nuclear-news

Illicit nuclear trade a ‘worsening problem’ – 20 known thefts of highly enriched uranium or plutonium

…Tobey said the nuclear trafficking threat today is a lot different than it was 30 to 40 years ago.

Now there are terrorists bent on wholesale destruction – as much as they can – and there is widespread dissemination of basic nuclear-weapons-related knowledge via the Internet, he said. You no longer have to go to a library and check out a book, he said…..

http://knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2014/02/13/illicit-nuclear-trade-worsening-problem/#more-11618

The trafficking of nuclear materials and technologies related to nuclear weapons is a growing threat, experts said Thursday at the 6^th annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit, but they said there are numerous ways to try to mitigate — if not eliminate — the problem.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, and Will Tobey, senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs, identified some of the supply chains for illicit trafficking that could lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons in countries such as Iran and among terrorists and “non-state actors.”

“I think it’s a worsening problem,” said Albright, whose institute released a report in October that addressed the future concerns.

Over the next 5 to 10 years, black market trading is likely to be conducted by several nations seeking nuclear weapons or wanting to maintain existing weapon arsenals or capabilities, Albright said.

Tobey said there have been about 20 known thefts of highly enriched uranium or plutonium, the nuclear materials that can be used to make a nuclear weapon. The good news is that those materials were later seized by authorities, but the bad news is that the places from which they were stolen – mostly bulk-processing facilities – didn’t know the nuclear materials were gone until after they’d been recovered.

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February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Devonport Naval Base not on nuclear waste shortlist

….“All of the potential sites have a proven track record in handling radioactive material in a safe and secure way…. 

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Devonport-nuclear-waste-shortlist/story-20620919-detail/story.html

February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Don’t Get Excited about Nuclear Fusion Yet

…But we’re a long way from that. Until we get there, oil and gas are our cheapest sources of energy. It’s going to be tough to shake the world off of fossil fuels. Just how tough is it? Tougher than splitting the atom. It’s as tough as fusing two atoms together…..

http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/dont-get-excited-about-nuclear-fusion-yet/5029

Significant new findings a long way from viable

By Joseph Cafariello
Thursday, February 13th, 2014

In romance, they say that breaking up is hard to do. But in nuclear energy, getting together is even harder.
Ever since scientists successfully harnessed the immense energy released by splitting the atom, (known as nuclear fission – such as takes place inside a nuclear bomb), they have been hard at work trying to harness the greater amounts of energy released from binding atoms together (known as nuclear fusion – such as takes place inside the sun).

After more than 60 years of trying, finally we have a breakthrough. The scientific journal Nature reported yesterday that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco “have successfully triggered significant amounts of fusion by zapping a target with their laser”.

The research could one day bestow upon humankind not only the most powerful source of energy we know of, but one of the safest and cleanest too.

Since the fusion process combines two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom, its fuel source (water) is abundant and cheap, while its waste bi-product (helium) can be combusted to generate more electricity by powering steam turbines.

By contrast, the fission process used in nuclear power plants today requires mining uranium, a limited resource, and produces toxic waste that remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

The challenge for scientists, however, is that fusing has always consumed more energy than was harnessed out. If they could just develop a fusion process that is economically feasible, the world could benefit from the ultimate source of power.

This is why yesterday’s announcement is so promising. For the first time in fusion research, “We’ve gotten more energy out of the fusion fuel than we put into the fusion fuel,” LLNL lead scientist Omar Hurricane proudly announced.

The Force Behind Fusion

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February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear-Armed Nations to Sit Out Humanitarian Meeting

February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

(UPDATED) (Now They Tell Us) Highly Radioactive Pieces Found in Naraha-Machi in June/July 2013 Came from #Fukushima I NPP, TEPCO Now Says

http://ex-skf.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/now-they-tell-us-highly-radioactive.html

14 February 2014

(UPDATE-2) Of all news outlets, it was Yomiuri who reported the news (two days late) and mentioned the last remaining potential route for the debris pieces – Reactor 3 explosion. From Yomiuri Shinbun (2/24/2014) （2014年2月14日  読売新聞）: [This date is wrong but i think it should be the 14 February 2014? – Arclight2011 ]

原子炉建屋の水素爆発で飛び散ったのか、海から流されてきたのかなど、理由は不明という。

The reason [why the debris pieces were there] is unknown; they could have been scattered by the hydrogen explosion in the reactor building, or they could have come from the ocean.

This news continues to be mostly ignored by both the mainstream media and the alternative net media. Very strange.

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(UPDATE 2/13/2014) The only news I’ve found so far about these debris pieces in Naraha-machi is from FNN local Fukushima news. Even that news hides the fact that the radioactivity of maximum 2.92 million becquerels of radioactive cesium IS PER 0.4 GRAM SAMPLE.

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Specifically, four small pieces of debris found at the river mouth in Naraha-machi 15 kilometers from the plant may have come from Reactor 3.

The first piece of debris were found in June 2013, but TEPCO didn’t mention the discovery until July after three more such high-radiation pieces were found. Even then, they published a half-baked result of the analysis, which was nothing more than the measurement of gamma radiation and beta radiation in microsieverts per hour. (See my post on July 2, 2013 for the first discovery.)

TEPCO disclosed the result of the analysis of the debris done by Japan Atomic Energy Agency (of Monju fame) during the regular February 12, 2014 press conference, and no major news outlet has reported the news so far. Only bloggers took note. (I suppose the mainstream media is busy educating themselves on the intricacies of the State Secrecy Protection Law, even though it hasn’t gone into effect yet.)

According to TEPCO, the pieces of debris were not only highly contaminated with radioactive materials released from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant but they actually, most likely came from the plant. The degree of contamination from radioactive materials found on the small pieces of debris is similar to that on the debris found around the Reactor 3 building.

From TEPCO’s handout for the press, 2/12/2014 (in Japanese):

Very high contamination from cesium-134, cesium-137, and presence of cobalt-60 (in blue rectangle, added by me). Note the unit is Bq per sample, not kilogram. For example, Sample No.3 (0.4 gram) has 2.0 x 10^6 Bq, or 2 million becquerels of cesium-137:

Very high all-beta:

But the composition of radioactive materials (ratio) on the debris pieces shows almost all radioactivity comes from cesium-134 and cesium-137:

Radioactivity of the debris pieces, compared to those of the debris around the Reactor 3 building and of the soil in Naraha-machi and neighboring Hirono-machi. The debris pieces have about the same order of magnitude of contamination as the debris around Reactor 3 for cesium-137, and one to three orders of magnitude higher contamination for cobalt-60. Unit is Bq per gram:
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February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nukes over wind turbines? UK Research & Development policies are warped

10:50 10 February 2014 by Stuart Parkinson

http://actionawe.org/nukes-over-wind-turbines-uk-rd-policies-are-warped/

Weapons of mass destruction get five times as much public research cash in the UK as renewable energy. Time for a rethink, says Stuart Parkinson

The scale of a nation’s public spending on different areas of research and development can be very revealing. For example, what sort of a nation would spend five times as much on developing weapons of mass destruction – including delivery systems – than on the R&D for renewable energy that is so central to tackling climate change? Figures just published reveal one such nation to be the UK.

Using data from freedom of information requests, campaign group Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), of which I am executive director, has pieced together recent R&D spending by the UK government on a series of major weapons systems and compared them with public R&D spending on measures to tackle major drivers of armed conflict, such as resource depletion, social and economic injustice, and climate change. This is the first time such an analysis has been carried out – for the UK or indeed anywhere else. What we have uncovered is deeply disturbing.

During the three financial years spanning 2008 to 2011, annual R&D spending on all aspects of UK nuclear weapons systems was over £320 million per year. This included: over £100m a year on warheads; over £120m a year on early development work for new submarines planned to carry the nuclear-armed Trident missiles; and over £90m a year on R&D for new nuclear reactors to propel those submarines.

Only about £12m a year of the total was focused on nuclear disarmament. Since the end of this period, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has moved on to the next stage of developing these new submarines, so more recent spending, which is not yet publicly available, is likely to have risen significantly.

Grim background

This is against a background of real-term cuts across UK universities and other publicly funded R&D. And it is in stark relief to spending in areas such as renewable energy – crucial to help tackle climate change and resource depletion. Figures reported to the International Energy Agencyput the UK’s public R&D spending on renewable energy at only £60m a year over the same three-year period – less than 20 per cent of the nuclear weapons spend. And, unlike nuclear weapons, public spending on renewable energy R&D has fallen since 2011 due to government budget cuts.

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February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Over 100 members of the U.S. Congress call for diplomacy with Iran on nuclear program

February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This week in Mexico: 130 nations discuss Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons

http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/blog/this-week-in-mexico.html

The preliminaries to the Second International Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons got under way today in Nayarit, Mexico. I am here representing both PSR and as Co-President, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

Red Cross Societies from across Latin America and the Caribbean convened for a two day Regional Meeting to discuss implementation of the Red Cross’ 4 year action plan to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The meeting was also attended by representatives from the Red Cross in Canada, Australia, Nigeria, Lebanon, New Zealand, Norway and Austria.

Masao Tomanaga from JPPNW, PSR’s sister IPPNW affiliate in Japan, addressed the meeting this morning on the effects of the nuclear attack on Nagasaki, and I made a presentation on the nuclear famine following limited nuclear war and the medical consequences of large scale nuclear war.

At the same time, 130 energetic campaigners from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) met just down the street to plan strategy for moving ICAN forward in the next few months.  Both the Red Cross members and many of the ICAN campaigners will be attending the formal government conference–hosted by the government of Mexico–which opens Thursday morning.

February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Power struggle over EU nuclear safety

….In its suggested amendments, the EC has proposed mandatory stress tests for European nuclear facilities every six years and a set of criteria to ensure national regulators are truly independent from interference from the government or from the industry when they make decisions……

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Power-struggle-over-EU-nuclear-safety-1302145.html

13 February 2014

February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

IAEA Delivers Final Report on Decommissioning Efforts at Fukushima Daiichi

…..The team also examined Japan’s efforts to monitor radiation condition in the marine environment, including seawater, sediments and biota, which were further discussed with officials of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA)…..

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2014/decommissioning.html

13 February 2014

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) delivered a report on 12 February 2014 to the government of Japan describing the findings of a two-part review of the nation’s efforts to plan and implement the decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (NPS).

At Japan’s request, the IAEA organized two expert teams to provide an independent review of Japan’s Mid-and-Long-Term Roadmap towards the Decommissioning of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Units 1-4. The first team visited Japan from 15 to 22 April 2013 and the second from 25 November to 4 December 2013.

“Japan has established a good foundation to improve its strategy and to allocate the necessary resources to conduct the safe decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi,” said team leader Juan Carlos Lentijo, IAEA Director of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology.” The situation, however, remains very complex, and there will continue to be challenging issues that must be resolved to ensure the plant’s long-term stability.”

The expert teams examined a wide variety of issues relating to decommissioning the power plant, including Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO’s) efforts to remove fuel assemblies from Reactor Unit 4’s Spent Fuel Pool and to manage the growing volume of contaminated water at the site.

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February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

We’re one step closer to nuclear fusion but still miles away

……All things considered, the interest in nuclear fusion is alive and kicking despite progress being made at a necessarily tedious pace and at the cost of billions of dollars. After the laser facility at NIF came online in 2009, it set for itself a deadline of September 2012 by which to the ignition of a fusion reaction – and missed, prompting politicians to deprioritise the project and chop funding by $60 million. In the same year, on the other hand, Russia and China announced plans for two ‘superlaser’ facilities to replicate inertial fusion.

Once any of them achieves a sustainable fusion reaction, countries will quickly start designing power plants. Already, engineers at the Naval Research Laboratory, USA, are drawing up plans for a Fusion Test Facility that will let them experiment with nuclear fusion with an aim to generate electric power. Let’s then give ourselves till the end of this century, eh?….

Vasudevan Mukunth

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/blogs/blogs-the-copernican/article5685659.ece

My favourite source of limitless energy lies in fiction, in Arthur Clarke’s The Songs of Distant Earth to be exact. In the book, Clarke describes a spaceship called ‘Magellan’ powered by zero-point energy, where energy is pulled out of nothing (or out of other dimensions – but since those dimensions are otherwise inaccessible, their existence would mean nothing to our dimension).

Clarke wasn’t entirely wrong – as usual – with his vision: using zero-point energy, or vacuum energy, is a scientifically viable possibility, albeit not in the way he’d imagine it. It requires tremendous advancements in technology to achieve. Perhaps he knew that, too: the novel is set in the late 40th century, a time by which humankind is likely to have at least fully understood how to produce more energy than is consumed in producing it.

In 2014, the only Earth-bound candidate (apart from Frank Wilczek’s time crystals) in a position to lay claim to this honour is nuclear fusion. This is a phenomenon already at work in the hearts of stars, but in laboratories on Earth, scientists are still grappling with getting minute details right so they can achieve sustainable nuclear fusion.

Blowing the fuse

On February 12, a team from the $1.2-billion National Ignition Facility (NIF), California, announced that they’d breached the first step: producing a fusion reaction that released more energy than it consumed, over experiments in September and November, 2013. Viewed against a historical backdrop that started in the early 1980s, this is a remarkable achievement. Viewed against a futuristic ‘frontdrop’, it pales in comparison to what should come next.

At NIF, scientists practice one of two known techniques to achieve nuclear fusion, at least if simulations based on theoretical models are to be believed: inertial containment. The principle is simple. Atoms of hydrogen are heavily compressed inside a very small capsule until they fuse together to form atoms of helium, releasing large amounts of energy. This is how a nuclear fusion reaction is triggered.

But in order to make it practicable, scientists have to make this reaction continue and sustain it. To get there, the reaction has to be controlled in such a way that more atoms of hydrogen and helium use some of the heat produced to compress themselves further, producing another fusion reaction, and so on. Beyond this stumbling block, needless to say, is the panacea to most energy problems conceivable by humankind.

Not exactly the reaction we’re looking for

Before we start speculating, however, it’s important to get some things right about the NIF achievement. For starters, they achieved “fusion fuel gains exceeding unity”, according to their paper. If fusion fuel gain is less than unity, then the amount of fuel produced divided by the amount of fuel consumed is a number less than 1. At unity, the value of the fraction is of course 1. Exceeding unity, therefore, means more fuel was produced than was consumed. The operative clause here is ‘fuel consumed’.

The folks at NIF used strong lasers pulsing for a few nanoseconds to deliver trillions of watts of energy to the contents of the capsule. However, not all the energy is consumed by the atoms but only a fraction. And if they have achieved fusion – which they have – it means the amount of energy produced by fusion was greater than the fraction they consumed, not greater than all the energy they were given. According to their paper published in Nature, the total energy delivered by the lasers was 1.9 megajoules while the reaction produced about 17 kilojoules.

As Omar Hurricane, the lead author of the published paper, told The Guardian, “We are finally, by harnessing these reactions, getting more energy out of that reaction than we put into the DT fuel.”

Even so, they were missing something here that’d make the process more efficient. This is where the history comes into play.

To get inertial containment right, scientists have to broadly look out for three things. First, the lasers have to be designed to perfectly deliver specific quantities of energy over carefully described intervals. Second, the lasers produce X-rays inside the capsule that then energise the atoms – the X-rays have to be as symmetrical as possible to act evenly. Third, the contents of the capsule have to be as spherically arranged as possible to minimise instability.

The contents being made to implode are a mixture of deuterium (D) and tritium (T) – both isotopes of hydrogen. They are coated as a fine patina on the insides of the capsule, which is made of gold. When laser pulses strike the gold, it emits X-rays that then driven the isotopes inward at such energy and speed (almost 1.12 million km/hr) that they are forced to fuse. Because the flux of X-rays can’t be possibly perfectly controlled, the focus was mostly on getting…

The perfect shot into the perfect capsule

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February 14, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear Hotseat #138: USS Reagan Sailors v. TEPCO Lawsuit Update w/Attny Charles Bonner

http://www.nuclearhotseat.com/blog/

DOWNLOAD HERE:

http://lhalevy.audioacrobat.com/download/04f9641a-1876-4dcc-ad04-8b373aef8633.mp3

INTERVIEW: Attorney Charles Bonner, representing USS Ronald Reagan sailors harmed by Fukushima radiation, with an update on their lawsuit against TEPCO.  Now 79 named plaintiffs with cancers, tumors, blindness, wasting of limbs, internal bleeding and more face off w/power giant for medical expenses on behalf of 75,000 military personnel in Japan during the start of the Fukushima crisis.

NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK:  A lying professor claims you can eat 32 grams of plutonium… and not get sick!  And TEPCO has solicited Fukushima clean-up suggestions from experts around the world.  200 ideas being vetted… and implementation not expected or possible between 2020.  Just in time for the Olympics? 

PLUS:

• Eight more children diagnosed with thyroid cancer in Fukushima while medical “experts” claim it has nothing to do w/Fukushima;
• TEPCO admits their radiation data is “wildly wrong” as new sources of radiation leaks keep showing up;
• Tokyo gets Abe-baby’s hand-picked pro-nuke misogynist Masuzoe as their new governor because anti-nuke vote got split;
• Hawaii getting hit hard with ongoing radiation, starts to discover how long it’s been going on (HINT: longer than they’ve known);
• California kayakers report Fukushima radiation on their boat bottoms;
• Teen cancer cluster in LA suburb calls in Erin Brockovich, who needs to realize they’re just ten miles from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, site of a 1959 nuclear meltdown and the largest radiation release in US history;
• Imminent influx of radioactive Pacific water from Fukushima will leave radwaste residue on west coast beaches;
• RadCAST radiation “weather report” with Mimi German.
• …and more!

February 12, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Radioactive Waste 55 – Illegal Nuclear Waste Dumping in England 1

….Here we have a government agency, the U.K. Ministry of Defense, breaking rules about nuclear waste safety at a government waste repository, Driggs. It is bad enough when unscrupulous companies conspire to with the Mafia illegally dump nuclear waste as I covered in recent posts. But when government agencies are mishandling nuclear waste, where is the public supposed to turn to rectify the situation?….

http://nucleotidings.com/article/radioactive-waste-55-illegal-nuclear-waste-dumping-england-1
By phoenix | 2/11/14

Yesterday, I blogged about illegal dumping of radioactive waste in a national nuclear repository in France. Continuing my focus on illegal radioactive waste dumping, today’s blog is about illegal dumping in the United Kingdom. The UK Ministry of Defense has shipped waste from nuclear submarines based at Devenport in Plymouth to Driggs in Cumbria on the west coast of England for decades. Recently the Observer newspaper learned and reported that since 1990, the waste being shipped to Driggs from Devenport has been exceeding the strict safety limits set by UK law for radioactivity.

Driggs is a repository for low-level radioactive waste that was operated by British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), a company owned by the U.K. government. BNFL was founded in 1971. It made nuclear fuel, ran nuclear reactors, generated and sold electricity, reprocessed and managed spent nuclear fuel and decommissioned nuclear power plants. In 2005, it transferred all the nuclear sites it managed, including Driggs, to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. By 2009, BNFL had sold off all of its operation divisions and it was announced in 2010 that it would be abolished. BNFL had been repeatedly criticized for poor record keeping and management of nuclear sites including Driggs.

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February 12, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

UK – Bradwell-on-Sea nuclear plans : Fears nuclear liquid discharge could pollute famous oysters

….“We are against the process. There’s just not enough information about the impact the process might have and we need to give the oysters every chance we can.”

He has been backed by Sarah Allison, a marine officer at Essex Wildlife Trust, who said she was “seriously concerned” about the discharge plans…..

 

http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/bradwell_on_sea_west_mersea_fears_nuclear_liquid_discharge_could_pollute_famous_oysters_1_331650

Ross Bentley Wednesday, February 12, 201

Plans to pour nuclear effluent into an Essex estuary could pollute the region’s famous oysters, a fisherman and wildlife expert have warned.

As part of the decommissioning procedure for the nuclear power station at Bradwell-on-Sea, near Maldon, a process known as fuel element dissolution (FED) is set to take place. It involves dissolving metal that was used to hold fuel rods in acid to reduce and capture radioactive material before discharging the liquid by-product into the sea at the Blackwater Estuary.

The process is due to start next month but West Mersea oyster fisherman, Richard Haward, who fishes the estuary and owns the well-known fishmongers The Company Shed, fears too little is known about the potential impact the effluent could have on the fragile population of native oysters that inhabit the area. In December, the estuary was designated a Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to protect the oysters, which have been farmed there since Roman times.

However, both Magnox, which operates the plant at Bradwell, and the Environment Agency say the liquid discharges will be within safe limits.

Mr Haward said: “The population of native oysters is much lower than it has been traditionally and the MCZ was set up to help the population grow. If nothing is done now the population could fall beyond a level where they could recover,”

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February 12, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Senate OKs task force to study nuclear power

February 12, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment