TEPCO firmly at fault for balking at payouts to disaster victims

IAEA Urges Patience For Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup

TEPCO to survey suspected fuel debris in reactor
‘We were driven out’: Fukushima’s radioactive legacy

The State of Nuclear Emergency Declared after the Fukushima Meltdown is Still On Today!!!

Having to conform to newly approved European copyright Law
Due to the newly approved stricter European copyright law, I have no other choice but to change the way to share articles here on the Nuclear News blog. This means that from now on I can only share partially one article with its link.
U.S. Congress needs to look hard at the rationale for a fast reactor program.
Are Washington’s ‘Advanced’ Reactors a Nuclear Waste?
Congress needs to look hard at the rationale for a fast reactor program.https://nationalinterest.org/feature/are-washington%E2%80%99s-advanced-reactors-nuclear-waste-43797,
Late last year, the Energy Department (DOE), began work on a new flagship nuclear project, the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR), a sodium-cooled fast reactor. If completed, the project will dominate nuclear power research at DOE. The department’s objective is to provide the groundwork for building lots of fast-power reactors. This was a dream of the old Atomic Energy Commission, DOE’s predecessor agency. The dream is back. But before this goes any further, Congress needs to ask, what is the question to which the VTR is the answer? It won’t be cheap and there are some serious drawbacks in cost, safety, but mainly in its effect on nonproliferation.
Congress has to ask hard questions: Is there an economic advantage to such reactors? Or one in safety? Or is it just what nuclear engineers, national laboratories, and subsidy-hungry firms would like to do?
The answer of DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, which would operate the reactor, is cast in terms of engineering and patriotic goals, not economic ones: “US technological leadership in the area of fast reactor systems . . . is critical for our national security. These systems are likely to be deployed around the globe and U.S. leadership in associated safety and security policies is in our best national interest.” In other words, we need to build fast reactors because DOE thinks other people will be building them, and we need to stay ahead.
But we then learned there are vast deposits of uranium worldwide, and at the same time many fewer nuclear reactors were installed than were originally projected, so there is no foreseeable fuel shortage. Not only that, the reprocessing of fuel, which is intrinsic to fast reactor operation, has turned out to be vastly more expensive than projected. Finally, by all accounts fast reactors would be more expensive to build than conventional ones, the cost of which is already out of sight. In short, there is no economic argument for building fast reactors.
With regard to nonproliferation, the issue that mainly concerns us is that the fast reactor fuel cycle depends on reprocessing and recycling of its plutonium fuel (or uranium 233 if using thorium instead of uranium). Both plutonium and uranium 233 are nuclear explosives. Widespread use of fast reactors for electricity generation implies large quantities of nuclear explosives moving through commercial channels. It will not be possible to restrict such use to a small number of countries. The consequent proliferation dangers are obvious. And while it is doubtful the U.S. fast reactor project will lead to commercial exploitation—few, if any, projects from DOE ever do—U.S. pursuit of this technology would encourage other countries interested in this technology, like Japan and South Korea, to do so.
With all these concerns, and the lack of a valid economic benefit, why does the Energy Department want to start an “aggressive” and expensive program of fast reactor development? It’s true that so far only exploratory contracts have been let, on the order of millions of dollars (to GE-Hitachi). But the Department is already leaning awfully far forward in pursuing the VTR. It estimates the total cost to be about $2 billion, but that’s in DOE-speak. We’ve learned that translates into several times that amount.
But beyond that, the nuclear engineering community, and the wider community of nuclear enthusiasts, have never given up the 1960s AEC dream of a fast breeder-driven, plutonium-fueled world. Such reactors were to have been deployed by 1980 and were to take over electricity generation by 2000. It didn’t even get off the ground, in part because of AEC managerial incompetence, but mainly because it didn’t make sense.
After the 1974 Indian nuclear explosion and the realization that any country with a small reactor and a way to separate a few kilograms of plutonium could make a bomb, proliferation became a serious issue. In 1976 President Gerald Ford announced that we should not rely on plutonium until the world could reliably control its dangers as a bomb material. The plutonium devotees never accepted this change. Jimmy Carter froze construction of an ongoing fast-breeder prototype, the Clinch River Reactor, about three time the size of the proposed VTR. Ronald Reagan tried to revive it but, as its rationale thinned and its cost mounted, Congress shut it down in 1983. The plutonium enthusiasts thought they got their chance under George W. Bush with a fast reactor and a reprocessing and recycling program under of the rubric of Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. But it was so poorly thought out it didn’t go anywhere. More or less the same laboratory participants are now pushing the VTR.
Congress needs to look hard at the rationale for a fast reactor program. This means getting into the details. At a Senate Appropriations hearing last month on advanced reactors, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said rather plaintively, “We cast the votes, and cross our fingers hoping nothing bad will happen.” That’s not good enough.
Victor Gilinsky is program advisor for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) in Arlington, Virginia. He served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Henry Sokolski is executive director of NPEC and the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future (second edition 2019). He served as deputy for nonproliferation policy in the office of the U.S. secretary of defense in the Cheney Pentagon.
Likely areas of Wales to be targeted for nuclear waste dumping
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most lethal nuclear waste
Here’s what the Government’s geologists had to say about the area in which you live, Wales Online Nathan Bevan, 10 FEB 2019
Meetings are to be held in Wales next month as part of the search for a site in which to bury the country’s most dangerous radioactive waste.
People in two areas – Swansea and Llandudno – are to be consulted as part of the Government-run Radioactive Waste Management’s hunt for “a willing host community” where the lethal stockpile can be buried hundreds of metres underground over decades to come.
The waste, which has been accumulating from nuclear power stations over the last 60 years, is to be transferred from specially-engineered containers where it is currently building up to a subterranean Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) where it can be left forever.
The government’s official line is that no location has been chosen and that any site will only be picked if a community is willing.
Experts at the RWM (a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority) have been scouring Wales for suitable regions and this is what they have to say about the area in which you live:
1. North Wales offshore including the Vale of Clwyd……….
2. North Wales Coalfield, comprising Wrexham and north to Prestatyn…….
3. From St Brides Bay to the Severn Estuary, extending north to Welshpool……
4. 20 km offshore strip along the Bristol Channel – from Carmarthen Bay to Cardiff…..
5. Most of North Wales and West Wales – from St Davids to Bangor……
6. Mostly offshore between St Davids and Caernarfon, with a small onshore area south of Harlech ……. https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/parts-wales-being-looked-sites-15805907
Potentially criminal activity in Trump campaign – a nuclear connection
Report: Trump Inaugural Committee Under Investigation for Possible Finance Crime, Slate By DEC 13, 2018 “………..Prosecutors also asked for documents from Tennessee developer Franklin Haney, the Journal reported. Haney made a $1 million donation to the inaugural committee and, in April, hired Cohen to help him obtain a $5 billion loan from the U.S. government, among other funding, for a pair of nuclear reactors in Alabama. Prosecutors asked him for documents related to any correspondence with members of the committee. ……
This investigation opens another possible route of inquiry into potentially criminal behavior by those in Trump’s orbit during the campaign and transition period. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/12/trump-inaugural-committee-federal-investigation.html
Secret USA nuclear base in Greenland revealed
WW3 FEARS: Pentagon’s secret underground tunnels of MOBILE NUCLEAR bases REVEALED THE US government built a fully-functioning mobile nuclear base below the ice of Greenland in preparation for war, it was revealed during a documentary. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1084951/ww3-fears-pentagon-mobile-nuclear-base-greenland-spt In 1960, the United States ran a highly publicised project known as Camp Century on the island to study the feasibility of working below the ice. However, declassified files show it was actually a cover-up for a top-secret Cold War programme. Project Iceworm was the code name for the United States Army’s mission to build a network of mobile nuclear missile launch sites.
The ultimate objective was to place medium-range missiles under the ice — close enough to strike targets within the Soviet Union.
YouTube series “The Real Secrets of Antarctica” revealed how the project came to light in January 1995.
The 2017 documentary detailed: “Some very interesting disclosures were declassified about US military installations in Greenland which took place in the 1960s.
“They fed the American people a highly publicised story about advances in research and building an underground city below Greenland called Camp Century.
Only later did the truth about Project Iceworm surface.
“The Pentagon was attempting to put in place mobile nuclear launching sites to utilise thousands of miles of tunnels.”
Project Iceworm was to be a system of tunnels 2,500 miles in length, used to deploy up to 600 nuclear missiles, that would be able to reach the Soviet Union in case of nuclear war.
The missile locations would be under the cover of Greenland’s ice sheet and were supposed to be periodically changed.
A total of 21 trenches were cut and covered with arched roofs within which prefabricated buildings were erected.
These tunnels also contained a hospital, a shop, a theatre, and a church and the total number of inhabitants was around 200.
From 1960 until 1963 the electricity supply was provided by means of the world’s first mobile nuclear reactor, named PM-2A.
Water was supplied by melting glaciers and tested to determine whether germs were present, including tests for the plague virus.
However, just three years after it was built, ice core samples taken by geologists demonstrated that the glacier was moving much faster than anticipated and would destroy the tunnels and planned launch stations in about two years.
The facility was evacuated in 1965, and the nuclear generator removed.
Project Iceworm was canceled, and Camp Century closed in 1966.
The Green New Deal goes to Washington — Beyond Nuclear International
But can its largely youthful supporters hold the nuclear lobby at bay?
via The Green New Deal goes to Washington — Beyond Nuclear International
A return to Greenham Common? — Beyond Nuclear International
US withdrawal from INF could make Europe a nuclear battleground again
via A return to Greenham Common? — Beyond Nuclear International
February 10 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Lessons About The Contemporary State Of Fossil Fuels – Venezuela-Style” • Let’s look at Venezuela, which is in trouble despite vast oil resources, and try to understand why it’s suddenly unable to extract them. The lesson from one country may be instructive to other oil-producing countries around the world – like the US. […]
Social Democrats vs. Fascists — GarryRogers Nature Conservation
Trump and Republicans such as Mitch McConnell want the U. S. to become a Fascist country controlled by and for the wealthy. Sanders and Progressives such as AOC want the country to become a Social Democracy ruled by equality and concern for people and the environment.
via Social Democrats vs. Fascists — GarryRogers Nature Conservation
Seven take-aways from the Green New Deal launch — RenewEconomy
Sweeping in scope, an agenda to transform the US into a green leader has been launched in Washington DC, here are the key points. The post Seven take-aways from the Green New Deal launch appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Seven take-aways from the Green New Deal launch — RenewEconomy
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