2019 March 04 « nuclear-news

U.S. army wants risky small modular nuclear reactors

The Army wants mobile nuclear reactors for FOBs, but some scientists say that’s ‘naive’, Army Times By: Todd South 3 Marc 19, The Army wants to bring back mobile nuclear reactors to power forward bases and is asking industry how to make that happen.

A collection of scientists that closely monitor nuclear issues thinks that the concept is “naive,” dangerous and describes the chances for the current technology to accomplish what the Pentagon wants as “vanishingly small.”

In January, the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office posted a request for information on the government website fbo.gov asking for information from industry on how companies might provide a less than 40-ton small mobile nuclear reactor design, capable of operating for three years or more and putting out 1 to 10 megawatts of power.

Dubbed “Project Dilithium,” a nod to the fictional dilithium crystal, a fuel source that powered warp drives in the Star Trek films and television series…….

But Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted that the Army’s own study showed the devices would “not be expected to survive a direct kinetic attack.”

Lyman acknowledges the Army’s need to save fuel, reduce convoys and transports and minimize attacks on those elements of the force. But, he also argues that adding reactors to the battlefield could create more problems than it solves.

In a lengthy response to the program posted on the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists website, Lyman outlines the scientific, safety and policy problems with developing and deploying a small mobile nuclear reactor.

But he closes with his analysis that the nuclear ambitions of the ground forces are part of a “patient, decade-long effort by nuclear lobbyists” aimed at gaining the interest of both the Pentagon and Congress to be “the savior small nuclear reactor vendors need: deep-pocketed and unbeholden to return-seeking investors.”

He implores defense officials to “pull the plug on this misguided effort.” ……….

The Army Nuclear Power Program, which ran from 1954 to 1977, developed eight small nuclear reactors. Those reactors ranged in power production from 1 to 10 megawatts.

How five of the eight reactors were used:

The PM-1 reactor was used in Sundance, Wyoming, from 1962 to 1968.
The PM-2A was used at Camp Century, Greenland, from 1961 to 1964.
The PM-3A was used at McMurdo Base, Antarctica, from 1962 to 1972.
The ML-1 was used in developmental testing from 1962 to 1966.
The MH-1A Panama Canal Zone from 1965 to 1977.

Lyman notes a major failure with one of the original eight designs in 1961 when a core meltdown and explosion of the ML-1 reactor in Idaho killed three operators.

The three deployed to Antarctica, Greenland and Alaska proved “unreliable and expensive to operate,” Lyman wrote.

The idea was resurrected by the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2014, in which Congress asked for a report on a “small modular reactor” to power forward or remote operating bases.

A Defense Science Board task force then published a detailed report in 2016 outlining the power requirements that could be met with such hardware. Last year, the Army’s deputy chief of staff, G-4, published a 148-page study on the use of mobile nuclear power plants for ground operations, adopting the recommendations of the 2016 Defense Science Board and further advocating, as the board did, that the Army manage ground nuclear reactor programs and pursue existing or near-to-maturity technologies.

Last year’s Army G-4 report outlined a dozen existing locations that officials think could have power provided by the type of mobile reactor they’re seeking:

Thule, Greenland
Kwajalein Atoll
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Diego Garcia
Guam (for both a naval and Air Force facility on the island)
Ascension Island
Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico
Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan
Camp Buehring, Kuwait
Fort Greely, Alaska
Lajes Field, Azores……… https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/03/01/the-army-wants-mobile-nuclear-reactors-for-fobs-but-some-scientists-say-thats-naive/

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, spinbuster, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Is it safe to keep ageing nuclear stations running until 2054?

Peach Bottom, other U.S. nuclear power plants could be running until 2054. Is it safe? The Inquirer, by Andrew Maykuth, February 28, 2019 …….. The Peach Bottom plant, 60 miles west of Philadelphia near the Maryland border, is operating under a 20-year extension from its original 40-year license, like many of America’s aging fleet of nuclear reactors. Last year it became one of the first plants to apply for what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission calls a “Subsequent License Renewal” — that would permit the reactors to run through 2053 and 2054, when they turn 80 years old.

As the construction of new nuclear power plants fell off after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 — the average age of a U.S. reactor is nearly 40 years old — older units like Peach Bottom are being pressed into longer service, and some worry that safety will suffer. …….

skeptics say that nuclear plant owners, ever alert to degradation from a harsh operating environment, will be challenged to keep geriatric power plants operating into their seventh and eighth decades. Market forces, driven by competition from inexpensive natural gas plants and renewable power, are not working in nuclear energy’s favor.

“There is this rush of license-renewal applications for the 60-to-80-year period that are pushing beyond our knowledge of the impact of aging,” said Paul Gunter, director of the reactor oversight project for Beyond Nuclear, an antinuclear group that has challenged Peach Bottom’s license extension.

Edwin Lyman, senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is wary of nuclear power, said reactor owners will be required to conduct more frequent inspections, maintenance, and repairs of aging reactors while facing increasing pressure to keep costs low. “It’s not clear to me that can be done at the same time compatibly,” he said………

Is it safe?

Critics say they’re particularly worried about cracking, embrittlement, and corrosion of critical plant components in place for 60 years that can’t be inspected, such as hidden electric cables, structural concrete, and the reactor vessel itself, which contains the uranium fuel that creates heat that is converted into electricity.

The NRC rejected a suggestion that it should order a closer post-mortem of older nuclear power plants that are being decommissioned to measure the effect of prolonged operations, said Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. He suggested that Exelon should be forced to conduct an “autopsy” on the decommissioned reactor vessel at Oyster Creek, which is the same make and design as the Peach Bottom units.

“It would behoove the public health and safety for the cost of doing the autopsy to be borne by the operator that wants to extend the operation of a plant with the same design,” Gunter said. “We’re questioning the licensing process as if it’s some kind of crystal ball that they can manage aging.” …….

The NRC will also not consider changes in conditions since the plants were originally licensed, such as an increase in population density, or the effects of climate change, said Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“All you can look at is whether there is an appropriate aging management program for those components that can’t be replaced, and you have to justify why they aren’t going to fall apart by the end of the extended period,” he said.

Lyman also questioned Peach Bottom’s method of storing spent fuel in a water pool, citing a 2016 study he coauthored that estimated if a catastrophic earthquake caused the pool to drain, the densely packed fuel assemblies could overheat and catch fire, spreading radioactive material into the atmosphere.

“A spent fuel fire at Peach Bottom could force Boston to relocate, not to mention Philadelphia — that’s how bad it could be,” said Lyman. https://www.philly.com/business/energy/aging-nuclear-power-plants-safe-three-mile-island-peach-bottom-us-future-20190228.html

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Huge workforce at Flamanville nuclear reactor, employed to fix unsafe welds

**Flamanville* Tendance Ouest 1st March 2019 EDF announced that “500 people will intervene to take over twenty welds” non-compliant on the site of the nuclear reactor. A team that will add to
the current workforce of the site, already 3800 people. The operation
should take place in the fall, “after our hot tests , ” said Bertrand
Michoud, director of facilities at the EPR Flamanville.

https://www.tendanceouest.com/actualite-313403-epr-de-flamanville-500-personnes-pour-reprendre-20-soudures-sur-le-chantier.html

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, safety | Leave a comment

Major presidential candidate in USA running on climate action policy

Think Progress 1st March 2019 , For the first time in history, a major presidential candidate is putting
climate change center stage in their campaign. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee
(D) announced on Friday he will seek to challenge President Donald Trump in
2020. “This is our moment, our climate, our mission — together, we can
defeat climate change. That’s why I’m running for president,” Inslee
said on Twitter. In a video announcing his presidential campaign, he called
climate change “the most urgent challenge of our time,” adding,
“we’re the first generation to feel the sting of climate change. And
we’re the last that can do something about it.”

https://thinkprogress.org/washington-governor-jay-inslee-running-for-president-climate-change-6cd8755ed1d7/

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, politics, USA | Leave a comment

USA officials worried about Saudi Arabia’s nuclear plans

Middle East Monitor 2nd March 2019 , Doubts have been raised about Saudi Arabia’s plans for its nuclear
capabilities, which it maintains are for peaceful purposes, to meet its
population’s energy needs. However a US body charged with looking in to
Saudi’s nuclear plans has warned that “many whistleblowers have warned
against conflicts of interest that could fall within the scope of the
Federal Criminal Law.” The Committee on Oversight and Reform issued the
warning after President Donald Trump announced he intended to sell
“sensitive nuclear technology” to Saudi Arabia to benefit US companies.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190302-us-officials-question-saudis-nuclear-plans/

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Saudi Arabia, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

A BIG boondoggle – Nuclear And Emerging Technologies For Space

Nuclear In Space — The NETS Meeting, Forbes 28 Feb 19 James Conca The NETS meeting is wrapping up today at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington. The Nuclear And Emerging Technologies For Space is an annual gathering of people from NASA, National Laboratories, industry, and academia to discuss space nuclear power and propulsion as well as new and emerging technologies that make further space exploration possible…….

The space market, now about $400 billion/year, is set to grow to between $1 trillion and $4 trillion per year by 2040). Last year, the market for electricity in the United States was only $400 billion. So the economic push is great to evolve these systems. Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Elon Musk (SpaceX) started their companies with the mission of enabling millions of people to live and work in space. SpaceX launch vehicles have dropped the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 15, and that should continue to drop by another factor of 5. …….

So the gateway to space is open in the way that the internet was opened in the 1990’s. And nuclear energy is the power that will get us through that gate. When humans are ready to live and work in space, nuclear energy must be ready as well. That nuclear poweris the safest energy source on Earth doesn’t hurt. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/02/28/nuclear-in-space-the-nets-meeting/#1929eb8e465a

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Destructive power of nuclear explosions documented as never before

Nuclear explosions: Preserving images of terrifying, swift power, CBS News 3333 Mar 19, The force of nuclear weapons has to be seen to be believed. Now, thanks to a project headed by Gregg Spriggs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the public can see the destructive power of atomic blasts as never before.Starting in 1945 the United States conducted 210 above-ground nuclear tests, all of them documented on film, from as many angles as possible.

That ended in 1963 when, for the good of the planet, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to stop testing in the atmosphere.

Unlike most of us, Spriggs understands the physics that produces these spectacular images – fireballs that can spread two miles across, and reach temperatures of 10 to 15 million degrees kelvin. At the outer edge of the fireball is a shockwave; what the fireball doesn’t vaporize, the shockwave crushes.

“When it starts off, it’s moving at Mach 100, a hundred times the speed of sound,” Spriggs said, showing correspondent David Martin footage of one test’s shockwave.

And then there is the mushroom-shaped cloud, which climbs into the sky, spewing radiation. “That’s directly tied to the nuclear fallout which is very, very sensitive to the cloud height,” he said.

Using a computer to measure the cloud from one blast, Spriggs discovered the original calculations made 50 years ago were off by a full mile. “Instead of 35,000 feet, it was something like 40,000 feet, and it was because of the way they measured it,” Spriggs said.

That made him wonder if calculations from all the other blasts were wrong as well. It was more than just academic curiosity; those calculations are used to predict the performance (what Spriggs called the yield) of today’s nuclear weapons. “If you measure the shockwave radius and you’re off by one percent, you will be off by five percent in the yield,” he said.

So, Spriggs set out to re-analyze and then release to the public the estimated 9,000 rolls of unclassified film that had been shot. He found most of them in the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, birthplace of the atom bomb. ………

What do you hope the public gets out of watching this?”

“I hope they appreciate just how horrific these weapons are,” Spriggs replied. “This is something that can kill millions of people in the blink of an eye.”

Spriggs is one of the few nuclear weapons designers old enough to have actually witnessed a nuclear explosion – a high-altitude nighttime blast over the Pacific……..https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nuclear-explosions-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory-film-preservation/

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japan’s nuclear watchdog concerned at possibility of volcano near nuclear station

RA eyes seabed watch of caldera near Kagoshima nuclear plant, Asahi Shimbun, By CHIKAKO KAWAHARA/ Staff Writer March 3, 2019 The nightmare scenario of a volcanic crater erupting and spewing a pyroclastic flow that engulfs a nuclear plant, causing catastrophic levels of radiation to leak into the atmosphere, doesn’t appear on the horizon … just yet.But the nation’s nuclear watchdog is taking no chances. It plans to install seabed sensors to monitor potential crustal deformations on the Aira Caldera, located just 40 kilometers from the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture.

Little is known of processes that lead to giant eruptions of calderas, or ground depressions formed by volcanic activity, due to a lack of observation data. Such eruptions are extremely rare and occurs every 10,000 years in Japan.

The Aira Caldera, in Kagoshima Bay, was the site of a giant eruption around 30,000 years ago.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has so far relied on land-based seismic and other sensors to indirectly monitor magma activity and other changes beneath the seabed.

Starting in the new fiscal year from April, the NRA will set up seismic sensors and water-pressure gauges on the seafloor for additional monitoring……..

Huge calderas exist within a 160-km radius of other nuclear plants in Japan, including Kyushu Electric’s Genkai plant in Saga Prefecture, Shikoku Electric Power Co.’s Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture and Hokkaido Electric Power Co.’s Tomari plant. The NRA intends to conduct studies in those areas, too………http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903030001.html

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, safety | 1 Comment

Kim Kardashian West demands Trump, Newsom, lead cleanup of Santa Susana Nuclear Site

Kim Kardashian West demands Trump, Newsom, lead cleanup of Santa Susana Field Lab

Her tweet has sparked hope among nearby residents that the government will act more quickly to clean up the old Cold War site. https://www.dailybulletin.com/2019/03/01/kim-kardashian-west-demands-trump-newsom-lead-clean-up-of-santa-susana-field-lab/ By OLGA GRIGORYANTS | ogrigoryants@scng.com | Los Angeles Daily News March 1, 2019

Celebrity Kim Kardashian West is calling on President Donald Trump and other government leaders to lead a cleanup of the contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the hills above San Fernando and Simi valleys, sparking enthusiasm among residents who have long demanded the action.

Kardashian, who lives in nearby Hidden Hills, demanded via Twitter Wednesday that Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry help push for the clean up the former nuclear and rocket engine testing site near many Valley schools and homes.

“(The California Department of Toxic and Substance Control, or DTSC, the federal Department of Energy and NASA) promised to clean up contaminated Santa Susana Field Lab by 2017, but the job hasn’t even begun!” Kardashian West shared with nearly 60 million followers. “Time to reform DTSC, and for (the federal agency) to keep its promises.”

March 4, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA | Leave a comment

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