nuclear-news

Opinion:

¶ “Trump’s Dirty Energy Policies Face Backlash in States Across the Country” • On December 9, as the Obama administration rushed to preserve what it could of its climate legacy before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, signed a bipartisan energy reform package. Illinois is not alone. [Truth-Out]

The Fisk Generating Plant in Chicago, now closed
(Photo: Seth Anderson / Flickr)

¶ “TEP can help Navajo and Hopi by buying their renewable energy” • I am a Diné (Navajo) woman who came to Tucson to study microbiology at the University of Arizona. Even though it’s 400 miles away, Tucson Electric Power gets some of its electricity the Navajo Generating Station. It could support Navajo solar and wind instead. [Arizona Daily Star]

Science and Technology:

¶ While lithium-ion batteries sold by Tesla and others are perhaps the most widely known storage technology, several…

If we burn all the fossil fuels “not only will the resultant climate change be faster than anything Earth has seen for millions of years, the climate that will exist is likely to have no natural counterpart, as far as we can tell, in at least the last 420 million years.”  — Gavin Foster, Professor of Isotope Geochemistry at the University of Southampton

*****

Back in the 1780s as coal-fired smoke stacks sprouted across England to belch their black soot into the hitherto virgin skies of Earth, it’s likely we had not yet an inkling of the vast destruction these ‘dark Satanic mills‘ were ultimately capable of unleashing:

(Scientists have now found that burning all the fossil fuels through about 2250 could result in conditions that are worse than those that occurred during the Permian Extinction of 252 million years ago. Video source: Catastrophe — The Permian…

Simulations indicate an all-round warming, associated with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, over the Indian subcontinent… — Climate Change and India

*****

In India, it was still February. The hot season was supposed to begin two months later in April. But temperatures in some coastal provinces had already rocketed to above 100 degrees F (38 C).

Late February temperatures for Konkan hit as high as 104 F (40 C) even as Mumbai and Ratnagiri hit 100 F (38 C).

According to Indian meteorological sources, there are no weather records of temperatures hitting such high marks so fast at any time in at least the past 20 years. Temperatures in late February and March for this region hit a range that is more typical of the height of the hot season from April to May. And when one considers the fact that India has experienced extreme heat and drought for at least…

Report below in yesterday’s Telegraph illustrates that no one wants this Nukiller baby in Cumbria.  Our Nukiller obsessed government though are in Seoul, South Korea trying to get South Korean backing for Moorside.  The South Koreans have been on the streets in their tens of thousands opposing Nukiller developments

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/04/04/toshiba-left-holding-baby-nugen-partner-backs-moorside-nuclear/

Toshiba left holding the baby as NuGen partner backs out of Moorside nuclear project
toshiba sign
Credit: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
The future of the Moorside nuclear plant in Cumbria has been thrown into fresh doubt after one of its backers quit the project, leaving struggling Japanese conglomerate Toshiba as the last developer standing.

Engie, formerly known as GDF Suez, will sell its 40pc stake in the project to majority partner Toshiba for $138.5m (£111.3m), saying the plan to build three nuclear reactors at the Cumbrian site faces “significant challenges” after a US subsidiary of the Japanese firm filed for bankruptcy.

The…

TVEL belongs to Atomenergoprom that is a part of the Rosatom State corporation. As a State corporation, Rosatom is subordinate to Putin. As Jan Haverkamp of Greenpeace explains: “Rosatom is a political vehicle”. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/prank-video-finland-prime-minister-rosatom/blog/54006.

Click to access ML17061A271.pdf

There is a “Partially closed meeting re GNF RAJ II Fuel Transport“, on this Thursday, April 6th, which is almost certainly to transport the TVEL fuel: https://adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/webSearch2/view?AccessionNumber=ML17082A294

10CFR50.46 Exemption Request Pre-Submittal Meeting, E110opt Cladding Material, March 6, 2017

Click to access ML17061A271.pdf

The now former CEO of Rosatom, Sergey Kirienko, was appointed Putin’s First Deputy Chief (of the Presidential Executive Office), in October – a reward for pulling off this con? The current CEO, Alexey Likhachev was previously First Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.

Whether Russia will be allowed to test its nuclear fuel in a US reactor, or not, is the true test of…

TVEL belongs to the Atomenergoprom, which is part of the Rosatom State corporation, which answers to Russian President Putin.

From world-nuclear-news.org:
“Alliance brings Russian fuel to US market
24 May 2016
Global Nuclear Fuel Americas (GNF-A) and Russian nuclear fuel company TVEL have agreed to work together to introduce Russian-designed pressurized water reactor fuel into the USA.  

The companies have announced a strategic alliance to introduce lead use assemblies (LUAs) of TVEL’s TVS-K fuel design in the USA and to seek licensing approval from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to supply the fuel in reload quantities.

GNF-A will provide US-based project management, licensing, quality assurance and engineering services while TVEL will provide TVS-K design expertise, engineering support and initial fabrication of LUAs. Subsequent LUAs are planned to be produced at GNF-A’s facility in Wilmington, North Carolina.

TVS-K is a 17×17-lattice PWR nuclear fuel assembly developed by TVEL for…