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Special nuclear flights between the US and UK: the dangers involved

CND, March 24

Despite claiming to have an independent nuclear weapons system, for more than sixty years Britain and the United States have been transferring and sharing technical
information, nuclear materials, and warhead components for use in each other’s nuclear weapons programmes.

One important way in which transfers of nuclear materials and technology are carried out between Britain and the US is through special flights into and out of Royal Air Force (RAF) Brize Norton, near Carterton in Oxfordshire. Read more about these special nuclear flights in this briefing, written in association with Nukewatch.  https://cnduk.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Special-nuclear-flights-between-the-US-and-UK-1.pdf

March 30, 2024 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Atomic blackmail – Russia-Ukraine war and Ramberg’s theory of vulnerability

Simon Bennett, School of Business, University of Leicester, 6 Mar 24

ABSTRACT

The Russia-Ukraine War is being fought between states committed to nuclear power. This paper references Ramberg’s nuclear powerplant (NPP) vulnerability treatise, the IAEA’s Seven Pillars of Safety metric and Pidgeon and O’Leary’s safety imagination approach to assess the safety of Ukrainian and Russian NPPs. It suggests governments should reflect on events in Ukraine, and, with reference to the above-mentioned approaches, decide whether the upside of nuclear power – the largely carbon-neutral production of electricity – outweighs the downside – giving a blackmail opportunity to hostile states. Although a cost-benefit analysis to inform decision-making is effortful, the paper suggests that failure to consider every advantage and disadvantage of nuclear power could prove costly in human and environmental terms. Drawing on Ukraine’s experience, the paper suggests the national interest is best served in time of war by generating electricity in multiple small plants rather than a few large plants.

Introduction

In 1985, at the height of the Cold War, foreign policy and nuclear expert Bennett Ramberg published his paperback Nuclear Power Plants: An Unrecognised Military Peril, whose subject is the targeting of NPPs by a protagonist to secure tactical or strategic advantage. The Russia-Ukraine War……..has made this subject relevant…………………………………………more https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207233.2024.2317089

COMMENT.

a wonderful article.  It contains so many insights that never seem to get mentioned —

 – aggressor nation would risk poisoning its own soldiers, civilians and land. 

– could target facilities with a larger footprint, such as waste storage ponds or fuel reprocessing plants.

–  the ideological-doctrinal domain of propaganda and messaging.

–  the blackmail potential of NPPs – it would seem wise to invest intellectual resources in imagining and active learning…….. a dearth of safety imagination in decision-making can be costly.

– – a large number of municipally-operated solar farms, wind farms, tidal barrages, waste-to-power and hydroelectric powerplants generating power for municipalities locally would have provided a more resilient system for Ukraine. In the matter of power generation, in time of crisis or conflict scaling-down secures.

March 28, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Air attacks on Ukraine have again put the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant(ZNPP), under Russian control, in danger

Air attacks on Ukraine have again put the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
(ZNPP), under Russian control, in danger. The vital power supply to keep
the reactors cool is off; potential meltdown and a catastrophic nuclear
“accident” is only being prevented by ancient power generators.

Nobody needs reminding of the devastation to Ukraine and vast swathes of Europe
when the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl melted down and exploded in 1986.


Though ZNPP is newer than Chernobyl with more safety features, it is very
much larger and simply is not safe without power.

Meanwhile, Rafael Grossi,
head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has been cosying up
to President Assad in Damascus, offering to help Syria with nuclear power!
It is well known that Assad has been trying to make the “bomb” for
years.

I humbly suggest Mr Grossi should be in Ukraine or perhaps Moscow to
ensure the safety of ZNPP, rather than waving nuclear power under the nose
of another tyrant who will probably use it as a horrific weapon rather than
a valuable source of power for his people.

Times 25th March 2024

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nuclear-plant-may-be-putins-new-weapon-prgdqxj0p

March 27, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

NRC admits San Onofre Holtec nuclear waste canisters are all damaged

San Onofre Safety.org, 29/11/2018

The San Onofre Holtec nuclear waste thin-wall storage canisters and system are lemons and must be replaced with thick-wall casks. There are no other safe options.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) admits in their November 28, 2018 NRC Inspection Report and Notice of Violation, ML18332A357 (page 8 and 9) every Holtec canister downloaded into the storage holes is damaged due to inadequate clearance between the canister and the divider shell in the storage hole (vault). The NRC states canister
walls are already “worn”. This results in cracks. Once cracks start, they continue to grow through the wall.


The NRC stated Southern California Edison (and Holtec) knew about this since January 2018, but continued to load 29 canisters anyway. Edison’s August 24, 2018 press release states they plan to finish loading mid 2019.
The NRC states Edison must stop loading canisters until this issue is resolved. However, there is no method to inspect or repair cracking canisters and the NRC knows this.
The NRC should admit the Holtec system is a lemon — a significant defective engineering design. They should revoke both San Onofre and Holtec dry storage system licenses.
The NRC should require all San Onofre thin-wall canisters be replaced with thick-wall transportable storage casks.
These are the only proven dry storage systems that can be inspected, maintained, repaired and monitored in a manner to prevent major radiological releases and explosions.


California state agencies should revoke San Onofre permits and withhold Decommissioning Trust Funds until these issues are resolved.
The Navy should consider revoking the San Onofre Camp Pendleton lease until Edison agrees to replace thin-walled canisters with proven thick-wall transportable storage casks. This is a national security issue…………………………………………https://sanonofresafety.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/nrc-allholteccanistersdamaged2018-11-29.pd

March 27, 2024 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Cannot Both Police Proliferation and Promote Nuclear Power

“We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could take place,” lamented Grossi during a September 2022 UN Security Council briefing, referring to the six Zaporizhzhia reactors in Ukraine, the closest ones to the fighting.

And yet, Grossi has also stated: “It’s very simple, the problem in Ukraine and in Russia is they are at war. The problem is not nuclear energy”. But nuclear energy is very much the problem. Wind farms and solar arrays would present no such dangers under similar circumstances.

Counter Punch, BY LINDA PENTZ GUNTER, 2o Mar 24,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/21/the-iaea-cannot-both-police-proliferation-and-promote-nuclear-power/

The UN agency is sounding the alarm about Ukraine’s reactors and Iran’s nuclear intentions, while at the same time promoting the very technology that delivers these risks

On March 21 in Brussels, Belgium, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will host what it is billing as the “First ever Nuclear Energy Summit.” The event follows a pledge made by 22 countries last December during the COP28 climate summit in Dubai to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. 

The Brussels summit, co-hosted by the IAEA and the Belgian government, and featuring prominent officials from the US Department of Energy, will bring together world leaders and other officials to “highlight the role of nuclear energy in addressing the global challenges to reduce the use of fossil fuels, enhance energy security and boost economic development,” according to the event’s website.

Ignoring for a moment that tripling anything by 2050 will be far too late to address the climate crisis now upon us, the Brussels summit is troubling as it marks a notable ramping up of aggressive nuclear power marketing by the IAEA, an agency of the United Nations that is mandated “to deter the spread of nuclear weapons”.

This goal is inherently thwarted by the promotion of civil nuclear energy, which effectively hands over the keys to the nuclear weapons castle by affording non-nuclear weapons countries the technology, materials, know-how and personnel to develop nuclear weapons. History has already demonstrated this with the nuclear weapons programs of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, all of which were acquired via the civil nuclear route.

This is precisely the conundrum with Iran, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that affords non-nuclear weapons countries the “inalienable right” to develop a civil nuclear power program. Iran has long claimed to be doing precisely that and yet the IAEA’s director general, Rafael Grossi, sounded the alarm in late February when he noted that Iran appears to have enriched uranium “well beyond the needs for commercial nuclear use.” This should not be a surprise.

Another contradiction lies in the IAEA’s stated mission to work for “the safe, secure and peaceful application of nuclear science and technology”. To achieve this, the agency eagerly advocates for the global expansion of nuclear power while at the same time worrying about the extreme peril of Ukraine’s 15 civil reactors embroiled in the current Russian war in that country. 

“We are playing with fire, and something very, very catastrophic could take place,” lamented Grossi during a September 2022 UN Security Council briefing, referring to the six Zaporizhzhia reactors in Ukraine, the closest ones to the fighting.

In late February this year Grossi warned again that an “extremely vulnerable off-site power situation continues to pose significant safety and security challenges for this major nuclear facility”, calling the safety and security situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant “precarious”.

And yet, Grossi has also stated: “It’s very simple, the problem in Ukraine and in Russia is they are at war. The problem is not nuclear energy”. But nuclear energy is very much the problem. Wind farms and solar arrays would present no such dangers under similar circumstances.

At COP28, Grossi trumpeted that “global net zero carbon emissions can only be reached by 2050 with swift, sustained and significant investment in nuclear energy”, entirely ignoring the faster, cheaper and safer contribution renewable energy is already making to that end. 

In the same statement Grossi described nuclear power as “resilient and robust” when it is manifestly neither. Nuclear energy’s share of global commercial gross electricity generation hit a four-decade record low in 2022 according to the 2023 World Nuclear Industry Status Report, a downward trend that is unlikely to change.

The IAEA’s triple nuclear energy plan is both a massive over-reach and a reckless and unattainable diversion, given that no new nuclear construction has ever come anywhere close to this pace, even with known and familiar reactor designs. In fact, nuclear power plants have been taking even longer to build in recent years, at even higher cost. 

The proposed “new” smaller reactors — not new at all and rejected for decades as too uneconomical — are designs on paper only that have zero chance of delivery in time and in enough numbers to make any impact on the climate crisis.

The IAEA cannot be both nuclear policeman and promoter. In pushing nuclear power across the globe, the IAEA is complicit in a climate crime that wastes time and money on the needless expansion of expensive, slow and dangerous nuclear power. This takes away vital resources from renewable energy and energy efficiency that would rapidly, safely and affordably address the climate crisis, none of which nuclear power can achieve.

Linda Pentz Gunter is the editor and curator of BeyondNuclearInternational.org and the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. 

March 22, 2024 Posted by | safety, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant reports shelling by Ukraine army

Reuters, March 14, 2024,  https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-controlled-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-says-was-shelled-by-ukraine-2024-03-14/

MOSCOW, March 14 (Reuters) – The Russian-controlled management of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, said on Thursday that the Ukrainian army had shelled a critical infrastructure facility at the plant.

An explosive device was dropped near a fence where diesel fuel tanks are located, the plant reported.

“Such attacks are unacceptable,” it said.

It was not immediately clear when the attack had taken place. Reuters was unable to immediately verify battlefield reports from either side.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi has repeatedly warned of the danger of attacks on the plant.

Russia and Ukraine, at war for more than two years, have blamed each other for past shelling that has downed power lines and endangered generators.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | incidents, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Observing the 45th Anniversary of the Worst U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plant Accident.

March 13th, 2024,  https://nuclearactive.org/

Thursday, March 28th marks the 45th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in Pennsylvania.  A new documentary, “RADIOACTIVE:  The Women of Three Mile Island,” tells the harrowing story of the 1979 accident involving the release of radioactive and toxic materials into the air, soils, water and into bodies young and old.  As official evacuation orders were delayed, people received much larger radioactive doses than if the evacuation orders were issued immediately.

Forty-five years later four women continue to challenge what the company and government say about the accident.

One review explained how the documentary “uncovers the never-before-told stories of four intrepid homemakers who take their local community’s case against the plant operator all the way to the [U.S.] Supreme Court –- and a young female journalist who’s caught in the radioactive crossfire.”

It also breaks the story of a “radical new health study that may finally expose the truth of the meltdown.  For over forty years, the nuclear industry has done everything in their power to cover up their criminal actions, claiming, as they always do, ‘No one was harmed and nothing significant happened.’” 

The director of the outstanding documentary is Heidi Hutner.  She is a professor of Literature, Sustainability, Women’s and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University New York, and a scholar of nuclear and environmental history, literature, film, and ecofeminism. Hutner chaired the Sustainability Studies Program for six years.

Beginning on March 12th, the documentary is being streamed on Apple + and Amazon Prime for $3.99.  Search for The Women of Three Mile Island.

After you watch the film, be sure to register for the historic webinar coming up on Thursday, March 28th at 6 pm Mountain Time with the director Heidi Hutner and her team:  Anna Rondon, who is Diné and founder of the New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute; Krystal Curley, who is Diné and director of Indigenous Life Ways; Mary Olson, founder of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project; and Professor Mark Jacobson, Stanford University.  Cindy Folkers, of Beyond Nuclear, will moderate.  The Sierra Club and Beyond Nuclear host the webinar.

In March and April, seven in-person screenings will be held in the U.S. and Canada.  CCNS saw the film last weekend at the International Uranium Film Festival in Window Rock, Arizona.  It received the Best Investigation Documentary award.  We highly recommend watching this story about how the nuclear industry operates and covers up the truth.

EVENTS:……………………………………………….

March 14, 2024 Posted by | incidents, USA | 1 Comment

Shelling continues near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station

12 March 2024. Modern Power Systems

Director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, in his 8 March statement Update 215 concerning the situation in Ukraine, reported his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin as part of the IAEA’s continuing efforts to help prevent a nuclear or radiological accident during the present conflict.

Mr Grossi said the meeting, on 6 March, was “professional and frank”, with the discussions focused on the paramount importance of reducing the still significant nuclear safety and security risks at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, under Russian control for the past two years.

It was their second meeting, following one in Saint Petersburg in October 2022, and it took place a month after Mr Grossi on 7 February crossed the frontline to travel to the ZNPP for the fourth time during the war. On the way to the plant, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv……………………………


Military activity

IAEA experts stationed at the ZNPP site have continued to hear explosions and other indications of military activity not far away from the facility. Three times during the week of 4 March they reported hearing several successive explosions within a few minutes, as well as one explosion on 7 march and multiple explosions on 8 March, possibly indicating the use of heavy weapons from an area close by.

On 1 March, the IAEA experts heard an explosion some distance away from the ZNPP. The following morning, the team was informed by the plant that there had been shelling in parkland a few hundred metres away from the city hall administrative building of the town of Enerhodar, where many plant staff live.

Further underlining the fragile nuclear safety and security situation at the ZNPP, the plant remains without back-up external power after the only remaining 330 kV line was disconnected on 20 February. As a result, the ZNPP remains dependent on its only functioning 750 kV power line, out of four such lines available before the war. The IAEA team has informed that the 330 kV line is not expected to be reconnected before 15 March.  https://www.modernpowersystems.com/news/newsshelling-continues-near-znpp-11594597

March 14, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

‘Sometimes I can’t sleep at night’: Adi Roche warns of nuclear risks of Ukraine conflict as she picks up peace award

“It’s a war crime to weaponise a nuclear facility,”

CCI’s medical volunteers treat children for illnesses such as “Chernobyl heart”, a cardiac condition prevalent in the region and thought to be caused by the fallout.

Founder of Chernobyl Children International, operations of which have been upended by Russian invasion, honoured by Ahmadiyya Muslim community

Mark Paul, Irish Times, Sat Mar 9 2024

Ukraine is “sitting on a nuclear powder keg” and the western world must not abandon it to its fate, said peace activist, charity founder and former presidential candidate Adi Roche as she received a major international peace award in London on Saturday.

Ms Roche, the founder of Chernobyl Children International (CCI), which has delivered more than €108 million of aid to Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus since the 1986 nuclear disaster in the region, has been awarded the Ahmadiyya Muslim Peace Prize.

The award is presented each year by the Ahmadiyya community, a south Asian Muslim movement, at a grand ceremony at one of Europe’s biggest mosques, the Baitul Futuh complex in south London.

Previous winners include Hiroshima bomb survivor and anti-nuclear campaigner Setsuko Thurlow and Buddhist nun Cheng Yen, the founder of the Tzu Chi humanitarian organisation in Taiwan.

Ms Roche was originally selected for the award in 2020 but the ceremony was postponed due to the pandemic.

Speaking to The Irish Times in advance of the peace symposium at the Baitul Futuh mosque, she said the award had “given her heart a little bit of a lift”, after CCI’s operations in Belarus and Ukraine were upended by Russia’s 2022 invasion of its neighbour.

But she also accused Russian president Vladimir Putin’s forces of issuing a discreet nuclear threat by invading Ukraine from Belarus on a route directly through the Chernobyl nuclear exclusion zone in the north of the country – the power plant was captured on the first day of the war.

“It’s a war crime to weaponise a nuclear facility,” she said. “The Hague Convention should be invoked. Russia issued a nuclear threat without having to say it by going through that area. It made them triumphalist and so they went on to Zaporizhzhia [a nuclear plant in southeast Ukraine that has been the scene of fighting and is now controlled by Russia].”

Before the war, CCI operated mostly in Belarus, working with medical teams to provide care for children in the region whose health was affected by the nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. Some of the kids were brought to Ireland each year to stay with host families.

Ms Roche said her Cork-headquartered charity has been unable to go into Belarus ever since sanctions were put in place against the regime there of Aleksandr Lukashenko, a close Putin ally.

The CCI operation in Belarus is now run entirely by 60 local staff.

Before the conflict, CCI also operated from the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which was captured by Russia early in the war and subsequently liberated by the Ukrainians. The charity has since had to shift its operations to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to avoid the fighting.

“In Ukraine we have a different set of problems. We are on the frontline of child cardiac services there,” said Ms Roche.

CCI’s medical volunteers treat children for illnesses such as “Chernobyl heart”, a cardiac condition prevalent in the region and thought to be caused by the fallout.

“With Chernobyl heart, the children can’t live with it, and they’ll die without help. Our surgeons there tried to stay working in Kharkiv after the invasion but they had to pull out two years ago and move to Lviv. The risk was too great – it would have been suicidal to stay. The surgeons were literally chased from east to west by the war,” said Ms Roche…………………………  https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2024/03/09/sometimes-i-cant-sleep-at-night-adi-roche-warns-of-nuclear-risks-of-ukraine-conflict-as-she-picks-up-peace-award

March 11, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Aberdeen shipping logistics company warned over nuclear transport safety failings.

An inspection by the industry watchdog found that nuclear
material had been transported without the proper safety checks in place.
The UK’s nuclear watchdog has slammed an Aberdeen-based shipping
logistics company over risks posed by its transportation of radioactive
materials.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the UK nuclear
regulatory body, identified a series of failings with Streamline Shipping
Group’s risk assessments during a routine compliance inspection at their
site in Aberdeen on January 31. Among the alarming findings were the fact
that radioactive materials had previously been moved despite not being
identified in risk assessment documentation.

 Aberdeen Live 8th March 2024

https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/aberdeen-shipping-logistics-company-warned-9152174

March 11, 2024 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Greenpeace warns on danger of restarting Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant 

Greenpeace today warned that any plans by Russia to restart reactors at
the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant would be a further step closer to a
potential nuclear disaster and must be stopped.

The environmental organization has restated its demand for the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) Director General to state clearly to Rosatom, the Russian
state nuclear corporation, that restart of any of the reactors cannot be
permitted.

The IAEA Director General is traveling to Moscow for meetings
with Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev. On 4th March, the second
anniversary of the Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant, Greenpeace,
together with the deputy head of the regional administration, held a press
conference in Zaporizhzhia city. The focus of the event was the
Zaporozhzhia nuclear plant crisis, including the reactor restart threats
and nuclear emergency planning.

 Greenpeace 5th March 2024

https://www.greenreconstruction.com/news/second-anniversary-of-russias-nuclear-plant-attack-in-ukraine

March 7, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Oppenheimer feared nuclear annihilation – and only a chance pause by a Soviet submariner kept it from happening in 1962

on October 27, 1962, a nuclear war was averted not because President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev were doing their best to avoid war (they were), but because Capt. Vasily Arkhipov had been randomly assigned to submarine B-59.”

This is but one of countless examples where global and military history has been dramatically altered by chance and luck. On Oct. 27, 1962, the world was extremely lucky. The question that Robert Oppenheimer would surely ask is, will we be so lucky the next time?

March 7, 2024, https://theconversation.com/oppenheimer-feared-nuclear-annihilation-and-only-a-chance-pause-by-a-soviet-submariner-kept-it-from-happening-in-1962-223148 Mark Robert Rank, Professor of Social Welfare, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis

History has often been shaped by chance and luck.

One of the blockbuster films of the past year, “Oppenheimer,” tells the dramatic story of the development of the atomic bomb and the physicist who headed those efforts, J. Robert Oppenheimer. But despite the Manhattan Project’s success depicted in the film, in his latter years, Oppenheimer became increasingly worried about a nuclear holocaust resulting from the proliferation of these weapons.

Over the past 80 years, the threat of such nuclear annihilation was perhaps never greater than during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

President John F. Kennedy’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, said that nuclear war was averted during that crisis by “just plain dumb luck.” As I detail in my forthcoming book, “The Random Factor,” nowhere was the influence of chance and luck more evident than on Oct. 27, 1962.

Russian missiles next door

To set the stage, a cold war of hostilities between the U.S. and the communist Soviet Union began almost immediately following World War II, resulting in a nuclear arms race between the two during the 1950s and continuing through the 1980s.

As a part of the Cold War, the U.S. was extremely concerned about countries falling under the Soviet communist influence and umbrella. That fear was magnified in the case of Cuba.

Tensions between the U.S. and Cuba had dramatically escalated following the failed 1961 U.S. attempt to overthrow revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his communist ruling party. Known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, its failure proved to be a major embarrassment for the Kennedy administration and a warning to the Castro regime.

In May 1962, Castro and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to secretly deploy strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba, with the intention of providing a strong deterrent to any potential U.S. invasion in the future. The Russian missiles and equipment would be disassembled and shipped aboard freighters bound for Havana, then be reassembled on-site.

On Oct. 14, a high-flying U.S. U-2 spy plane photographed the construction of a missile launch site in western Cuba. This marked the beginning of the 13 days in October known as the Cuban missile crisis.

After heated deliberations with his cabinet and advisers, Kennedy decided on a naval blockade surrounding Cuba to prevent further Soviet ships from passing through. In addition, Kennedy demanded removal of all missiles and equipment already in Cuba.

This began a standoff between the U.S. and Russia. Ultimately, the missiles were disassembled and removed from Cuba. In exchange, the U.S. removed its Jupiter ballistic missiles from bases in Turkey and Italy.

But one utterly random – and utterly crucial – aspect of this resolution was not known until years later through the memoirs of, and interviews with, Soviet sailors.

Continue reading →

March 7, 2024 Posted by | history, incidents, Reference | Leave a comment

Improvement notice served over storage of hazardous materials at Dounreay

 By Alan Hendry – alan.hendry@hnmedia.co.uk, 4 Mar 24,  https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/improvement-notice-served-over-storage-of-hazardous-material-344039/

An improvement notice has been served over shortfalls in arrangements for storing alkali metals at Dounreay.

Buildings used to store these metals, predominantly sodium, were leaking in rainwater – with pools observed where the containers were being kept.

The notice was served by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) on Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS), formerly Magnox Ltd.

ONR inspectors judged that the prolonged period of exposure to moist and damp conditions was resulting in degradation of the barriers for safe storage of the chemicals.

Although no-one was harmed as a result of these shortfalls, and there were no radiological consequences, ONR concluded that there was potential for serious personal injury if workers had been exposed to the hazardous materials.

March 7, 2024 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Mistakes, Misfiring and Trident: Britain’s Flawed Nuclear Deterrence

Australian Independent Media, March 4, 2024,  Dr Binoy Kampmark

Nuclear weapons are considered the strategic silverware of nation states. Occasionally, they are given a cleaning and polishing. From time to time, they go missing, fail to work, and suffer misplacement. Of late, the UK Royal Navy has not been doing so well in that department, given its seminal role in upholding the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. In January, an unarmed Trident II D5 nuclear missile fell into the Atlantic Ocean after a bungled launch from a Royal Navy submarine.

The missile’s journey was a distinctly shorter than its originally plotted 6,000 km journey that would have ended in a location somewhere between Africa and Brazil. In language designed to say nothing yet conceal monumental embarrassment, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps called it “an anomaly” while the Labour opposition expressed concern through its shadow defence secretary, John Healey. An anonymous military source was the most descriptive of all: “It left the submarine but it just went plop, right next to them.

The anomaly in question, which Shapps witnessed on board the HMS Vanguard, took place off the coast of Florida during a January 30 exercise at the US’s Navy Port site. Its failure is the second for the missile, which was also tested in 2016 and resulted in its automatic self-destruction after veering off course and heading to the United States. It was therefore galling for the Defence Secretary to then claim in a written statement to Parliament that Trident was still “the most reliable weapons system in the world”, a claim also reiterated by the missile’s manufacturers, Lockheed Martin. With a gamey sense of delusion, Shapps continued to argue that the test merely “affirmed the effectiveness of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, in which the government has absolute confidence. The submarine and crew were successfully certified and will rejoin the operational cycle as planned.”…………………………………………………………………………………..

Even at the best of times, deterrence, as a claim, is the stuff of fluffy fiction, astrological flight and fancy. It is unverifiable, speculative, highly presumptuous. Who is to know if a nuclear weapon will be fired at any point, at any time, against any target, on whatever pretext presents itself?

The madman theory suggests that such a weapon will be deployed, though we are not sure when this might eventuate. Keeping company with such a theory is the rational, mass murderer type who takes comfort in the prospect that 100 humans might survive a holocaust killing billions. Shoot and take your chances. Human stupidity glows with the hope that errors will be healed, and mass crimes palliated.

In actual fact, the true proof of such deterrence would lie in hellish murder: weapons launched, catastrophe ensuing. Those recording such evidence are bound to be done by coarse skinned mutants with plumbing problems.

The Trident misfiring episode can be seen in one of two ways. First, it illustrates the point that we are here because of dumb luck, having survived error, misunderstanding and miscommunication. In the second sense, it yields an uncomfortable reality for the war planners in White Hall: Trident may not work when asked to.

Whether a system fails because of faulty machinery or accident, the problem of misfiring does not go away. At some point, a misfire with potency will result in deaths, though we can perhaps be assured that Trident may simply fail to live up to the heavy sense of expectation demanded of it. We can hope it just plops.  https://theaimn.com/mistakes-misfiring-and-trident-britains-flawed-nuclear-deterrence/

March 4, 2024 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Texas wildfires continue to pose threat to Pantex nuclear weapons plant, and climate change will bring further threats to nuclear facilities

By Jessica McKenzie, François Diaz-Maurin | February 28, 2024

A wildland fire in the Texas Panhandle forced the Pantex plant, a nuclear facility northeast of Amarillo, to temporarily cease operations on Tuesday and to evacuate nonessential workers. Plant workers also started construction on a fire barrier to protect the plant’s facilities.

The plant resumed normal operations on Wednesday, officials said.

“Thanks to the responsive actions of all Pantexans and the NNSA Production Office in cooperation with the women and men of the Pantex Fire Department and our mutual aid partners from neighboring communities, the fire did not reach or breach the plant’s boundary,” Pantex said in a social media post on Wednesday afternoon.

At a press conference Tuesday evening, Laef Pendergraft, a nuclear safety engineer with the National Nuclear Security Administration production office at Pantex, said the evacuations were out of an “abundance of caution.”

“Currently we are responding to the plant, but there is no fire on our site or on our boundary,” Pendergraft told reporters.

The 90,000-acre Windy Deuce fire burning four to five miles to the north of the Pantex plant was 25 percent contained as of late Wednesday afternoon.

Until the fire is fully contained, it will continue to pose a threat to the nearby Pantex plant, says Nickolas Roth, the senior director of nuclear materials security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. “I think the sign that the coast is clear is that the fire is no longer burning,” he told the Bulletin. “One can imagine many reasons operations would resume.”……………………………………….

While the specific cause of the Smokehouse Creek fire has not yet been identified, climate change is making explosive wildfires more likely, with serious implications for the country’s nuclear weapons programs.

Since 1975, the Pantex plant has been the United States’ primary facility responsible for assembling and disassembling nuclear weapons. It is one of six production facilities in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nuclear Security Enterprise.

In addition to warhead surveillance and repair, the plant is currently working on the full scale production of the B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb and 455-kiloton W88 Alteration (Alt) 370 warhead as part of the broader US nuclear weapons life-extension and modernization programs. The plant handles significant quantities of uranium, plutonium, and tritium, in addition to other non-radioactive toxic and explosive chemicals.

If a wildfire were to impact the site directly, the health and safety implications could be enormous.

“I don’t like to speculate in terms of worst-case scenarios,” Roth told the Bulletin. “The potential for danger if a fire ever broke out at a site with weapons usable nuclear material is quite great.”

“The danger from plutonium really comes from inhaling particulates,” Dylan Spaulding, a senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained on a podcast in 2023. “So if powder is inhaled, or if somehow powder were to be dispersed through, say, a big fire or some kind of incident at the site, that would certainly pose a risk for surrounding communities.”

Up to 20,000 plutonium cores, or “pits,” from disassembled nuclear weapons can be stored on site. (The exact figure is classified, but experts contacted by the Bulletin said the current number of “surplus” plutonium pits already dismantled is likely to be around 19,000, plus an additional unknown number of backlog pits awaiting disassembly.)

But as Robert Alvarez wrote in the Bulletin in 2018, the plutonium is stored in facilities built over half a century ago that were never intended to indefinitely store nuclear explosives. After extreme rains flooded parts of the facility in 2010 and 2017, some of the containers began showing signs of corrosion.

A 2021 review by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board of the Pantex plant’s operations found that an increasing number of plutonium pits are stored in unsealed containers. These pits are either “recently removed from a weapon, planned to be used in an upcoming assembly or life extension program, or pending surveillance,” the board explained. The board previously recommended that these pits be repackaged into sealed insert containers for their safe long-term staging. But the plant personnel “stated it is only achieving approximately 10 percent of its annual pit repackaging goals, citing a lack of funding and priority.”…………………………………………………………………………..

A Department of Energy report published in April 2022 on fire protection at the Pantex, which identified several weaknesses within the plant, did not discuss risks from wildland fires.

“The event is obviously a stark reminder of the dangers of climate change on even high security nuclear weapons facilities,” said Kristensen.

But as other authors have previously argued in the Bulletin, climate change is a blind spot in US nuclear weapons policy. “All of these [nuclear] structures were built on the presumption of a stable planet. And our climate is changing very rapidly and presenting new extremes,” Alice Hill, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Bulletin in 2021………..  https://thebulletin.org/2024/02/texas-wildfires-force-major-nuclear-weapons-facility-to-briefly-pause-operations/

March 2, 2024 Posted by | climate change, safety, USA | 1 Comment

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