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Education as anti-Russian nuclear strategy: USA’s Department of Energy co-opts another educational institution

Physics department to develop nuclear science program for graduate students, The GW Hatchet, By Jared Gans May 13, 2019 4:24 AM

Faculty in the physics department will receive funding from the Department of Energy to develop new nuclear science and engineering programming for international students.

Faculty said they are working to form a Nuclear Education Hub that will teach aspects of operating nuclear reactors to graduate students in a partnership with Virginia Tech. The efforts, which faculty aim to complete this fall, will focus on recruiting Ukrainian graduate students by offering them the opportunity to learn about nuclear physics unconstrained by outdated Russian safety standards for nuclear power plants, the standards most Ukrainian plants were built on.

Andrei Afanasev, the director of the project and an associate professor of theoretical physics, said faculty are primarily designing the program for Ukrainian students because Ukraine relies on nuclear power plants to generate electricity and because American nuclear companies have shown increasing interest in Ukraine’s nuclear operations……..

William Briscoe, the chair of the physics department, said the partnership was partly inspired by the desire to separate Ukraine from Russian influence ……He said the program is designed to train students who will likely work at Ukrainian nuclear power plants in the future……. https://www.gwhatchet.com/2019/05/13/physics-department-to-develop-nuclear-science-program-for-graduate-students/

May 14, 2019 Posted by | Education, USA | Leave a comment

Russia’s upgraded nuclear-powered missile cruisers to get advanced torpedo defense systems

Tass, May 13 2019  Both Project 22350 new frigates and Project 20380 corvettes under construction and Project 11442 cruisers undergoing upgrade will be furnished with the Paket-NK system.  MOSCOW, May 13. /TASS/. The advanced Paket-NK torpedo defense system developed by the Research and Production Enterprise ‘Region’ (part of Tactical Missiles Corporation) will be mounted on Project 11442 cruisers during their upgrade, Enterprise CEO Igor Krylov told TASS on Monday……..

As a result of their upgrade, the Project 11442 cruisers will get new Oniks and Kalibr missiles and Tsirkon hypersonic weapons (instead of Granit missiles currently in service). Advanced surface-to-air missile systems, communications, navigation, life support and other systems are due to be mounted on these warships.
The Project 11442 heavy missile cruisers are among the Russian Navy’s largest warships: they are 250 meters long and displace over 26,000 tonnes. The warships have 20 launchers of Granit anti-ship supersonic missiles as their basic armament. The warships have an unlimited operating range due to their nuclear propulsion unit. Russia and the United States are the sole countries that operate warships of this class. http://tass.com/defense/1057894

 

May 14, 2019 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The false hope of “Small Modular Nuclear Reactors” being pushed in Wales

Beyond Nuclear 12th May 2019 Irene is with a group called CADNO, founded in 1987 and active until the plants closed. The CADNO acronym in Welsh means Society for the Prevention
of Everlasting Nuclear Destruction. It is also the Welsh word for fox.
Now the group is slowly gearing back up, because the Trawsfynydd site is being
talked about as a possible location for a new, small modular reactor (SMR).
CADNO is the fox we actually need to guard this henhouse. The old
Trawsfynydd reactors are decommissioning now, but very slowly. On
Wikipedia, the page proclaims that the decommissioning is expected to take
“almost 100 years.”
The SMR phantom is manifesting itself many places
beyond Trawsfynydd. Being described as “small” and “modular” tends
to mask the reality that it is expensive, of little use for climate change,
and likely still far in the future.
Local politicians, including in Gwynedd, the county in which the Trawsfynydd reactors sit, view the project as an easy jobs handout for a region struggling to employ people. It’s
false hope, of course, because the likelihood of SMRs coming to fruition is
slim and would provide only a handful of jobs.
The area is ripe for more wind power but the UK government remains eager to subsidize new nuclear instead, the only way new nuclear power plants will ever get built.

https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2019/05/12/the-fox-we-need-to-guard-this-henhouse/

May 14, 2019 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Majority of UK voters want to slash greenhouse gases to nearly zero by 2050

Independent 12th May 2019 A majority of voters would support radical action to slash greenhouse gases
to nearly zero by 2050 at a cost of tens of billions of pounds, a new poll
has found. The public has thrown its weight overwhelmingly behind calls by
the government’s independent climate change advisers to make a legally
binding commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions by the middle of
the century. The exclusive survey by BMG Research found 59 per cent of
voters would support such action, with only 8 per cent opposing it and 34
per cent who had no view.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/climate-change-greenhouse-gasses-public-support-poll-greta-thunberg-a8909641.html

May 14, 2019 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s Committee on Climate Change urged to consider a carbon tax

FT 13th May 2019 Nick Butler: There is a very simple measure the UK’s Committee on Climate
Change could have flagged. We need a carbon tax to change consumer
behaviour. Introduced at a level designed to alter behaviour (perhaps £50
a tonne), a carbon tax would encourage consumers of all kinds – from
manufacturers to domestic customers – to switch to lower-carbon energy
supplies and encourage the development of technology to make that possible.

Charged at this level a tax would be far more effective than the current
EU-based measures and would allow energy users to identify low-cost
alternatives, or where necessary develop them. In the process, it would
demonstrate whether the most expensive options, such as carbon capture and
the reconstruction of the way we heat buildings, are really necessary.

https://www.ft.com/content/2c5f19d6-7245-11e9-bf5c-6eeb837566c5

May 14, 2019 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Professor Kazuhiko Kobayashi at Sellafield, warns on nuclear radiation and danger to children

Radiation Free Lakeland 12th May 2019 Professor Kazuhiko Kobayashi has done ground breaking work with theUniversity of Tokyo on the impact of climate change on rice nutrition. This is important work and it has been widely featured in national and
international media.

Kazuhiko’s real passion however is to warn people
about the worst criminality against humankind: nuclear power and nuclear
weapons.

Kazuhiko organises respite for children and families who have been
impacted by the ongoing Fukushima disaster.

Members of Radiation Free Lakeland met up with Kazuhiko last autumn to show him the Sellafield area and he told us that there is money for climate research but not so much for
research into the impacts of radiation on our food and health. He is a kind
gentle man and he was visibly shocked to see the scale of Sellafield.

Kazuhiko broke down in tears within the shadow of Sellafield, at the
impacts the nuclear industry is having on our children’s health. His
passionate opposition to nuclear power and weapons, his work for change and
to help those impacted, is an inspiration.

https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2019/05/12/worst-criminality-against-humankind-report-from-fukushima-by-kazuhiko-kobayashi/

May 14, 2019 Posted by | Japan, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Drones find new radiation hotspots near site of Chernobyl nuclear disaster

New RADIATION HOTSPOTS Exposed Near Chernobyl Site 33 Years After Disaster Sputnik News, 12 May 19 Following the Chernobyl accident, authorities officially designated an exclusion zone around the plant where restrictions on public access and inhabitation are in place. This is where specially equipped unmanned aerial vehicles have spotted previously unknown areas with significantly greater levels of radiation.

A British research team claims to have discovered unexpected radioactive hotspots near the Chernobyl ground zero, three decades after the worst nuclear accident in history.

The hotspots were identified by a suite of drones capable of detecting radioactive gamma particles and neutrons, the University of Bristol announced……

According to UN estimates, 134 Chernobyl plant workers out of those 600 present during the accident received high doses of radiation and suffered from radiation sickness; 28 of them died in the first three months following the accident and another 19 died in the following years of various causes, not necessarily associated with radiation exposure.

Over 110,000 inhabitants of the polluted areas near Chernobyl were evacuated, coupled with another 220,000 people living in Ukraine as well as in the adjacent areas of neighbouring Belarus and Russia. Two weeks after the disaster, Soviet officials decided to confine the remains of the doomed reactor into a special steel and concrete tomb, often referred to as a sarcophagus, to prevent further radiation leaks.

It soon emerged that it would only last for about 20 years, and in November 2016, a new movable steel structure was deployed to cover the crumbling original sarcophagus. https://sputniknews.com/science/201905121074941281-chernobyl-new-radiation-hotspots/

May 14, 2019 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

USA preparing Hanford vitrification plant to deal with 56 million gallons of radioactive waste

May 14, 2019 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

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