2014 March 27 « nuclear-news

Across the United States there exist numerous facilities at which nuclear fuel is manufactured and stored, including highly enriched uranium (HEU). According to experts, even someone with rudimentary skills could utilize this HEU fuel to create a nuclear weapon capable of leveling a major U.S. city.

You would think that after the destruction of the world trade center, thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars spent that the Department of Homeland Security would have made securing these facilities a top priority.

But you’d be wrong.

A new report from Harvard University underscores just how ripe with security holes and ineptitude these facilities really are. So much so that recently an 82 year-old nun and two of her cohorts compromised one of these locations with tools as simple as a pair of bolt cutters and a couple of hammers. What’s more is that the facility cited in the report is one that nuclear security experts refer to as the “Fort Knox of Highly Enriched Uranium” – the Y-12 Oak Ridge, Tennessee National Security Complex.

In the early morning hours of July 28, 2012, an 82 year-old nun and two other protesters broke into the Y-12 nuclear weapons production facility—sometimes referred to as the Fort Knox of HEU—in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Equipped with hammers, paint, blood, and a pair of bolt cutters, they cut through four fences—three of them with intrusion detectors—setting off alarms, and traversed a 600-meter semi-wooded area until they arrived at the wall of a building housing hundreds of tons of HEU, enough for thousands of nuclear weapons. They painted blood on the walls, sang songs, and pounded on the building with their hammers, before finally being accosted by a single guard. Fortunately, they were not terrorists armed with explosives and did not mean any harm (and the building has specially designed walls that would be very difficult for terrorists to penetrate, along with extensive interior protections). But later investigations revealed a security culture failure of epic proportions, not only in the intrusion but also in the response.

How could this happen? The subsequent investigation of the incident by the Department of Energy (DOE) Inspector General revealed “multiple system failures on several levels” and “troubling displays of ineptitude” in Y-12’s security practices. For example, it turned out the site had a new intrusion detection system, which was setting off ten times as many false alarms as usual. Normally, the guard at the central alarm station could check if an alarm was caused by a real intruder using cameras along the fence—but the cameras had been broken for months. They had not been put on the priority list to be fixed, on the assumption that guards could always check out the alarms; but it appears that with so many false alarms, the guards had grown weary of investigating. For whatever reason, even a series of alarms on a path leading directly to the HEU building was not enough to prompt the guard at the central alarm station to take more serious action. The heavily armed guards inside the facility heard the hammering and thought it might be construction they had not been told about, even though it was before dawn, and did not bother to check.

In short, there was a profound breakdown in security culture—among those who tolerated an intrusion system setting off ten times as many false alarms as usual, among those who did not bother to fix the cameras, among the guards who did not react to the alarms or the hammering, and eventually in the armed response to the intrusion.

Perhaps even more troubling, prior to the intrusion, officials at DOE headquarters thought of Y-12 as one of their most secure sites, and had no idea such a serious erosion of security practices had occurred. Tom D’Agostino, then-administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), warned that “this incident raises important questions about the security of Category I materials [those requiring the highest level of security] throughout the DOE complex.”

Full Report: Advancing Nuclear Security: Evaluating Progress and Setting New Goals (PDF)

The Department of Homeland Security insists that it is a necessary component of the national security apparatus.

They’ve certainly found time to weave a massive surveillance web across this country to record the digital interactions of every single American. They’ve highlighted the existence of serious threats emerging from domestic lone wolves who engage in activities such as making cash purchases, storing emergency supplies, or purchasing bulk ammunition. And these days everyone from a guy producing his own silver coins to kids making gun gestures with their fingers is accused of engaging in terrorist activity.

But when it comes to weapons of mass destruction it seems like no one in government really cares.

This report, yet again, brings to question the purpose of all the added security measures being forced upon the American people.

If national security is such a top priority of DHS and other agencies, then why is it that our Southern border remains so porous that individuals from countries like Iran and Afghanistan, some of them with possible ties to mid-east terrorist organisations, have been nabbed over the last several years trying to make their way into the United States?

How is it that critical utility infrastructure components like water reservoirs and electrical sub stations remain susceptible to even basic attacks?

And how, in a world where terrorism and improvised weapons are the typical method of attack, can supposedly highly secured nuclear facilities be broken into by a nun with bolt cutters?

An objective observer would have to conclude that protecting the United States from terrorists of the al-Queda Jihadi influence is not at all what these initiatives are all about.

Seriously, is anyone at DHS or the rest of our federal agencies paying attention to the real threats to our national security?

March 27, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Jonathan Schell dies at 70; author and anti-nuclear activist

For four decades, Jonathan Schell covered war and politics as a reporter and columnist for The New Yorker, Newsday and The Nation.

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-jonathan-schell-20140327,0,2301879.story#ixzz2x8Pdsl5t

Times Staff and Wire Reports

March 26, 2014, 8:01 p.m.

Jonathan Schell, the author, journalist and activist who wrote passionately and cogently about war and politics for more than 40 years, condemning conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq and galvanizing the anti-nuclear movement with his horrifyingly detailed bestseller, “The Fate of the Earth,” died Tuesday at his home in New York City. He was 70.

The cause was cancer, according to Schell’s companion, Irena Gross.

With unrelenting rage and idealism, Schell focused on the consequences of violence in essays and books that conveyed a hatred of war rooted in part in his firsthand observations of American military operations in Vietnam.

He was only 24 when he published his first book, “The Village of Ben Suc” (1967), a graphic account of the American assault on a small village northeast of Saigon in 1967. Schell, then a graduate student returning from studies in Japan, wangled a press pass and swooped into the hamlet with the first wave of U.S. military helicopters, then chronicled its obliteration in quiet but forceful prose.

“It was a remarkable piece of reporting and writing, particularly for one so young and so modestly experienced,” New Yorker editor David Remnick wrote in a tribute Wednesday that described Schell as “an invaluable voice” of moral conscience.

As gentle in person as he was impassioned on paper, Schell was a reporter and columnist for such publications as The New Yorker, Newsday and most recently The Nation.

Among his books, “The Fate of the Earth” (1982) was his mostly widely praised. Originally published as a four-part series in the New Yorker, it opened with a detailed description of how atom bombs are made and the annihilation they would cause before proceeding to analyze the problems with deterrence theory and discourse on humanity’s obligation to future generations. It appeared at an especially tense moment of the Cold War, with public sentiment for a nuclear weapons freeze growing.

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March 27, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New Zealand – Are our muttonbirds radioactive? but no tests for Strontium 90

“We will need to go through a number of approval processes and engage in consultation with local people before anything can happen as there are sensitive issues to consider before work can begin.”

“Our study is complementary to that earlier work but tests feathers instead of the birds themselves,” Dr Krofcheck said.

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/296744/are-our-muttonbirds-radioactive

Thu, 27 Mar 2014

– By Jamie Morton of the NZ Herald

Scientists are to check whether New Zealand muttonbirds that spend the winter off the coast of Japan have been exposed to radiation from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

In a new pilot study, University of Auckland scientists will investigate whether radioactive cesium has entered the New Zealand ecosystem or food chain via the birds.

The wrecked plant and its trapped contents have loomed over Japan since floodwaters from the March 2011 tsunami knocked out the plant’s back-up generators that were supposed to keep cooling its nuclear fuel.

The over-heating sparked meltdowns in three reactors and forced 150,000 to flee, and tens of thousands have been unable to return home to areas contaminated by radiation.

In the study, researchers will test the birds’ feathers for gamma rays that indicate the presence of the radioactive isotope cesium-134.

Feathers will be collected from prime muttonbird sites in the South Island, particularly Stewart Island.

New Zealand sooty shearwaters or titi migrate annually, spending the summer mating and raising their chicks in New Zealand before over-wintering off the coast of Japan.

Dr David Krofcheck, of the university’s department of physics, said the research was “very much about taking a precautionary approach”as there was no evidence to indicate that the birds had been vectors of radioactivity.

“But detection of gamma rays would tell us whether the birds spend sufficient time near Fukushima to accumulate cesium-134 from nuclear fission,” he said.

“Obviously the issue would then become whether that radioactivity is being absorbed into local ecosystems or the food chain.”

Pacific Bluefin tuna caught off the west coast of the United States showed only a minute trace of cesium-134 from Fukushima, 100 times less than normal radioactive elements found in fish.

The sooty shearwater was of cultural and economic value to Maori, who sustainably harvested the nearly fledged chicks during the annual muttonbird season.

The season runs from April to May and was restricted to Maori and their whanau who use the birds for food, oil and feather down.

Dr Krofcheck said consultation with Maori, the Rakiura Titi Islands Administering Body, about the research would begin as soon as possible.

“We will need to go through a number of approval processes and engage in consultation with local people before anything can happen as there are sensitive issues to consider before work can begin.”

The research is being done in collaboration with the Department of Zoology, University of Otago.

Previous tests on muttonbird exposure to radiation from Fukushima found no evidence of cesium being passed from parents to chicks.

“Our study is complementary to that earlier work but tests feathers instead of the birds themselves,” Dr Krofcheck said.

“Obviously what we are hoping to find in this latest research is that cesium levels in muttonbirds do not exceed exposure levels you would expect from natural sources.”

– By Jamie Morton of the NZ Herald

March 27, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

TED’s Pro-Nuclear Bias – Dennis Riches

Thirty-six talks are tagged “energy” and among these only a few are primarily about nuclear energy while a few others cover it as a sub-topic. This is a reflection of the TED’s bias, but also of those searching for the best way to respond to global warming. Some of them are pro-nuclear, while others believe either that nuclear is so irrelevant that it’s not worth discussing, or they just want to make it a one-front war against the fossil fuel industry. The bias in the TED talks is also a reflection of society’s lack of concern about nuclear energy. Nuclear energy and nuclear weapons are no longer novelties that strike fear in our hearts, even though the risks haven’t changed at all.

http://nf2045.blogspot.jp/2014/03/teds-pro-nuclear-bias.html

Posted by Dennis Riches at Monday, March 24, 2014

TED talks gone nuclear: how neoliberal proselytizing goes hand in hand with the promotion of nuclear energy
The TED talks became popular about ten years ago once broadband video had become widely available. At first, the videos seemed like a valuable educational resource and a compelling alternative in a post-literate world to reading magazine articles. Few people would read, or even find, a report about the eradication of smallpox, but many more would find and listen to a twenty-minute personal narrative by the man who led the UN program which successfully eradicated smallpox. What’s not to like here? But over time I noticed that more and more of the talks ended with the speaker saying something to the live audience like “go out and change the world,” and it was clear that the message was directed at the wealthy, important people in attendance, not at the masses watching the recordings. It had become clear that TED reflected a particular belief system about how to improve the world, and that the conference had a missionary purpose which left people watching at home as mere spectators. Critical voices started to grumble about a vaguely sensed banality that arises from the missionary aura of the event. For a while, no one was quite able to define the problem, and it was difficult to find fault with a forum that presented so many interesting speakers and was apparently devoted to changing the world for the better. It wasn’t until 2012 that critical reviews seemed to be getting close to articulating what is wrong with TED. Martin Robbins wrote in “The Trouble with TED Talks” in New Statesman in September, 2012. He noted that the TED slogan “ideas worth spreading” indicates that TED is essentially concerned with proselytizing. A significant flaw in the structure of TED is that participation in the conference is accessible only to people who can pay thousands of dollars to attend for a few days. Robbins asks, “What better crowd could there be than social elites who’ve invested thousands of dollars for the opportunity to bask in the warm glow of someone else’s intellectual aura?” For Robbins, the major flaw is that ideas worth spreading are never challenged or peer reviewed. There is no question period after the talks, no debate, no transparency about the way speakers are selected. He concludes:
TED Talks are designed to make people feel good about themselves; to flatter them and make them feel clever and knowledgeable; to give them the impression that they’re part of an elite group making the world a better place. People join for much the same reason they join societies like Mensa: it gives them a chance to label themselves part of an intellectual elite. That intelligence is optional, and you need to be rich and well-connected to get into the conferences and the exclusive fringe parties and events that accompany them, simply adds to the irresistible allure. TED’s slogan shouldn’t be ‘Ideas worth spreading’, it should be: ‘Ego worth paying for’.
In December 2013, Benjamin Bratton wrote “We Need to Talk about TED” for The Guardian. He stated his opinion that “TED actually stands for: middlebrow megachurch infotainment.” He noted an implicit requirement that talks be based on “epiphany and personal testimony” in order to be considered worthy. He asked, “What is it that the TED audience hopes to get from this? A vicarious insight, a fleeting moment of wonder, an inkling that maybe it’s all going to work out after all? A spiritual buzz?” Bratton noted that TED management demanded that its various satellite conference organizers (TEDx events) refrain from featuring speakers whose topics include the paranormal, the conspiratorial and new agey. The goal was to have TEDx present talks that are imaginative yet grounded in reality. Bratton gives TED some credit for trying to maintain its reliability, but he noted:
“the corollaries of placebo science and placebo medicine are placebo politics and placebo innovation. On this point, TED has a long way to go… If we really want transformation, we have to slog through the hard stuff (history, economics, philosophy, art, ambiguities, contradictions). Bracketing it off to the side to focus just on technology, or just on innovation, actually prevents transformation… Keep calm and carry on “innovating” … is that the real message of TED? To me that’s not inspirational, it’s cynical. In the US the rightwing has certain media channels that allow it to bracket reality… other constituencies have TED.
In spite of what TED claims in its response to such criticisms, I think there is nonetheless an ideological bias in the TED conference, and this is incompatible with the objective of conducting an open search for innovative solutions to global problems. The problem can be understood by asking what is absent as opposed to what is present. Because it was established by and for technology millionaires, content has been consciously or unconsciously selected to reflect their world view. Prominent intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader, for example, have never appeared on the TED stage. In TEDworld, solutions come in the form of small-scale initiatives by selected innovators that can be scaled up, if they receive support from wealthy donors during networking sessions at the conference. Someone who has developed an inexpensive water filter might get private funding to launch a large-scale deployment in an African country, but this is as far as problem-solving goes. The TED stage does not welcome discussion of the big questions about resource exploitation and the geopolitical goals of Western powers that perpetuate numerous African conflicts. No one on the TED stage talks about solving complex social problems through government policy, taxes on the wealthy, or electoral reform. Many TED speakers beseech the TED audience to take action because they see government and private enterprise as incapable of doing the right thing. Bill Gates said in his talk about his charitable foundation, “Governments don’t naturally pick these things [philanthropic initiatives] in the right way. The private sector doesn’t naturally put its resources into these things. So it’s going to take brilliant people like you… [special people in the TED audience]” Somehow, this depressing lack of faith in democratic institutions and traditions isn’t seen as detracting from the optimism and inspiration of the event. An excellent example of ideological filtering can be seen in the way TED has set the parameters of its discussion of nuclear energy. In the list below, I briefly comment on the few talks that have mentioned nuclear energy, and what emerges from this review is a bias that promotes nuclear energy as a solution to global warming yet avoids all mention of its historical failures, the health and environmental hazards, and the intractable problem of waste disposal. There is a long list of qualified and respectable nuclear scientists who lost their funding when they began to report findings unfavorable to national energy policy goals, but they have continued to do good research with funds they raise privately. These people have never been invited to the TED stage because it seems they have been categorized among those who do “placebo science,” science which is “not grounded in reality.” Other people who will never be invited are representatives of ethnic groups such as the Navajo, Dene and Marshallese who have been victimized by nuclear weapons testing and uranium mining. What follows is a brief summary and critique of the short list of TED talks that are concerned with nuclear energy.
1. Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy? (2010) This is perhaps the only instance of a TED talk presented as a multi-faceted discussion in which ideas are challenged by the debaters, the moderator and members of the audience. However, the debate parameters are stacked in favor of nuclear energy. The “No” answer is framed as needing to prove that renewable energy could provide enough baseload energy to replace both carbon and nuclear sources. The speaker, Mark Jacobson, is a specialist in atmospheric research and renewable energy, so he isn’t the best person to speak of the negative aspects of nuclear energy. The “anti-nuclear” argument is allotted little opportunity to discuss environmental impacts, health impacts, proliferation risks, the risk of catastrophic failures (this was one year before Fuskushima) and the questionable values of a society that leaves the nuclear waste legacy to future generations. Nonetheless, Jacobson manages to cover some of these topics while spending most of his time explaining the potential of renewables. The pro-nuclear argument is presented by the famous apostate of traditional environmentalism, Stewart Brand.

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March 27, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

“Nuclear is pricing itself out of the market” – Citigroup

Coal, it says, is basically priced out of the market. Environmental regulations means that the LCOE for new coal is around 15.6c/kWh, and it notes that coal only accounts for 2 per cent of the generation projects under development.

On nuclear, Citi says cost over-runs at the Vogtle plant under construction in Georgia – now slated to cost $15 billion, way above expectations – mean that nuclear is pricing itself out of the market. Citi puts its LCOE at 11c/kWh), which it said is relatively expensive, vs combined cycle gas plants and solar and wind. And it notes that while financing costs are inexpensive in the current monetary environment, this situation will not last.

“Financing cost are likely to rise which would hurt the LCOE attractiveness of a high construction cost generating source like nuclear,” Citi says. “As a result, we do not expect nuclear to effectively compete on economic merits. Despite this LCOE dynamic, there is merit to increasing fuel diversity and supporting lower carbon generation. “

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/citigroup-says-the-age-of-renewables-has-begun-69852

By Giles Parkinson on 27 March 2014

Investment banking giant Citigroup has hailed the start of the “age of renewables” in the United States, the world’s biggest electricity market, saying that solar and wind energy are getting competitive with natural gas peaking and baseload plants – even in the US where gas prices are said to be low.

In a major new analysis released this week, Citi says the big decision makers within the US power industry are focused on securing low cost power, fuel diversity and stable cash flows, and this is drawing them increasingly to the “economics” of solar and wind, and how they compare with other technologies.

Much of the mainstream media – in the US and abroad – has been swallowing the fossil fuel Kool-Aid and hailing the arrival of cheap gas, through the fracking boom, as a new energy “revolution”, as if this would be a permanent state of affairs. But as we wrote last week, solar costs continue to fall even as gas prices double.

Citi’s report echoes that conclusion. Gas prices, it notes, are rising and becoming more volatile. This has made wind and solar and other renewable energy sources more attractive because they are not sensitive to fuel price volatility.

Citi says solar is already becoming more attractive than gas-fired peaking plants, both from a cost and fuel diversity perspective. And in baseload generation, wind, biomass, geothermal, and hydro are becoming more economically attractive than baseload gas.

It notes that nuclear and coal are structurally disadvantaged because both technologies are viewed as uncompetitive on cost. Environmental regulations are making coal even pricier, and the ageing nuclear fleet in the US is facing plant shutdowns due to the challenging economics.

“We predict that solar, wind, and biomass to continue to gain market share from coal and nuclear into the future,” the Citi analysts write.

Citi says the key metric in comparing power sources will be the levellised cost of energy (LCOE). “As solar, wind, biomass, and other power sources gain market share from coal, nukes, and gas, the LCOE metric increasingly becomes important to the new build power generation decision making,” it says.

(Citi defines LCOE as the average cost of producing a unit of electricity over the lifetime of the generating source. It takes into account the amount produced by the source, the costs that went into establishing the source over its lifetime, including the original capital expenditure, ongoing maintenance costs, the cost of fuel and any carbon costs. It also includes financing costs and ensuring that the project generates a reasonable internal rate of return (IRR) for the equity providers).

Here is the key graph on the current state of play, baseload generation and their renewable competitors to the left, and peaking gas and solar to the right.

On baseload, all renewables except marine beat coal and nuclear. Combined cycle gas just hangs on.

As for peaking plant, it depends on the gas prices, but these are rising and in some regions it is now back above its pre-GFC and fracking boom levels. The move to export LNG will likely cause a further increase in prices.

And here (below) is more on those gas prices. As can be seen, natural gas prices have nearly doubled in the past two years, and these have a direct correlation to the price of gas-fired electricity.

At a natural gas price of $US4.00/mmbtu, the LCOE of a gas peaker is $US0.10/kwh and a CCGT (combined cycle or baseload plant) is $US0.06/kwh. If Citi’s commodities team’s long-term gas price forecast of $5.50 is used, the implied LCOE is $0.12/kwh for natural gas peaker or $0.07/kwh for a CCGT plant.

“These numbers,” Citi says, “set the bar for alternative energy.

“Given the large expected increase in demand for gas, offset by production gains, gas prices are expected to rise over the long term. As a result, the bar for renewables and other fuel sources to cross continues to rise, thus making it easier for alternatives to gain market share.”

(Australia take note: its gas prices are already double the US price, which is why gas generation is being pushed out of the market. Coal, however, is recovering because the Australian government does not set strict emissions standards).

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March 27, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment