Radiation harms space technology, as well as people
Pioneering planet hunter suffers radiation overdose, New Scientist, 20 November 2012 by Lisa Grossman The first space telescope to hunt for transiting exoplanets may be on its deathbed.
On 2 November, the COROT satellite, which launched in 2006, lost the use of its only remaining onboard computer. The spacecraft can no longer receive data from its 30-centimetre telescope, which searches for the telltale dimming of stars as planets cross in front of them.
The culprit was too much radiation, says project scientist Malcolm Fridlund of the European Space Agency. The orbiting spacecraft had spent a long time in a harsh particle environment called the South Atlantic Anomaly.
Earth’s magnetic field is especially weak at this region about 200 to 800 kilometres above the surface, leading to high levels of damaging radiation. Because of its passages through the anomaly, COROT had survived more than twice the amount of radiation it was designed to
withstand….. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22517-pioneering-planet-hunter-suffers-radiation-overdose.html
Aging nuclear reactors, like Pilgrim, Plymouth, become more dangerous
Nuclear facilities are licensed to operate for forty years and all have experienced age-related degradation before the termination of their original license. Despite this, the NRC continues to extend licenses to facilities throughout the U.S.
from 1952-2009 there have been 99 major nuclear power station incidents worldwide.
NUKE MATTERS: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima…Plymouth?
http://www.wickedlocal.com/plymouth/news/opinions/x35738056/NUKE-MATTERS-Three-Mile-Island-Chernobyl-Fukushima-Plymouth#axzz2CQF4Vofv By Karen Vale, Campaign Coordinator, Cape Cod Bay Watch Wicked Local Plymouth, 18 Nov 12, Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and most recently Fukushima – these catastrophic nuclear accidents thrust the debate about the safety of nuclear power into the public
spotlight.
Fukushima also triggered a critical examination of nuclear stations with the same type and operational design as the reactors that failed in March 2011. In the U.S., there are 23 reactors with the same design as Fukushima – including Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
(Pilgrim) on Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth. Continue reading
Rokkasho: Japan’s nuclear reprocessing plant – to keep nuclear industry alive
Rokkasho has grown dependent on the reprocessing complex for nearly all its jobs and income.
“Without Rokkasho, we would not get approval to restart the other reactors—not ever,” says a member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
Japan’s Nuclear Future, Rokkasho and a hard place The government’s fudge on its nuclear future remains unconvincing http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21566018-governments-fudge-its-nuclear-future-remains-unconvincing-rokkasho-and-hard-place Nov 10th 2012 | ROKKASHO THIS remote north-eastern coastal village in Aomori prefecture would delight a North Korean or Iranian spy. Not because of the rolling countryside, but the 
uranium-enrichment facility, the plant undergoing testing to make nuclear fuel by reprocessing spent uranium and plutonium, and the stash of a good part of Japan’s stockpiles of more than nine tonnes of separated plutonium—enough, experts say, to make more than 1,000 nuclear warheads.
The Rokkasho plant seems an anomaly in a country that forswearsnuclear weapons and that has shut down all but two of its 54 nuclear reactors. Yet the same government that says it wants to phase out atomic energy by the end of the 2030s also insists that it is committed soon to start reprocessing enough nuclear waste at Rokkasho to provide fuel for Japan’s nuclear-power plants to go flat out into the 2050s.
It does not take much prodding for officials to concede a potential contradiction, big enough to render Japan’s nuclear policy almost meaningless. Continue reading
Ionising radiation – the killer for super fast space travel
Super-Fast Space Travel Would Kill You In Minutes http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/11/super-fast-space-travel-would-kill-you-in-minutes/ JAMIE CONDLIFFE, 6 Nov 12, Everyone thinks it would be cool to travel at the speed of light, which is why scientists devote their lives to working out if it would be possible and NASA is trying to develop its own warp drive. But easy, tiger: turns out super-fast space travel would be fatal. A paper published in Natural Science brings some boring common sense to the speed-of-light-travel table. In order to travel huge distances in next to no time, people need to travel close to the speed of light. In so doing, travellers cover extremely large distances very quickly, and thanks to the quirks of relativity, it would feel like it took mere minutes because of an effect known as time dilation , which squashes perceived time.
The trouble is that travelling close to the speed of light brings about other effects too. In Natural Science , Edelstein and Edelstein point out that hydrogen in any craft cable of travelling at the speed of light would also prevent it from travelling at the speed of light. They explain :
Unfortunately, as spaceship velocities approach the speed of light, interstellar hydrogen H, although only present at a density of approximately 1.8 atoms/cm3, turns into intense radiation that would quickly kill passengers and destroy electronic instrumentation. In addition, the energy loss of ionizing radiation passing through the ship’s hull represents an increasing heat load that necessitates large expenditures of energy to cool the ship.
In other words, travel close to the speed of light and you’ll be bombarded with so much radiation that you kick the bucket. The knock-on effect is that even if it’s possible to create a craft capable of travelling close the speed of light, it wouldn’t be able to transport people.
Instead, there’s a natural speed limit imposed by safe levels of radiation due to hydrogen, which means humans couldn’t travel faster than half the speed of light unless they were willing to die almost immediately. Dammit. [Natural Science ]
Nuclear fusion – pie in the sky – years away from even feasibility study
Nuclear Fusion Project Struggles to Put the Pieces Together Scientific America, 27 Oct 12, Contracting woes may cause further delays for $19.4-billion ITER, a project designed to show the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a power source
By Geoff Brumfiel and Nature magazine The world’s largest scientific project is threatened with further delays, as agencies struggle to complete the design and sign contracts worth hundred of millions of euros with industrial partners, Nature has learned.
ITER is a massive project designed to show the feasibility of nuclear fusion as a power source. Continue reading
In a grid connected solar power system, a solar inverter converts the DC electricity generated by solar panels into AC electricity suitable for use by home appliances and for exporting to the mains grid. Continue reading
The nuclear fusion dream – ever elusive
Fusion: Maybe Less Than 30 Years, But This Year Unlikely Bill Chameides Dean, Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, August 2012 No ignition at the U.S. National Ignition Facility , home to the world’s largest laser….. Scientists have been thinking about how to bring this game changer into the energy game for decades. (See fusion/fission timeline .) As far back as 1946, two British scientists — Sir George Paget Thomson and Moses Blackman — filed the first patent for a fusion power plant .
But there have been a couple of hold-ups . To get a fusion reaction started, you need to slam the hydrogen atoms together really, really hard and that requires a lot of energy. (In a hydrogen bomb, the fusion reaction gets ignited by an atomic bomb, using fission. Not exactly the preferred method for your local fusion power plant.)
Even trickier is controlling the fusion reaction. It’s one thing to make a fusion bomb, it’s a lot harder to get the reaction going and keep it under control in a way that the amount of energy extracted is larger than that expended to initiate and manage the reaction.
Over the almost 70-year pursuit of the fusionary holy grail, it’s been fairly common for scientists working on the problem to say that they’re about 30 years away from achieving a power plant based on fusion. (See here and here .) The problem has been that while time has marched on, the 30-year horizon has remained fixed. Suffice to say it has proven to be a very tough problem…. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-chameides/fusion-maybe-less-than-30_b_1949573.html
Radioactive wastes in space – oh what a lovely idea!
Nuclear waste to fuel Neptune mission THE AUSTRALIAN BY: JONATHAN LEAKE The Times September 30, 2012 BRITAIN’S burgeoning stockpile of nuclear waste may finally be put to good use – as fuel for Europe’s future missions to the solar system’s most distant and exotic planets such as Uranus and Neptune.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and Britain’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) want to use radioactive isotopes harvested from the waste to make the nuclear batteries essential to power such space probes. Continue reading
Nuclear lobbying might succeed in resuscitating the dangerous Monju dream
The [nuclear industry] lobbying has also forestalled scrapping a controversial, 25-year-old fast breeder reactor on the country’s western coast in Fukui prefecture.
25 years and $13 billion after construction began, the Monju fast breeder reactor has managed to produce electricity for only one hour.
“What’s frightening is that it has the property that once it starts running out of control it can’t be stopped,…. What no one can ignore is that Monju is located adjacent to an earthquake fault.
Japan Plans Restart of Controversial Reactor VOA Correspondent Steve Herman was given unprecedented access inside Japan’s Fast Breeder Reactor Research and Development Center at a time when the country is debating its future energy policy in wake of last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
kui Pref., Japan. Steve Herman September 25, 2012 TSURUGA, JAPAN — There has been an ongoing debate in Japan on the best way to obtain a safe and affordable energy supply for the island nation. The nuclear option suffered a setback in March, 2011, when a massive earthquake and devastating tsunami caused a meltdown in reactors at Japan’s main Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant. Continue reading
Design for recycling rare earths is urgently needed
“The situation clearly calls for international policy initiatives to minimize the seemingly bizarre situation of spending large amounts of technology, time, energy and money to acquire scarce metals from the mines and then throwing them away after a single use.”
Yale Researchers Call for Specialty Metals Recycling http://environment.yale.edu/news/article/yale-researchers-call-for-specialty-metals-recycling/ 25 Sept 12 An international policy is needed for recycling scarce specialty metals that are critical in the production of consumer goods,
according to Yale researchers in Science.
“A recycling rate of zero for specialty metals is alarming when we consider that their use is growing quickly,” said co-author Barbara Reck, a research scientist at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Specialty metals, which include rare earth elements such as indium, gallium and germanium, account for more than 30 of the 60 metals in the periodic table. Because they are used in small amounts for very precise technological purposes, such as red phosphors, high-strength magnets, thin-film solar cells and computer chips, recovery can be so technologically and economically challenging that the attempt is seldom made. Continue reading
Facts: Thorium fuel not clean, not safe, not commercially viable
One reason reprocessing thorium fuel cycles haven’t been successful is that uranium-232 (U-232) is created along with uranium-233. U-232, which has a half-life of about 70 years, is extremely radioactive and is therefore very dangerous in small quantities:
Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power, http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/thorium2009factsheet.pdf By Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd A Fact Sheet Produced by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Physicians for Social Responsibility
Thorium “fuel” has been proposed as an alternative to uranium fuel in nuclear reactors. There are not “thorium reactors,” but rather proposals to use thorium as a “fuel” in different types of reactors, including existing light-water reactors and various fast breeder
reactor designs. Continue reading
Don’t believe the lies that Thorium reactors are clean, safe, and cheap
Thinking About Thorium by Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President of CCNR, September 16 2012 On CBC’s “Quirks and Quarks” radio program aired on Saturday, September 15, 2012, there was an enthusiastic endorsement of “thorium reactors” as a nearly miraculous form of nuclear energy that will avoid all of the major problems now associated with uranium-based nuclear power.
I have been asked by several people to give my own personal opinion of this prospect, and accordingly have written the following:
Background:
When nuclear power was first presented to a credulous public, fully conditioned to respect science and admire scientists, people were quick to believe that nuclear power was safe, clean, cheap and inexhaustible — just because scientists said so. It was also said that “peaceful” nuclear power had nothing whatsoever to do with atomic bombs and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It took decades for people to realize that these are all lies.
I can’t believe that people are now so eager to swallow the hype about thorium with all its over-the-top claims of being safe, clean, cheap, inexhaustible, unrelated to nuclear weapons, and even a miraculous way of solving the nuclear waste problems created by the previous generation of — what? — safe, clean, cheap, inexhaustible, unrelated to nuclear weapons, nuclear reactors. Continue reading
Thorium reactors – the latest dishonest spin from the nuclear propagandists
S. Korea urges U.S. to allow ‘peaceful’ nuclear enrichment SEOUL, Sept. 17 (Yonhap) –– South Korea called for the United States to approve it undertaking “peaceful” enrichment of uranium and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, a government think tank said Monday, as little progress has been made in bilateral negotiations to revise the countries’ nuclear accord.
Under a 1974 accord with the U.S., South Korea is banned from enriching uranium or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. The allies have held five rounds of formal negotiations since 2010 to rewrite the bilateral nuclear cooperation treaty, which expires in 2014…..
Some nonproliferation experts say pyroprocessing is not significantly different from reprocessing, and pyroprocessed plutonium could be quickly turned into weapons-grade material….. http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2012/09/17/38/0301000000AEN20120917002600315F.HTML
USA public waking up to the dangers of MOX nuclear fuel reprocessing
MOX or not? Gov’t likes weapons fuel, public doesn’t Equities.com, By Eric Fleischauer, The Decatur Daily, Ala. 
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services Sept. 14--The Energy Department believes it is safe to use weapons-grade fuel at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, but not many residents attending a public hearing Thursday agreed.
“They don’t need to have it here,” said Sara Crossfield of Athens, who has a farm near the Limestone County plant. “TVA’s charter requires them to protect us.”
U.S. treaties with Russia require the disposal of 50 tons of surplus plutonium. The treaties authorize disposal by recycling the weapons-grade plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, for use in nuclear reactors. MOX is a mixture of plutonium and low-enriched
uranium.
The purpose of Thursday’s public hearing was to receive comments on a draft document describing the environmental impact of using MOX. About 60 people attended.
While MOX is the Energy Department’s preferred alternative for most of the surplus plutonium, the Tennessee Valley Authority said it has no preference. Sachiko McAlhany, document manager for the U.S. Department of Energy, presented a summary of the environmental impact statement. She said the department concluded using MOX “does not appreciably change” the risk posed by conventional uranium fuel.
Neither McAlhany nor a TVA representative, Mick Mastilovic, answered questions at the hearing. The comments from the public will be incorporated into the final environmental impact statement, scheduled for a spring 2013 release.
The plutonium would be reprocessed into MOX at a $6 billion plant in South Carolina, operated by France-based AREVA. It would then have to be transported to Browns Ferry.
Many of the concerns expressed by those attending the hearing involved the cost of creating MOX and the risks involved in transport.
Concerns specific to Browns Ferry focused on the impact of the fuel — which burns at slightly higher temperatures than conventional fuel — on the reactors and the possibility that Browns Ferry would become a terrorist target. Continue reading
1 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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