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Cyberattacks grind Hanford nuclear energy workers’ benefit program to a halt

Cyberattacks grind Hanford nuclear energy workers’ benefit program to a halt, Seattle Times May 10, 2021   By Patrick Malone

Cyber attacks on the U.S. government have abruptly paused processing of benefit applications for workers who were sickened while working on nuclear weapons programs at Hanford and other Department of Energy sites, delaying aid to some dying workers, according to advocates.

Without warning, advocates from the Alliance of Nuclear Workers Advocacy Group received notice late last Friday that effective Monday, a vital component of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program would be offline for two to four months.

The Radiation Dose Reconstruction Program databases’ sudden hiatus could delay approval of new benefits for groups of workers who believe they’ve been exposed to workplace hazards.

Among them are more than 550 workers from Hanford, a mothballed plutonium processing site in Richland, who were potentially exposed to radiation and toxins when they were provided leaky respirators, according to a Seattle Times investigation last year.

Those workers are seeking inclusion in the federal benefits program administered by the Department of Labor. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health plays an instrumental role in determining eligibility.

Hanford, born in secrecy during World War II in a rush to develop the first atomic bomb, processed the plutonium fuel for nuclear weapons for four decades, a process that fouled the 580-square-mile site with radioactive waste and toxic vapors that sickened and killed many workers.

Washington’s U.S. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Adam Smith, both Democrats, sponsored legislation in response to The Times investigation that would expand benefits to include the Hanford cleanup crew who were given faulty respirators and other nuclear workers across the country who aren’t yet eligible.

Others who could be affected are some 1,378 individual workers across the country currently applying for assistance, and those with recent terminal diagnoses, who normally would be eligible for benefits awarded as quickly as a day after application. Those benefits can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Terminally ill workers often do not have 2 to 4 months to live,” Terrie Barrie, ANWAG founder, wrote in a Monday, May 3, letter to NIOSH director to Dr. John Howard. “Will they no longer have the option to have their claim expedited so that they can receive the medical and financial benefits before they die?”

The source and nature of the cyberattacks are unclear, but in a May 4 letter to ANWAG, Howard said that an ongoing review of the energy workers’ compensation databases “identified very significant concerns about the cybersecurity integrity of the Program’s claimant database,” forcing an immediate and secret shutdown of the claims process……………………. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/cyberattacks-grind-hanford-nuclear-energy-workers-benefit-program-to-a-halt/

May 11, 2021 Posted by | - plutonium, employment, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 1 Comment

Scientists refute Exelon’s claim about costs of replacing nuclear with renewable energy.

Exelon CEO: Replacing nuclear with renewables, storage to meet carbon goals could cost Illinois $80B Utility Dive,  May 6, 2021 ”………..Achieving the same amount of zero emissions power through renewables and storage would be 12 times more expensive than continuing to run Illinois’ nuclear plants and cost the state’s consumers $80 billion, Exelon CEO Chris Crane said during the company’s Q1 earnings call on Wednesday………….

the Union of Concerned Scientists disputed Crane’s remarks regarding the cost of replacing nuclear with renewables and storage in Illinois. 

“Crane’s comment that renewables plus storage would cost 12 [times] or $80 billion more than keeping the existing nuke plants running is ridiculous. I’m guessing he’s comparing the incremental cost of keeping them running (basically the subsidies) to the all-in cost of adding new renewables plus storage and the tax credits,” said Steve Clemmer, director of energy research for the UCS Climate and Energy Program.   …….

In addition to the governor’s proposal, several other energy policy reform bills have been introduced in Illinois to drive the state’s energy transition and tackle climate change. Legislative leaders are meeting to develop a package from the various bills that can be considered this session, 

May 8, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Amid Widespread Disease, Death, and Poverty, the Major Powers Increased Their Military Spending in 2020

Amid Widespread Disease, Death, and Poverty, the Major Powers Increased Their Military Spending in 2020 https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/04/28/amid-widespread-disease-death-and-poverty-major-powers-increased-their-military?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter

The existence of widespread poverty in the world’s mightiest military powers raises the question of what could have been done to alleviate or eliminate it, if during 2020 they had not poured nearly $1.1 trillion into preparations for war.

byLawrence Wittner      Last year was a terrible time for vast numbers of people around the globe, who experienced not only a terrible disease pandemic, accompanied by widespread sickness and death, but severe economic hardship.

Even so, the disasters of 2020 were not shocking enough to jolt the world’s most powerful nations out of their traditional preoccupation with enhancing their armed might, for once again they raised their military spending to new heights.

Someday people will ask whether increasing preparations for war by these nations—mostly designed to destroy one another—was the best these governments could do as their populations sank into widespread disease, death, and poverty.

During 2020, world military expenditures increased to $1,981,000,000,000—or nearly $2 trillion—with the outlays of the three leading military powers playing a major part in the growth.  The U.S. government increased its military spending from $732 billion in 2019 to $778 billion in 2020, thus retaining its top spot among the biggest funders of war preparations.  Meanwhile, the Chinese government hiked its military spending to $252 billion, while the Russian government raised its military outlay to $61.7 billion.


As a result, the U.S. government remained by far the most lavish spender on the military in the world, accounting for 39 percent of the global total. Even so, the Chinese government continued its steady role in the worldwide military buildup, with its military disbursements rising for the 26th consecutive year.  Indeed, China’s 76 percent increase in military spending between 2011 and 2020 was the largest among the world’s top 15 big spenders.  When added together, the 2020 military expenditures of the United States, China, and Russia accounted for 55 percent of the global total.                   

This upward spiral in military spending coincided with a sharp rise in the number of the world’s people living in poverty, which soared by an estimated 131 million to 803 million by the end of the year.

In the United States, the richest nation in the world, 2020 produced the largest increase in poverty since the U.S. government began tracking it in 1960.  By the end of the year, an estimated 50 million people were struggling with hunger, including 17 million children. Plunged into severe privation, vast numbers of Americans lined up, sometimes in caravans that stretched for miles, to obtain free food at private and public food pantries and other distribution centers. Ignoring the terrible human costs of the economic crisis plaguing the nation during his re-election campaign, President Donald Trump boasted instead of his administration’s “colossal” increase in military spending.

In Russia, where real incomes fell for five of the previous seven years, they dropped still further in 2020. In that year, the average Russian had 11 percent less to spend than in 2013. Indeed, during the first nine months of 2020, as poverty grew, an estimated 19.6 million Russians reportedly lived below the poverty line, equivalent to 13.3 percent of the population.  According to a leading economist at Russia’s Institute of International Finance, the authorities “were so concerned about their external threats that they completely forgot about the domestic population.”

The situation was apparently quite different in China. Thanks to the government’s successful efforts to limit the spread of Covid-19, the Chinese economy had an easier time of it in 2020 than did the economies of other major nations. This factor, plus four decades of rapid economic growth and an ongoing campaign to improve the government’s popularity by reducing the country’s worst poverty, led to the Communist Party’s announcement that November that President Xi Jinping and the party had accomplished the miracle of eliminating severe poverty in China.

But all was not as it seemed. In 2020, China, despite its Communist pretensions, had one of the largest gaps between rich and poor throughout the world. By October, its number of billionaires had soared to 878, the highest total in any nation. In contrast, as a New York Times article reported that month, “millions of people on low incomes are working fewer hours at lower pay, depleting savings, and taking out loans to survive.” Moreover, claims as to the eradication of poverty in China were dubious, for the official poverty measuring line there was much lower than in nations with a similar level of economic development.  A Brookings Institution economist pointed out that, if China used the same standard as other upper middle-income countries, between 80 and 90 percent of its population would be considered poor. “Even if you aren’t out of poverty, the country will say you’re out of poverty,” remarked a bitter Chinese farmer.  “That’s the way it is.”

The existence of widespread poverty in the world’s mightiest military powers raises the question of what could have been done to alleviate or eliminate it if, during 2020, had they not poured nearly $1.1 trillion into preparations for war.

Also, of course, the vast resources used for the military buildup could have bankrolled other programs that would have substantially improved the lives of their citizens.  In the United States, as the National Priorities Project noted, the military budget could have funded healthcare for 208 million adults, or 21 million scholarships for university students, or 84 million public housing units, or the employment of 9.2 million elementary school teachers, or 10 million clean energy jobs, or VA medical care for 72 million military veterans.

But, sadly, building the mightiest military forces in world history had greater appeal to the governments of the United States, China, and Russia. Perhaps, someday, people will ask whether increasing preparations for war by these nations—mostly designed to destroy one another—was the best these governments could do as their populations sank into widespread disease, death, and poverty.

May 6, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, weapons and war | Leave a comment

France desperate to sell its flawed nuclear technology to India, Time for India to cancel Jaitapur nuclear power project.

Time for India to cancel Jaitapur nuclear power project, France keen on flogging its ‘messy’ tech to India Business May 2, 2021  By Ranvir Nayar Media India Group France remains desperate to sell its severely troubled EPR nuclear reactors to India, even though its own project at home and at both the sites outside of France have had severe cost and time overruns and continue to face safety issues.

On March 3, 2021, Electricité de France, EDF, the sole operator of nuclear power plants in France, informed the country’s nuclear safety body, Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), of a design anomaly on three nozzles of the main primary system of the European Pressurised Reactor that it has been building at Flamanville in north-west France.

The design flaw is serious as the main primary system contains water used to cool the reactor core and transfer energy from the nuclear reaction to the steam generators. The design dates back to 2006 and the nozzles were manufactured in 2011.

https://mediaindia.eu/business/jaitapur-nuclear-france/

May 6, 2021 Posted by | France, India, marketing | Leave a comment

Further delay, more costs, for Finland’s nuclear power station, Fennovoima

Helsinki Times 4th May 2021, THE NUCLEAR POWER PROJECT of Fennovoima in Pyhäjoki, North Ostrobothnia,
is set to be delayed further, writes YLE. The Finnish consortium of power
and industrial companies stated last week that its effort to ensure the
design and licencing materials meet the Finnish standards has taken longer
than expected, predicting that a building permit for the plant could be
secured by mid-2022 instead of 2021.

The construction would therefore start
in the summer of 2023 and the plant start commercial operation in 2029. The
timetable is set forth in a supplement attached last week to the building
permit application the consortium filed with the Ministry of Employment and
the Economy in 2015. Fennovoima, the supplement reveals, has also raised
its cost estimate for the project from 6.5–7.0 to 7.0–7.5 billion
euros, citing its own operational and administrative costs.

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/19161-finnish-nuclear-power-project-to-be-delayed-further.html

May 6, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, Finland | Leave a comment

The dramatic economic failure of America’s nuclear industry

The controversial future of nuclear power in the U.S. National Geographic, 45 May 21, ”……….debates rage over whether nuclear should be a big part of the climate solution [[the nuclear industry’s confidence trick] in the U.S. The majority of American nuclear plants today are approaching the end of their design life, and only one has been built in the last 20 years. Nuclear proponents are now banking on next-generation designs …….

Yet an expansion of nuclear power faces some serious hurdles, and the perennial concerns about safety and long-lived radioactive waste may not be the biggest: Critics also say nuclear reactors are simply too expensive and take too long to build to be of much help with the climate crisis.

Bombs into plowshares

A test reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, where Finan now works, produced the first electrical power from nuclear energy in 1951. Its success was soon trumpeted in President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous “atoms for peace” speech to the United Nations in 1953. Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist who runs the non-profit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, points out that the speech was given shortly after a thermonuclear test blast in the Soviet Union, when atomic fears were at a peak.

The United States, still the world’s largest producer by far of nuclear electricity, currently has 94 reactors in 28 states. But after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, when a reactor partially melted down near Middletown, Pennsylvania, enthusiasm for nuclear energy dimmed.

The average age of American power plants, which are licensed to run for 40 years, is 39; in the last decade, at least five have been retired early, largely because maintenance costs and cheaper sources of power made them too expensive to operate.

The most recent closure came just last week, on April 30, when the second of two reactors was shut down at the Indian Point power plant, on the Hudson River north of New York City. …

Late and over budget

While environmental opposition may have been the primary force hindering nuclear development in the 1980s and 90s, now the biggest challenge may be costs. Few nuclear plants have been built in the U.S. recently because they are very expensive to build here, which makes the price of their energy high.

Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, led a group of scientists who recently completed a two-year study examining the future of nuclear energy in the U.S. and western Europe. They found that “without cost reductions, nuclear energy will not play a significant role” in decarbonizing the power sector.

“In the West, the nuclear industry has substantially lost its ability to build large plants,” Buongiorno says, pointing to Southern Company’s effort to add two new reactors to Plant Vogtle in Waynesboro, Georgia. They have been under construction since 2013, are now billions of dollars over budget—the cost has more than doubled—and years behind schedule. In France, ranked second after the U.S. in nuclear generation, a new reactor in Flamanville is a decade late and more than three times over budget………

May 6, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Misguided funding for small nuclear reactors

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Are Mostly Bad Policy, Clean Technica  By Michael Barnard 3 May 21,

People asserting that SMRs are the primary or only answer to energy generation either don’t know what they are talking about, are actively dissembling or are intentionally delaying climate action.

Like hydrogen, small modular nuclear reactors have been seeing a resurgence of interest lately. Much of that is driven by governmental policies and investments focusing on the technology. Much of it comes from the nuclear industry. And inevitably, some comes from entrepreneurs attempting to build a technology that they hope will take off in a major way, making them and their investors a lot of money.

Most Of The Attention & Funding Is Misguided At Best, & Actively Hostile To Climate Action At Worst

First, let’s explore briefly the world of small modular nuclear reactors (SMNR) or small and medium reactors (SMR). The most common acronym is SMR, but you’ll see both.

As it says on the box, they are nuclear generation devices, specifically fission nuclear. That means they use radioactively decaying fissile materials, fuels, to heat a liquid which creates steam which drives steam turbines to generate electricity. Technically, they are like a coal generation plant, but with the heat provided by the decay of uranium instead of the burning of long-buried plant matter.

There are a handful of differences between them and traditional nuclear generation reactors. The biggest one is that they are smaller, hence the ‘small’ and ‘medium’ in the names. They range from 0.068 MW to 500 MW in capacity, with the International Atomic Energy Association using small for up to 300 MW and medium for up to 700 MW.

Despite the buzz, this is not new technology. The first nuclear generation plant was a Russian 5 MW device that went live in 1954. Hundreds of small reactors have been built for nuclear powered vessels and as neutron sources. This is well trodden ground. Most of the innovations being touted were considered initially decades ago.

In the seven decades since the first SMR was commissioned, 57 different designs and concepts have been designed, developed and, rarely, built. Most of the ones which are built are doing what nuclear reactors do, getting older without new ones being built to replace them.

The Russian models are far-north icebreaker power plants being considered for land-based deployment in remote northern towns, with the Siberian one at end of life. The Indian ones are 14 small CANDU variants in operation, most decades old now. The Chinese one is coming up to end of its 40-year life span as well.

The Argentinean model has been in construction on and off for over a decade with work stoppages, political grandstanding, and monetary problems. It may never see the light of day.

The Chinese HTR-PM, under construction for the past decade, is the only one with remotely new technology. If commissioned, it is expected to be the first Gen IV reactor in operation.

And to be clear, this isn’t a technology, it’s many technologies. Across the decades, 57 variants of 18 types have been put forward. None of the types can be considered to be dominant.

Claims About SMRs Don’t Withstand Advocates for SMRs typically make some subset of the following claims:

They are saferThey can be manufactured in scaled, centralized manufacturing facilities so they will be cheaperThey can provide clean power for remote facilities or communitiesThey can be deployed onto decommissioned coal generation brownfield sitesThey can be built faster.

Safety concerns aren’t why nuclear is failing in the marketplace, economics are why nuclear is failing in the marketplace…….. .  https://cleantechnica.com/2021/05/03/small-modular-nuclear-reactors-are-mostly-bad-policy/

May 4, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

The huge carbon footprint and massive energy use of online activities and of Bitcoin

Graphic courtesy of Alice Eaves on Rehabilitating Earth website

This is a most timely article.    Why is  the world not noticing this?   Elon Musk and other billionaire Bitcoin fans are also fans of space travel –   another energy-gobbling thing.   They are fans of nuclear energy.  The thing that nuclear energy fans have in common with space travel fans and Bitcoin fans is their religious fervour for endless growth and endless energy use.

Unfortunately our entire culture, the Western consumer culture, has swept the world  with a mindless belief in ever more stuff, ever more digital use, with no awareness of the  energy used.   So we tink that our billions of trivial tweets are up ”in the cloud”, – not even realising that they are in dirty great steel data buildings that use massive amounts of energy just to keep cool, This ever- expanding energy and resource gobbling is going to kill us, – and Bitcoin is just one glaring, sorry example of this.

Truth or fiction: Is mining bitcoin a ticking time bomb for the climate?  Rehabilitating Earth   By Jennifer Sizeland 2 May 21

While many of us may consider the carbon footprint of buying a physical item like a jumper or a toaster, it is truly mind boggling to think about the environmental impact of time spent online. This may be why the huge carbon footprints of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are going largely under the radar for many of us, including investors and climate activists.

Yet the real-world cost of bitcoin cannot be underestimated. A University of Cambridge study found that the network burns through 121 terawatt-hours per year, putting it into a category of a top-30 country in terms of electricity usage. In fact, the carbon cost was largely ignored altogether until 2017 when prices surged and the general population started to take more notice. Aside from the significant carbon footprint of bitcoin, it’s important to understand what bitcoin is and why it’s so popular.

Decoding Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin is created by mining a 64-digit hexadecimal number (known as a ‘hash’) that is less than or equal to the target hash that the miner is looking for. The miner gets paid in crypto tokens for all the currency they make. The act of solving these computational equations on the bitcoin network makes the payment network trustworthy. It proves the worth of the bitcoin and verifies it at the same time so that it can’t be spent twice. Essentially, an online log makes records of the transactions made and once approved, they’re added to a block on the chain, hence the phrase ‘blockchain’.

What makes it all the more confusing is that not only is cryptocurrency fairly new to the general population, but the way it is created is shrouded in secrecy due to its niche status. This makes it much harder for miners to be held accountable for their intensive carbon usage, in a time when every company needs to consider their impact on the planet.

The secrecy is also what excites investors about bitcoin since it isn’t tied to a certain location or institution and it’s completely decentralised – unlike a bank. Investors trust bitcoin as inflation is controlled algorithmically by cutting the reward rate periodically, rendering the rate of new bitcoin supplies as unalterable by design. The issue remains that there is no government or organisation to hold them to account for their carbon footprint. A footprint which is intrinsically tied to its value as the demand for it increases, using more and more energy. With every market jump, the cost to the planet is greater.

The price of one bitcoin is $57,383 at the time of writing, which takes the market cap value above that of Facebook and Tesla. The wider cryptocurrency market that includes dogecoin, ethereum and litecoin has reached an estimated $1.4 trillion and counting.


From a financial perspective, miners want cheap servers to increase their profit margins which is why much of the bitcoin activity is done in China. As the industry is unregulated there is no reason why activity wouldn’t surge in the place where it costs the least to do it. Currently, China does not have a cost-effective renewable energy supply so two thirds of the grid is fuelled by dirty coal power stations.

Another problematic caveat to the bitcoin story is the amount of so-called green companies and investors that are buying into it. Some of them are not disclosing this element of their portfolio due to the immense carbon footprint but those that are publicly traded have no choice. Perhaps one of the most high-profile companies to reap the rewards from bitcoin is Elon Musk’s Tesla, who have made $1 billion in 10 weeks from their investment. It remains to be seen whether these businesses are doing their due diligence regarding the origins of their bitcoin and if it is mined from a sustainable source. While this may give Tesla more money to invest in green infrastructure, it’s hard to say whether this is the more ethical way to do so……….

One important lesson we can take from this is that it demonstrates how the digital world has a very real impact on planet Earth. Whether we’re buying cryptocurrency or simply scrolling the internet, we are impacting the planet in one way or another. https://rehabilitatingearth.com/2021/05/02/truth-or-fiction-is-mining-bitcoin-a-ticking-time-bomb-for-the-climate/

May 3, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, climate change, ENERGY, Reference | Leave a comment

China’s big stake in UK’s new nuclear projects

Times 2nd May 2021 , How Beijing bought up Britain. China has quietly spent £134bn hoovering up
UK assets, from nuclear power to private schools and pizza chains. Research
reveals that almost 200 British companies are either controlled by Chinese
investors or count them as minority shareholders. The value of Chinese
investments totals £134 billion.

Some of the biggest sums have been spent
in the energy sector, notably nuclear power. Chinese state-owned China
General Nuclear (CGN) bought a 33.5 per cent stake in Hinkley Point C power
station in Somerset, the first new nuclear facility to be built in the UK
in more than 20 years.

The main investor is France’s EDF. CGN, which has
been blacklisted in America for allegedly helping to acquire US tech for
military use in China, has also joined with EDF on the proposed nuclear
plant at Sizewell C in Suffolk. CGN will take a 20 per cent stake during
the plant’s development. Plans for a third plant, at Bradwell in Essex,
have China hawks up in arms, because CGN intends to take a majority 66.5
per cent stake during development and will use its own reactor technology.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-beijing-bought-up-britain-hqll9tjtx

May 3, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, China, politics international, UK | Leave a comment

Delays, increased costs and geopolitical uncertainties throw doubt on construction of nuclear power station in Finland.

Nuclear power plant construction in north Finland faces delay, increased costs and geopolitical uncertainties

Costs for the partly Russian-owned controversial plant will be €1 billion more than previously estimated. Barents Observer,    By Thomas Nilsen , April 29, 2021

“Further deterioration of political and commercial relations between the EU, the USA and Russia could lead to more sanctions between the parties. Such deteriorated international affairs and sanctions could influence the project’s schedule and financing, in particular,” Fennovoima writes in its updated construction license application to Finnish authorities on Wednesday. 

Work on the site in Pyhäjoki south of Oulu is in full swing despite final permission for the reactor itself at Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant is not yet granted.

The original application was delivered in 2015, but as Fennovoima sees “changes in boundary conditions,” an updated application was made. Among other things, the application includes an additional survey on the power plant’s impact on the marine environment and fishery during operation.

Other changes are related to security and preparedness arrangements and design solutions, although, no changes to the key principles of the power plant, Fennovoima underlines…….

Russia’s state-owned nuclear corporation holds a 34% stake in the plant. For Moscow, export of civilian nuclear power reactors is both a commercial revenue and a source of symbolic technology pride.

Last week, government officials in the Czech Republic said they were kicking Rosatom out of the play for bidding at a planned new reactor for the Dukovany nuclear power plant. The move came amid the diplomatic turmoil between Prague and Moscow following a 2014 blast in a weapons storage which Czech intelligence blames Russian military spies for being involved.

Like with the Czech nuclear power plant, also Fennovoima’s Hanhikivi 1 reactor is planned to receive uranium fuel supplies from Russia……..  https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/nuclear-safety/2021/04/construction-nuclear-power-plant-runs-delay-costs-increase-and-geopolitical#.YIp3J6ITqk0.twitter

May 1, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, Finland, politics international | Leave a comment

Whistleblower can’t sue U.S.Dept of Labor, because it has ‘sovereign immunity’


Federal Nuclear Engineer Loses Whistleblower Retaliation Appeal, Bloomberg Law, May 1, 2021,

  • Safety reports on nuclear plant allegedly cost him promotions
  • Energy Reorganization Act doesn’t allow suit against government

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineer who blew the whistle on health and safety risks at a nuclear power plant can’t sue the Department of Labor for alleged retaliation because it’s shielded by sovereign immunity, the Fourth Circuit said Friday.

Michael Peck worked as senior resident inspector at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. After he left the plant, Peck took three actions regarding concerns he had with safety conditions there—he filed a formal “differing professional opinion” with the NRC; sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which oversees the NRC; and provided testimony to the…… (subscribers only)  https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/federal-nuclear-engineer-loses-whistleblower-retaliation-appeal

May 1, 2021 Posted by | employment, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Many hurdles to jump before Bradwell nuclear station starts construction. Meanwhile renewables race ahead

Nuclear Engineering International 29th April 2021. JUST BEFORE THE TURN OF the year, on 18 December, UK energy regulator Ofgem granted an electricity generation licence to Bradwell Power Generation Co
Ltd. The company is planning to build a new nuclear station at Bradwell on
the UK’s Essex coast, near where one of the country’s first nuclear
stations is in a ‘care and maintenance’ decommissioning phase.

The licence was welcomed by Bradwell Power Generation chief executive Alan
Raymant, who called it, “an important milestone on the journey to
completing the Bradwell B project and demonstrates our continued
progress”.

But what may sound like the culmination of a process is in
fact an early step, and Raymant admitted, “The generating licence is one
of many licences and permits we will need in order to develop, construct
and operate Bradwell B”.

Support for the Bradwell project is mixed. The
UK government generally acts on the assumption that nuclear will continue
to supply around a fifth of electricity supply, as it has over the last two
decades. But that is largely because it was thought that replacing this
large tranche of zero-carbon power with renewables sources was too
ambitious.

The scale of the renewables roll-out has put that assumption
under pressure in some quarters. The GDA process has been under way since
January 2017 and in February 2020 it reached step four, the final step,
which ONR describes as “Successful completion of the high-level technical
assessment of the design”. ONR estimates that step 4 will be completed by
the start of 2022. As part of this process, in January the Environment
Agency opened a consultation on its assessment of the design.

The EA’s role is to regulate “specific environmental matters at nuclear sites in
England by issuing environmental permits to cover site preparation,
construction, operation and decommissioning”. EA provides a statement
about a design’s acceptability at the end of the GDA. During the GDA, it
works by identifying concerns.

So-called ‘GDA Issues’ are significant,
but resolvable, and must be resolved before construction of the reactor
starts and before GDA can be completed. ‘Assessment Findings’ are
matters best resolved at the site- specific stage. In a consultation now
under way EA has listed six potential GDA Issues and 40 Assessment
Findings.

The GDA Issues are: While operational experience is used to
support safety case documentation, the Environment Agency and ONR have
noted that it is not used consistently across the project. The Requesting
Party has not addressed a Regulatory Observation about this. The Requesting
Party has shown that it has considered the environmental aspects of the
station design. However, it still has to demonstrate that it has adequately
considered the safety aspects of the design.

Where safety aspects are still
under review the Requesting Party must ensure that environmental protection
is given appropriate consideration. The Requesting Party has proposed using
rectangular filters in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning
system. It must demonstrate that these are equivalent or better than
cylindrical types, which are considered best practice in the UK.

ONR/EA have not yet received design requirements for the spent fuel, which define
the specifications for an interim store which will be used before the fuel
is disposed of in a geological disposal facility. The Requesting Party has
yet to confirm its strategy for disposing of the in-core instrument
assemblies and that this will not affect disposal of the waste in-core
instrument assemblies.

The Requesting Party has still to get advice from
Radioactive Waste Management Ltd on whether the higher activity waste from
the UK HPR1000 will be able to be disposed of in the latter’s planned
geological disposal facility. No date for submission of the final
application to the Planning Inspectorate have been published by Bradwell
Power Generation, but it is likely to be after 2022.

https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurethe-development-clock-is-ticking-on-bradwell-b-8707354/

May 1, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s £41 billion nuclear submarine project beset by delays, safety problems, cost overruns

Times 25th April 2021, HMS Anson trundled out of Devonshire Dock Hall on Tuesday to a ripple of
applause, before its 7,400-tonne bulk slipped into the water for the first time. The launch of the Royal Navy’s fifth Astute submarine was a milestone for the defence giant BAE Systems, which builds the boats at its cavernous factory at Barrow-in-Furness on the Cumbrian coast.

But despite the fanfare, it was also a reminder of the growing risks that haunt this most sensitive corner of the defence industry. HMS Anson, a hunter-killer submarine powered by a nuclear reactor but armed with conventional weapons,
has been almost a decade in the making. It is years late and is still some way off being ready. It may have to undergo years of trials before being accepted into service. Its launch was delayed by problems with HMS Audacious, the fourth Astute.

It sat in the water for almost three years before leaving Barrow last year. Delays to the Astutes illustrate the
challenges facing Britain’s submarine enterprise, the biggest cost to the Ministry of Defence. Crucially, they point to the risks around the successor programme: the construction of four Trident nuclear warhead-armed submarines, Dreadnoughts, which are needed to sustain the UK’s policy of continuous at-sea deterrent.

Those risks range from delays refuelling the ageing Vanguard submarines they will eventually replace, to setbacks and
cost overruns on vital infrastructure projects, to management churn and weak scrutiny. They suggest that without drastic action, the MoD may have to adjust its expectations for the £41 billion project, particularly the assumption that the first boat will be in service in the “early 2030s”.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/are-britains-nuclear-subs-slipping-below-the-waves-3zt7658zq

April 29, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Extended subsidies for New Jersey’s nuclear stations

New Jersey utility board extends ZEC subsidies for PSEG nuclear plants, S and P Global, Steven Dolley Editor Valarie Jackson  28 Apr 21,  The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities voted unanimously April 27 to extend the state’s zero-emission certificate subsidies for PSEG Nuclear’s Hope Creek and Salem plants, payments the company said it must continue to receive if the plants are not to be permanently shut for being unprofitable to operate.

The board’s decision extends, until May 2025, a ZEC subsidy of $10/MWh provided to PSEG for generation from its Hope Creek and Salem-1 and -2 nuclear units in Hancocks Bridge, with a combined capacity of 3.736 GW.

PSEG officials have said, including at a hearing in March on the proposed extension of the ZECs, that the company would permanently shut the units if the subsidies were not extended, because they would be uneconomic to continue to operate.

…….. Opponents of the ZEC program have said that the subsidies are an unnecessary bailout of nuclear power, claiming that economic analyses had not demonstrated that such large subsidies are needed to keep Hope Creek and Salem in operation and renewable generation is a more desirable path for the state.

Jeff Tittel, director of the anti-nuclear New Jersey Sierra Club, said in an April 27 statement, “this is the third year in a row that the BPU rubberstamped these unneeded subsidies,” which “will take money away from offshore wind, solar, and energy efficiency programs in New Jersey. We are concerned that it will prevent this state from moving forward with our 100% renewable goals by 2050.”………… www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/042721-new-jersey-utility-board-extends-zec-subsidies-for-pseg-nuclear-plants

April 29, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Do the New Jersey nuclear power plants really need a handout?

N.J. nuclear plants may get $300M bailout renewed. If they do, you’ll keep footing the bill.
nj.com Apr 26, 2021By Amanda Hoover | NJ Advance Media For NJ.com,

The Board of Public Utilities will decide Tuesday if it will continue to award hundreds of millions in subsidies to PSE&G, the operator of New Jersey’s three nuclear power plants.

And if it does, you’ll see the money come out of your pocket — even if you’re not a PSE&G customer.

The question before the board is whether or not the power company needs the money as nuclear plants become increasingly less profitable. Critics and consumer advocates say the company should take the financial hit itself, but PSE&G insists the plants present a situation so dire it will be forced to shutter them without assistance.

This won’t be new money on your bill, but a continued rate hike. PSE&G first won about $300 million in annual subsidies in a controversial 2019 BPU decision. The subsidies are zero emissions credits, known as ZECs for short. They became available under a law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2018 to promote clean energy.

But things have changed, critics say. The coronavirus shutdowns have put many out of work and hampered local businesses. The extra charge tacked on to each bill means more to consumers.

And electric usage is likely up now as many people work and spend more time at home. With more people struggling financially, the estimated $41 a year per customer takes new significance. There’s already a moratorium on energy shutoffs through the end of June to help those who are struggling.

“These are profitable plants, we didn’t think they deserved this handout from the beginning,” said Stefanie Brand, director of the Rate Counsel, the body that advocates for utility customers. “We now have about a million households in this state that are struggling to pay their bills. Their plants may not be as profitable as PSE&G would like, they’re still — as far as we’re concerned — profitable.”

Because the companies are unregulated, much of the financial information is private. That leaves outsiders guessing how much the energy company really needs a handout. The plants include Salem 1 and 2 reactors owned by PSE&G and Exelon, as well as the Hope Creek Nuclear Generating Station owned solely by PSE&G. All are in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County……..

Keeping the plants in place until 2050 also assumes they will function past their expected lifespan. That means costly repairs that will continue to threaten their profitability…….

PSE&G has spent millions in lobbying and threatened to shutter the plants or neglect repairs without the subsidies…….. https://www.nj.com/business/2021/04/nj-nuclear-plants-may-get-300m-bailout-renewed-if-they-do-youll-keep-footing-the-bill.html

April 27, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

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