nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

ROLLS ROYCE FALLS 3% ON QATARI INVESTMENT IN SMALL NUCLEAR BUSINESS

  https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/rolls-royce-falls-3-on-qatari-investment-in-small-nuclear-business/ 22 Dec 21,

  • Rolls Royce Holding PLC (LON: RR) has fallen 3% on news of the Qatari investment into the small nuclear reactor business
  • It may well not be the investment itself that is the catalyst for the price change but Omicron
  • The £85 million Qatar investment isn’t really a material number for Rolls Royce, even as it’s a vote of confidence in the programme.

Rolls Royce shares have continued their recent decline even as the news comes through of a Qatari investment in the small nuclear reactor programme. This could be seen as a surprise – investment in such a programme is likely to be a good deal for Rolls Royce after all. On the other hand, £85 million, the size of the investment, isn’t a large number compared to Rolls Royce – it’s not, as they say, a material number.

The likelihood is therefore that it is wider events driving the Rolls Royce share price, Omicron continues to rage around the world, air travel becomes increasingly restricted and so on. It’s worth pointing out that the RR incomes do not depend, particularly, on actually selling engines to people. There are fees involved in that, most certainly, but there’s an element of selling razors in how the business work. Once you’ve sold someone a razor then you’ve a capitve market for razor blades. Once you’ve got an engine in an aircraft then there’s a decades-long maintenance and repair income flow. That Rolls Royce income stream though depends upon hours in the air – exactly the thing being depressed by Omicron.   

Rolls Royce shares have continued their recent decline even as the news comes through of a Qatari investment in the small nuclear reactor programme. This could be seen as a surprise – investment in such a programme is likely to be a good deal for Rolls Royce after all. On the other hand, £85 million, the size of the investment, isn’t a large number compared to Rolls Royce – it’s not, as they say, a material number.

The likelihood is therefore that it is wider events driving the Rolls Royce share price, Omicron continues to rage around the world, air travel becomes increasingly restricted and so on. It’s worth pointing out that the RR incomes do not depend, particularly, on actually selling engines to people. There are fees involved in that, most certainly, but there’s an element of selling razors in how the business work. Once you’ve sold someone a razor then you’ve a capitve market for razor blades. Once you’ve got an engine in an aircraft then there’s a decades-long maintenance and repair income flow. That Rolls Royce income stream though depends upon hours in the air – exactly the thing being depressed by Omicron.  https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/rolls-royce-falls-3-on-qatari-investment-in-small-nuclear-business/

December 24, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Bill Gates’ sodium-cooled ‘Natrium’ nuclear reactor design – strikingly like the disastrous reactors at Santa Susana Field Lab.

Most striking of all is the success of official campaigns asserting that even the most serious accidents have caused little or no harm

Spent Fuel, Harpers, by Andrew Cockburn, 20 Dec 21, The risky resurgence of nuclear power  ” ………………………….  Gates and other backers extoll the promise of TerraPower’s Natrium reactors, which are cooled not by water, as commercial U.S. nuclear reactors are, but by liquid sodium. This material has a high boiling point, some 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, which in theory enables the reactor to run at extreme temperatures without the extraordinary pressures that, in turn, require huge, expensive structures……………….

Woolsey fire in 2019 spread radiological contamination from the Santa Susana site

Prosperous and 70 percent white, West Hills, California, is one of the communities that have sprouted near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the decades since the 1959 meltdown. Unlike the poor, sick, and embittered residents of Shell Bluff, people living in West Hills had until recently only the barest inkling that nuclear power in the neighborhood might have had unwelcome consequences. “Almost no one knew about the Santa Susanna Field Lab, or they thought it was an urban legend,” Melissa Bumstead, who grew up in nearby Thousand Oaks, told me recently. In 2014, Bumstead’s four-year-old daughter, Grace, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. “This has no environmental link,” her pediatric oncologist told her firmly. Childhood cancers were rare, and this was just cruel luck.

Then, while taking Grace to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Bumstead ran into a woman who recognized her from the local park where their young daughters played. The woman’s child had neuroblastoma, another rare cancer, as did another from nearby Simi Valley, whom they encountered while the children were getting chemo. Back at home, someone on her street noticed the childhood cancer awareness sticker on Bumstead’s car and mentioned that another neighbor had died of cancer as a teenager.

Bumstead began to draw a map detailing the cluster of cancer deaths in small children just in the previous six years, but stopped working on it in 2017. “I had such severe PTSD when I added children onto it, my therapist told me to stop.” But it is still happening, she said, mentioning the unusual number of bald children she had noticed in local elementary schools in recent years, as well as the far-above-average rate of breast cancer cases recorded in the area. A cleanup of the field lab was due to be completed in 2017, but it has yet to begin.

I called Bumstead because I had been struck by the fact thatTerraPower’s Natrium reactor resembles in its basic features the long-ago Sodium Reactor Experiment at Santa Susana. (Natrium is Latin for sodium.) “That’s exactly what we had!” Bumstead exclaimed when I mentioned that liquid sodium is integral to TerraPower’s project. “The meltdown was in the sodium reactor.” As her comment made clear, such liquid sodium technology is by no means innovative.

Nor, in an extensive history of experiments, has it ever proved popular—not least because liquid sodium explodes when it comes into contact with water, and burns when exposed to air. In addition, it is highly corrosive to metal, which is one reason the technology was rapidly abandoned by the U.S. Navy after a tryout in the Seawolf submarine in 1957.

That system “was leaking before it even left the dock on its first voyage,” recalls Foster Blair, a longtime senior engineer with the Navy’s reactor program. The Navy eventually encased the reactor in steel and dropped it into the sea 130 miles off the coast of Maryland, with the assurance that the container would not corrode while the contents were still radioactive. The main novelty of the Natrium reactor is a tank that stores molten salt, which can drive steam generators to produce extra power when demand surges. “Interesting idea,” Blair commented. “But from an engineering standpoint one that has some real potential problems, namely the corrosion of the high-temperature salt in just about any metal container over any period of time.”

TerraPower’s Jeff Navin assured me in response that Natrium “is designed to be a safe, cost-effective commercial reactor.” He added that Natrium’s use of uranium-based metal fuel would increase the reactor’s safety and performance. Blair told me that such a system had been tried and abandoned in the Fifties because the solid fuel swelled and grew after fissioning.

As the sodium saga indicates, the true history of nuclear energy is largely unknown to all but specialists, which is ironic given that it keeps repeating itself. The story of Santa Susana follows the same path as more famous disasters, most strikingly in the studious indifference of those in charge to signs of impending catastrophe.The operators at Santa Susana shrugged off evidence of problems with the cooling system for weeks prior to the meltdown, and even restarted the reactor after initial trouble. Soviet nuclear authorities covered up at least one accident at Chernobyl before the disaster and ignored warnings that the reactor was dangerously unsafe. The Fukushima plant’s designers didn’t account for the known risk of massive tsunamis, a vulnerability augmented by inadequate safety precautions that were overlooked by regulators. Automatic safety features at Santa Susana did not work. This was also the case at Fukushima, where vital backup generators were destroyed by the tidal wave.

No one knows exactly how much radiation was released by Santa Susana—it exceeded the scale of the monitors. Nor was there any precise accounting of the radioactivity released at Chernobyl. Fukushima emitted far less, yet the prime minister of Japan prepared plans to evacuate fifty million people, which would have meant, as he later recounted, the end of Japan as a functioning state. Another common thread is the attempt by overseers, both corporate and governmental, to conceal information from the public for as long as possible. Santa Susana holds the prize in this regard: its coverup was sustained for twenty years, until students at UCLA found the truth in Atomic Energy Commission documents.

Most striking of all is the success of official campaigns asserting that even the most serious accidents have caused little or no harm……………………

“The right not to know” about the effects of nuclear power is currently embraced far beyond Fukushima. In the face of escalating alarm about climate change, the siren song of “clean and affordable and reliable” power finds an audience eager to overlook a business model that is dependent on state support and often greased with corruption; failed experiments now hailed as “innovative”; a pattern of artful disinformation; and a trail of poison from accidents and leaks (not to mention the 95,000 tons of radioactive waste currently stored at reactor sites with nowhere to go) that will affect generations yet unborn. Arguments by proponents of renewables that wind, solar, and geothermal power can fill the gap on their own have found little traction with policymakers. Ignoring history, we may be condemned to repeat it. Bill Gates has bet a billion dollars on that.  https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/spent-fuel-the-risky-resurgence-of-nuclear-power/

December 21, 2021 Posted by | safety, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Small nuclear reactors for military use would be too dangerous – excellent targets for the enemy

In normal operation, they release potentially hazardous quantities of fission products that would be widely distributed by any penetration of the reactor vessel. More worryingly, the resiliency of tri-structural isotropic particles to kinetic impact is questionable: The silicon carbide coating around the fuel material is brittle and may fracture if impacted by munitions.

Further, graphite moderator material, which is used extensively in most mobile power plant cores, is vulnerable to oxidation when exposed to air or water at high temperatures, creating the possibility of a catastrophic graphite fire distributing radioactive ash. Even in the case of intact (non-leaking) fuel fragments being distributed by a strike, the radiological consequences for readiness and effectiveness are dire.

Given these vulnerabilities, sophisticated adversaries seeking to hinder U.S. forces are likely to realize the utility of the reactor as an area-denial target…….. , a reactor strike offers months of exclusion at the cost of only a few well-placed high-explosive warheads, a capability well within reach of even regional adversaries

Even an unsuccessful or minimally damaging attack on a reactor could offer an adversary significant benefits…………..placing these reactors in combat zones introduces nuclear reactors as valid military targets,

MOBILE NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS WON’T SOLVE THE ARMY’S ENERGY PROBLEMS, War on the Rocks, 14 Dec 21, JAKE HECLA  ”………… As China and Russia develop microreactors for propulsion, the U.S. Army is pursuing the ultimate in self-sufficient energy solutions: the capability to field mobile nuclear power plants. In this vision of a nuclearized future, the Army will replace diesel generator banks with microreactors the size of shipping containers for electricity production by the mid-2020s.

…….  the question is whether or not reactors can truly be made suitable for military use. Are they an energy panacea, or will they prove to be high-value targets capable of crippling entire bases with a single strike?

nuclear power program is confidently sprinting into uncharted territory in pursuit of a solution to its growing energy needs and has promised to put power on the grid within three years. However, the Army has not fielded a reactor since the 1960s and has made claims of safety and accident tolerance that contradict a half-century of nuclear industry experience.


The Army appears set to credulously accept industry claims of complete safety that are founded in wishful thinking and characterized by willful circumvention of basic design safety principles……….. 

Continue reading →

December 16, 2021 Posted by | Reference, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Buyer beware: NuScale tries a new way to get funding for its small nuclear reactor plan

An Oregon company is going public to raise money for nuclear power ambitions, OPD, 15 Dec 21, 

……………NuScale, headquartered in the Portland suburb of Tigard, will go public by merging with what’s known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The company, Spring Valley Acquisition Corporation, is already publicly traded. Such mergers have recently gained popularity on Wall Street by allowing private companies the option to go public without the costs or risks associated with the more conventional initial public offering, or IPO.

Other Oregon businesses like the vacation rental company Vacasa and battery manufacturer ESS Tech have also gone public by merging with so-called “blank check” companies. In each of those cases, some investors pulled out when news of the mergers dropped, leaving each company with less money than they’d initially hoped……………

December 16, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Dr Jim Green dissects the hype surrounding Small ”Modular” Nuclear Reactors

 Nuclear power’s economic failure, Ecologist, Dr Jim Green, 13th December 2021     Small modular reactors

Small modular reactors (SMRs) are heavily promoted but construction projects are few and far between and have exhibited disastrous cost overruns and multi-year delays.

It should be noted that none of the projects discussed below meet the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production of reactor components, which could potentially drive down costs.

Using that definition, no SMRs have ever been built and no country, company or utility is building the infrastructure for SMR construction.

In 2004, when the CAREM SMR in Argentina was in the planning stage, Argentina’s Bariloche Atomic Center estimated a cost of US$1 billion / GW for an integrated 300 MW plant (while acknowledging that to achieve such a cost would be a “very difficult task”).

Now, the cost estimate for the CAREM reactor is a mind-boggling US$23.4 billion / GW (US$750 million / 32 MW). That’s a truckload of money for a reactor with the capacity of two large wind turbines. The project is seven years behind schedule and costs will likely increase further.

Russia’s floating plant

Russia’s floating nuclear power plant (with two 35 MW reactors) is said to be the only operating SMR anywhere in the world (although it doesn’t fit the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production).

The construction cost increased six-fold from 6 billion rubles to 37 billion rubles (US$502 million).

According to the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, electricity produced by the Russian floating plant costs an estimated US$200 / MWh, with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure.

The cost of electricity produced by the Russian plant exceeds costs from large reactors (US$131-204) even though SMRs are being promoted as the solution to the exorbitant costs of large nuclear plants.

Climate solution?

SMRs are being promoted as important potential contributors to climate change abatement but the primary purpose of the Russian plant is to power fossil fuel mining operations in the Arctic.

A 2016 report said that the estimated construction cost of China’s demonstration 210 MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is about US$5 billion / GW, about twice the initial cost estimates, and that cost increases have arisen from higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and project delays.

The World Nuclear Association states that the cost is US$6 billion / GW.

Those figures are 2-3 times higher than the US$2 billion / GW estimate in a 2009 paper by Tsinghua University researchers.

China reportedly plans to upscale the HTGR design to 655 MW but the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology at Tsinghua University expects the cost of a 655 MW HTGR will be 15-20 percent higher than the cost of a conventional 600 MW pressurised water reactor.

HTGR plans dropped

NucNet reported in 2020 that China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp dropped plans to manufacture 20 HTGR units after levelised cost of electricity estimates rose to levels higher than a conventional pressurised water reactor such as China’s indigenous Hualong One.

Likewise, the World Nuclear Association states that plans for 18 additional HTGRs at the same site as the demonstration plant have been “dropped”.

In addition to the CAREM reactor in Argentina and the HTGR in China, the World Nuclear Association lists just two other SMR construction projects.

In July 2021, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) New Energy Corporation began construction of the 125 MW pressurised water reactor ACP100.

According to CNNC, construction costs per kilowatt will be twice the cost of large reactors, and the levelised cost of electricity will be 50 percent higher than large reactors.

Fast reactor

In June 2021, construction of the 300 MW demonstration lead-cooled BREST fast reactor began in Russia.

In 2012, the estimated cost for the reactor and associated facilities was 42 billion rubles; now, the estimate is 100 billion rubles (US$1.36 billion).

Much more could be said about the proliferation of SMRs in the ‘planning’ stage, and the accompanying hype.

For example a recent review asserts that more than 30 demonstrations of different ‘advanced’ reactor designs are in progress across the globe.

In fact, few have progressed beyond the planning stage, and few will. Private-sector funding has been scant and taxpayer funding has generally been well short of that required for SMR construction projects to proceed.

Subsidies

Large taxpayer subsidies might get some projects, such as the NuScale project in the US or the Rolls-Royce mid-sized reactor project in the UK, to the construction stage.

Or they may join the growing list of abandoned SMR projects:

* The French government abandoned the planned 100-200 MW ASTRID demonstration fast reactor in 2019.

* Babcock & Wilcox abandoned its Generation mPower SMR project in the US despite receiving government funding of US$111 million.

* Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D in 2018.

* MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs in Iowa in 2013 after failing to secure legislation that would require rate-payers to partially fund construction costs.

* TerraPower abandoned its plan for a prototype fast neutron reactor in China due to restrictions placed on nuclear trade with China by the Trump administration.

* The UK government abandoned consideration of ‘integral fast reactors’ for plutonium disposition in 2019 and the US government did the same in 2015.

Hype

So we have a history of failed small reactor projects.

And a handful of recent construction projects, most subject to major cost overruns and multi-year delays.

And the possibility of a small number of SMR construction projects over the next decade.

Clearly the hype surrounding SMRs lacks justification.

Moreover, there are disturbing, multifaceted connections between SMR projects and nuclear weapons proliferation, and between SMRs and fossil fuel mining.

Hype cycle

Dr Mark Cooper connects the current SMR hype to the hype surrounding the ‘nuclear renaissance’ in the late 2000s:

“The vendors and academic institutions that were among the most avid enthusiasts in propagating the early, extremely optimistic cost estimates of the “nuclear renaissance” are the same entities now producing extremely optimistic cost estimates for the next nuclear technology. We are now in the midst of the SMR hype cycle.

* Vendors produce low-cost estimates.

* Advocates offer theoretical explanations as to why the new nuclear technology will be cost competitive.

* Government authorities then bless the estimates by funding studies from friendly academics.”  ………………. https://theecologist.org/2021/dec/13/nuclear-powers-economic-failure

December 14, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, Reference, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Analysis: Small Modular Reactors Are Decades Away. That Suits the Fossil Lobby Just Fine.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the fossil fuel lobby in all three countries is keen to support nuclear power as “one of the answers to climate change.” Unlike renewables that can be deployed quickly, new nuclear power is decades away, providing breathing space for a dying industry to go on exploiting fossil fuels while nuclear power plants are built.

Analysis: Small Modular Reactors Are Decades Away. That Suits the Fossil Lobby Just Fine.  https://www.theenergymix.com/2021/12/01/analysis-small-modular-reactors-are-decades-away-that-suits-the-fossil-lobby-just-fine/December 1, 2021

Primary Author: Paul Brown @pbrown4348    Media outlets and the energy journalists employed by them seem to have lost their critical faculties when it comes to writing about small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), according to critics who think the industry has no hope of delivering on its promises to build a new generation of power stations.

In the build-up to the climate talks at COP 26 in Glasgow, through the negotiations and afterwards, small modular reactors were repeatedly discussed enthusiastically in newspaper articles, government announcements, and by the nuclear industry.

In every article or press release these reactors, which in the UK have yet to leave the drawing board, were touted as a vital part of Britain’s efforts to reach zero emissions by 2050. The same treatment has been given to similar plans in Canada, France, and the United States.

Oil Price reported Rolls Royce, the British engineering giant, was “breathing life back into the nuclear industry” by promising the first reactor in operation by the early 2030s and 10 by 2035.

After months of hype, having been given £210 million of British government money and raised £250 million from private investors, Rolls Royce has finally applied to the UK licencing authority to have its design approved so construction can begin.

Rolls-Royce SMR has been established to deliver a low-cost, deployable, scalable, and investable program of new nuclear power plants,” said CEO Tom Samson. “Our transformative approach to delivering nuclear power, based on predictable factory-built components, is unique, and the nuclear technology is proven. Investors see a tremendous opportunity to decarbonize the U.K. through stable baseload nuclear power, in addition to fulfilling a vital export need as countries identify nuclear as an opportunity to decarbonize.”

Meanwhile, campaigners and climate policy specialists at the Glasgow talks were looking for fast, deep cuts in carbon emissions before 2030, to enable the planet to have a chance of staying below 1.5°C. They cast Rolls-Royce’s plans, which have been re-announced repeatedly over several months, as another prime example of “greenwash” or “kicking the can down the road.”

Nor did campaigners at Glasgow miss the fact that Britain, Canada, and the United States, the three countries with most enthusiasm for small modular reactors, have something else in common: Their wish to go on extracting oil and gas that scientists say needs to be kept in the ground if the 1.5°C limit is not to be breached.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the fossil fuel lobby in all three countries is keen to support nuclear power as “one of the answers to climate change.” Unlike renewables that can be deployed quickly, new nuclear power is decades away, providing breathing space for a dying industry to go on exploiting fossil fuels while nuclear power plants are built.

Jonathon Porritt, chair of the U.K.’s Sustainable Development Commission between 2000 and 2009 and founder member of Forum for the Future, is scathing about the plans of the U.K. government and Rolls Royce.

He says taking the SMR through the Generic Design Assessment process takes at least four years, more likely five, and even if it passes it will take years to build, given the need to find sites and seek planning permission amid likely public opposition.

To be generous, Porritt said, it would be 2035 before the first was commissioned, let alone the five to 16 reactors Rolls Royce wants to build.

“It is therefore of zero benefit in terms of meeting the (British) government’s own target of a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035,” he said.  “It doesn’t matter how many times ministers bang this particular drum, or how many times deplorably gullible journalists in the BBC, Financial Times, Times, and the Daily Telegraph suck it all up. Moonshine is still moonshine.”

“It’s all such a pathetic waste of time—and of taxpayers’ money,” he added. “Whatever the time scale, SMRs will never compete with renewables plus storage.”

Porritt went on to discuss tidal stream energy using undersea turbines rather like wind turbines, which two British companies are developing with some success, and the even greater potential of using the tidal range—the height difference between low and high tide—to generate electricity to generate electricity through traditional turbines. Since Britain has the second-highest tides in the world after Canada and is surrounded by the sea, it has huge potential—but is ignored by the U.K. government.

“If our government was genuinely serious about energy security (instead of finding ways of propping up Rolls-Royce to support our nuclear weapons program), tidal power would be top of its list,” Porritt concluded.

Not all publications, however, agree with the mainstream British press about nuclear power. Under the headline “Nuclear Power Won’t Save the World—It Won’t Even Help”, published in the Green Energy Times, climate writer and retired computer engineer George Harvey said the cost estimates and timetables for nuclear power were never realistic.

“All told, we might say that putting money into nuclear power goes beyond being a monumental waste,” he wrote. “It detracts from the overarching issue of dealing with climate change by making that money unavailable for dealing with the problem using less expensive, more reliable energy that can be built far more quickly.”

December 6, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

New Name- Same Scam. NuScale small nuclear reactors become ‘VOYGR”, universities co-opted.

NuScale SMR plants become VOYGR    03 December 2021,

NuScale Power’s small modular reactor (SMR) power plants are to be named VOYGR, the company has announced. The company is working towards commercialising the technology and aims to be ready to deliver the first VOYGR plant to public power consortium Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems’ Carbon Free Power Project by the end of the decade………

UAMPS earlier this year said it expects to submit a combined licence application for the Carbon Free Power Project – currently envisaged as a six-module plant – to the NRC in 2024. The plant is to be located on a site at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho National Laboratory…….

Training centre


NuScale has now opened a third university-based centre to provide training and outreach opportunities through simulated, real-world nuclear power plant operation scenarios. The NuScale Energy Exploration (E2) Center, opened in collaboration with the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, is at the Center for Advanced Small Modular and Micro Reactors located in College Station, Texas, and uses state-of-the-art computer modelling within a simulation of the control room of a 12-unit NuScale power plant control.

Previous E2 Centers were opened at Oregon State University, in November 2020, and at the University of Idaho, in August 2021. The centres are supported by a 2019 DOE grant to broaden the understanding of advanced nuclear technology in a control room setting. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/NuScale-SMR-plants-become-VOYGR

December 6, 2021 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

France joins the Small Nuclear Reactor frenzy, bringing out its odd version ”NAAREA”

French engineering group Assystem has signed a cooperation agreement with
newly-created French micro-reactor developer Naarea to build its
ultra-compact eXtra Small Modular Reactor (XSMR). Dassault Systèmes is to
supply Naarea with a cloud-based platform on which to virtually design the
1 to 40 MW molten salt reactor. Naarea expects the first units of XSMR to
be produced by 2030.

The company  says its ultra-compact molten salt reactor uses “the untapped potential of used radioactive materials, and thorium, unused mining waste.” Naarea noted, “The current stocks of these two wastes will supply the energy needs of humanity for thousands of years, and reconcile humanity with its future.”

 World Nuclear News 3rd Dec 2021

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Assystem-to-cooperate-with-Naarea-on-micro-reactor

December 6, 2021 Posted by | France, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Canada to get its version of the mythical beast – the Small Nuclear Reactor – GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) BWRX-300

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) will build a GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) at its Darlington Nuclear Station in Clarington, Ontario, marking a major triumph for the nuclear vendor in a stiff competition for the much-watched utility-scale project.

OPG announced the selection of the GE Hitachi BWRX-300 SMR over competitors X-energy and Terrestrial Energy in a live stream on Dec. 2. The utility said it will now work with GE Hitachi on the SMR engineering, design, planning, preparing the licensing and permitting materials, and performing site preparation activities. The companies are targeting a “mutual goal of constructing Canada’s first commercial, grid-scale SMR, projected to be completed as early as 2028.” Site preparation, which will include
“installation of the necessary construction services,” is slated to begin in the spring of 2022, pending appropriate approvals. OPG additionally said it will apply to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
(CNSC) for a License to Construct the SMR by the end of 2022.

 Power Mag 2nd Dec 2021

https://www.powermag.com/darlington-nuclear-plant-will-get-a-bwrx-300-smr-as-ge-hitachi-bags-lucrative-opg-selection/

December 6, 2021 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 3 Comments

Gordon Edwards discusses a Canadian documentary on the ”Nuclear Revival” and small nuclear reactors.

Gordon Edwards, 1 December 21, On November 24, 2021, APTN broadcast a half-hour TV documentary about High Level Nuclear Waste in Canada, with some extra attention paid to the new, unorthodox irradiated fuels that would result from the proposed new reactors called SMRs. Here is a link to the program, entitled Nuclear Revival:  https://youtu.be/uLhPwAWejzc 

A couple of observations that crossed my mind while watching the report by Journalist Christopher Read –
(1) The fuel bundles should be thought of as CONTAINERS of the actual radioactive wastes, which are locked up inside those solid bundles.  There are many different radioactive elements (all of them human-made, most of them not found in unspoiled nature) that can escape from the fuel bundles as gases, liquids or solids. They all have different chemical and biological properties but they are all cancer-causing elements and can damage genetic materials like DNA molecules.

Even though the fuel bundles may not move an inch from where they have been emplaced, these other materials can leak out or leach out and find their way to the environment of living things. Time is on their side!! Damaged fuel bundles are analogous to a broken bottle – the container is still there, but the contents (some at least) have escaped.

(2) Concerning SMRs, even if these new nuclear reactors all worked very well, which is doubtful, they will be terribly expensive and very slow to reach a level of commercial deployment (and profitability) – at least 10 to 20 years – so they are too costly and too slow to respond to the climate crisis TODAY.

Solar and wind are much cheaper than nuclear, they are proven and can be quickly deployed, while energy efficiency measures are even cheaper and even faster to implement. We do not yet know how much progress can be made using these alternatives but clearly they should have the first priority – with nuclear as a wait-and-see backup possibility which very likely will not be needed at all (as in the case of Germany, which has phased out nuclear – nearly finished – and now is focussed on phasing out coal, using renewables and efficiency.)

December 2, 2021 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster | 3 Comments

UK government secretive about its Net Zero strategy, especially on tax-payer funded projects like small nuclear power plants.

UK refuses to release document showing Net Zero Strategy CO2 savings, New Scientist, 1 December 2021, By Adam Vaughan

The UK government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has turned down a freedom of information request that would allow independent scrutiny of its plan for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

The UK government has refused a freedom of information request to release a spreadsheet showing how much its landmark Net Zero Strategy will cut carbon emissions for individual measures, such as backing a new nuclear power station and fitting new electric car chargers.

Withholding the document smacks of “secrecy and subterfuge” and prevents the public from being able to interrogate the estimated impacts of the measures, says Ed Matthew at climate change think tank E3G.

The publication of the government’s Net Zero Strategy on 19 October was a key moment ahead of the COP26 climate summit, laying out in detail how the UK plans to reach its 2050 commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the coming years.

Previous government blueprints for decarbonisation, such as the 2020 10-point green plan and 2017 clean growth strategy, have spelled out estimates of exactly how much individual policies will cut emissions. But the Net Zero Strategy failed to provide any such breakdown, which observers said showed a lack of transparency that hampered independent scrutiny.

Government officials conceded that there was a spreadsheet containing all the figures, but said they wouldn’t release it. Now, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has refused a freedom of information request by New Scientist to publish the document. It declined the request on the grounds that it involves the disclosure of internal communications…………….

The strategy does show top-level estimates of how much emissions will change for different sectors, such as power, buildings and farming, between now and 2050. But it doesn’t break down individual measures, including backing new hydrogen production or developing new small nuclear plants, both of which will be supported by hundreds of millions of pounds in public funding.

“Ministers are behaving like a shady dealer asking customers to buy a product without seeing it first,” says John Sauven at Greenpeace UK. He is calling on BEIS to publish the spreadsheet: “The best thing would be for the government to release the numbers behind the plan and allow experts to kick the tyres on it”.

The document is likely to include estimates of how extensively various technologies will be employed and their impacts on greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. There may be a mismatch between what the government has committed to publicly, such as a Conservative party manifesto pledge to quadruple offshore wind capacity by 2030, and the estimates that are being withheld, for example………..

New Scientist has appealed the decision not to publish the document.  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2299318-uk-refuses-to-release-document-showing-net-zero-strategy-co2-savings/#ixzz7Drfyfmii





December 2, 2021 Posted by | politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

”Nuclear Revival” for Canada? Gordon Edwards discusses the latest propaganda.

 

Gordon Edwards, 27 Nov 21, Christopher Read’s latest half-hour documentary on the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) discusses its efforts to convince some small community in Ontario to receive all of Canada’s high level radioactive wastes for deep burial. 

These are the most toxic materials ever produced by any industry. Of the hundreds of kinds of radioactive poisons contained in the used nuclear fuel, only a handful existed on Earth in significant amounts before 1939. They are created in large quantities inside nuclear reactors.

 NWMO is owned by the same companies that make the radioactive poisons in the first place – and they have no intention of stopping. They want to keep right on mass-producing the highly dangerous byproducts indefinitely. Because they have to wait 30 years before moving these deadly wastes – they are literally and figuratively “too hot” to move sooner — there will always be a catastrophic amount left unburied at the surface no matter how fast they bury the older, somewhat cooler wastes. 

Meanwhile they will be burdening communities with a permanent radioactive  legacy, including contamination caused by unpacking and repackaging millions of embrittled fuel bundles right at the surface, beside the proposed waste dump. Any damage to any of these fuel bundles during handling, even small  cracks, will allow radioactive materials to escape and some of it will inevitably enter the sir we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, or the soil we walk on.


New reactors are untested, exorbitantly expensive, and will take 10 to 20 years to become available, if ever. They are a DDD = Dirty, Dangerous Distraction from the real job of cutting greenhouse gases now, not 10 years from now.  Energy efficiency and renewables can be implemented in a single building season. Wind and solar and efficiency measures are far cheaper and much faster to implement than new nuclear. 

When your house is on fire, it is time to grab a bucket or a fire hose and pour water on it – out the fire out!  This is no time to sit down and design a new, improved sprinkler system for future use.

 Climate change is here now. Action is urgent.

Investing in new nuclear plants is just “kicking the can down the road”. Canada’s Environment Commissioner points out that Canada has the worst record for fighting climate change of any country in the G7, as our greenhouse gas emissions have increased steadily since Trudeau was first elected in 2915. Five of the G7 countries have reduced their GHG emissions, while the sixth has increased GHG emissions at a much slower rate than Canada has. 

To invest in unproven and dangerous nuclear plants now will guarantee that no progress will be made for at least 10 to 20 years, minimum. And it will give us more radioactive waste, much of it even more dangerous than the waste we already have. Can we afford to encourage this kind of behaviour with lavish government subsidies?

November 29, 2021 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster | 2 Comments

Small modular reactors not the solution 

Small modular reactors not the solution – German nuclear authority assessments,

NEWS10 Mar 2021,  Kerstine Appunn, Using a large fleet of small modular reactors (SMR) to secure climate neutral electricity supply in the future – as proposed by billionaire and philanthropist Bill Gates – poses many unsolved problems and security risks, two researcher assessments commissioned by the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) have found according to a report by Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). SMR proponents claim that, once produced in bulk, these small plants are cheaper and safer thanks to advanced reactor designs and can be operated with converted short-lived radioactive materials, solving the waste problem. But the two reports, seen by SZ, conclude that SMR “carry enormous risks with regard to the proliferation of weapons-grade materials and will probably never be as cheap as their advocates claim”, Michael Bauchmüller writes.

The paper by the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut) found that in order to replace the 400 or so large reactors today, “many thousands to tens of thousands of SMR plants” would have to be built. But this raises questions for proliferation, the spread of dangerous nuclear material.

The second assessment by researchers from the Institute for Safety and Risk Sciences, at the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, on nuclear waste aspects of SMR found in three scenarios that a repository for nuclear waste would remain necessary, and that the amount of low and medium level radioactive waste would increase “massively” during the dismantling of nuclear facilities.

Germany will shut down its last nuclear power plant by the end of 2022, according to the government’s phase-out legislation which is supported by a majority of the population. After the nuclear disaster in Fukushima ten years ago, Angela Merkel’s government decided to accelerate the phase-out of nuclear power in Germany where opposition to nuclear plants was one of the key causes leading to the founding of the country’s Green Party. Nuclear power is compensated for by expanding renewable sources wind, solar PV and biogas, as Germany strives for a climate neutral power supply by 2040 or 2050 at the latest. 

November 29, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Hurdles ahead for Rolls Royce small nuclear reactor development.

“SMR proponents argue that they can make up for the lost economies of scale by savings through mass manufacture in factories and resultant learning. But, to achieve such savings, these reactors have to be manufactured by the thousands, even under very optimistic assumptions about rates of learning.”
The Rolls Royce SMR design is not exactly small at 470 MWe.

SafeEnergy E Journal  No.92. December 21 Rolls Royce’s Small Modular Reactors On 9th November the Government announced that it would back the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor with £210m in funding. Matched by private sector funding of over £250 million, this investment will be used to further develop SMR design and start the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process  

  The Government claims that SMRs have the potential to be less expensive to build than traditional nuclear power plants because of their smaller size, and because the modular nature of the components offers the potential for parts to be produced in dedicated factories and shipped by road to site – reducing construction time and cost.

But the reason why existing reactors are large is precisely to derive economies of scale: why smaller reactors should be more economic is problematic. Nuclear proponents allege that assembly-line technology will be used in reactor construction but this has yet to be shown in practice anywhere in the world.

Some say that SMRs are little more than wishful thinking. For example, Professor MV Ramana ‒ Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia – states:  

  “SMR proponents argue that they can make up for the lost economies of scale by savings through mass manufacture in factories and resultant learning. But, to achieve such savings, these reactors have to be manufactured by the thousands, even under very optimistic assumptions about rates of learning.” (1) 
The Rolls Royce SMR design is not exactly small at 470 MWe. It is proposing to build 16 reactors at an expected cost around £1.8bn – £2.2bn and producing power at £40-60/MWh over 60 yrs. (2)

As well as the Government funding, Rolls-Royce has been backed by a consortium of private investors. The creation of the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor (SMR) business was announced following a £195m cash injection from BNF Resources, and Exelon Generation to fund the plans over the next three years.(3)

  Rolls Royce has submitted the SMR design to the GDA regulatory process, in a bid to secure clearance from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the UK’s nuclear and environmental regulatory bodies. It expects the process to take around four to five years, during which time it plans to “engage in a range of parallel activities” including the SMR factory development, potential siting for future nuclear plants, and “commercial discussions”. (4)

Before the ONR approval process begins, the company must first get clearance from the government to submit its designs, which is expected by around March next year. (5)  

  As expected, Moorside, Wylfa and Trawsfynydd have all been mentioned as potential sites for an SMR. Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen also wants Hartlepool to be on the list. (6)  https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/SafeEnergy_No92.pdf

November 27, 2021 Posted by | 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

What might trip up the Rolls Royce plan for small nuclear reactors?

Fix the Planet newsletter: Can small nuclear power go big? Small modular reactors are being pitched as an affordable and fast way to decarbonise power grids but questions about the technology abound, New Scientist  EARTH, 25 November 2021, By Adam Vaughan

”……… nuclear power did have a showing in Glasgow, at official events in the conference, deals on the sidelines and cropping up as a subject during press briefings.

One new technology popped up a few times: small modular reactors (SMRs), mini nuclear plants that would be built in a factory and transported to a site for assembly. A UK consortium led by Rolls-Royce wants to build a fleet in the country to export around the world as a low carbon complement to renewables. During COP26 the consortium received £210 million from the UK government. More private investment is expected soon.

Yet questions abound. Why should this technology succeed where large nuclear plants have failed to take off in recent years, beyond China? If they are small, will they make a sizeable enough dent in emissions? And will they arrive in time to make a difference to a rapidly warming world?……

What exactly is planned?

The reactors that Rolls-Royce SMR wants to build have been six years in development, with their roots in ones the company previously built for nuclear submarines. Despite being billed as small, the new reactor design is fairly large. Each would have 470 megawatts of capacity, a good deal bigger than the 300 MW usually seen as the ceiling for an SMR.

The consortium hopes to initially build four plants on existing nuclear sites around the UK. Ultimately it wants a fleet of 16 , enough to replace the amount of nuclear capacity expected to be lost in the UK this decade as ageing atomic plants retire. Later down the line, the SMRs could be exported around the world too.

 Alastair Evans at Rolls-Royce SMR. says the first SMR would cost about £2.3 billion and could be operational by 2031. Later versions may fall to £1.8 billion, he claims. That may seem cheap compared to Hinkley, but an offshore wind farm with twice the capacity costs about £1 billion today, and that figure will be even lower in a decade’s time………….

What might trip them up?

SMRs have been in development for years but have made little inroads to date. The UK government has been talking about them for much of the past decade, with nothing to show. Progress elsewhere around the world has been slow, too. Outside of Russia there are no commercial SMRs connected to power grids. Even China, one of the few countries that has built new nuclear plants in recent years, only started construction of a demo SMR earlier this year, four years late. It wasn’t until last year that leading US firm NuScale had its design licensed by US authorities.

Paul Dorfman at the non-profit Nuclear Consulting Group, a body of academics critical of nuclear power, says the nuclear industry has always argued economies of scale will bring down costs so it is hard to see why going small will work. He says modularisation – making the reactors in factories – will only bring down costs if those factories have a full order book, which may not materialise. “It’s chicken and egg on the supply chain,” he says. He also notes the plants will still create radioactive waste (something another potential next gen nuclear technology, fusion, does not). And he fears nuclear sites near coasts and rivers will be increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as storm surges as seas rise.

What’s next?   The Rolls-Royce SMR group this month submitted its reactor design for approval by the UK nuclear regulator, a process that could take around five years. It now needs to pick three locations for factories and start constructing them. The group also needs to win a Contract for Difference from the UK government, a guaranteed floor price for the electricity generated by the SMRs……..  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2299113-fix-the-planet-newsletter-can-small-nuclear-power-go-big/

November 27, 2021 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »