Trump uses the pandemic, to decimate environmental restrictions. Nuclear waste to landfill decision is just one example.
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https://americanindependent.com/donald-trump-administration-nuclear-waste-cleanup-coronavirus-new-mexico-covid-19/ By Josh Israel,April 8, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic is making the problem even worse.
The Trump administration has been under fire for not doing enough to clean up nuclear waste. And now, with the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing measures, the efforts are effectively on hold. At the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, an underground nuclear waste facility operated by the Department of Energy, new shipments of hazardous material from nuclear sites across the country have reportedly been stopped to protect workers from the coronavirus. According to an Associated Press report, the small number of essential employees working at nuclear facilities around the country, including Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, are focusing on safety, security, and information technology. Cleanup efforts have been frozen. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) told the wire service this week that worker safety is a priority, but more effort is needed to speed nuclear cleanup. “We are fighting to make sure workers and their families are taken care of during this crisis and that workers have the resources they need to meet cleanup goals when they are able to safely return to their jobs,” she said. Cantwell, Washington Sen. Ron Wyden (D), and New Mexico Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall raised concerns in early March that the Trump administration was not planning to spend enough money to do needed nuclear waste cleanup. Funding for those efforts, they warned, was being cut in favor of spending more money on modernization of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The landfill decision is the latest in a line of moves by the Trump administration that flout environmental concerns. It also comes as the administration is under fire for using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to decimate environmental protections. The Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that it was temporarily suspending enforcement of civil environmental regulations, allowing the fossil fuel industry to ignore monitoring and compliance obligations. The agency additionally rolled back automobile pollution standards enacted during the Obama administration. Donald Trump has repeatedly promised America “crystal clear clean water and clean air” but has significantly changed environmental regulations, often going beyond the loosening of rules that industry asks for. Last year, Trump told reporters at a NATO summit in London that climate change was “very important” to him, saying he thought about it “all the time.” However, months later, his administration curbed a series of methane regulations that even some energy companies opposed. And despite claiming he wants “crystal clear” water, Trump has signed a series of orders allowing construction on highly controversial oil pipelines to move forward. “Nobody in the world can do what you folks do,” he told a group of pipeline engineers in April last year before signing an order making it difficult for states to intervene and stop such projects. “And we’re going to make it easier for you.” |
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Climate change could cause sudden biodiversity losses worldwide
 Climate change could cause sudden biodiversity losses worldwide, Science Daily, April 8, 2020
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Ordinary people can beat the nuclear establishment: it’s been done before
Housewives and Fishmongers Defeat the U.S. Nuclear Establishment https://allthingsnuclear.org/gkulacki/housewives-and-fishmongers-defeat-the-u-s-nuclear-establishment
It was the height of the McCarthy era. The nuclear arms race was just beginning and opposing it was called un-American. But a crew of Japanese fishermen and a small group of Japanese housewives would change the debate. Their signature campaigns set off a chain reaction of global awareness that eventually led the United States to sign an international agreement banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, under water, and in outer space.
Castle Bravo
On March 1, 1954 the United States tested a nuclear weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The blast over the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands left a crater on the ocean floor 6,500 feet wide and 250 feet deep. Radioactive debris from the blast rained down over a 7,000 square mile area.
This wasn’t the first U.S. nuclear weapon tested in the Marshall Islands—an impoverished nation of scattered coral atolls close to the equator in the central Pacific Ocean—nor would it be the last. Between 1946 and 1958 the United States conducted 67 explosive nuclear weapons tests there.. The United States took control of the islands from Japan during WWII and administered them as part of a Trust Territory of the Pacific under a mandate from the United Nations until 1986.
It’s hard to imagine a more egregious betrayal of that trust. Several hours after the test—code named Castle Bravo—radioactive debris began falling on the unsuspecting inhabitants of the Rongelap atoll 150 km to the east of the crater. Children ran out to play in the snow-like powder that covered the island. Some ate it. The United States waited two days before evacuating the endangered islanders to a safer atoll more than 650km to the southeast.
Lucky dragon
A Japanese fishing boat called the Daigo Fukuryū Maru—the Lucky Dragon No. 5—got caught in a dirty rain of radioactive fallout from the Castle Bravo test. It pelted the fisherman for hours, stuck to their exposed skin and got into their eyes, noses and mouths. By the time they returned to Japan two weeks later their skin was burned, their hair was falling out, and their gums were bleeding. Six months after returning home, Aikichi Kuboyama, the ship’s radio operator, died from his exposure.
The Japanese media was fascinated and appalled by their story, which was reported around the world. Memories of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were revived and amplified. But this time the Japanese public, and people throughout Asia, began to realize the potential danger was not confined to the site of the explosion. They could all become victims of the atomic bomb. Indonesia’s President Suharto put it this way in his opening address to the first ever international conference of the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia in the city of Bandung in April 1955:
“The food that we eat, the water that we drink, yes, even the very air that we breathe can be contaminated by poisons originating from thousands of miles away. And it could be that, even if we ourselves escaped lightly, the unborn generations of our children would bear on their distorted bodies the marks of our failure to control the forces which have been released on the world.”
The Suganami appeal
Japanese fishmongers saw their businesses crippled by widespread public fear of eating “A-bombed tuna.” Five-hundred of them met in Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji Market and decided to launch a signature campaign against atomic and hydrogen bombs. Their efforts inspired the Suganami City Assembly to pass a supportive resolution.
Six months earlier a group of housewives had begun meeting in the newly opened Suganami Community Center to read books and discuss social issues, including the causes of war, with the center’s part-time director, Kaoru Yasui. After the Castle Bravo test, they joined with neighbors to form the Suganami Council and launched an appeal to the people of Japan, and the world, to ban hydrogen bombs.
The housewives, fishmongers and many other groups who collected signatures were not part of an organized movement. They were ordinary people. Within a month, 250,000 had signed. By the end of 1955 it was 20 million. According to some accounts, nearly a third of the population of Japan eventually signed the appeal.
The notoriety of the Japanese campaign, along with increased scientific investigation of the distribution and consequences of radioactive fallout, created global public health concerns and inspired people to press the nuclear weapons states to stop testing. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories were strongly opposed to any agreement on testing. But President Eisenhower joined the Soviets in a testing moratorium in 1958 and negotiations on a treaty began in Geneva. This eventually led to the entry into force the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere as well as underwater and in space.
This year the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago have launched an appeal to ban nuclear weapons. You can do your part to advance the process of nuclear disarmament by lending your signature to the cause.
Refuelling continues at Limerick nuclear plant, but three more workers test positive for Covid19
 More Limerick nuclear plant workers test positive for coronavirus; refueling to continue
by Andrew Maykuth, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 8, 2020 Exelon Generation said Wednesday that three nuclear plant workers have now been diagnosed with COVID-19 since it took the Limerick Generating Station out of service for refueling on March 27 — two since Friday — but the giant power plant is still on track to complete its maintenance turnaround early next week.
Of more than 1,000 workers involved with the refueling outage at Limerick’s Unit 1 reactor, 44 were quarantined because they may have come into contact with one of the infected workers or with infected people outside the plant, the company said in a statement Wednesday. About 23 of the quarantined workers show symptoms, said Val Arkoosh, the chair of the Montgomery County Commission. Of the three people who have tested positive since the project began, one was a regular employee and two were contractors, she said. “As the outage winds down, the number of workers onsite will continue to decrease significantly and we will remain overly cautious in our criteria for quarantining, including all workers — symptomatic or not — who have had potential exposure at work or at home,” Exelon said in a statement. The company announced on Friday that one worker had tested positive, and said that two more were flagged this week. The workers were sent home to recover. Since the illness takes several days to incubate before a patient displays symptoms, it’s uncertain if the workers were infected on site or had come into contact with somebody before the outage began. About half the contracted workers are local and half come from out of state; specialists typically move like nomads between plants during the spring and autumn nuclear refueling seasons. Limerick is one of more than 30 reactors nationwide that are scheduled for refueling and maintenance outages this spring, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. Anti-nuclear activists have protested the influx of so many workers during a public health crisis, and Montgomery County officials have raised concerns about Exelon’s decision to proceed with the refueling…… https://www.inquirer.com/business/limerick-nuclear-plant-refueling-coronavirus-workers-infected-20200408.html |
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Coronavirus complicates refuelling of nuclear reactors, Fermi 2 has undisclosed number of Covid19 workers
Coronavirus strikes Fermi 2 nuclear plant during refueling; utility keeps working,TOM HENRY, The Blade, thenry@theblade.
9 Apr 20, NEWPORT, Mich. — An undisclosed number of coronavirus cases have been documented inside Fermi 2 during the nuclear plant’s latest refueling outage.
But owner-operator DTE Energy said it believes it has enough precautions in place now to complete the work and get the plant restarted in the coming weeks.
In a statement, DTE spokesman Stephen R. Tait said the company “can confirm that we have had employees test positive, but are not giving out numbers, locations or names at this time.”
Media reports showed the first worker tested positive about the same time the refueling outage began on March 21. A Detroit television station reported at least two more positive cases were documented within days of that.
DTE won’t say for the record when it expects to complete Fermi 2’s outage.
But many similar operations — which once took six weeks or longer — have been shortened to about a month in recent years. Utilities lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential electricity sales each day nuclear plants sit idle.
Nuclear plants are refueled every 18 to 24 months, depending on the type of uranium used in their reactor cores.
Fermi 2, located along western Lake Erie in northern Monroe County’s Frenchtown Township, is one of many nuclear plants across the United States scheduled to be refueled during the spring or fall of 2020, the two seasons when demand for electricity is lowest.
Energy Harbor’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant along the Lake Erie shoreline in rural Ottawa County recently completed its latest refueling.
Both plants are about 30 miles from downtown Toledo.
The coronavirus pandemic has, of course, complicated those efforts this year.
To help keep refuelings on schedule, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month allowed for an exemption from rules which limit the number of consecutive hours workers are allowed to be inside the plant at a time. The agency said in a March 28 letter to the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute that it will consider such requests on a case-by-case basis, and that exemptions will be limited to 60 days. …..
In nearly all refuelings, including at those at Fermi 2 and Davis-Besse, hundreds of specialized, out-of-state contractors augment the regular plant workforces, often resulting in 1,000 or more workers assigned to any given site at a time. Work is usually divided into eight-hour shifts, with activity occurring 24 hours a day.
Officials have noted those contractors move throughout the country from job to job, bringing with them the potential of carrying viruses outside of the sites they last worked. …….. https://www.toledoblade.com/business/energy/2020/04/08/coronavirus-strikes-Fermi-2-nuclear-plant-during-refueling-utility-keeps-working-to-get-it-restarted/stories/20200408092
Sweden’s wind power on the way to putting nuclear out of business
Giant Wind Park Starting Up Is Another Blow to Nuclear Industry
A surge in renewable energy output in the Nordic region has sent power prices below the level where some nuclear plants are profitable. Bloomberg Green, By Lars Paulsson April 8, 2020, Sweden’s biggest wind farm began producing power this month, and the region’s nuclear reactors are feeling the heat.Vasa Vind AB’s Askalen started commercial output on April 1, increasing supplies in a market already bloated by a massive surplus of water for power generation. A day later, two units at Vattenfall AB’s Forsmark nuclear plant north of Stockholm curbed output by about 50%. Two reactors at the utility’s Ringhals plant are halted because of low power prices.
While there’s no direct link between those events, it’s the latest sign of how renewable energy is crowding out traditional power sources across Europe. The 288-megawatt facility in northern Sweden will boost the nation’s wind output further, after a 50% jump in the first quarter from a year earlier because of a very breezy winter.
“This could mean more frequent periods with rock bottom power prices, forcing conventional generators off the grid, especially when windy conditions coincide with high hydro output,” said Oliver Metcalfe, lead analyst for onshore wind research at BloombergNEF in London.
BNEF forecasts that global onshore wind capacity will gain 9% to more than 66 gigawatts this year, a forecast scaled back from the 24% expansion first anticipated.
That will help push out more traditional coal, gas and nuclear plants from the energy system. The German and U.K. coal power industries, among others, have already been decimated by a surge in green power.
Sweden will install more than 4.2 gigawatts of new onshore wind this year and next, according to BNEF. The Nordic region’s biggest economy will rely heavily on wind to replace old nuclear reactors in the future. The Askalen park has installed 80 Vestas A/S’s V136 turbines, which are as high as 112 meters……. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-08/giant-wind-park-starting-up-is-another-blow-to-nuclear-industry
Who has the UK nuclear button while Johnson is ill? No comment
Who has the UK nuclear button while Johnson is ill? No comment, LONDON (Reuters) 7 April, – The British government declined on Tuesday to say who had responsibility for the United Kingdom’s nuclear codes while Prime Minister Boris Johnson is treated in intensive care for COVID-19 complications.
Russia wants to extend New START nuclear weapons treaty, but the U.S. has not revealed its plans
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RUSSIA SAYS U.S. ‘UNWILLINGNESS’ IS THREATENING MAJOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS DEAL https://www.newsweek.com/russia-us-unwillingness-threatening-major-nuclear-weapons-deal-1496824 BY DAVID BRENNAN ON 4/8/20 Russia has again pointed the finger at the U.S. for delaying the extension of the New START nuclear weapons treaty, which expires next year.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that any questions about why the deal has not been extended should be directed to Washington rather than Moscow. Peskov said the Kremlin remains keen to make a deal, but has met with delay from the White House. “Actions on destruction of this document—on its non-extension—are taken not by Moscow,” Peskov told reporters, according to the Tass state news agency. “Rather, this is our U.S. colleagues’ unwillingness, and we have repeatedly expressed our regret in that regard.” The 10-year New START treaty came into force in 2011. It extended the existing START agreement, which was signed in the early 1990s. New START capped the number of deployed Russian and U.S. strategic nuclear warheads and bombs at 1,550, and the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers used for nuclear missions at 700. The total allowed number of deployed and non-deployed assets is currently 800. New START is the last of what former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev called the “three principal pillars of global strategic stability,” following the collapse of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty last year. Russia has repeatedly said that it wants to extend New START, but the U.S. has still not revealed its plans. President Donald Trump has hinted that they wish to include China in any new deal, but experts—among them one of the original negotiators of START—have warned this is not feasible in such a short time frame. Chinese officials have dismissed any suggestion of involvement in a new treaty. Newsweek has contacted the State Department for comment on its plans regarding New START. Peskov acknowledged that the New START deal has fallen down the pecking order with the appearance of the coronavirus pandemic. Both the U.S. and Russia—like many other nations—are struggling to contain the virus. “The coronavirus has halted many vital processes,” Peskov said, “This is the reality we have to face.” Russian Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev—who was serving as president when New START was signed—complained Wednesday that in the nine years since the deal was agreed, the U.S. has flipped from “cooperation to political pressure and unleashed an unprecedented war of sanctions against us, trying to oust Russia from the global agenda.” In an op-ed for Tass, Medvedev suggested that removing sanctions on Moscow would be a good first step to re-open New START talks. “If the New START deal ceases to exist, its demise will have extremely serious consequences for international security,” the former president and prime minister said. Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin have urged the White House to lift sanctions—imposed because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, support of separatists in eastern Ukraine and meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—to help the global response to coronavirus. |
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Nuclear fusion, too hot, too costly? And not ready before 2050
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Nuclear fusion promises a clean, green energy future — but there’s a catch
ABC Radio National By Antony Funnell for Future Tense 9 Apr 20, It’s a nuclear race like no other, involving billions of dollars and hundreds of scientists from across the globe.
Their aim is as ambitious as it is monumental: to replicate the energy source that powers the solar system, effectively building a mini sun — a swirling mass of super-heated atomic plasma so hot that it can only be contained by a magnetic field. The process is called nuclear fusion. Scientists believe that if fusion technology can be successfully harnessed as a human energy source, it could help save the world from future environmental catastrophe. From vision to constructionJust outside the port city of Marseille in the south of France work is underway on a giant nuclear fusion test facility known as ITER — Latin for “the way”. Its construction is being funded by an international collaboration between 35 nations, and it’s expected to cost somewhere between $27 billion and $36 billion when completed…… Fusion versus fissionConventional nuclear reactors harness energy from a process called fission, which involves splitting the nucleus of a large atom. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, works by forcing atoms together in order to release energy……. “The advantages of fusion are: no risk of meltdown — it’s very easy to stop it safely — no production of radioactive waste, and a very high energy density of the fuel,” ……. Early test reactors managed to produce a fusion reaction, but not one that was sustainable or energy efficient. In other words, it took more energy to produce the reaction, than the reaction itself produced…… The first plasma experiments are now expected to begin in 2025. For ITER to be considered a success, according to Professor Garrett, it must demonstrate that it can achieve an energy gain of a factor of 10. “ITER consumes 50 megawatts of power to produce this plasma at 150 million degrees, and the goal is to produce 500 megawatts of power from that plasma,” he says. “The second goal is to be able to maintain that condition for many minutes at a time, so maybe 10 minutes, up to an hour, and that’s what you would need for a steady-state power reactor.” Scale and manageabilityITER isn’t the only nuclear fusion initiative underway. In both North America and the United Kingdom there are numerous projects operating on a smaller scale………. Future focused or fantastic folly?Proponents of nuclear fusion believe it will end the world’s dependence on fossil fuels once and forever. But the catch is that no-one involved in the research believes a fully operational, commercially viable nuclear fusion reactor will be operating before at least 2050. That fact has seen some question the level of financial investment, including Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, the director of Energy Research at Oxford University and a former director general of CERN. He once managed the UK’s fusion program, but two years ago, in an interview with the Simons Centre for Geometry and Physics, he expressed doubts about ITER and the viability of the industry in general. “I used to think that there was a reasonably good chance that fusion could compete with other low carbon sources of power, but while I would not say that it’s impossible, the situation has changed,” he said. “The cost of wind and solar power has decreased faster than anyone could have dreamed. Meanwhile ITER has gone way over budget. Fusion reactors will be intrinsically more expensive than we thought a decade ago.” He argues that ITER needs to go ahead, but that a final cost comparison with renewables should be conducted before any construction on a full-scale reactor is begun. |
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Bosnia might need international arbitration over Croatia’s nuclear waste dump plan near the border
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Bosnia May Seek Arbitration on Croatia Nuclear Waste Dispute
https://balkaninsight.com/2020/04/08/bosnia-may-seek-arbitration-on-croatia-nuclear-waste-dispute/ Nedim Dervisbegovic, Sarajevo, BIRN
April 8, 2020, Minister says Bosnia will ramp up its protests after Croatia gives go-ahead for nuclear waste store to be built near Bosnian border. Bosnia may request international arbitration if Croatia proceeds with a plan to create a nuclear waste disposal site just across the border from Novi Grad in north-west Bosnia, Foreign Trade and Economic Relations Minister Stasa Kosarac was reported as saying. Kosarac’s ministry said dumping waste from the Croatian-Slovenian jointly-owned Krsko nuclear power plant at a former military storage facility near the Croatian town of Dvor would endanger the health and lives of some 250,000 people living in 13 Bosnian municipalities along the Una River. He made the statement after speaking with a group of ministers from Bosnia’s two entities, state parliamentarians and Novi Grad’s mayor via video link on Tuesday. Kosarac reportedly informed them about his telephone conversations with the Croatian ambassador to Bosnia, Ivan Sabolic, and Croatia’s Environment and Energy Minister, Tomislav Coric, after the fund for financing the decommissioning of the Krsko power plant and the disposal of its radioactive waste said last week that it had received approval from Coric’s environment ministry to use the former Čerkezovac military barracks at Trgovska Gora near Dvor. The statement said the video conference had concluded that Bosnia’s Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations would now ask the Council of Ministers – Bosnia’s state government – to help set up legal teams “to deal with this open bilateral issue with Croatia, and that budget funds be allocated for this”. “It was also concluded that it was necessary for all relevant institutions to strengthen diplomatic activities with the goal of preventing Croatia from designating this location as the final solution for the disposal of the nuclear waste,” it added. Croatia needs to take over half of the nuclear waste from the Krsko power plant, which lies inside Slovenia, by 2023. The plant was a joint venture of the two republics when both were part of former Yugoslavia. |
Russia evacuates some employees from Bangladesh nuclear site
Rosatom evacuates some employees from Bangladesh nuclear site, https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsrosatom-evaucates-some-employees-from-bangladesh-nuclear-site-7864853 8 April 2020 Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom has repatriated 178 employees from the Rooppur nuclear power plant construction site in Bangladesh.Rosatom had to obtain government permission to evacuate its employees. Russia temporarily suspended all international flights on 3 April in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The first 178 employees arrived on a flight from Dhaka, which landed at the Nizhny Novgorod international airport in Russia on Monday.
Almost all of the workers were from Rosatom’s Engineering Division or were subcontractors working at the Rooppur site, where Rosatom is building two VVER-1200 reactors.
Rosatom said passengers on the flight would be tested for Covid-19, and will need to spend two weeks in isolation, under medical supervision.
More than 4000 people are involved in the construction of Rooppur NPP, so the temporary relocation of 178 employees will not affect the project schedule, Rosatom said.
Rosatom said it is taking steps to combat the spread of Covid-19 by monitoring employee temperatures at various locations on-site, issuing masks to workers and increasing disinfection of all office space.
Rooppur 1 is currently scheduled to start operating 2023, followed by Rooppur 2 a year later.
Russia gambles on safety and cost, in extending life of fast breeder reactor
One of Russia’s fast neutron reactors granted a runtime extension https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-04-one-of-russias-fast-neutron-reactors-granted-a-runtime-extension
Russia’s nuclear regulator has agreed to extend the operational lifetime of 39-year-old experimental reactor as part of a wide-ranging modernization program at the Beloyarsk nuclear plan. April 8, 2020 by Charles Digges
The reactor, a BN-600, is a powerful sodium-cooled fast-breeder and its continued operation marks a step by Russia toward developing a closed nuclear fuel cycle, a subject of concern among some environmentalists and nonproliferation experts.
Fast breeder reactors form the backbone of Russia’s “proryv” or “breakthrough” program, which aims to develop reactors that do not produce nuclear waste. In simple terms, these breeders are theoretically designed to burn the spent nuclear fuel they produce, thus closing the nuclear fuel cycle and creating nearly limitless supplies of energy.
But the technology has been hard to perfect. Russia is alone among nuclear nations in actually running fast-breeders with any success. Yet they have still not been able to close the nuclear fuel cycle entirely.
Under the new order, the BN-600 reactor, which began operations in 1981, would continue to function until 2025, at which point the Beloyarsk plant’s operators say it will be evaluated for yet another extension that would see it run until 2040.
The Beloyarsk plant is the site of another fast-breeder reactor, the BN-800, which began commercial operations 2016 after several long delays. The plant also hosts two AMB supercritical water reactors, one of which ceased operations in 1983, the other in 1990.
At the moment, technicians at the plant have been isolated on site to prevent their exposure to the coronavirus, which has driven most of the world’s population indoors and shuttered much of the international economy.
But Rosenergoatom, Russia’s nuclear utility still maintains high hopes for the safety and modernization plan, of which the BN-600’s runtime extension is a part. So far, the modernization plan, which began in 2009 has included the installation of a reactor emergency protection system, an emergency dampening system using an air heat exchanger and a back-up reactor control panel.
In addition, a large amount of work has been carried out on the inspection and replacement of equipment, including the replacement of the reactor’s steam generators.
But many environmental groups, Bellona among them, consider reactor runtime extensions to be worrisome territory. As the world’s nuclear reactor fleet begins to age, runtime extensions throughout the world have become routine business.
Yet because commercial power-producing nuclear reactors have only been around for a little more than four decades, the industry can’t make safe bets on their behavior over longer periods of time than that.
In particular, data on how reactor cores – which are largely irreplaceable – age over time is extremely scarce. While certain characteristics of core aging can be simulated in test reactors, such simulations can’t take all variables into account.
Individual national regulatory bodies also set the criteria for whether or not reactors are granted runtime extensions – meaning that what Japan or France consider to be safe grounds for an extension might differ from what Russia or the United States deem safe.
But as the history of Chernobyl and Fukushima show, the fallout from nuclear disasters doesn’t respect international boundaries.
However, because nuclear reactors typically cost billions of dollars to build, there is less incentive to construct new ones to replace the old. But as Chernobyl and Fukushima also showed, such decisions could cost more than the short-term savings they provide.
$35B for nuclear weapons better spent on doctors
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$35B for nuclear weapons would be better spent on doctors https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/07/letter-35b-for-nuclear-weapons-better-spent-on-doctors/ 9 Apr 20, Elizabeth Martinson The 2020 U.S. defense budget is $738 billion — how many unemployed people or small businesses would that help What do you choose? The 2020 U.S. defense budget is $738 billion. How many unemployment checks would that pay? How many small businesses would that save? The U.S. annual cost for nuclear forces is about $35.1 billion. That would provide 300,000 beds in intensive care plus 35,000 ventilators plus 150,000 nurses plus 75,000 doctors. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talks about military escalation in Iran. How can we support talk about war when thousands of people worldwide are sick and dying? Which do you choose? Talk to your Congress members about co-sponsoring legislation for no war with Iran. Ask them to reconsider the huge amount of military spending. National security is important, but our military budget is not providing for our safety or our health in this time of fear and pandemic. |
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NuScam and other nuclear companies weasel their way into University of Tennessee
TVA signs nuclear research MOU with University of Tennessee on advanced SMR technologies, Power Engineering Rod Walton, 4.7.20 In its latest move toward potentially embracing next-gen nuclear energy technology, the Tennessee Valley Authority has signed a memorandum of understanding with the state’s largest university to study it together.
The University of Tennessee and TVA signed the MOU to evaluate development of advanced nuclear technologies such as small modular reactors. The project, if developed, would be at TVA’s 935-acre Clinch River Nuclear Site in Roane County.
TVA has not made a decision to build it and would still require U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval for a specific design. Late last year, however, the NRC approved the federal utility’s early site permit at Clinch River.
Earlier this year, TVA announced it had signed an MOU with the Oak Ridge National Lab, part of the Energy Department system……. This announcement joins previously announced partnerships and design advancements involving companies such as NuScale Power, Lightbridge, Framatome and South Korea’s SMART SMR……
Knoxville is the flagship campus for the UT system. The university has more than 29,000 students from every state in the U.S. and more than 100 other nations.
(Rod Walton is content director for Power Engineering and POWERGEN International. He can be reached at 918-831-9177 and rod.walton@clarionevents.com). https://www.power-eng.com/2020/04/07/tva-signs-nuclear-research-mou-with-university-of-tennessee-on-advanced-smr-technologies/
Idaho lawmakers want DOE to remove spent nuclear fuel from the Idaho National Laboratory.
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Idaho lawmakers urge Department of Energy to remove spent nuclear fuel from INL https://idahonews.com/news/local/idaho-lawmakers-urge-department-of-energy-to-remove-spent-nuclear-fuel-from-inl– Idaho representatives and senators are urging the Department of Energy to take additional steps to remove spent nuclear fuel from the Idaho National Laboratory.CBS2 News Staff Thursday, April 9th 2020 BOISE, Idaho (CBS2) Representative Mike Simpson and Representative Russ Fulcher sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy Wednesday encouraging further action by DOE. The letter asks the DOE to remove spent nuclear fuel from the Idaho National Lab (INL) consistent with the 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement.
Idaho’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Senator Mike Crapo, U.S. Senator James Risch, Representative Mike Simpson and Representative Russ Fulcher sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy Wednesday encouraging further action by DOE. The letter asks the DOE to remove spent nuclear fuel from the Idaho National Lab (INL) consistent with the 1995 Idaho Settlement Agreement. The delegation wrote, “We encourage the Department to initiate activities needed to begin loading of spent nuclear fuel into a multi-purpose canister (MPC) at the Idaho National Laboratory using existing facilities.” The letter urges DOE to take additional action to prove it will meet the 2035 deadline for removal of spent nuclear fuel. Read the full letter HERE, or the text below. [on original] |
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