2018 February 16 « nuclear-news

Collaboration to try and market Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)

GE Hitachi, Holtec Announce Cooperation to Accelerate Commercialization of SMR-160 Small Modular Reactor, Power Magazine

02/14/2018 GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH), Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF), Holtec International and SMR Inventec, LLC (SMR, LLC), today announced a collaboration to advance the SMR‐160, a single loop, 160 MWe pressurized light water reactor based on existing light water technologies.In a Memorandum of Understanding, the companies have agreed to enter into a procompetitive collaboration to progress the SMR-160 which SMR, LLC intends to develop, design, license, commercialize, deploy and service globally. The cooperation will initially include nuclear fuel development supported by GNF and control rod drive mechanisms designed by GEH, and may later extend to other areas.

“We are excited to leverage the experience and capabilities of world class nuclear companies like GEH and GNF as we bring our game changing SMR-160 technology to global markets,” said Holtec President and CEO Dr. Kris Singh. “SMR-160 has prioritized safety in its design, to produce a right-sized, passively safe and cost-effective solution for carbon-free energy. This collaboration will ensure the SMR-160 supply chain, to deliver and fabricate critical SMR-160 technologies and components, including at our new Advanced Manufacturing Division in Camden, New Jersey.”……http://www.powermag.com/press-releases/ge-hitachi-holtec-announce-cooperation-to-accelerate-commercialization-of-smr-160-small-modular-reactor/

February 16, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | marketing, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Mystery of particle of enriched uranium floating above Alaska

Scientists Have No Idea Why This Enriched Uranium Particle Was Floating Above Alaska Gizmodo, Ryan F. Mandelbaum, Feb 14, 2018, On 3 August 2016, 7km above Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a research plane captured something mysterious: An atmospheric aerosol particle enriched with the kind of uranium used in nuclear fuel and bombs.

A NASA WB-57 plane, like the one that located the mystery particle.

It’s the first time scientists have detected such a particle just floating along in the atmosphere in 20 years of plane-based observations.

Uranium is the heaviest element to occur naturally on Earth’s surface in an appreciable amount. Normally it occurs as the slightly radioactive isotope uranium-238, but some amount of uranium-235, the kind humans make bombs and fuel out of, occurs in nature. Uranium-238 is already rare to find floating above the Earth in the atmosphere. But scientists have never before spotted enriched uranium, a sample uranium containing uranium-235, in millions of research plane-captured atmospheric particles.

“One of the main motivations of this paper is to see if somebody who knows more about uranium than any of us would understand the source of the particle,” scientist Dan Murphy from NOAA told me. After all, “aerosol particles containing uranium enriched in uranium-235 are definitely not from a natural source,” he writes in the paper, published recently in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity………

where the particle came from is a mystery. It’s pretty clear it came from recently made reactor-grade uranium, the authors write (AKA, not from Fukushima or Chernobyl). Perhaps from burnt fuel contaminated with uranium, they thought. They tried to trace it to a source using the direction of the wind – but their best estimate pointed vaguely to Asia. Higher probability areas include some parts of China, including its border with North Korea, and parts of Japan. ….https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/02/scientists-have-no-idea-why-this-enriched-uranium-particle-was-floating-above-alaska/

February 16, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment