nuclear-news

A Tribute to Pioneers:

Carol Levin and her husband, the late Richard Gottlieb. Courtesy photo.

¶ Carol Levin and her late husband Richard Gottlieb, who co-founded Sunnyside Solar in the 1980s, are among the 25 renewable-energy innovators honored in an exhibit at the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury. They have been an inspiration to a generation of solar enthusiasts. [Commons]
(Richard Gottlieb installed PVs on the first space satellites powered by the sun.)

Science and Technology:

¶ A glitzy new process, under development at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, uses gold nanoparticles to convert CO2 into usable chemicals efficiently. The breakthrough is “carbon negative” and might lead to an effective industrial-scale way to reduce CO2 emissions. [Energy.gov]

¶ Aiming to help make electricity more available in rural parts of India, students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have designed a wind turbine that could be mounted on…

We may never know his motive. But, he apparently wasn’t technically inclined enough to figure out how to remove the photos from his phone before disposal. And, yet, he was supposed to be operating and maintaining nuclear subs from September of 2007 to March of 2012.
“On January 19, 2009, at approximately 4:00 a.m., SAUCIER took two photos, one of the auxiliary steam plant panel and the other of the reactor compartment viewed through a portal.  On March 22, 2009, at approximately 1:30 a.m., SAUCIER took two photos that, when placed side by side, provided a panoramic array of the Maneuvering Compartment, the room from which the propulsion system of the boat is operated.  On July 15, 2009, at 12:47 p.m., SAUCIER took two photos documenting the reactor head configuration of the nuclear reactor and a view of the reactor compartment from within that compartment.” (USDOJ, 27…

Ninety-nine percent of the planet’s freshwater ice is locked up in the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps. Now, a growing number of studies are raising the possibility that as those ice sheets melt, sea levels could rise by six feet this century, and far higher in the next, flooding many of the world’s populated coastal areas.

Last month in Greenland, more than a tenth of the ice sheet’s surface was melting in the unseasonably warm spring sun, smashing 2010’s record for a thaw so early in the year. In the Antarctic, warm water licking at the base of the continent’s western ice sheet is, in effect, dissolving the cork that holds back the flow of glaciers into the sea; ice is now seeping like wine from a toppled bottle.

The planet’s polar ice is melting fast, and recent satellite data, models, and fieldwork have left scientists sobered by the speed…

A small Denver, Colorado, manufacturer has rolled out the first prototype of a new all-electric aircraft, suggesting that the same revolution currently sweeping through the auto industry may soon become airborne.  Source: Electric aircraft Sun Flyer – Business Insider

Opinion:

¶ “All-in for Offshore Wind in Massachusetts” • These two words should guide Beacon Hill on offshore wind: Go big. On the surface, the new House energy bill is a miracle for offshore wind. But the case for renewables in Massachusetts is more urgent than ever. [The Equation]

Offshore windpower in the Netherlands.

Science and Technology:

¶ A recent decade-long study following the lives of over 6,000 US residents has shed some new light on the connection between air pollution and heart disease. It showed that people living in areas with more outdoor air pollution accumulate deposits in the arteries that supply the heart. [CleanTechnica]

World:

¶ The innovative Eco Wave Power wave energy station has been installed on the ammunition jetty in Gibraltar. It is a big moment for both Gibraltar and a company with big plans for a promising green energy tech…

GR:  Read my last post to see how forecasters failed to predict the extreme rainfall and flooding that hit Texas today.

“Whatever happened to normal weather? Earth has always experienced epic storms, debilitating drought, and biblical floods. But lately it seems the treadmill of disruptive weather has been set to fast-forward. God’s grandiose Symphony of the Seasons, the natural ebb and flow of the atmosphere, is playing out of tune, sounding more like a talent-free second grade orchestra, with shrill horns, violins screeching off-key, cymbal crashes coming in at the wrong time. Something has changed.”  Source: Meteorologists are seeing global warming’s effect on the weather | Paul Douglas | Environment | The Guardian

The Tories are overwhelmingly pro-nuclear, but their reasons for this stance don’t add up.

Figure 1: Attitudes to nuclear power by party [Source: YouGov, 2012] Now many in the party will claim, oh that’s because we want “value for money” with the least government involvement. Of course the reality is that nuclear energy is very expensive. And most of the companies involved in this industry are state owned (or count the govumint as their main if not only customer).

Figure 2: LCoE costs for Hinkley C compared to German Renewables [Source: energytransition.de 2015] Any future UK nuclear reactors will be built by foreign mulitnationals that are owned by foreign governments, so its difficult to conclude nuclear power will be less subject to the whims of events in foreign countries. The approval or disapproval of Hinkley C is essentially a decision that will be taken by…

Japanese (Toshiba) owned Westinghouse announced (26-May-2016) completion of a cold hydrostatic pressure test for Sanmen Nuclear Power Unit 1 (AP 1000) in China. The reactor unit is more than three years behind schedule, and has been under construction for over 8 years.

The test showed that welds held at a pressure of 3,107 psig (21.4 MPa) for a whole 10 minutes didn’t appear to leak. This was apparently not at operating temperatures, so is not reflective of the real system stresses. The entire test was completed within 4 hours.

Compare to the California Code which says 30 minutes “without leakage, undue distortion, excessive permanent expansion or evidence of impending failure“. The Westinghouse press release merely says that “Inspection of the more than 1800 welds found no leaks“.

This 10 minutes of maximum pressure was around 1.48 times the operating pressure for the AP 1000 reactor. 1.5…