2015 April 18 « nuclear-news

Hinkley Point replacement nuclear reactors may be ruled unsafe

Hinkley Point’s replacement reactors face ‘unsafe’ ruling Adam Sage Paris, April 17 2015 David Cameron’s £16 billion plan to buy a new generation of French-made nuclear reactors is fresh turmoil following an official warning that a key component could be unsafe.

The British Office for Nuclear Regulation has been told by its French counterpart that tests have revealed a ‘serious anomaly’ with a similar reactor under construction in northern France. The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) said the steel lid and bottom of the reactor vessel appeared to be weak, and risked cracking up …….http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/utilities/article4414718.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2015_04_17

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Escalating danger in Indian Ocean as China to sell submarines to Pakistan

Xi’s Submarine Sale Raises Indian Ocean Nuclear Clash Risk Bloombeg 17 Apr 15 Soon a brash naval captain may pose a bigger risk of triggering a nuclear crisis between India and Pakistan than a religious terrorist.

China is likely to conclude a sale of eight conventional submarines during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Islamabad on April 20, more than doubling Pakistan’s fleet. Analysts say it may be the first step in helping Pakistan gain the ability to fire nuclear weapons at sea, keeping pace with rival India.

The submarine sale will add to tensions in regional waters as Prime Minister Narendra Modi bulks up India’s navy to prevent China from gaining a foothold in the area. Xi’s visit, the first by a Chinese head of state to Pakistan since 2006, will also outline investments in gas pipelines, highways and rail links that will give China access to the Arabian Sea, in part through territory claimed by India.

While Pakistan’s efforts are still “embryonic,” its naval commanders want to follow Israel’s example of equipping conventional submarines with nuclear-tipped missiles, Iskander Rehman of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based policy research group, said in a March 9 report. Nuclear weapons at sea pose a greater risk than stationary land-based arsenals because they are submerged and harder to detect.

“We are now entering a new era whereby naval interactions will occur under a perpetual nuclear shadow,” Rehman said by phone. “My main concern is less the risk of nuclear terrorism, but rather the dangers tied to naval friction within a newly nuclearized maritime domain.”…….http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-16/xi-s-submarine-sale-raises-risk-of-nuclear-clash-in-indian-ocean

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war | Leave a comment

Increased risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, with Canada-India uranium sales deal

Canada-India uranium deal will spur proliferation, experts warn Arms control experts say Canada sends the wrong signal to countries that play by the rules By Evan Dyer, CBC News 17 Apr 15 India test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile Thursday, just hours after signing a deal to buy 3,000 tons of Canadian uranium.The Agni-III missile, which has a range of over 3,000 kilometres, was fired from the Indian army’s test range on Wheeler Island in the Bay of Bengal. India declared the test a success…….While the terms of this week’s deal are not public, the nuclear cooperation agreement, first announced in 2010 and finalized in 2013, includes assurances that India use Canadian material for civilian purposes only……..

some nuclear proliferation experts say India has been able to make such a deal without abiding by the rules set out for most other countries that abide by the international non-proliferation regime. And they warn that countries the West has been attempting to bring into the rules-based system — such as Iran — will be less inclined to submit when they see the rules don’t apply to India.

Canadian technology used to gain bomb…..Of particular concern to the rest of the world was that India developed its bomb using nuclear material from a reactor it had acquired from Canada ostensibly for civilian use……..

Some experts fear Canada appears to be selling India uranium with fewer controls and conditions than it typically demands from NNPT member countries that do play by the rules.

“Normally there’s some sort of tracking and accounting system so that Canada would be receiving information from India very specifically about what Canada-sourced material is being used for,” says Trevor Findlay, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Managing the Atom project.

“In this case, because the agreement [to buy the uranium] is secret, we have no idea whether that’s in place, and it probably isn’t because the Indians have been pushing against that,” he told The Current.

Findlay and other experts warn that the special treatment for India shows other governments a country can ignore the rules, build the bomb, tough it out for a few decades and emerge on the other side as an accepted nuclear weapons power.

Already, Pakistan says the deals give India a strategic advantage, and Pakistan has blocked preliminary talks on the most important arms control initiative in years: a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty that would ban future production of weapons-grade material.http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-india-uranium-deal-will-spur-proliferation-experts-warn-1.3036540

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, India, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Economic advantages: the feasibility of going 100% renewable energy

The adoption of targets for 100% renewables by 2050 could deliver combined energy savings of more than $500 billion a year to the major economies of the EU, the US and China, and create millions of new jobs, a new study has found. The study, released this week by New Climate Institute and commissioned by Climate Action Network, also found that if all countries took action on renewables at this scale, global warming would not cross the 2°C threshold beyond which scientists predict would result in dangerous and irreversible changes to the earth’s climate.

when City staff examined their options last year, they discovered something that seemed remarkable, especially in Texas: renewable energy was cheaper than non-renewable. By January 2017, all electricity within the city’s service area will come from wind and solar power.

NuClear News, April 15  A report written by the French Environment and Energy Agency (Ademe) has concluded that supplying the nation’s electricity demand with renewables by 2050 would cost about the same as the plan currently favoured by the President and the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, which is to meet France’s power needs with 50% nuclear, 40% renewables, and 10% fossil fuel by 2050. (1)

 Vancouver has become the latest city to commit to running on 100% renewable energy. The city of 600,000 on Canada’s west coast aims to use only green energy sources for electricity, and also for heating and cooling and transportation. Cities and urban areas are responsible for 70-75% of global CO2 emissions and that’s where “real action on climate will happen” said Park Won-Soon, Mayor of Seoul, South Korea at the ICLEI World Congress 2015, the triennial sustainability summit of local governments where Vancouver made the announcement. (2)

Continue reading →

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, renewable | Leave a comment

Surge in renewable energy trade n Europe

Renewable energy surge revives Europe’s power trade FRANKFURT/LONDON | BY VERA ECKERT AND NINA CHESTNEY(Reuters) 17 Apr 15 – The rise of renewable energy is delivering a boost to Europe’s declining power market as traders get busy in short term deals to juggle unpredictable supplies of wind and solar.

Exchanges show more trade as suppliers buy and sell power closer to when demand will appear, to meet their delivery obligations, because electricity cannot be stored effectively. New players are also attracted by lower capital requirements and risks.

“As the percentage of renewables generation increases, the need for short-term adjustments will grow, reflecting the limited precision of forecasts for wind and solar generation in comparison to schedules of conventional thermal plants,” said Bonn-based independent energy consultant Thomas Niedrig.

“Over the last five years, (spot) volumes jumped by 25 percent, making the spot sector a growth star in difficult times,” UK research company Prospex said in a study………

German government data shows renewables capacity almost quadrupled from 2003 to 2014 and renewables now account for 26 percent of total electricity generation………

The market leader is the Nordic countries’ Nord Pool Spot, followed by EPEX Spot, Italy’s GME, Spain’s OMIE and N2EX in Britain, according to Prospex.

EPEX last December introduced a German auction for 15 minute intraday power, held at 3pm in the afternoon of the previous day as a tool to concentrate liquidity.

A number of big trading houses already active in EPEX Spot’s short term market, among them Geneva’s Vitol SA, Noble Clean Fuels Ltd. and Total Gas & Power, signed up for it in 2015, it said.

But there is also money to be made by smaller operators.

“Whereas previously intraday trading was largely the preserve of utilities…now it’s definitely very much in vogue and seen as a profitable activity, especially with the flexibility of not being tied to assets,” said Chris Panton, senior analyst at Energy Fundamentals, a London based investment and advisory firm……http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/17/us-europe-power-trading-idUSKBN0N814H20150417

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, EUROPE | Leave a comment

When USA Accidentally Nuked Britain’s First Satellite

That Time The US Accidentally Nuked Britain’s First Satellite, Gizmodo
KARL SMALLWOOD – TODAYIFOUNDOUT.COM 16 APRIL 2015“……..The satellite in question was the Ariel-1, which was developed as a joint-venture between the United States and Britain, with Britain designing and building the core systems of the satellite and NASA launching it into orbit via a Thor-Delta rocket……..
According to NASA, the instruments aboard Ariel-1 were intended to help “contribute to the current knowledge of the ionosphere” and its relationship with the Sun. More specifically, scientists were curious about how the ionosphere, a part of the Earth’s atmosphere made of particles charged by radiation from the Sun, worked. (For more on the ionosphere, see: Why Do Radio Signals Travel Farther at Night than in the Day?) As it turned out, as Ariel-1 was happily free-falling around the Earth, the US military had decided to detonate an experimental 1.4 megaton nuclear weapon named Starfish-Prime in the upper atmosphere as part of Project Fish Bowl. The explosion, which happened on the other side of the planet to Ariel-1, sent a wave of additional radiation around the Earth that ultimately damaged some of the systems on Ariel-1, particularly its solar panels, ultimately killing it and about 1/3 of the rest of the satellites in low-Earth orbit at the time. This famously included the Telstar satellite, which was the first commercial communication relay satellite designed to transmit signals across the Atlantic.

The Telstar actually wasn’t in orbit at the time of the explosion, being put there the day after the Starfish-Prime detonation. However, the additional radiation created by the explosion took years to dissipate and was not anticipated by the designers of this particular satellite. The immediate result being the degradation of Telstar’s systems, particularly the failure of several transistors in the command system, causing it to stop working just a few months after being placed in orbit.As to the purpose of the Starfish-Prime explosion, according to James Fleming, a history professor who combed through previously top-secret files and recordings concerning the blast, the US military were working with scientist James Van Allen to see if nuclear explosions could influence the existing belts of radiation around the Earth…….
He forgot to mention the obligatory, FOR SCIENCE!!!

Bonus Facts:

At around the same time the US was planning to send actual nuclear bombs into orbit, British scientists were similarly experimenting with explosives by attaching grenades to suborbital rockets to run atmospheric pressure tests; once again demonstrating that no matter where they’re from or what tools are available, scientists just really like to blow things up.
The Starfish explosion was actually supposed to have happened on June 20th, but the rocket carrying it failed at about 30,000 feet. Once this happened, the self-destruct on the nuclear warhead was initiated and it broke apart, raining its radioactive innards down on Johnston and Sand Islands, as well as in the ocean around them.
Britain’s first astronaut, Helen Sharman, was sent into space in 1991. All in all, 21 other nationsbeat Britain to the punch in terms of sending a representative of their country into space, including Afghanistan (Abdul Ahad Mohmand), Mongolia (Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa) and Vietnam (Phạm Tuân).
The effects of Starfish-Prime weren’t just limited to low orbit. The electromagnetic pulse created by the blast ended up being much larger than expected and, in Hawaii some 900 or so miles away from the blast, the pulse ended up knocking out a few hundred street lights and damaged the telephone system. Needless to say, a similar blast in today’s digital society would have caused drastically more damage.

Karl Smallwood writes for the wildly popular interesting fact website TodayIFoundOut.com. http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/04/that-time-the-us-accidentally-nuked-britains-first-satellite/

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

South Miami’s Underline project threatened by nuclear power expansion

FPL’S NUCLEAR EXPANSION PLAN COULD RUIN THE UNDERLINE. Miami New Times BY JESSICA WEISS APRIL 17, 2015 Biking along a tranquil, green path in South Miami sounds pretty enjoyable. Next to a series of massive, ten-story nuclear power transmission lines? Not so much

That’s a real possibility facing the Underline, a project to transform the underutilized land below Miami’s Metrorail from the Miami River to the Dadeland South Station into a ten-mile urban trail and green space. A design is in the works, and construction is set to begin next year.

But part of the area dedicated to the Underline is also the possible home of new transmission lines for two nuclear reactors being proposed for Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station by Florida Power & Light. The new reactors would require the construction of massive poles to transmit energy to consumers. And they’d be located on South Dixie Highway from Pinecrest to downtown Miami, within the 125 acres of new green space where the Underline is supposed to run.

“There’s a definite tension between these transmission lines and a beautiful experience on a bike path,” says Meg Daly, the founder of Friends of the Underline…….

Since Daly hatched the idea for the vertical park in 2012, the Underline project has advanced rapidly, receiving funding from the cities of Miami, Coral Gables, and South Miami; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and other groups. In March, Friends of the Underline tapped the codesigner of Manhattan’s popular High Line, James Corner Field Operations, to design the Underline master plan. This week, a series of public meetings are being held to collect public feedback about the design of the space.

“There is so much need in our community for spaces for biking and walking,” Daly says. “Bikes, cars, and pedestrians need to coexist. That is part of a future vision of a walkable, bikeable city.”

Lawmakers, scientists, environmentalists, and citizens have expressed a number of other concerns about expanding nuclear power along Biscayne Bay, including the future impact of sea-level rise, the project’s high costs, and the amount of water used by nuclear power. Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado joined other local leaders this week to blast the project.

But the plan has already passed through local and state levels, and FPL is pursuing a federal license……http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/fpls-nuclear-expansion-plan-could-ruin-the-underline-7573012

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Six months later,radiation accident in East Idaho acknowledged

Radiation accident in East Idaho acknowledged six months after it occurred BY LUKE RAMSETH (Idaho Falls) Post RegisterApril 16, 2015 An October radiation accident at a waste processing facility on the U.S. Department of Energy’s desert site west of Idaho Falls drew concern this week, largely because it took nearly six months for either the DOE or contractor to publicly disclose the incident.

The accident happened Oct. 23 at the New Waste Calcining Facility, operated by contractor CH2M-WG Idaho, or CWI. It resulted in a small internal radioactive contamination of one worker and a weeks-long work stoppage for a portion of the facility, while an investigation and decontamination effort took place.

It was not until last week that DOE disclosed what happened. DOE officials made a 14-slide PowerPoint presentation to the Idaho National Laboratory Site Environmental Management Citizens Advisory Board’s meeting in Pocatello.

“It was the first time I had heard of it,” Advisory Board Chairman Herb Bohrer said this week.

Kerry Martin, the INL oversight regional manager for Idaho’s Department of Environmental Quality, said Wednesday she also had not heard of the incident until last week, which she called “amazing.”……..http://www.idahostatesman.com/2015/04/16/3754095/radiation-accident-in-eastern.html

April 18, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

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