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Push for small nuclear reactors – portrayed as “renewable energy”


NuScale targets 2016 to apply for NRC approval for its nuclear power system  Portland Business Journal 

Jan 21, 2015   Staff Reporter“….NuScale Power has passed the 50 percent mark on work to prepare a 12,000-page application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to certify its transportable nuclear power system.

It will submit the document in late 2016 and expects the NRC to take 39 months to review, putting it on track for a 2020 commercial launch……. The 570MWe complex of 12 units will be sited in Idaho, potentially near the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho national Laboratory Site near Idaho Falls. The deal makes UAMPS NuScale’s first official customer, subject to NRC certification of the system……. NuScale also benefits from Congress’s recent move to extend renewable energy tax incentives through the end of 2014, putting nuclear on equal footing with its carbon-free rivals…….

renewable-lie

.http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/sbo/2015/01/nuscale-targets-2016-to-apply-for-nrc-approval-for.html?page=2

March 25, 2015 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

The Northern Hemisphere in peril from its many nuclear power plants

The Northern Hemisphere’s Nuclear Power Plant Problem, Event Horizon Chronicle, 24 Mar 15 
“……..But Fukushima Daichi is the least of it. There are hundreds of other nuclear power plants, and something like 99% of them are in the northern hemisphere. They are notoriously complex, high maintenance, prone to catastrophic failure and all of them are ageing.

In the event of an emergency situation, they quickly fail, melt down and/or blow up (as at Chernobyl, Ukraine and Fukushima, Japan) and can never be repaired. They then spew massive amounts of deadly radionuclides to the global environment for a geological age to come.

There are one hundred of them in the USSA; there are still more in Europe. It is virtually a certainty that more of them will be failing, melting down and/or blowing up in the coming years, maybe even later this year.

nuclear-fears

A lot of the nuclear power reactors in the USSA are directly on the sea coast, or on major rivers, and/or near major cities and/or near major military bases.

If there is a shooting nuclear war, or serious natural disasters such as tsunamis, major earthquakes (on the New Madrid Fault, for instance), powerful storms, etc., multiple nuclear power plants will either be destroyed or fail, maybe even scores or hundreds of them, as would easily be the case in the event of a nuclear war.

You can bet on that. And the northern hemisphere of this planet will then become a sterile, “no go,” Death Zone. I am not being alarmist in the slightest. The average person has simply not thought through the dire implications of having built all of these hundreds of ticking time bombs called “nuclear power plants” and sprinkling them all over the world, almost all of them in the northern hemisphere.

What They Aren’t Telling You About Nuclear War

Let me impress upon you that I am not being melodramatic about the possibility of a shooting nuclear war. A wide range of political commentators and analysts are warning about the real risk of nuclear war, including well-known public figures such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, and many other, well-known and less-well-known figures.

If NATO and the USSA continue their economic and military pressure against Russia, the situation could deteriorate from a Cold War into a hot, military conflict that could easily turn nuclear, with terrible consequences.

In the Eastern Pacific region, there is also growing tension between the USSA, and China and North Korea.http://eventhorizonchronicle.blogspot.com.au/

March 25, 2015 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Nuclear terrorism danger would be magnified, if Japan reactivated nuclear reprocessing

fast-breeder-MonjuNuclear terrorism risks in Northeast Asia: Japan’s reactor restart and spent fuel Nautilus Peace and Security NAPS Net Special Report by Peter Hayes 23 March 2015 “…..Japan’s Post-Fukushima Choice

Due to Fukushima, Japan now must choose to go in one of two directions that are largely exclusive: either towards a reactor restart choice that leads to a minimalist phase-out of separated plutonium over time; or towards a maximalist reliance on separated plutonium over time in a closed fuel cycle………

Should Japan opt to start enough reactors to justify reactivating the plutonium fuel cycle, then the implications for nuclear terrorism would be substantial. The train of logic for maximum spent fuel arising from a closed nuclear fuel cycle is radically different to that for the once-through fuel cycle.  In this trajectory, the following would occur:

  • Japan starts many more light water reactors, sooner rather than later, and extends reactor lifetimes beyond forty years, and constructs new reactors
  • This choice enables far more MOx fuel fabrication and recycling of MOx fuel to these reactors than in the once-through fuel cycle usage; this choice would either slowly reduce or rapidly increase the stockpile of separated plutonium that would be supplemented (if the central state is willing to subsidize heavily the utilities for using MOx fuel) by reprocessing the spent fuel from the operation of the light water reactors
  • Thereby generating a new stream of separated and un-separated plutonium in Japan to store and secure, and available for diversion or attack.

Although it does not follow automatically, this vision of the revived closed fuel cycle also implies that:

  • The fast reactor is developed in order to burn actinides to reduce the waste disposal problem (whether it would do so is debatable)
  • The fast reactor would be developed to breed plutonium based on the argument that doing so makes Japan more independent from external nuclear fuel supply.

All the steps in this second path which maximizes separated fuel involves more transport, more bulk processing and storage, and creates more opportunity for non-state actors to divert fissile material or to attack directly the spent fuel stocks in pools or other nuclear materials process sites in the envisioned “closed” fuel cycle.    In short, this trajectory maximizes the nuclear terrorist threat, directly and indirectly, over the next thirty years, especially when the demonstration effect on other states to follow suit are taken into account.  For exactly this reason, the United States has reaffirmed recently that it does not favor MOx use and breeder activity in Japan or elsewhere……..[19]http://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/nuclear-terrorism-risks-in-northeast-asia-japans-reactor-restart-and-spent-fuel/

 

March 25, 2015 Posted by | Japan, reprocessing, safety | Leave a comment

Russia wants US to remove Its Nuclear Weapons From Europe

Russia: US Must remove Its Nuclear Weapons From Europe, NewsMax 24 Mar 2015  Russia called for a ban on American nuclear weapons in parts of Europe, saying the U.S. is breaking an international agreement by holding joint nuclear training missions with NATO allies that don’t possess such weapons.

Using ships and airfields as well as training crews from non-nuclear states from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in such exercises is “in direct contradiction to the letter and spirit” of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement on its website.

“There can be only one solution,” Lukashevich said. Russia is calling for “the return of all nonstrategic nuclear weapons” to U.S. territory as well as “a ban on stationing them abroad, elimination of infrastructure for their rapid deployment, and denial of training for the preparation and use of nuclear weapons” by the militaries of non-nuclear states…..http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/russia-nuclear-weapons-us/2015/03/24/id/634132/

March 25, 2015 Posted by | EUROPE, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Wind turbines in tree shapes to be installed in Paris

TREE SHAPED WIND TURBINES TO BE INSTALLED IN PARIS A French company called New Wind is installing tree-shaped wind turbines at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France. The company’s founder, Jérôme Michaud-Larivière came up with the idea while in a Paris square, when he “saw the leaves tremble when there was not a breath of air.” He hopes the trees can be used to exploit small air currents flowing along buildings and streets, and could eventually be installed in people’s yards and urban centres………http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/tree-shaped-wind-turbines-paris/

March 25, 2015 Posted by | decentralised, France | Leave a comment

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