Labour seeks pact to keep AI out of nuclear arms deployment

David Lammy wants UK to agree rules with other countries to regulate use of artificial intelligence in controlling nuclear weapons

Telegraph 8th July 2023

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/08/labour-explore-ai-ban-decisions-nuclear-weapons-david-lammy/

July 11, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology | Leave a comment

Nuclear. The Flamanville EPR impacted by the shutdown of the first reactor in China?

In China, the first EPR reactor is again shut down after the discovery of “excessive oxidation” on the reactor claddings. What effect on Flamanville (Manche)?

4 Jul 23

It looks like a new pebble in the shoe for the EPR , which already had plenty of it. Officially, however, everything is fine. Shutdown of the Taishan 1 reactor in the first quarter of this year was scheduled. This began on January 31, 2023 .

To this reloading operation, the Chinese operator, of which EDF is a 30% shareholder, added inspections. The objective announced by Taishan Nuclear, three weeks ago, is to “gather data for long-term stable operation “, without giving more details. This shutdown was normally only supposed to last a month…

What effect on Flamanville?

But, according to Le Canard enchaîné , this shutdown is linked to the discovery of “excessive oxidation” on the reactor sheaths.

Designed by EDF, the Chinese EPR of Taishan 1 has broken down due to poor workmanship on the made in France sheaths which protect the nuclear fuel. The most beautiful effect, less than a year from the start of the Flamanville EPR!

These sheaths, manufactured by Framatome , are used in particular to transmit the heat given off by the uranium to the water in the primary circuit. Taishan Nuclear would have discovered that in use, friction would tend to slightly damage these fuel sheaths. To date, no restart date has been mentioned.

The first EPR model built in the world, the Taishan 1 reactor has suffered numerous breakdowns since its commissioning in 2018. This technical shutdown could cost France dearly, while a similar problem had been observed a few years ago. on one of the reactors of the Chooz power plant, in the Ardennes (stopped for five months at the time).

If EDF and Framatone have not communicated in recent days, this umpteenth episode is problematic , while a relaunch of the expansion of the EPR is expected in France, and hoped for internationally.

These five months of shutdown of Taishan 1 are added to the counter of the long months of inactivity of the reactor since its commissioning. While EDF announces that it wants to start up the Flamanville EPR next year, this breakdown shows that the start-up of an EPR reactor is not the guarantee of reliable and abundant production.Greenpeace France

July 8, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Germany, technology | Leave a comment

Wishful thinking about nuclear energy won’t get us to net zero

The climate problem is too serious to engage in unrealistic modelling exercises. Wishful thinking about nuclear energy will only thwart our ability to act meaningfully to lower emissions rapidly.

BY M.V. RAMANA AND SUSAN O’DONNELL | July 3, 2023 https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2023/07/03/wishful-thinking-about-nuclear-energy-wont-get-us-to-net-zero/391721/

On June 20, the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) released its 2023 Canada’s Energy Future report, developing scenarios for a path to net zero by 2050. These scenarios project roughly a tripling of nuclear energy generation capacity in Canada by 2050, seemingly reinforcing then-natural resources minister Seamus O’Regan’s statement in 2020 that there is “no path to net zero without nuclear.”

However, underlying both the scenarios and O’Regan’s contention is wishful thinking about the economics of nuclear energy, and how fast nuclear power can be scaled up.

The new nuclear capacity the report envisions consists of so-called small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which have so far not been built in Canada. Aside from refurbishing existing CANDU reactors, the CER does not think any more standard sized nuclear reactors will be built in Canada. Most of this buildup is to happen between 2035-2050, meaning that nuclear power will not help meet the government’s stated goal of decarbonizing the electricity grid by 2035.

But can SMRs be built rapidly after 2035? Only two Crown companies in the business of generating electricity for the grid have proposed to build SMRs: NB Power in New Brunswick, and Ontario Power Generation (OPG).

The reactor designs proposed for New Brunswick are cooled by molten salts and liquid sodium metal. Despite decades of development work and billions of dollars invested, major technical challenges have prevented molten salt reactors and sodium-cooled reactors from commercial viability, making it highly unlikely that the New Brunswick designs can be rapidly deployed in the time frame envisioned by the CER.

Assuming that OPG’s chosen design—the 300-megawatt BWRX-300—is the one to be deployed widely, then around 70 SMR units would need to be built and operating effectively on the grid between 2030-2050. The BWRX-300 design is yet to be approved by any safety regulator anywhere in the world.

But the report has an even more serious problem: economics. Nuclear power cannot compete economically, which is why its share of global electricity generation has declined from 17.5 per cent in 1996 to 9.2 per cent in 2022. Because SMRs lose out on economies of scale, they will produce even more expensive electricity.

The CER’s scenarios for nuclear power are based on the Electricity Supply Model, meant to calculate “the most efficient and cost-effective way to meet electricity demand in each region.” Such models are widely used in energy analysis and policymaking, but their utility depends on the validity of the assumptions used; garbage in, garbage out.

Two key parameters underlie the report’s scenarios: the capital cost of an SMR, and how that cost evolves with time. The CER’s assumptions in the two net-zero scenarios are that a SMR costs $9,262 per kilowatt in 2020, falling to $8,348 per kW by 2030, and to $6,519 per kW by 2050. Both these assumptions are ridiculously out of touch with the real world.

Consider the CAREM-25 SMR designed to feed 25 megawatts of electricity into the grid, being built in Argentina since 2014. Its original cost estimate in 2014 of US$446-million has escalated significantly since then, but even using these original costs, the project costs nearly $30,000 per kilowatt in 2022 Canadian dollars.

The NuScale design, arguably the closest to deployment in the United States, has been in development since 2007 with the build not yet begun. The January 2023 cost estimate for six NuScale SMRs with a total capacity of 462 megawatts is $9.3-billion, or over $26,000 per kilowatt in Canadian dollars.

Finally, the cost of the five-megawatt Micro Modular Reactor Project at Chalk River, Ont., was estimated by the proponent in May 2020 to be between $100- and $200-million. In 2022’s Canadian dollars, that works out to $22,000 to $44,000 per kilowatt.

In other words, the CER’s cost assumptions are wild underestimates, two-and-a-half to four times lower than the current evidence.

The second incorrect assumption is that costs will decrease with time. Both in the United States and France, the countries with the highest number of nuclear plants, the trend was the opposite: costs went up—not down—as more reactors were built. In both countries, the estimated construction cost of the most recent reactors being built—Vogtle in the United States and Flamanville-3 in France—have broken new records.

We need government organizations to do better. The climate problem is too serious for such unrealistic modelling exercises. Wishful thinking will only thwart our ability to act meaningfully to lower emissions rapidly.

M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and primary investigator of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B.

July 7, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Reference, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 2 Comments

Minireactor cost surge threatens nuclear’s next big thing

Japan Times, BY JONATHAN TIRONE, BLOOMBERG, 3 July 23

High inflation and rising interest rates are driving up the cost of a new generation of miniature atomic reactors that the nuclear industry is relying on to lift sales and help meet climate targets.

Nuclear-company executives and regulators met this week at the International Atomic Energy Agency to negotiate potential manufacturing and technology standards, a key step the industry needs to take in order to make prices competitive with other emissions-free energy sources. There are currently more than 80 unique small modular reactor, or SMR, designs under development, resulting in sprawling supply chains and caps on scaling up production.

“With higher interest rates to deal with and inflation pushing up the cost of steel, copper wire and just about everything else that goes into building an SMR, we know that even the most promising projects are having to tell their investors and buyers that prices have risen substantially,” IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said at the meeting in Vienna. “Avoiding, or at least mitigating, cost rises and delays is now even more crucial.”

……………………. Nuclear energy costs in the U.S. currently level out to an average of $373 a megawatt hour, according to the latest estimates by BloombergNEF. That’s significantly higher than solar or onshore wind at $60 and $50 a megawatt hour, respectively.

Enter companies like NuScale Power Corp., the first U.S. SMR developer with a licensed design, and which wants to begin generating at the end of the decade. NuScale originally foresaw average generation costs of $55 a megawatt hour in 2016, which was slightly lifted to $58 five years later.

But new estimates show costs surged to almost $120 a megawatt hour this year, according to company data analyzed by the Institute for Energy Economics. Skyrocketing prices of commodities including steel, carbon fiber and copper drove the increase, according to the report. NuScale’s stock has tumbled a third a third this year.

…………………………….. The IAEA’s Grossi chided delegates that they need to work together to develop industry standards, lest they contribute to the industry’s “reputation of unfulfilled promises.”……… https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/07/03/business/mini-nuclear-reactor-cost-surge/—

July 5, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is already billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule. Not even its leaders can say how much more money and time it will take to complete

Scientific American Charles Seife on June 15, 2023

“……………………………….. ITER is on the verge of a record-setting disaster as accumulated schedule slips and budget overruns threaten to make it the most delayed—and most cost-inflated—science project in history.

………………. Since the 1950s fusion machines have grown bigger and more powerful, but none has ever gotten anywhere near what would be needed to put this panacea energy source on the electric grid. ITER is the biggest, most powerful fusion device ever devised, and its designers have intended it to be the machine that will finally show that fusion power plants can really be built.

Documents recently obtained via a lawsuit, however, imply that these figures are woefully outdated: ITER is not just facing several years’ worth of additional delays but also a growing internal recognition that the project’s remaining technical challenges are poised to send budgets spiraling even further out of control and successful operation ever further into the future.

Yet no one within the ITER Organization has been able to provide estimates of the additional delays, much less the extra expenses expected to result from them. Nor has anyone at the U.S. Department of Energy, which is in charge of the nation’s contributions to ITER, been able to do so. When contacted for this story, DOE officials did not respond to any questions by the time of publication.

ITER leaders seldom let slip that anything was awry either…………………………………………………………….

In response to this stonewalling, earlier this year I initiated a lawsuit under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act seeking to reveal the extent of ITER’s expected schedule and cost troubles. So far, the lawsuit has been partially successful. It has extracted partially redacted documents revealing that in November 2021 ITER’s internal estimates showed the project already facing about 17 months of delays. By the time of the June 2022 ITER Council meeting, the number had doubled to roughly 35 months of delays—enough to easily add billions of dollars to ITER’s already bloated budget. But this timeline didn’t reflect other events bound to introduce even more delays……………………………………………….

With each passing decade, this record-breaking monument to big international science looks less and less like a cathedral—and more like a mausoleum. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-fusion-project-is-in-big-trouble-new-documents-reveal/

July 4, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, technology | Leave a comment

Even the science engineering big-wigs don’t seem too enthusiastic about nuclear fusion

Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Decades of research are still needed before fusion can be used as clean energy, The Conversation June 28, 2023, Kristen Schell Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Carleton University. Ahmed AbdullaAssistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Carleton University

“…………………………………………….. The efficiency of a potential fusion energy power plant remains to be seen. The reported fusion net gain actually required about 300 megajoules of energy input, which was not included in the energy gain calculation. This energy input, needed to power 192 lasers, came from the electric power grid.

In other words, the experiment used as much energy as the typical Canadian household does in two days. In doing so, the fusion reaction output enough energy to light just 14 incandescent bulbs for an hour.

The same is true of nuclear fission, which is the reaction inside current nuclear power plants. The complete fission of one kilogram of Uranium-235 — the fissile component of nuclear fuel — can generate about 77 terajoules. But we cannot convert all of that energy into useful forms like heat and electric power.

Instead, we have to engineer a complex system that can control the nuclear fission chain reaction and convert the generated energy into more useful forms.

This is what nuclear power plants do — they harness the heat generated during nuclear fission reactions to make steam. This steam drives a turbine connected to an electric power generator, which produces electricity. The overall efficiency of the cycle is less than 40 per cent.

In addition, not all of the uranium in the fuel is burned. Used fuel still contains about 96 per cent of its total uranium, and about a fifth of its fissile Uranium-235 content.

Increasing the amount of uranium spent in our current fleet is possible — it’s an ongoing sphere of work — but it poses enormous engineering challenges. The huge energy potential of nuclear fuel is currently mitigated by the engineering challenges of converting that energy into a useful form.

From science to engineering

Until recently, fusion has been seen primarily as a scientific experiment, not as an engineering challenge. This is rapidly changing and regulators are now investigating how deployment might unfold in the real world.

Regardless of the efficiency of a future fusion power plant, taking energy conversions from basic science to the real world will require overcoming a multitude of challenges………………….

The science of fusion energy, as with nuclear fission, is rooted in efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Notably, several nuclear physicists who helped develop the nuclear bomb wanted to “prove that this discovery was not just a weapon.”

The early history of nuclear power was one of optimism — of declarations the technology would advance and be able to meet our need for ever-increasing amounts of energy. Eventually, fusion power would come along and electricity would become “too cheap to meter.”

Lessons learned

What have we learned over the past 70 years since the onset of nuclear power? First, we’ve learned about the potentially devastating risk of technology lock-in, which occurs when an industry becomes dependent on a specific product or system.

Today’s light-water fission reactors — reactors that use normal water as opposed to water enriched with a hydrogen isotope — are an example of this. They were not chosen because they were the most desirable, but for other reasons.

These factors include government subsidies that favoured these designs; the U.S. Navy’s interest in developing smaller-scale pressurized water reactors for submarines and surface warships; advances in uranium enrichment technology as a result of the U.S. nuclear weapons program; uncertainties regarding nuclear costs that led to the assumption that large light-water reactors are simply scaled-up versions of smaller ones; and conservatism regarding design choices given the high costs and risks associated with nuclear power development.

We have been struggling to move to other technologies ever since……………………………………………

Large infrastructure projects are extremely complex systems that rely on enormous work forces and co-ordination. They can be managed, but they usually go over-budget and fall behind schedule. Modular technologies exhibit better affordability, cost control and economies, but micro and small nuclear reactors will also be economically challenged.

……………………………………………….. Fusion reactors generate large amounts of waste, though not the same kind fission does.

………………………………………..Billions of dollars are needed to advance nuclear fission technology, and we have far more experience with fission than with fusion. An appetite for funding must be demonstrated by governments, electric utility companies and entrepreneurs……………….. https://theconversation.com/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-decades-of-research-are-still-needed-before-fusion-can-be-used-as-clean-energy-196758

July 3, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology | Leave a comment

Watchdog group has concerns over nuclear micro-reactor plans

Monday, June 26th 2023, By Nestor Licanto, https://www.kuam.com/story/49121972/watchdog-group-has-concerns-over-nuclear-microreactor-plans

U.S. defense department proposal to use a nuclear micro-reactor as a power backup for the planned missile defense system on Guam is now being considered by Congress.

But a local watchdog group is sounding the alarm over the danger of the largely untested technology.

Leland Bettis of the local think tank and research group, pacific center for island security has been tracking the missile defense system plans for Guam and the potential for a nuclear micro-reactor.

“That’s not been disclosed by the MDA yet but we’ve sorta been tracking this. I think what really drew our attention was over the weekend the Senate Armed Services Committee’s executive summary, their NDAA language includes this piece which asks for a briefing for the Senate about the possibility of placing microreactors in Guam. 109

Bettis acknowledges that nuclear power has proven to be safe, and can provide huge cost savings even for private commercial use. [??]

But he believes a red line is crossed if they become targets in a combat situation.

“Just imagine if these reactors are a principal source of power for some of the measures, and counter-measures that the military is operating they’re certainly gonna be a target,” Bettis said. “That means that the environmental impact is not just about how does the nuclear reactor perform in producing power but how might a micro nuclear reactor perform if it’s targeted and hit.”

An article last year in the “Military Times” mentions Guam as a potential site for the mobile nuclear equipment.

It describes a 40-ton reactor that can fit into three to four 20-foot containers and can provide up to 5 megawatts of power.

The army has been considering the use of mobile nuclear power for years in a program called project pele, ironically named after the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes.

The benefits as a power source in remote, austere locations is clear, but there are drawbacks in battle situations.

If however that reactor is struck during conflict all the troops that are around that will be affected. So I think the concerns that they had about the use of these particular power devices for military people is magnified ten-fold when you think about the possibility that these might be placed in proximity to a civilian community.

And the military has confirmed that the planned 360-degree missile defense system could have as many as twenty different sites scatttered across the island.

Bettis says we need to know now more than ever, what’s going into each of these sites.

The people that I’ve talked to talk about a micro nuclear reactor and say if it hits you need a set-aside that’s at least a mile. That’s gonna be a very different sort of thing then if you had command and control module in your neighborhood, so I think as a community we need better transparency about what is being planned at all these locations.

June 26, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | OCEANIA, safety, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 1 Comment

Nuclear-based fantasies are holding back real climate action

SMR Education Task Force, June 22, 2023, https://crednb.ca/2023/06/22/nuclear-based-fantasies-are-holding-back-real-climate-action/—

Today a network of groups across Canada announces the launch of the SMR Education Task Force to share under-reported facts about small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) with members of Parliament and provincial legislatures.

We begin with the latest report from Canada Energy Regulator (CER). This federal document, called Canada’s Energy Future, projects that enough new nuclear reactors (SMRs) will be operational by 2050 to more than double Canada’s existing nuclear electricity generation.

Canada currently has 19 operating power reactors, built over 58 years. The new report claims that we will build more than 50 new reactors in much less time.

This fantasy has no basis in reality. It is inconsistent with independent analyses by energy researchers not tied to the nuclear industry. One such study in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists makes it clear that SMRs have at best a marginal role to play in a truly effective climate action plan. SMRs fail the tests of timeliness and affordability – they take too long and cost too much.

In addition to Ontario and Alberta, the CER report imagines deploying SMRs in Quebec and British Columbia. This is news to citizens in those provinces. BC ratepayers have rejected nuclear power in the past, and Quebec phased out of nuclear power in 2012. With every reactor comes long-lived radioactive waste — including the structure itself, which is a provincial responsibility to safeguard for thousands of years after shutdown.

Yesterday, the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB) sent a letter to Canada’s Natural Resources Minister reminding him that more than 120 civil society, public interest, faith-based and Indigenous groups across Canada have signed a statement warning that SMRs are a dirty, dangerous distraction from urgent climate action.

These groups understand that responding to the climate emergency does not require gambling on untested nuclear reactors. They know that energy efficiency measures and renewable sources cost at least 3 to 7 times less than nuclear power per tonne of carbon emissions avoided.

The groups oppose using public funds earmarked for climate action to support the nuclear industry’s eager experimentation with novel reactor designs. We are challenging the government to release the research and data that support its nuclear-based strategy.

Nuclear promoters, with long-standing allies embedded in the federal and provincial governments, are making unsubstantiated promises about SMRs in an audacious attempt to grab as much public funding as possible to keep their dying industry alive.

Worldwide, nuclear’s share of global electricity has dropped over the last 25 years from 17% to less than 10%. The International Energy Agency forecasts that more than 90% of all new electricity installations worldwide over the next 5 years will be non-hydro renewables.

The industry’s money-grab will succeed only if our public representatives remain uninformed about the facts. That is why we are pleased to announce the SMR Education Task Force and look forward in the months ahead to share information about SMRs based on independent science and research.

June 25, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, climate change, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 1 Comment

Nuclear Fusion: A Clean Energy Revolution Or A Radioactive Nightmare?

By Kurt Cobb – Jun 20, 2023, Oil Price

Fusion reactors, while producing energy, also produce neutron streams that can cause radiation damage, produce radioactive waste, necessitate biological shielding, and even create the potential for weapons-grade plutonium production.

Apart from the aforementioned problems, fusion reactors face issues such as tritium release, intensive coolant demands, and high operating costs, which would require the power plant to have at least a one-gigawatt capacity to balance costs.

Given the time and resources required for fusion power plant construction, the technology might not be feasible for timely carbon emission reduction, and the prospect of fusion energy might be distracting society from immediate solutions to energy scarcity and climate change.

……………………

The reality of fusion power, however, is one of huge scale and vast obstacles according to Daniel Jassby, a former research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (All of what follows assumes that the remaining obstacles to producing net energy from fusion will be overcome. Addressing that issue would require a seperate and lengthy essay.)

Perhaps the most unexpected revelation Jassby offers runs entirely contrary to the clean image that fusion energy has in the public mind. It turns out that the most feasible designs for fusion reactors will generate large amounts of radioactivity and radioactive waste.

[here much detail on the operation of nuclear fusion]………………………………………………………………………..

To power the enormously energy-intensive process of fusion, a fusion plant will use a lot of energy just to run itself. That means scale will matter. In order to accommodate this so-called parasitic power drain AND produce enough excess electricity to sell to pay for the costs of constructing the plant and for its ongoing operation, fusion plants will have to have a capacity of at least one gigawatt (one billion watts). One gigawatt can supply electricity to 300,000 to 750,000 homes depending on how the calculation is done. And, even much larger capacity per plant will be desirable because it will decrease the percentage of power production devoted to sustaining the fusion reaction and servicing the plant infrastructure. In short, making fusion plants big will be the only way to make them economical. So much for my friend’s fantasy of handheld fusion power units!

In a second article, Jassby addresses the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) located in France. The project is a cooperative research venture designed to study and perfect fusion. It will not produce any electricity itself, but rather set the stage for so-called demonstration plants which could be built in the second half of this century.

……………………..

just to operate its experiments, ITER will require 600 megawatts of power, a window into the parasitic power requirements of fusion reactors.

The fantasy of cheap, unlimited fusion power arriving soon with no serious side-effects prevents us as a society from grappling with near-term energy depletion and our ongoing dependence on fossil fuels in the accelerated manner required to prevent a major energy crisis. Hope that fusion energy will somehow solve our energy and climate problems is not a real plan. It is just another illusory and far-in-the-future technical fix offered to convince us that we don’t need to alter our way of life in any substantial way to address the serious problems we face. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Nuclear-Fusion-A-Clean-Energy-Revolution-Or-A-Radioactive-Nightmare.html

June 23, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, technology | Leave a comment

Chinese astronauts install radiation-exposure experiment outside Tiangong space station

By Andrew Jones, 21 June 23, https://www.space.com/astronauts-install-radiation-experiment-china-tiangong-space-station

China plans to conduct radiation experiments on plant seeds, microorganisms and small animals.

China is running a biological radiation exposure experiment outside its space station.

The country’s Shenzhou 16 astronauts — Jing Haipeng, Zhu Yangzhu and Gui Haichao — installed the experiment outside the Tiangong space station‘s Mengtian science module on June 10, China’s National Space Science Center (NSSC) announced in a statement.

The experiment was deployed using Mentian’s dedicated payload airlock and attached to an external payload adapter using the space station’s small robotic arm.

The experiment payload contains 13 sample box units loaded with biomaterials. These are designed to study the impact of cosmic radiation and microgravity on organisms, the origin and evolution of life and the development of space radiation mutagenic resources.

The equipment can be used for in-orbit experiments on biological samples, including plant seeds, microorganisms and small animals, according to NSSC. The temperature inside each sample container unit can be adjusted to suit the organisms it is hosting.

On-orbit medical research involving space radiation biological exposure is of great significance to supporting China’s human spaceflight program. That program is ambitious, with plans to launch long-term crewed missions in Earth orbit and send people to the surface of the moon, the Chinese-language outlet Science and Technology Daily reported.

The experiment payload was developed jointly by the NSSC and Dalian Maritime University. It is intended to operate for five years and is planned to be used for several scientific projects.

The Shenzhou 16 crew arrived at Tiangong on May 30 and will remain aboard the space station until November.

June 22, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, radiation, space travel | Leave a comment

World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal

The ITER project formally began in 2006, when its international partners agreed to fund an estimated €5 billion (then $6.3 billion), 10-year plan that would have seen ITER come online in 2016. The most recent official cost estimate stands at more than €20 billion ($22 billion), with ITER nominally turning on scarcely two years from now. Documents recently obtained via a lawsuit, however, imply that these figures are woefully outdated: ITER is not just facing several years’ worth of additional delays but also a growing internal recognition that the project’s remaining technical challenges are poised to send budgets spiraling even further out of control and successful operation ever further into the future.

With each passing decade, this record-breaking monument to big international science looks less and less like a cathedral—and more like a mausoleum.

By Charles Seife on June 15, 2023. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-fusion-project-is-in-big-trouble-new-documents-reveal/?fbclid=IwAR3siLk4iSD43-SE6sBStfYeTIl9YNeZ5QcLz27JgQwMd85DcYV7kUmciw8

It could be a new world record, although no one involved wants to talk about it. In the south of France, a collaboration among 35 countries has been birthing one of the largest and most ambitious scientific experiments ever conceived: the giant fusion power machine known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

But the only record ITER seems certain to set doesn’t involve “burning” plasma at temperatures 10 times higher than that of the sun’s core, keeping this “artificial star” ablaze and generating net energy for seconds at a time or any of fusion energy’s other spectacular and myriad prerequisites. Instead ITER is on the verge of a record-setting disaster as accumulated schedule slips and budget overruns threaten to make it the most delayed—and most cost-inflated—science project in history.

ITER is supposed to help humanity achieve the dream of a world powered not by fossil fuels but by fusion energy, the same process that makes the stars shine. Conceived in the mid-1980s, the machine, when completed, will essentially be a giant, high-tech, doughnut-shaped vessel—known as a tokamak—that will contain hydrogen raised to such high temperatures that it will become ionized, forming a plasma rather than a gas. Powerful magnetic and electric fields flowing from and through the tokamak will girdle and heat the plasma cloud so that the atoms inside will collide and fuse together, releasing immense amounts of energy. But this feat is easier said than done.

Since the 1950s fusion machines have grown bigger and more powerful, but none has ever gotten anywhere near what would be needed to put this panacea energy source on the electric grid. ITER is the biggest, most powerful fusion device ever devised, and its designers have intended it to be the machine that will finally show that fusion power plants can really be built.

The documents, drafted a year ago for a private meeting of the ITER Council, ITER’s governing body, show that at the time, the project was bracing for a three-year delay—a doubling of internal estimates prepared just six months earlier. And in the year since those documents were written, the already grim news out of ITER has unfortunately only gotten worse. Yet no one within the ITER Organization has been able to provide estimates of the additional delays, much less the extra expenses expected to result from them. Nor has anyone at the U.S. Department of Energy, which is in charge of the nation’s contributions to ITER, been able to do so. When contacted for this story, DOE officials did not respond to any questions by the time of publication.

The problems leading to these latest projected delays were several years in the making. The ITER Organization was extremely slow to let on that anything was wrong, however. As late as early July 2022, ITER’s website announced that the machine was expected to turn on as scheduled in December 2025. Afterward that date bore an asterisk clarifying that it would be revised. Now the date has disappeared from the website altogether. ITER leaders seldom let slip that anything was awry either. In February 2017 ITER’s then director general, the late Bernard Bigot, discussed its progress with DOE representatives. “ITER is really moving forward,” he said. “We are working day and night…. The progress is on schedule.” The timeline he presented implied that everything was on track. Construction of the ITER complex’s foundation, which incorporates an earthquake protection system with hundreds of tremor-dampening rubber- and metal-laminated plates, should have been almost complete. From there, assembly of the reactor itself was planned to begin in 2018. At the time of Bigot’s remarks, two of its major pieces—a massive magnetic coil to wrap around the doughnutlike tokamak and a large section of the vacuum vessel that makes up the tokamak’s walls—were supposed to be ready to ship within the month and by the end of the year, respectively. Instead the coil would take almost three more years to complete, as would the vessel sector. The pieces were completed in January and April 2020, respectively. In fact, a large proportion of the big components of the machine were behind schedule by a year or two years or even more. Soon ITER’s official start of assembly was bumped from 2018 to 2020.

Then, in early 2020, the COVID pandemic struck, slowing manufacturing and shipping of machine components.

Continue reading →

June 21, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, Reference, technology | Leave a comment

USSR Sprinkled More Than 2,500 Nuclear Generators Across The Countryside

Hundreds of these tiny atomic terrors are still unaccounted for in the rugged landscape of the former Soviet Union.

By Erin Marquis, 16 June 23, https://jalopnik.com/ussr-sprinkled-more-than-2-500-nuclear-generators-acros-1850501190

Ah, the USSR. It was a strange place with strange ideas. Ideas such as planting unprotected mini nuclear power sources into inhospitable and hard-to-reach areas. I mean, nothing should go wrong as long as the government always exists to maintain them, right?

Welcome to the world of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators or RTGs. It’s a piece of nuclear history I only recently learned about and thought I should bring this whole new horror to your attention as well. These things are just kind of rolling around famously stable Russia, and it seems like it should be a cause for concern.

RTGs are not nuclear reactors, nor are they “nuclear batteries.” Rather they work by converting the heat caused by radioactive decay into electricity. Due to the dangerous nature of the materials used however, countries like America only use RTGs in applications such as space exploration. Voyager, Cassini and New Horizons uses RTGs for power, as do the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity. These probes however, use expensive plutonium-238 as their power sources and we launch them far the hell away from us.

The USSR though? Nah. It’s going to use super cheap, super radioactive Strontium-90 instead, though later, smaller RTGs used equally cheap Caesium-137 or Cerium-144. These three isotopes all have one thing in common; they’re all the products of spent nuclear fission. In other words, waste. The terrestrial Beta-M RTG is about 1.5 meters wide and 1.5 meters tall and weight about one metric ton, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The entire unit put out about between 1 and 1000 watts (quite the spread) and had a working life of 10 to 20 years.

Originally built by the USSR’s Navy to power lighthouses and radio navigation beacons along Russia’s expansive arctic coastline, the RTGs provided power hundreds or even thousands of miles from civilization, occasionally completely unprotected and always unsupervised. They were occasionally secured by metal frames or sheds, but sometimes these lighthouses and radio beacons were set up on little more than rough structures hastily constructed out of nearby timber with the RTG stuck outside to face the harsh arctic elements. While the USSR provided regular rolling patrols to maintain the RTGs, that came to a screeching halt in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell. After that, there was no money to maintain the hard-to-reach RTGs, and they became victims of neglect and metal thieves.

After it proved useful for the Navy, the Soviets put the RTGs into service in other rough terrains. That’s how several ended up in the mountains of the former Soviet state of Georgia. Three residents from the village of Lia, Georgia, found a canister high up in the mountains. Since this strange material gave off heat, the three used it to stay warm overnight, but they woke up vomiting and dizzy. A week later, a military hospital diagnosed the three with radiation sickness. Two of the men would make it out with the help of dozens of skin grafts and months in the hospital. But the man who slept closest to the radioisotope source and handled it the most could not be saved.

Their arrival at the hospital launched a mad scramble from the international atomic community to find the orphan source of radiation. Footage of the clean-up crew both training for retrieval and actually snaring the Strontium-90 core shows just how dangerous RTGs are:

That wasn’t the only incident involving RTGs however. In 2001, scrappers broke into a lighthouse on Kandalashka Bay and stole three radioisotope sources (all three were recovered and sent to Moscow). Three men in the mountains of Georgia were also exposed in 2002 after stumbling upon cores left out in the woods. In 2003, scrappers hurled a core into the Baltic Sea, where a team of experts retrieved it.

June 18, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Russia, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, wastes | 1 Comment

A.I. or Nuclear Weapons: Can You Tell These Quotes Apart?

Many experts on artificial intelligence are warning of its potential dangers and calling for regulation, just as others once did with the atomic bomb.

NYT.By Ian Prasad Philbrick and Tom Wright-Piersanti. June 10, 2023

The comparison seems to be everywhere these days. “It’s like nuclear weapons,” a pioneering artificial intelligence researcher has said. Top A.I. executives have likened their product to nuclear energy. And a group of industry leaders warned last week that A.I. technology could pose an existential threat to humanity, on par with nuclear war.

People have been analogizing A.I. advances to splitting the atom for years. But the comparison has become more stark amid the release of A.I. chatbots and A.I. creators’ calls for national and international regulation — much as scientists called for guardrails governing nuclear arms in the 1950s. Some experts worry that A.I. will eliminate jobs or spread disinformation in the short term; others fear hyper-intelligent systems could eventually learn to write their own computer code, slip the bonds of human control and, perhaps, decide to wipe us out. “The creators of this technology are telling us they are worried,” said Rachel Bronson, the president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which tracks man-made threats to civilization. “The creators of this technology are asking for governance and regulation. The creators of this technology are telling us we need to pay attention.”…………………………………more https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/upshot/artificial-intelligence-nuclear-weapons-quiz.html

June 14, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, technology | Leave a comment

Nuclear-Powered Cargo Ships Are Trying to Stage a Comeback

Faced with the difficult task of decarbonizing, some shipping companies are taking another look at a polarizing solution—nuclear fission.

Wired, CHRIS BARANIUK, JUN 9, 2023

“………………………………………..Eisenhower agreed to authorize a nuclear-powered merchant ship that would carry both cargo and passengers. As well as goodwill, naturally.

The nuclear ship Savannah, capable of hauling 14,000 tons of cargo, entered service in 1962. Its reactor was encased behind 4 feet of concrete, as well as thick layers of steel and lead. In the glitzy passenger lounge stood an 8-foot-long table topped with white marble—and an early CCTV system so passengers could keep an eye on the reactor while sipping martinis.

…………….. heed this cautionary tale of nuclear hubris. The NS Savannah was a failure. During its first year at sea, the ship dumped 115,000 gallons of radioactive waste into the ocean. It had inadequate cranes and poorly designed cargo hatches. Egregiously expensive to run, the vessel carried passengers for a mere three years, and cargo alone for another five, before retiring.

Other countries also tried—and struggled—to make nuclear merchant ships work during the 20th century. West Germany’s demonstration nuclear cargo ship, the Otto Hahn, was refused entry to some ports and the Suez Canal on safety grounds. The Mutsu, a Japanese vessel, suffered a minor failure in its reactor’s radiation shielding in 1974, causing outcry. Indignant fishers blocked the ship’s return to port for several weeks.

As of 2023, there is only one active nuclear-powered merchant ship in the world, the Russian-built container-carrying NS Sevmorput. It is tiny compared to most fossil-fuel-powered container ships and has been plagued by breakdowns.

…………………………In February, a gaggle of organizations based in South Korea, including those behind multiple shipping lines, signed a memorandum of understanding. The group aims to develop nuclear-powered merchant ships equipped with small modular reactors. But they won’t say much else about the project.

“We believe it is too early to mention details on the tangible results of this partnership,” Hojoon Lee, a spokesperson for HMM, one of the shipping lines involved, tells WIRED. “We still have a long way to go to achieve the commercial viability of nuclear energy sources.”

There is another project afoot, in Norway, called NuProShip (Nuclear Propulsion of Merchant Ships). The team behind it has come up with a short list of six possible reactor designs that could work in a demonstrator vessel, says project manager Jan Emblemsvåg of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “The progress is quite OK,” he adds, via email. He and colleagues plan to convert a liquefied natural gas tanker called the Cadiz Knutsen to run on nuclear power.

Both the South Korean and Norwegian efforts are considering molten salt reactors. Instead of solid fuel rods, the nuclear fuel in these devices is dissolved into, for example, molten fluoride salts. Such reactors first operated in the 1960s and are nothing new, but technical issues, including corrosion occurring inside the reactors, have hampered their widespread rollout. Despite concerns from some over the viability of this technology, multiple countries are pursuing it.

………………………………………. while there are lots of nuclear reactors operating at sea right now, they tend to be on vessels with some of the highest security in the world. Commercial ships are occasionally subject to piracy and accidents, including large fires and explosions—the thought of adding nuclear fuel to such scenarios is unlikely to be met with enthusiasm.

The task of switching to a world in which nuclear-powered vessels are commonly welcomed at commercial ports is “not trivial,” says Stephen Turnock, professor of maritime fluid dynamics at the University of Southampton. “You have to have protocols in place to say what would happen in the event of an emergency associated with a nuclear-powered vessel,” he explains.

Simon Bullock, a shipping researcher at the University of Manchester, says that there is not enough of a regulatory framework to define how nuclear ships would operate globally in the commercial sector, including detail on who would bear responsibility for any mishaps. Would it be the ship owner, the ship operator, the manufacturer of the nuclear reactor, or the country where the ship is registered, known as the flag state? There are six “decade-long problems” of this kind regarding nuclear vessels that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and other agencies would have to sort out if nuclear-powered commercial ships were ever to become widespread, he says……………………….

The crews on nuclear ships would also require special training and expertise, which raises the cost of running such vessels. Is it worth dealing with all these challenges, given the need to decarbonize right now? Probably not, says Bullock. “The critical thing here is the next 10 years,” he says, referring to the urgency of tackling emissions and climate change right now. “Nuclear can do nothing about that.”

Even the Norwegian NuProShip project won’t convert its first demonstrator ship until at least 2035. Meanwhile, there are other low- or zero-emissions fuels already being deployed in vessels—from methanol to ammonia, electric batteries, and hydrogen. None of these is perfect, and all will jostle for supremacy in the coming years. Nuclear, with its many complications, is “possibly a dangerous distraction” from the main horse race, says Bullock……………….. https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-cargo-ships/

June 11, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, technology | Leave a comment

Is nuclear fusion energy salvation?

the real reason for the race to fusion is actually to allow the stockpiling of nuclear weapons that are even more dreadful than present ones. Currently, a major difficulty in manufacturing nuclear bombs is “the need for highly enriched uranium or plutonium” to initiate the reaction. Research with nuclear fusion could provide an alternative path to accomplish the ignition.

Few know that “100 significant accidents happened in world’s nuclear power plants from mid-1950s to 2010.” The world’s press has given scant attention to how people were used as guinea pigs in testing sites such as the Marshall Islands.

mronline, By Don Fitz, Stan Cox ( Jun 07, 2023) Originally published: Dissident Voice on June 3, 2023

Like a third rate zombie movie on Netflix, delusions of nuclear fusion repeatedly rise from the dead. The cover story in the June 2023 issue of Scientific American by Philip Ball, “Star Power: Does Fusion Have a Future After All?” recycles the corporate line which was broadcast on December 13, 2022. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had reached a “breakthrough” in developing an alternative to fission.

As Joshua Frank described the hype over nuclear fusion …

“there’s no toxic mining involved, nor do thousands of gallons of cold water have to be pumped in to cool overheated reactors, nor will there be radioactive waste byproducts lasting hundreds of thousands of years. And not a risk of a nuclear meltdown in sight! Fusion, so the cheery news went, is safe, effective, and efficient!“

After six months of the announcement’s being debunked, the Scientific American article admitted some of the inherent faults with fusion, repeated some of the original misstatements, and went on with detailed descriptions of technical tweaks necessary to make the technology viable in the second half of the century. Unfortunately, most of those who criticized fusion missed one of its most serious dangers—that discovering a source of limitless cheap energy would doom humanity’s future rather than enhance it.

The Terror

In order to interpret the spin of the military-industrial-pseudo-scientific (MIPS) complex, we need to appreciate the primary obstacle to expanding nuclear power. MIPS must overcome the intense terror of nukes.

The terror began with images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Photos of burnt bodies are burned into the minds of their viewers. MIPS seeks to discount the images with the myth that Japan had to be nuked, even though it was ready to surrender. The mythology continued with the “Atoms for Peace” false pretense that there could be a disconnect between nuclear power and nuclear bombs.

A few decades went by and on March 28, 1979 Three-Mile Island melted down. A good part of its infamy stemmed from repeated government lies that the event was not so serious and would have few long-lasting effects. Americans would never be convinced that nukes would only be dangerous if the Soviets or Japanese built them.

Then there was Chernobyl on April 26, 1986. In 2009 the New York Academy of Science published a detailed analysis estimating the total death count to be around 900,000 and the MIPS spewed forth venomous claims that it was not actually so bad, but was merely the worst human-caused catastrophe in history.

This was followed on March 11, 2011 with the Fukushima Daiichi apocalypse when 3 of 6 nuclear reactors melted down, spreading radioactivity into the neighboring Pacific Ocean and poisoning unknown quantities of aquatic life. So, each generation from World War II through today, has memories of horrendous nuclear events which MIPS has been totally unsuccessful at erasing.

But credit should be given where it is due, and there is an area where MIPS has done quite well in its plugola efforts. Those efforts have been to keep everyday leakage of nuclear material and “smaller” catastrophes either out of or reduced to short paragraphs in the corporate press. Few know that “100 significant accidents happened in world’s nuclear power plants from mid-1950s to 2010.” The world’s press has given scant attention to how people were used as guinea pigs in testing sites such as the Marshall Islands. Souma Dutta notes such events:

… in the Soviet nuclear test sites of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, Novaya Zemlya and others, the French nuclear test sites of Reggane & Akker in Algeria and the Mururoa Atoll in the Pacific, the British test sites in the Australian territories of Monte Bello, Maralinga, Emu Field, and the Chinese test site of Lop Nur.

Denial Non-Stop

The Scientific American article lets us know which dangers of nuclear fusion that MIPS continues to deny six months after the NIF “breakthrough.” Despite a good amount of evidence to contrary, the article claims that nuclear fusion would (a) produce “near zero carbon emissions” but (b) “without creating the dangerous radioactive waste.”

……………………………Please remember that the goal of corporations is profit. That requires expanding production by increasing the amount of energy used to the maximum. If fusion were added to the energy mix, there would continue be little to no decrease in fossil fuel use.

Equally fallacious is the claim that nuclear fusion would not result in deadly waste. Essential for the fusion process is tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Its isotopes can permeate metals and pass through the tiniest spaces in enclosures. Since tritium can enter virtually any part of the human body, it can lead to a variety of cancers.

Nuclear fusion would be even more inefficient at water use than would fission reactors. Though not exactly a “waste product,” this wastage would seriously drain water supplies at a time when they are increasingly being exhausted.

Dirty Little Secrets Creep into the Open

Philip Ball’s article slyly admits the accuracy of several of the most frequent criticisms of the December 2022 “breakthrough” announcement. They appear as a hint to the MIPS complex that, in order to manufacture consent on the grandeur of nuclear fusion, its acolytes should modify some of their more outlandish claims if they are to be taken seriously.

First, nuclear fusion is far, far too expensive to provide energy “too cheap to meter” during upcoming decades. Not only is tritium (costing $30,000 per gram) necessary to start the initial reaction, reactors must be lined with expensive lithium. Equipment to make the tiny event happen is enormous, requiring space equal to three football fields. The complexity of the system requires twice as many employees—1000 for fusion vs. 500 for a fission reactor. This helps explain why original cost projections of $6.3 billion mushroomed to DOE’s current estimate of $65 billion.

Second, closely linked to cost is the contrast between the minuscule amount of electricity squeezed out with the use of 192 lasers in December 2022 and the gargantuan amount that would be needed to feed the grid. According to Brian Tokar, the Livermore blast lasted for one ten-billionth of a second. Nowhere close to powering a major city for a year, or a month or even an hour.

Third, the cost for such a frivolous amount of energy means that no one seriously suggests that fusion reactors will power homes in the foreseeable future. Many proponents now openly admit that claiming that the technology will be used to improve people’s lives is a hoax. Ball quotes an industry spokesperson bluntly stating that “There is not today a single project underway to build a fusion power plant that will produce energy.”

Fourth, the real reason for the race to fusion is actually to allow the stockpiling of nuclear weapons that are even more dreadful than present ones. Currently, a major difficulty in manufacturing nuclear bombs is “the need for highly enriched uranium or plutonium” to initiate the reaction. Research with nuclear fusion could provide an alternative path to accomplish the ignition.

Dr. M.V Ramana explains the search for “neutrons with the very short pulse widths characteristic of low-yield nuclear intercepts that can be used to establish lethal criteria for chemical/biological agents and nuclear warhead targets.” Thus, if experimentation with nuclear fusion were to be successful, it could further shorten the Doomsday Clock, increasing the probability of human annihilation.

To Dream the Impossible Dream

………………………………………….. quest for limitless energy is a journey into oblivion. To dream the impossible energy dream is to hallucinate the most hideous nightmare. Richard Heinberg warns of the dangers of ignoring limits, noting that if nuke fusion were to remove limits on energy production, corporations would expand production to endlessly deplete soil and destroy species habitat.

Searching for infinite energy other than fossil fuels would present dangers as ominous as nuclear war.

Christopher Ketcham summarizes:

mainstream environmentalists have siloed climate change as a phenomenon apart from the broad human ecological footprint, separate from deforestation, overgrazing of livestock, megafauna kill-off, collapsing fisheries, desertification, depleted freshwater, soil degradation, oceanic garbage gyres, toxification of rainfall with microplastics, and on and on–the myriad biospheric effects of breakneck growth.

The attitude that “nothing is as threatening as climate change” has lured many into the abyss of ignoring (or minimizing) the humongous dangers of “alternative” energy (AltE). Stan explains how AltE contributes to ongoing threats, writing that the total quantity of “human-made mass”—which is everything made by people—has now exceeded the “the total weight of all living plant, animal, and microbial biomass on Earth.” This material mass is doubling every 20 years, it contributing to the “breakdown of of entire ecosystems” as well as climate change………………………….

The good news is that it does not have to be like this. We now have the knowledge and ability to provide good lives for people throughout the world if we have the sense to distinguish what humanity needs vs. what corporations are greedy for.

Do we really need to build rocket ships to Mars? Is the quality of our lives improved by having products that fall apart sooner and sooner? Must there be a car for every adult on Earth instead of having communities where people get 80% of what they use by walking or cycling?

Are Americans really safer by having over 700 military bases and the ability to exterminate every human many times over. Don’s book on Cuban Health Care documents how that country’s medical system produces less infant mortality and a longer life expectancy than the U.S. while spending less than 10% of what the U.S. spends per person annually.

Contrary to widespread propaganda, humanity does not desperately need more energy. We desperately need to live better with less energy. https://mronline.org/2023/06/07/is-nuclear-fusion-energy-salvation/