SBS, 16 May 18North Korea on Wednesday called into question a much-anticipated and unprecedented summit between its leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported.
Pyongyang also cancelled high-level talks due Wednesday with Seoul over the Max Thunder joint military exercises between the US and the South, Seoul said.
The US will “have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military ruckus”, Yonhap quoted the North’s official news agency KCNA as saying.
The drills between the two allies’ air forces were a rehearsal for invasion and a provocation at a time when inter-Korean relations were warming, it cited KCNA as adding.
The language used is a sudden and dramatic return to the rhetoric of the past from Pyongyang, which has long argued that it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself against the US. …….
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that Pyongyang had called the June 12 summit into question over joint military exercises between the US and the South.
Greenpeace France 14th May 2018 [Machine Translation] On the eve of EDF’s Annual General Meeting,
Greenpeace France points to the deception that EDF’s CEO has been driving for several months and will present the shareholders of the company tomorrow.
With a lot of communication on the energy transition, the company is far from developing renewable energies and directs almost all of its investments in nuclear power. That is a losing strategy, both for the company, and for France, which is lagging far behind the implementation of its energy transition.
Faced with EDF shareholders, Jean-Bernard Lévy will no doubt say tomorrow that the company plays a central role in the energy transition, with its solar plan for 2035 presented in December 2017. ” In reality, when we compare the calendars and EDF budgets, we realize that the company will mainly give priority to investments in the nuclear fleet and
postpone its investments in solar …
When Timothy Mousseau, a researcher with the University of South Carolina, started visiting Ukraine nearly 20 years ago, he studied birds, insects and plants, “basically anything we could catch.” It was an excuse to go somewhere unusual and study something unconventional: How creatures large and small deal with exposure to nuclear radiation.
But as humans’ interaction with radiation grows more common, Mousseau has found the need for this kind of research has grown. This summer, the USC evolutionary biologist is shifting his focus to canines. And he will be bringing a group of pre-veterinary students with him.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was constructed during the 1970s in Ukraine. More than 32 years ago, one of the Chernobyl plant’s reactors exploded, causing “the largest peacetime nuclear disaster in history,” according to a report by The Guardian. The nearby town of Prypiat has remained uninhabited.
Although there are few people in the area, dogs left behind after the disaster bred, and today there are about 250 strays roaming the area, according to the Clean Futures Fund, a nonprofit aid group that is working to bring veterinarians to the site to vaccinate the dogs for rabies, as well as to spay and neuter them.
The USC team is also partnering with the Clean Futures Fund in their research.
The researchers, led by Mousseau, will be examining the animals for signs of tumors. The animals will be sedated, Mousseau said. They also will look for signs of eye cataracts, another sign of radiation poisoning, he said.
The students will be tasked with looking for changes in the animals’ genetics and microbiome. The dogs will also be outfitted with meters.
“What we’re really hoping to get at is a better idea of how much radiation it takes to cause significant genetic damage,” Mousseau said.
Mousseau is no stranger to media attention. His work has been featured in The New York Times, NBC and most recently, National Geographic. He breezes through an interview with ease. He said especially following the Fukushima disaster in Japan, there has been heightened interest in the effects of radiation on creatures.
Not to mention that radiation is creeping into Americans’ daily life, he said. He said the average dose Americans receive each year has more than doubled in the last 20 years. And more exposure could be on the horizon: A handful of companies are working to make commercial space travel happen.
In the medical field, diagnostic tools such as CT scans and portable devices used in a dentist’s office emit radiation. Then there is the radiation used to treat cancer, and it also has uses in medical research, according to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
CT scans can produce a little less than the same amount of radiation as the lowest doses seen in Japanese atomic bomb survivors, according to the Food & Drug Administration. Still, the FDA states a typical CT scan’s risk for causing cancer is “very small.”
All “nuclear materials” in medicine are regulated. But Mousseau said more research needs to be done to understand the body’s response to even tiny amounts of radiation. He thinks the dogs, with their naturally shorter life spans, will make for good test subjects.
“You can see the effects in a shorter period of time,” Mousseau said. “We can look at consequences much more quickly.”
The canines, with their lifetime exposure to radiation, make for desirable research subjects. But the researchers plan to help take care of the dogs, too, by monitoring their health.
Courtney Rulison, 21, said she found out about the opportunity when fliers were passed around to USC biology students.
Rulison, who aspires to become a veterinarian, explained she will help prepare the animals for spaying and neutering. She said she was picked because of her interest and expertise in the animals.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take for this volunteer organization not to be needed anymore,” she said. “Or if these dogs can ever be adopted or leave Chernobyl. For right now, they have to stay there because they’re contaminated.”
Reach Mary Katherine Wildeman at 843-937-5594. Follow her on Twitter @mkwildeman.
Telegraph 14th May 2018,The United States has told North Korea that is must start shipping nuclear
weapons, fissile material and some of its long-range missiles out of the
country within a couple of months of the June summit between Kim Jong-un,
the North Korean leader, and President Donald Trump, according to South
Korean media. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/14/us-pressures-north-korea-ship-nuclear-weapons-overseas-sanctions/
Daily Post 14th May 2018 , Demands have been made by the Green Party for an ‘urgent debate’ on whether
the UK Government is offering a package of financial support to build Wylfa Newydd.
The Daily Post reported this month that Prime Minister Theresa May
was meeting Hitachi Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi for crunch talks on funding
for nuclear reactors. There were warnings Hitachi could withdraw from the
multi-billion pound Horizon Nuclear Power ventures on Anglesey and in
Gloucestershire unless assurances were made on finances.
There have been reports in the Japanese press that the UK government has agreed to offer
financial guarantees for the project. But a spokesman for the Department
for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy(BEIS), said: “We don’t
recognise these reports.”
Now Green MP Caroline Lucas has demanded a
meeting to clarify the Government’s position. She tweeted: “This is
absolutely outrageous. “The government is planning to plough billions of
pounds of taxpayers’ money into failing nuclear without any transparency
or scrutiny. I’m calling for an urgent debate on this in parliament.” https://www.dailypost.co.uk/business/business-news/demand-urgent-debate-whether-uk-14656243
One-Fourth of U.S. Nuclear Plants Are at Risk of Early Retirement, Bloomberg, By Tim Loh, May 16, 2018,
Cheap electricity, high fixed costs pressure nuclear fleet Outlook is particularly bleak in Midwest thanks to wind power
More than a quarter of U.S. nuclear power plants don’t make enough money to cover their operating costs, raising the threat of more early retirements.
Of the 66 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S., 24 are either scheduled to close or probably won’t make money through 2021, according Nicholas Steckler, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. These at-risk sites have total generating capacity of 32.5 gigawatts, more than a quarter of the entire fleet, Steckler wrote in a reportTuesday.
It would cost about $1.3 billion a year to plug the revenue gaps for these struggling sites, Steckler and co-author Chris Gadomski said in the report. The study follows a similar analysis in March that showed that half of U.S. coal-fired power plant capacity is on shaky ground. …..
the industry has had success convincing policy makers in New York, Illinois and New Jersey to take steps toward bailing out struggling plants …… the U.S. Energy Department is currently weighing a March request from FirstEnergy Corp.’s competitive power unit for government aid to help keep money-losing nuclear and coal-fired power plants online.
By ending the Iran deal, Trump has put America on the path to war, Guardian. Bernie Sanders 13 May 18 We need to try to talk with Iran’s government, seek a better relationship with the Iranian people, and a more constructive role for Iran in the region.
Last week, Donald Trump made one of the most reckless moves of his presidency:withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action(JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear agreement. With this decision, the president discarded years of hard work by our diplomats, who had obtained an extremely rigorous set of restrictions and inspections guaranteeing that Iran would not obtain a nuclear weapon. He also slammed the door on a once-promising possibility of detente between the US and Iran.
It’s important to understand that the JCPOA is not just an agreement between the US and Iran, but one negotiated alongside our partners in the P5+1 – the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany – and endorsed by the United Nations security council. Trump’s withdrawal further deepens tensions with our most important democratic allies, France, the UK and Germany, who all continue to support the agreement and have consistently said that it is in their own national security interests to see it upheld.
Trump also rejected the advice of his own top national security officials like the joint chiefs chairman, Gen Joseph Dunford, and defense secretary, James Mattis, both of whom have repeatedly stated that staying in the agreement is in the national security interests of the US. Nuclear non-proliferation and national security professionals around the world share that assessment. Just as he has done on the issue of climate change with his withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, Trump has chosen to ignore the overwhelming expert consensus and sided instead with a small ideological faction, with disastrous consequences for our global security.
Withdrawing from the JCPOA also seriously harms the US’s ability to negotiate future non-proliferation agreements, such as one with North Korea. Why would any country in the world sign such an agreement with the US and make the tough concessions that any such agreement requires if they thought that a reckless president might simply discard that agreement a few years later? ……..
It is folly to imagine that, having unleashed these problems through the misuse of military force, we can solve them in the same way. Yet President Trump’s bellicose speech last week clearly seemed to shift American policy toward the same goal of regime change that underlay the Iraq war. Real American leadership, and real American power, is not shown by our ability to blow things up, but by our ability to bring parties together, to forge international consensus around shared problems, and then to mobilize that consensus to address those problems. That is what the JCPOA did. Unfortunately, President Trump has now chosen to put us on a very different, more dangerous path. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/14/nuclear-deal-trump-america-war
A top defector believes North Korea will never completely give up it’s nuclear weapons, SBS, 16 May 18
North Korea will never completely give up its nuclear weapons, a top defector said ahead of leader Kim Jong-un’s landmark summit with US President Donald Trump next month.
The current whirlwind of diplomacy and negotiations will not end with “a sincere and complete disarmament,” but with “a reduced North Korean nuclear threat,” said Thae Yong-ho, who fled his post as the North’s deputy ambassador to Britain in August 2016.
Supes question Navy over cleanup fraud, SF Bay, By Scott MorrisMay 14, 2018, San Francisco elected officials Monday called for re-testing for radioactive material at an inhabited parcel of a former U.S. Navy shipyard in Hunters Point after revelations of fraudulent data by a Navy contractor.
At a meeting of the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation Committee, Supervisor Malia Cohen, whose district includes the project area, as well as Supervisors Jane Kim and Sandra Lee Fewer called the credibility of the Navy’s cleanup efforts into question following the criminal conviction of two employees of a federal contractor for falsifying records. ……https://sfbay.ca/2018/05/14/supes-question-navy-over-cleanup-fraud/
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Will Soon Face a Moment of Reckoning, NuScale is bringing small nuclear alive. But will the concept survive? GreenTech Media , JASON DEIGNMAY 14, 2018
Last month’s first-ever small modular reactor design approval could usher in a new era for nuclear power, provided the technology can live up to the hype.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) phase 1 review approval of a small nuclear reactor (SMR) design from Portland, Oregon-based NuScale Power means the technology now has a realistic chance of being up and running within a decade.
In a press release, NuScale said its first operational products, for Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), could be hooked up to the grid “by the mid-2020s,” while Bloomberg reported that the company was aiming for commercial operations in 2026.
The reactor developer next has to get NRC design certification application approval and customer UAMPS needs a combined construction and operating license, NuScale’s director of communications, Mariam Nabizad, told GTM. …….
When it goes live, the UAMPS plant could be the definitive test of whether nuclear has a future in many Western economies. In Europe and the U.S. the industry is on the wane, mounting a rearguard PR campaign to claw back fans and betting heavily on SMRs to regain credibility.
That means the UAMPS project, which is set to have a dozen 50-megawatt NuScale SMR modules, will have to buck recent nuclear new-build trends by coming in on time and on budget.
And, critically, it will have to be competitive with other generation sources being built eight years from now. Nabizad said that the estimated overnight cost for the UAMPS project was $2.9 billion, and its target levelized cost of energy was $65 per megawatt-hour.
For comparison, the International Renewable Energy Agency predicts that by 2020, more than half a decade ahead of the UAMPS project going live, onshore wind will be hitting an LCOE of $50 per megawatt-hour and solar will be at $60 per megawatt-hour.
……… with wind- or solar-tied storage plummeting in cost, it is unclear to what extent intermittency will be an issue for intermittent renewables eight years from now. All these factors could fuel concerns that SMRs may never be a viable technology. ……. even if NuScale and its brethren can reignite interest in nuclear across the U.S. and Europe, it may still face a threat from within its own industry.
Trump Abandons Nuclear Energy Project, Failed ‘Test’ Cost 38 Times More Than Russian Success, Western Journal , By Michael Bastasch , May 14, 2018
The Trump administration will abandon a nuclear energy project that was supposed to satisfy de-nuclearization treaty obligations with Russia and will instead bury diluted nuclear weapons underground.
Energy experts have long pointed to bureaucratic inefficiencies holding back nuclear energy projects, but the now-abandoned Mixed Oxide, or MOX, project illustrates just how expensive building these facilities has become.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry wrote to Congress in early May, detailing the administration’s plan to abandon the project. Perry wants to blend weapons-grade plutonium with inert substances and then bury them underground in New Mexico, according to a copy of the letter obtained by Reuters.
The federal government has already spent about $7.6 billion on the MOX project at South Carolina’s Savannah River Site, but Perry said completing the facility meant to convert nuclear weapons into fuel would cost another $48 billion.
In total, MOX is projected to cost nearly $56 billion and is still decades away from completion. Federal officials initially expected MOX to cost less than $5 billion and begin operations this year……
Renewables Investment Nudges Out Fossil Fuel And Nuclear, Forbes,Felicia Jackson Contributor, May 15, 2018, The global clean energy transition is gaining pace as it becomes a mainstream investment option.
The global clean energy transition is gaining pace as it becomes a mainstream investment option. According to the latest research from CERES on progress to a ‘Clean Trillion’ it is also one that far outstripped fossil fuels and nuclear in 2017.
In 2017 the clean energy industry reached a critical turning point. Growth and cost reductions across the sector have far outperformed expectations based on policy frameworks alone. Dramatic reductions in cost, increases in scale, and technology improvements have fundamentally changed the dynamics of the clean energy market. Energy market
dynamics have shifted in favor of clean energy technologies such as wind and solar, which increasingly out-compete new fossil fuel and nuclear power sources.
Within In Sight of the Clean Trillion: Update on an Expanding Landscape of Investor Opportunities, Ceres says that what it calls the ‘Clean Trillion’ – the goal of an additional $1 trillion investment in clean energy per year through 2050 – is increasingly feasible as the market matures.
……..Overall, the combination of lower cost, lower regulatory risks, improved technology and rapid growth and uptake of clean energy creates a very different clean energy investment future and significant, scaled investment opportunities as compared to what we have historically seen. Fulton says, ‘We see a pathway to a post-subsidy world as clean energy increasingly out-competes fossil fuels and nuclear power’.For forward thinking investors, it seems as if fossil fuel weighting in investment portfolios is due another look. https://www.forbes.com/sites/feliciajackson/2018/05/15/renewables-investment-nudges-out-fossil-fuel-and-nuclear/#58038b5e3752
Legislation’s foes fear it would shift risk from shareholders to ratepayers , By Mike Hughlett Star Tribune, MAY 14, 2018
Xcel said the legislation passed Monday would give it more certainty in recovering at least $1.4 billion in maintenance costs expected over the next 17 years at its nuclear reactors in Monticello and Red Wing. Opponents of the Senate bill fear it would shift risk from Xcel’s shareholders to ratepayers.
Similar legislation is pending in the House.
By a vote of 37-29, the Senate passed a newly amended version of the bill. The amendments appear to strengthen the hand of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The legislation has been criticized for weakening the PUC’s authority over Xcel’s nuclear investment decisions, and Gov. Mark Dayton has threatened to veto it for that reason.
…….. Essentially, the bill would allow Xcel to get upfront approval from the PUC for future nuclear expenses, instead of approval after those investments are made. Critics say that would give Xcel an incentive to aim high on its estimates, in case of any future cost overruns.
The energy minister spoke extensively about successes in renewables and made no mention of nuclear power, at the conference in Cape Town, 15 MAY 2018 TANYA FARBER
Just hours after being sworn in as acting president‚ Jeff Radebe nailed his colours to the renewable energy mast at African Utility Week, on Tuesday.
Radebe was speaking at the Cape Town International Convention Centre‚ where 7‚000 delegates from around the world gathered to talk about water‚ energy and power.
The energy minister‚ who is acting president while President Cyril Ramaphosa and Deputy President David Mabuza are out of the country‚ spoke extensively about successes in renewables and made no mention of nuclear power.
“To date we have concluded 91 projects with a capacity of 63‚000 megawatts (MW). Sixty-two of these projects have the combined capacity of 3‚800MW, which already is connected to the grid‚” he said.
He told delegates that SA had seen a “significant decline in tariffs of about 55% for wind and 76% for solar” energy. About R136bn had been invested in renewable energy‚ with another R56bn to be spent over the next 3-5 years, when the construction of 27 renewable power projects — signed off in April — will begin.
These projects would save water‚ create 39‚000 jobs and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 23-million tonnes.
Radebe said the resource plan, which maps out the country’s energy mix for the next two decades, would be finalised in August.
The report is seen as the litmus test for whether Ramaphosa’s government has distanced itself from the nuclear aspirations of his predecessor‚ Jacob Zuma.
Although the nuclear deals were deemed unlawful‚ there is a chance they could re-emerge. But if Radebe’s speech was anything to go by‚ nuclear might finally be fading into the background.
FAIRBANKS — An Army Corp of Engineers team is planning the formal decommissioning of the only nuclear power plant ever built in Alaska, Fort Greely’s SM-1A plant.
The SM-1A plant provided steam and electricity to the Army post near Delta Junction off and on between 1962 and 1972. It was one of eight experimental projects to test the use of small nuclear power plants at remote installations.
It’s expected to take about 10 years to plan, contract out and complete the SM-1A cleanup, according to a Baltimore-based team from the Army Corps of Engineers that came to Fort Greely for meetings last month……….
When SM-1A shut down in 1972, the Army chose to place the facility into a safe storage status instead of formally decommissioning it. The highly enriched uranium fuel and waste were shipped out of Alaska and radioactive components of the reactor were encased in cement.
The Army chose this temporary method of mothballing the facility out of hope that within a relatively short amount of time significant quantities of radioactive waste would decay to a safer nonradioactive state, according to an Army Corps of Engineers website about the SM-1A at bit.ly/2G7TjVH.
Later studies showed that the volume of radioactive waste wasn’t decreasing as expected and that a more hands-on approach was needed to clean up the plant. The increasing costs of nuclear waste disposal also motivated the Army to begin cleaning up the site.
There’s no estimate yet for the cost of decomissioning SM-1A, but such a project for a similar power plant has a budget of $66.4 million.
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