Uranium Processing Facility in Tennessee getting even further behind schedule
Oak Ridge uranium project even more behind schedule than it used to be http://www.abqjournal.com/main/219488/blogs/nm-science/oak-ridge-uranium-project-even-more-behind-schedule-than-it-used-to-be.html By John Fleck / Journal Staff Writer on Wed, Jul 10, 2013
[T]he Department of Energy’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan states that the First Phase of the Uranium Processing Facility project will be completed in 2025, which indicated a rather significant delay from previous reports that — just a couple of years ago — had the entire project completed before then. The First Phase is focused on moving the operations now housed in the 9212 uranium processing complex at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. Phases Two and Three, incorporating the work now done in Y-12′s 9215 building and 9204-2E (Beta-2E), would not be completed until around 2038.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, in a response to earlier questions about the plan, this week confirmed the schedule in the Stockpile Stewardship report as being the most up-to-date assessment of the work plan for the multibillion-dollar project.
Nuclear waste experts reject Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel program
Nuclear waste: DC has ignored a cheaper way to dispose of plutonium — until now Sentinel.com, Douglas Birch & R. Jeffrey Smith The Center for Public Integrity, 7 July 13, “………Frank von Hippel, a White House science official in the early 1990’s who chaired a working group on Russia’s weapons plutonium, said he initially supported the MOX plant because the threat was high and MOX was the only solution Russia would support. But Russia’s decision since then to burn its new MOX fuel in reactors that can actually produce more plutonium was the last straw for von Hippel. As a result, he said, the MOX plant “[has] become from my point of view a pretty meaningless program” — one that’s cost billions of dollars so far.
Last May, von Hippel joined three other prominent scientists in a commentary published in Nature, entitled, “Time to Bury Plutonium,” in which they criticized Britain’s draft plans to dispose of its huge stockpile of surplus reactor plutonium by building a new MOX plant of its own. The four authors wrote that MOX programs worldwide have been plagued by extravagant expenses, technology breakdowns and design flaws.
In France, Areva’s recycling of plutonium from spent fuel for MOX adds about $750 million each year to the cost of electricity, according to a French study in 2000 cited by their article. Britain closed its Sellafield MOX plant in 2011, they pointed out, after it operated at just 1 percent of capacity for a decade.
The authors urged the country to “give plutonium immobilization another look … Although the technique has not been demonstrated at full scale, there is substantial literature on how to do it. Immobilization should be easier and cheaper than MOX production.” Von Hippel separately said that according to his calculations, it could be as much as seven times cheaper. Continue reading
The failure of the South Carolina Mixed Oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel plant
Nuclear waste: DC has ignored a cheaper way to dispose of plutonium — until now Sentinel.com, Douglas Birch & R. Jeffrey Smith The Center for Public Integrity, 7 July 13, “………..Unrealized ambitions
Although the White House has not allocated any additional funding for the South Carolina plant after 2014, the Energy Department claims it remains in contention as a solution to the plutonium disposal problem. But already it’s clear that the original U.S. goal for the program — reducing the world’s supply of nuclear explosive material by 68 tons – will not be realized.
Washington compromised repeatedly with Russia to pursue a program that even for some of its initial supporters has long since ceased to be a top nonproliferation priority. Meanwhile, the price of the MOX fuel factory soared far beyond the Energy department’s estimates, making it one of many, multi-billion dollar, Energy Department programs accused of being poorly run.
“MOX is just a sample of a larger problem,” says Gene Aloise, a senior federal auditor who tracked nonproliferation projects for the Government Accountability Office from 1994 to 2012.
The result is that Washington has spent at least $3.7 billion on a plant to manufacture reactor fuel no U.S. utility is eager to buy, after rejecting alternatives that likely would have been cheaper.
“The government’s plutonium plan is a pluperfect disaster,” Sen. Edward Markey, a newly-elected Massachusetts Democrat, told the Center for Public Integrity in a statement. “And all to produce $2 billion worth of reactor fuel at a cost of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and damage to our global non-proliferation efforts.” Markey was the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, has long been active on nuclear safety issues, and in 1986 chaired hearings on the Chernobyl disaster.
The factory’s fate might be decided next year, as the administration prefers, after another $320 million is spent on its construction. Or Congress might decide to take swifter and more decisive action in budget legislation this summer……..And after twenty years of negotiations, promises and plans, and billions in spending, the U.S. appears no closer — in its principal plutonium disposal efforts — to the goal of making the world safer from a nuclear disaster.http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/070513_nuclear_waste/nuclear-waste-dc-has-ignored-cheaper-way-dispose-plutonium-until-now/
Secret promises to USA, by Japan, to burn plutonium
Mainichi: Japan’s secret promise with U.S. to burn plutonium — “It is abnormal for sure” — “Expected to stir up controversy” http://enenews.com/mainichi-japan-secretly-promised-to-burn-plutonium-it-is-abnormal-for-sure-expected-to-stir-up-controversy
Title: Japan made secret promise with U.S. to restart pluthermal nuclear program
Source: Mainichi
Date: June 25, 2013
A Japanese prime ministerial envoy secretly promised to the United States that Japan would resume its controversial “pluthermal” program, using light-water reactors to burn plutonium, according to documents obtained by the Mainichi.
The secret promise was made by Hiroshi Ogushi, then parliamentary secretary of the Cabinet Office, to Daniel Poneman, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, during Ogushi’s visit to the United States on behalf of then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in September last year.
[…] The fact that a Japanese official promised to the U.S. to implement such a controversial project without a prior explanation to the Japanese public is expected to stir up controversy. […]
“It is abnormal for sure,” said one official with the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. […]
See also: Plutonium-burning reactors to restart in Japan? — Gov’t forcing companies to use MOX fuel — Official: “We have no other choice”
The exploding costs of the Savannah River MOX plant
The explosive costs of disposing of nuclear weapons WP,By Walter Pincus, July 3 Costs can explode like fireworks when it comes to nuclear weapons disposal.
For example, it could cost more money and take longer to get rid of just 37.5 tons of excess, weapons-grade plutonium than it did for the Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bombs that ended World War II. Four weapons — the Trinity plutonium implosion device tested in the New Mexico desert; the Little Boy uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima; the Fat Man plutonium bomb that hit Nagasaki, and an unused uranium bomb — were produced within six years in current dollars of some $24.1 billion, according to Stephen I. Schwartz’s book, “Atomic Audit.”
In comparison, it will cost more than $24.2 billion and take until 2036 for the United States to get rid of those 37.5 tons of plutonium, according to a Government Accountability Office estimate. It appears in the Senate Armed Services report on the fiscal 2014 defense authorization bill.
Costs have skyrocketed for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina. The facility is designed to blend the surplus plutonium with uranium oxide to make mixed oxide (MOX) that can be used as fuel in some U.S. commercial reactors. That would make the plutonium unusable for future nuclear weapons.
When the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) originated this MOX program in 2002, design and construction were to cost $1 billion.
By 2005, the estimate was $3.5 billion. When project construction began in 2007, it was three years behind schedule with a $4.8 billion price tag.
According to NNSA’s fiscal 2014 budget request, construction will hit $7.78 billion.
The annual cost to run the facility has also exploded. NNSA estimated in 2002 that it would cost $100.5 million a year to operate the MOX plant. Annual operating costs are now expected to be $543 million. The planned 2017 completion date has slipped another two years, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.
Here’s another ticking time bomb. A federal facilities agreement in 2002 with South Carolina called for Washington to pay up to $100 million a year to the state if the plant did not produce 1 ton of MOX fuel annually, starting in 2009. That was to compensate the state for the storage of excess plutonium.
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), a main project booster, has used amendments to delay the fines until 2016, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.
The cost prompted the Obama administration to propose slowing construction while it reviews the MOX program, including assessing other ways to get rid of the plutonium……… http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-explosive-cost-of-disposing-of-nuclear-weapons/2013/07/03/64f896e0-e287-11e2-80eb-3145e2994a55_story.html
Integral Fast Nuclear Reactor’s serious problems
Another Take on Pandora’s Promise EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL BY GAR SMITH – JUNE 28, 2013“…….Problems with the IFR Looking beyond the ballyhoo, there are significant concerns about IFRs that Pandora’s Promise fails to address. To date, no breeder reactor has been commercially viable. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, shares David McKay’s concern about the 250-plus metric tons of excess plutonium moldering away in storage sites around the world. Makhijani, however, believes the idea that “sodium cooled-fast neutron reactors [could] be built to denature the plutonium reveals a technological optimism that is disconnected from the facts.” While some IFRs “have indeed operated well,” Makhijani notes, “roughly $100 billion have been spent worldwide to try and commercialize these reactors – to no avail.”
Fueled by a uranium-plutonium alloy, IFRs can produce (“breed”) more plutonium than they burn. But this plutonium can be used to produce nuclear weapons, which poses serious diversion and proliferation risks. Also, IFRs are cooled by molten sodium, not water. Sodium can explode when it comes in contact with water and, when exposed to air, sodium ignites and burns furiously. Sodium-cooled reactors are prone to coolant leaks. Fast reactor accidents have occurred in France, Japan, Scotland, at the Fermi 1 reactor in Michigan, and twice at a Simi Valley reactor site in southern California.
Several competing nuclear power designs are cited in Pandora’s Promise, but they receive little screen time. There is a brief mention of Liquid Fluoride Thorium reactors, a Traveling Wave Reactor (Bill Gates’ pet project), and the government’s support for “mini-nukes” that could be installed underground and fired up to power urban skyscrapers. How practical and safe are they? Pandora’s Promise provides few answers. There is no in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of any of these alternatives….. . http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/another_take_on_pandoras_promise
Japan gets first shipment of highly radioactive MOX fuel
FIRST MOX NUCLEAR SHIPMENT SINCE FUKUSHIMA ARRIVES IN JAPAN http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/17766227/first-mox-nuclear-shipment-since-fukushima-arrives-in-japan/ TAKAHAMA, Japan (AFP) 26 June 13, – The first reprocessed nuclear shipment since the disaster at Fukushima arrived under armed guard near the Takahama nuclear plant in Japan on Thursday, an AFP journalist at the scenereported.
The vessel had travelled for around two months with its cargo of MOX fuel — a blend of uranium and plutonium — after being reprocessed in France. The shipment will now be stored because Japan has no working reactors able to use it.
Savannah River Mixed Oxide Nuclear Fuel (MOX) a costly failure
Von Hippel last May joined three other scientists in advocating the burial alternative in a scientific journal article about Britain’s plutonium stocks. One co-author was Rodney Ewing, who Obama has since appointed to head a federal nuclear waste panel, and another was Allison MacFarlane, now chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The MOX plant, if it is completed, needs an NRC license……
Administration officials say the main purpose of their “strategic reassessment” is to reexamine the burial alternative. A DOE report in 2002 concluded it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars less than building the MOX plant.
Energy Department Nuclear Nonproliferation Program Plagued By Problems, HUFFINGTON POST , 24 June 13 A multibillion-dollar U.S.-led effort to stem the threat of a terrorist nuclear blast is slowly unraveling because of huge cost overruns at a federal installation in South Carolina and stubborn resistance in Moscow to fulfilling the program’s chief goal, according to U.S. officials and independent experts.
The 13-year old Energy Department program, authorized in agreements with Moscow spanning three presidents, is meant to transform excess plutonium taken from retired U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons into fuel for nuclear plants, so that it can’t be stolen and misused.
But that ambitious goal has been blocked by a tangle of technical, diplomatic and financial problems. The Obama administration is now considering cancelling the project, an idea that has provoked furious opposition from some Republican lawmakers who say it is vital to U.S. national security.
Its potential demise has provoked cheers from some leading arms control and nonproliferation experts, however. They say that as a result of little-noticed revisions to the underlying pact with Moscow on the plutonium’s disposal, the deal might actually wind up promoting Russia’s production of as much or more plutonium as it was supposed to eliminate. To keep its end of the bargain, the U.S. has spent more than a decade and $3.7 billion building a problem-plagued factory for making the plutonium-laced reactor fuel, located at the government’s Savannah River complex south of Aiken. Its construction and related costs have recently hit more than $680 million a year, but Congress is now considering a White House plan to shrink that spending substantially. Continue reading
Savannah River MOX project should be shut down
the MOX plant has “become from my point of view a pretty meaningless program” that should now be killed.
“The irony of this whole project is that it basically started with a good goal, of eliminating weapons grade material with the idea that it won’t be available for weapons purposes,” “But then it sort of evolved into this program that provides a fairly significant subsidy to the plutonium economy. So in the end, we will end up with more plutonium.”
How a Massive Nuclear Nonproliferation Effort Led to More Proliferation, The Atlantic, More than a decade of negotiations with Russia produced a clear winner, and it was not the United States. DOUGLAS BIRCH AND R. JEFFREY SMITHJUN 24 2013 SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, South Carolina – A half-finished monolith of raw concrete and rebar rises suddenly from slash pine forests as the public tour bus crests a hill at this heavily-secured site south of rural Aiken……..
Dark clouds hover over this ambitious federal project, 17 years in the making and at least six more from completion–if, indeed, it is ever completed. It lies at the center of one of the United States’ most troubled, technically complex, costly, and controversial efforts to secure nuclear explosive materials left stranded by the end of the Cold War.
This plant – and another just like it in Russia — is meant to transform one of these materials, plutonium, into commercial reactor fuel that can be burned to provide electricity for homes, schools and factories, essentially turning nuclear “swords into ploughshares.” The aim of the so-called Mixed Oxide, or MOX, plant is to ensure the material never winds up in the hands of terrorists.
In the right hands, only nine pounds of plutonium — an amount about the size of a baseball — could make a bomb as powerful as the one the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima. The world’s military and civilian nuclear programs have produced about 500 metric tons of pure plutonium, an amount that could fuel tens of thousands of nuclear weapons yet fit into a backyard shed. Countries with nuclear programs continue to add roughly two tons to this inventory every year.
Washington has been spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to help secure or remove plutonium and weapons-grade uranium in dozens of countries. But the U.S.-Russia plutonium disposition program, which includes the Savannah River plant, is the U.S. government’s single most expensive nonproliferation project now, according to Michelle Cann, senior budget analyst with a nonprofit group called Partnership for Global Security. Continue reading
The development of MOX nuclear fuel, and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
an industrial-scale facility in America capable of turning plutonium into reactor fuel — a key step on the path to a revived breeder program.
The MOX plant was “the plutonium nose under the tent”
Ernest Moniz…his June 2000 deal, approved by the two country’s presidents, called for both sides to use the 
plutonium mostly as a reactor fuel, as Moscow sought.
The George W. Bush administration subsequently embraced a plan to promote breeder reactors and the recycling of plutonium, not just domestically, but by other nuclear states including Russia, in a controversial program known as the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. . Formal papers ordering the start of the MOX plant construction were signed in August 2007 by a former chief of the Bush-Cheney energy policy transition team, according to an internal Energy Department document.
How a Massive Nuclear Nonproliferation Effort Led to More Proliferation, The Atlantic, DOUGLAS BIRCH AND R. JEFFREY SMITHJUN 24 2013 SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, South Carolina “,……….Breeder reactors, in a kind of Atomic Age alchemy, can manufacture more plutonium than they consume, inspiring dreams of almost limitless energy. By generating fast-moving neutrons that transform the uranium mixed into their fuel into additional plutonium, they hold the promise of a significant energy reward: One gram of plutonium can produce more energy than a ton of oil. At one time or another, breeders have been pursued by every major nuclear nation. Continue reading
Problems in nuclear pyroprocessing
South Korea’s Nuclear Blues The Diplomat, By Sebastian Sarmiento-Saher June 19, 2013“…..Assuming that South Korea does gain approval to conduct pyroprocessing, it may take years to do so in a way that is both technically and economically viable. The Diplomat spoke with Olli Heinonen, a Senior Fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, who said that “[t]he product to the ROK pyroprocessing scheme is a uranium/transuranium/zirconium fuel, which is not suitable to fuel ROK’s LWR [Light Water Reactor] or CANDU [Canada Deuterium Uranium] reactors. Thus ROK is developing a prototype Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR), which is planned to be operational around 2028. A commercial scale SFR is envisioned to be available by the mid of the Century.”
In addition to a long wait time, pyroprocessing results in other fissile materials like Neptunium that can be used for nuclear bombs and must be safeguarded. Neptunium must be separated out, but as Dr. Heinonen added, “[i]t is fairly easy and straight forward for the IAEA to monitor and confirm that this does not take place.” This will mean that additional safeguarding efforts would need to be implemented – all of which will ultimately depend on South Korea’s willingness to abide by them.
Finally, how proliferation resistant is pyroprocessing in terms of achieving pure plutonium metal needed for nuclear weapons and timing? Dr. Heinonen gave his take: “The fact that plutonium is not fully separated from other elements gives to the ROK officials basis to argue that this difference makes pyroprocessing more proliferation resistant than traditional reprocessing.”
“In order to have pure plutonium separated, additional process steps are required either at the pyroprocessing plant or at a separate installation, which would be found by the IAEA. If such process steps are made it would take 1-3 weeks to turn the material to plutonium metal. However, before that the process steps need to be developed and constructed, but the bottom line is that by having the envisioned uranium/plutonium metal, a proliferator is substantially closer to pure plutonium metal.” ….. http://thediplomat.com/pacific-money/2013/06/19/south-koreas-nuclear-blues/
Nuclear industry fleeces taxpayers again – Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
Golden Fleece Award Goes to Department of Energy for Federal Spending on Small Modular Reactors http://www.taxpayer.net/library/article/golden-fleece-award-goes-to-department-of-energy-for-federal-spending-on-sm $100 Million in “Mini Nuke” Corporate Welfare Already Doled Out, Another Half Billion Dollars Or More in the Pipeline for Major Corporations that Could Pay for Own R&D, Licensing
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The federal government is in the process of wasting more than half a billion dollars to pay large, profitable companies for what should be their own expenses for research & development (R&D) and licensing related to “small modular reactors” (SMRs), which would be about a third of the size or less of today’s large nuclear reactors. In response, the nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense today handed out its latest “Golden Fleece Award” to the Department of Energy for the dollars being wasted on SMRs.
Titled “Taxpayer Subsidies for Small Modular Reactors,” a related TCS background report is available online here……
In making the Golden Fleece Award, Taxpayers for Common Sense highlighted the following issues: Continue reading
Safety and insurance problems for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)
Although significantly smaller than traditional reactors, SMRs will still require significant insurance in the event of an accident. New nuclear reactors are currently covered by the Price-Anderson Act for accidents valued at over $12.6 billion. Price-Anderson may fall dramatically short in the case of SMRs
Taxpayer Subsidies for Small Modular Reactors Taxpayers for Common Sense February 27, 2013 Download: Golden Fleece: Taxpayer Subsidies for Small Nuclear Reactors (pdf)
“……..Current Applicants Seeking Federal Subsidies
Five small modular reactor projects have applied for support from DOE to date, but none of the five different reactor designs have been licensed by the NRC. NRC and DOE aim to award the first design certification license by 2018 and final construction/operating license by the early 2020s. Currently, all five projects are in the pre-application phase with NRC working towards initial design certification.
All but one SMR project would develop an integral pressurized light water reactor (iPWR) while the other would develop a fast neutron reactor (FNR)…… Continue reading
South Korea and USA planning nuclear pyroprocessing
Meanwhile, South Korea and the U.S. are set to sign a pact that will allow the two nations to step up their joint research on pyroprocessing technology, said a senior official at Seoul’s foreign ministry.
If adopted, the pact would enable the International Atomic Energy Agency to guarantee the safety of pyroprocessing technology.
Britain’s rather horrible plutonium and Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) dilemma
“……….The Government wants to try and turn plutonium into a fuel which can be used1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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