nuclear-news

Russia’s new nuclear submarine to be commissioned soon

Souce:Xinhua Published By Thomas Whittle

Updated 29/12/2012 5:54 pm

image courtesy of hobbyboss.com

SAINT PETERSBURG, Dec. 28 — The latest submarine addition to Russia’s ‘Project 955′ upgrading of its nuclear capability, the Yuri Dolgoruky, is due to be commissioned in the northern port of Severodinsk on Sunday, Itar-Tass reported Friday.

The sub, armed with new and improved ballistic missile capabilities, is one of eight major projects due to be completed by 2020 that will form the core of the Russian Navy’s nuclear deterrence strategy over the coming decades.

The total cost of the Yuri Dolgoruky has been estimated at 23 billion rubles (750 million U.S. dollars).

Image courtesy of shipmodels.info

http://www.nzweek.com/world/russias-new-nuclear-submarine-to-be-commissioned-soon-40051/

December 29, 2012 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Toshiba in Talks to Sell Part of Westinghouse Nuclear-Power Unit

• ASIA BUSINESS
• December 27, 2012,

BY MARI IWATA

TOKYO—Toshiba Corp. is negotiating with three parties to sell up to 16% of its Westinghouse Electric Co. nuclear-power unit, Toshiba President Norio Sasaki said.

The three parties “have made very good offers,” but Toshiba is “not in a hurry,” Mr. Sasaki said. The Japanese conglomerate’s forecast for its nuclear-reactor business is positive, despite softer demand after last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan, he said.

Toshiba paid about $4.2 billion for 77% of U.S.-based Westinghouse six years ago. At that price, the 16% would be valued around $875 million. Toshiba has since sold 10% of Westinghouse to Kazakhstan state-owned NAC Kazatomprom …

Subscription only

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324669104578205060423492162.html?mod=WSJ_Energy_leftHeadlines

December 29, 2012 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Before the bombs go off: Bellona

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2012/environmental_effects_of_nuclear_production

The advent of nuclear weapons in the 1940s created an environmental Frankenstein, the repercussions of which no nuclear-armed nation on earth has been able to deal with effectively. As the search for nuclear weapons begat the harnessing of the atom’s power for the “peaceful” purposes of energy production, the two are inextricably intertwined in producing an environmental, sociological and economic challenge that they governments of the world are only beginning to comprehend.

Charles Digges, 27/12-2012

And if current progress in dealing with weapons and civilian nuclear waste is any indication, the destructive force of both nuclear arms and nuclear energy – even if they were banned tomorrow by all world governments simultaneously – will continue to linger for generations to come. The simple fact of the matter in both cases remains that, ever since the inception of the atomic chain reaction occurred to Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard as he stood waiting to cross Budapest street in 1933, – according to his memoirs – no scientist, group of scientists or national governments have come up with a way to store nuclear waste for the hundreds of decades it takes to lose its contaminating effects, or mitigate the effects of radiation exposure to human health. Nuclear weapons and their doppelganger nuclear power have thus together achieved the status of a time release weapon of mass destruction even before the red button is pushed in a remote missile silo or a dirty bomb detonated by terrorists.

Haste failed to account for waste

The race to create the world’s most potent weapon of mass destruction in the hopes of ending World War II with Fat Man and Little Boy under Robert Opppenheimer’s  Manhattan Project was exactly that  – a race that took haphazard chances with then-barley known effects of radiation, and only a theoretical knowledge of how long radioactive contamination remains lethal within the environment.

Little Boy exploding above Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Fat Man exploding over Nagasaki on Aust 9, 1945

Wikimedia Commons

On August 6, 1945, the US bomber the Enola Gay unleashed the uranium-235 based Little Boy on Hiroshima with 16 kilotons of force. Three days later, the plutonium powered Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki by the US bomber Bockscar, yielding 21 kilotons of force.

The rest of the world struggled to catch up, with Russia detonating its first uranium powered nuclear bomb in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan on August 29, 1949 as the result of a massive post-war effort involving some 68,000 people working within the First Chief Directorate, or PGU, headed by Igor Kurchatov. The PGU, through the Soviet period underwent several name changes – many intended to disguise its purpose – and has emerged today as Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation.

A replica of the first Russian atomic bomb

Bellona

Though an ally of the United States, Great Britain did not develop its own nuclear weapon until the early 1950s, detonating its first uranium-235 powered device under a frigate off the coast of Australia on October 3, 1952, followed by its free fall “Blue Danube” atomic bomb in November of 1953. Secrecy codes adopted by the administration of President Harry Truman, and codified by the McMahon Act of 1946, restricting foreign access to nuclear weapons know-how – despite Britain’s close collaboration in the Manhattan Project.

Successes in disarmament

US led efforts in the early 1990s via the Nunn Lugar program an others by the US Department of Energy (DOE)  – which collectively form the US Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) effort – to decommission tens of thousands of nuclear warheads, submarines, and shut down plutonium producing reactors in the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War proved one successful blow in disarmament.  This drive was augmented in 2002 by the G-8’s Global Initiative program, which pumped another $20 billion over 10 years into helping fortify the storage and security of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from decommissioned military nuclear weapons like submarines, as well as to augment CTR efforts to rid, or at least safely store, Russia’s vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons. US-led programs also contributed to the safe storage of weapons grade plutonium in Russia, and launched other efforts to help retrain the legions of now-jobless Soviet weapons scientists to apply their skills to peaceful purposes.

A Russian nuclear submarine being dismantled on Nunn-Lugar funding

Bellona Archive

But many of these programs are now drawing to a close, both because of their own built-in expiration dates, like the G-8 initiative, and the future of US programs, like CTR, have recently become foggy as Moscow’s political system expresses new paranoia about revealing its nuclear secrets – and indeed about western aid in general. This backpedaling to the Soviet cloud of secrecy surrounding issues nuclear – which is by no means the exclusive domain of the Russians – threatens to leave unfinished several critical weapons destruction programs, and has even seen the Kremlin recently state plans to restore its nuclear submarine might under the world’s seas – replacing missile subs decommissioned by CTR and other international efforts – despite the excessive cost overruns that such new lines of nuclear weapons systems imply.

Nunn-Lugar helps destroy a missile silo in the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine

Wikimedia Commons

But many of these programs are now drawing to a close, both because of their own built-in expiration dates, like the G-8 initiative, and the future of US programs, like CTR, have recently become foggy as Moscow’s political system expresses new paranoia about revealing its nuclear secrets – and indeed about western aid in general. This backpedaling to the Soviet cloud of secrecy surrounding issues nuclear – which is by no means the exclusive domain of the Russians – threatens to leave unfinished several critical weapons destruction programs, and has even seen the Kremlin recently state plans to restore its nuclear submarine might under the world’s seas – replacing missile subs decommissioned by CTR and other international efforts – despite the excessive cost overruns that such new lines of nuclear weapons systems imply.

The uncertainty of CTR’s future efforts – which America insists it will continue – and funding shortfalls by G-8 nations under the Global Initiative cast a shadow over the future of literally tons of nuclear military hardware and irradiated equipment that continues to pose one of the most critical environmental questions of the last, the current and several centuries to come.

Emergent hazards of the nuclear weapons industry and the advent of nuclear energy

Continue reading →

December 29, 2012 Posted by arclight2011 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment