TerraPower’s Nuclear Reactor Could Power the 21st Century. The traveling-wave reactor and other advanced reactor designs could solve our fossil fuel dependency IEEE Spectrum, By Michael Koziol 3 June 18, “…. ..In a world defined by climate change, many experts hope that the electricity grid of the future will be powered entirely by solar, wind, and hydropower. Yet few expect that clean energy grid to manifest soon enough to bring about significant cuts in greenhouse gases within the next few decades. Solar- and wind-generated electricity are growing faster than any other category; nevertheless, together they accounted for less than 2 percent of the world’s primary energy consumption in 2015, according to the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century.
To build a bridge to that clean green grid of the future, many experts say we must depend on fission power. ………several U.S. startups are pushing new reactor designs they say will address nuclear’s major shortcomings. In Cambridge, Mass., a startup called Transatomic Power is developing a reactor that runs on a liquid uranium fluoride–lithium fluoride mixture. In Denver, Gen4 Energy is designing a smaller, modular reactor that could be deployed quickly in remote sites.
In this cluster of nuclear startups, TerraPower, based in Bellevue, Wash., stands out because it has deep pockets and a connection to nuclear-hungry China. Development of the reactor is being funded in part by Bill Gates, who serves as the company’s chairman. And to prove that its design is viable, TerraPower is poised to break ground on a test reactor next year in cooperation with the China National Nuclear Corp. …….
“There are multiple levels of problems with the traveling-wave reactor,” says Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. “Maybe a magical new technology could come along for it, but hopefully we don’t have to rely on magic.” Makhijani says it’s hard enough to sustain a steady nuclear reaction without the additional difficulty of creating fuel inside the core, and notes that the techniques TerraPower will use to cool the core have largely failed in the past…….
The TWR will be able to use depleted uranium, which has far less U-235 and cannot reach criticality unassisted. TerraPower’s solution is to arrange 169 solid uranium fuel pins into a hexagon. When the reaction begins, the U-238 atoms absorb spare neutrons to become U-239, which decays in a matter of minutes to neptunium-239, and then decays again to plutonium-239. When struck by a neutron, Pu-239 releases two or three more neutrons, enough to sustain a chain reaction.
It also releases plenty of energy; after all, Pu-239 is the primary isotope used in modern nuclear weapons. But Levesque says the creation of Pu-239 doesn’t make the reactor a nuclear-proliferation danger—just the opposite. Pu-239 won’t accumulate in the TWR; instead, stray neutrons will split the Pu-239 into a cascade of fission products almost immediately.
In other words, the reactor breeds the highly fissile plutonium fuel it needs right before it burns it, just as Feinberg imagined so many decades ago. Yet the “traveling wave” label refers to something slightly different from the slowly burning, cigar-style reactor. In the TWR, an overhead crane system will maintain a reaction within a ringed portion of the core by moving pins into and out of that zone from elsewhere in the core, like a very large, precise arcade claw machine.
To generate electricity, the TWR uses a more complicated system than today’s reactors, which use the core’s immense heat to boil water and drive a steam turbine to generate usable electricity. In the TWR, the heat will be absorbed by a looping stream of liquid sodium, which leaves the reactor core and then boils water to drive the steam turbine.
But therein lies a major problem, says Makhijani. Molten sodium can move more heat out of the core than water, and it’s actually less corrosive to metal pipes than hot water is. But it’s a highly toxic metal, and it’s violently flammable when it encounters oxygen. “The problem around the sodium cooling, it’s proved the Achilles’ heel,” he says.
Makhijani points to two sodium-cooled reactors as classic examples of the scheme’s inherent difficulties. In France, Superphénix struggled to exceed 7 percent capacity during most of its 10 years of operation because sodium regularly leaked into the fuel storage tanks. More alarmingly, Monju in Japan shut down less than a year after it achieved criticality when vibrations in the liquid sodium loop ruptured a pipe, causing an intense fire to erupt as soon as the sodium made contact with the oxygen in the air. “Some have worked okay,” says Makhijani. “Some have worked badly, and others have been economic disasters.”
Today, TerraPower’s lab is filled with bits of fuel pins and reactor components. Among other things, the team has been testing how molten sodium will flow through the reactor’s pipes, how it will corrode those pipes, even the inevitable expansion of all of the core’s components as they are subjected to decades of heat—all problems that have plagued sodium-cooled reactors in the past. TerraPower’s engineers will use what they learn from the results when building their test reactor—and they’ll find out if their design really works.
The safety of the TerraPower reactor stems in part from inherent design factors. Of course, all power reactors are designed with safety systems. Each one has a coping time, which indicates how long a stricken reactor can go on without human intervention before catastrophe occurs. Ideas for so-called inherently safe reactors have been touted since the 1980s, but the goal for TerraPower is a reactor that relies on fundamental physics to provide unlimited coping time.
The TWR’s design features some of the same safety systems standard to nuclear reactors. In the case of an accident in any reactor, control rods crafted from neutron-absorbing materials like cadmium plummet into the core and halt a runaway chain reaction that could otherwise lead to a core meltdown. Such a shutdown is called a scram.
TerraPower plans to break ground on its test reactor next year in China. If all goes well, this reactor will be operational by the mid-2020s. But even if TerraPower’s reactor succeeds wildly, it will take 20 years or more for the company to deploy large numbers of TWRs. Thus for the next couple of decades, the world’s utilities will have no choice but to rely on fossil fuels and conventional nuclear reactors for reliable, round-the-clock electricity.
Fission will probably not be the final answer. After decades of always being 30 years away, nuclear fusion may finally come into its own. Societies will be able to depend on renewables more heavily as storage and other technologies make them more reliable……….
Beyond Iran and North Korea, the nuclear-armed rivals of India and Pakistan need help to prevent a war. A cease-fire in disputed Kashmir shows progress, but a deeper reconciliation, especially an understanding in their shared history, is needed. May 31, 2018, By the Monitor’s Editorial Board
As long as he is already trying to denuclearize North Korea as well as permanently ban Iran from building a nuclear weapon, President Trump may want to pay heed to India and its neighbor Pakistan. The two nuclear-armed powers have gone to war three times since they achieved independence in 1947. And over the past year, regular skirmishes along their disputed border in Kashmir have killed dozens and displaced 50,000 civilians.
Pakistan and India each recognize a nuclear war would be mutually devastating. Yet they need help in overcoming a deep suspicion and animosity, driven in part by diverging narratives of their shared past, that could someday trigger a full-scale conflict.
With the border fighting in Kashmir getting out of hand in recent months, the two countries agreed May 29 to honor a cease-fire pact that was first put in place 15 years ago. The agreement is a welcome step. Yet it provides only a pause in hostilities without a commitment to a peace dialogue and, more important, the creation of a culture of reconciliation.
Iran and North Korea are still a long way from any attempt to reconcile with their perceived foes. Ending their nuclear threat has required outside pressure. Pakistan and India, however, have tried at times to come to terms with each other since the violent partition of British India into their respective countries, one largely Muslim and the other largely Hindu. Sometimes their leaders talk or the countries share a sports contest. Nonetheless, trade and travel between the two remain minimal given the size of their economies. And the Kashmir dispute as well as terrorist attacks keep them apart.
Religious differences have mattered less in their relations than the role of nationalist politicians who find it convenient to whip up hatred and fear of the other side. The ill will is generated in large part by competing histories of the 1947 partition – who started it, who killed more people, and who were the heroes and villains. Over the decades, the official history textbooks in each country have become political weapons to create an enemy and build up national unity.
Peace between India and Pakistan will require some sort of agreement on their shared history, one that must reduce old grievances and lessen the paranoia that could trigger a nuclear war. In Northeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and China have tried in the past two decades to write a joint history in hopes of reducing the use of old resentments. The efforts have largely failed.
Yet this past winter, India and Pakistan achieved some success in transcending nationalist histories with the first citizen-level attempt at a joint telling of their shared history. Two history professors, one in Pakistan and the other in India, held a semester-long course titled “Introduction to South Asian History” that included more than 20 students from each country connected online. The teaching took place mainly over Skype and included a visit of 11 Pakistani students to India in May.
The two teachers, Ali Usman Qasmi of the Lahore University of Management Sciences and Pallavi Raghavan at OP Jindal Global University, reported that the students were amazed to discover what they did not know about the other country. They achieved an “overlapping consensus” on historical events with respect and understanding. The success of the course, they wrote, “shows that an alternative imagining of the past conducive to achieving peace and harmony in the region is … possible.”
Cease-fires in Kashmir, even a peace dialogue or a full opening of trade, will help India and Pakistan avoid the worst kind of wars. But much of that may not matter until the two peoples can craft a shared understanding of the past in order to reconcile for a better future.
Times 30th May 2018 Hitachi ‘won’t pay’ for nuclear accidents at proposed Wylfa plant on Anglesey. Hitachi could seek to absolve itself of financial responsibility for any accidents at its proposed new nuclear power station in north Wales.
The Japanese conglomerate has decided to continue with work developing the planned Wylfa plant on Anglesey after progress in financing talks with the government, which Hitachi is already relying on for a package of loan guarantees, subsidies and potential direct investment to make the project viable.
However, the company wants further concessions to reduce its risks, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported. Reports in several Japanese media outlets have claimed that the Wylfa plant could cost as much as three trillion yen, or almost £21 billion — making it even more expensive than Hinkley Point C.
EDF decided to build Hinkley Point only thanks to a 35-year subsidy contract from the government, which locks consumers into paying a fixed price for the power it generates and has been criticised for its high cost.
The Nikkei reported that some of Hitachi’s directors also wanted “safeguards that reduce or eliminate Hitachi’s financial
responsibility for accidents at the plant”. Nuclear operators are already obliged to take out insurance to cover their liabilities in case of an accident. If they are unable to secure insurance from the market, the government is obliged to step in and provide it instead. It is unclear what alternative arrangement or safeguards Hitachi might be seeking. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/hitachi-wont-pay-for-nuclear-accidents-at-proposed-wylfa-plant-on-anglesey-gtm28q0k3
Toshiba exits US nuclear project https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180531_37/31 May 18 Japanese electronics maker Toshiba is walking away from a nuclear energy project in the US. The firm says it won’t take part in building or operating the nuclear plant.
There are 2 reactors on the drawing board. Toshiba executives say the project is no longer financially viable.
They say an increase in shale production has caused a fall in electricity sales.
They also point to stricter regulations introduced after the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima. Toshiba joined the South Texas Project in 2008. Executives were hoping to start operating the reactors around 2016 or 2017.
But the power company that’s heading up the project hasn’t started building them.
Toshiba is cutting its ties to the nuclear power business overseas.
The firm incurred massive losses through its former American nuclear subsidiary, Westinghouse.
“Right now the greenery that we have, the earth, the soil — everything is a product of the things that people who have come before us have left behind,” Narita told NBC News. “We can’t just treat those things carelessly.”
So are there any models of “rogue” regimes with nuclear programs that might appeal to North Korea? The answer is yes. But, unfortunately, it’s a state that kept its nuclear deterrent intact: Pakistan. If Pyongyang is weighing up two possible futures—Libya vs. Pakistan—it’s not much of a choice.
Pakistan began to seriously pursue nuclear weapons in the 1970s, motivated by a desire to deter its more powerful rival India, as well as match India’s nuclear capability. The Pakistani politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who later became prime minister, claimed, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves—even go hungry—but we will get one of our own.” In 1998, on a clear and bright day in the Chagai district, Pakistan carried out a series of nuclear tests. Pakistan’s chief scientific officer said “All praise be to Allah” and pushed the button, causing the mountain to shake in a vast explosion.
In 2016, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientistsestimated that Pakistan had 130 to 140 warheads and predicted that it would nearly double its arsenal by 2025. Islamabad could deliver nuclear weapons by medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, F-16 fighters, and tactical systems for short-range use on the battlefield.
We can be confident that North Korea is paying close attention to Islamabad’s experience. After all, the two countries share important similarities. They both face an enduring rivalry with a far more powerful democratic state that used to be part of the same country (India and South Korea). Furthermore, both North Korea and Pakistan have, at times, flouted international norms. In 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pakistan never signed the treaty. For decades, North Korea and Pakistan have been informal allies, trading conventional weapons and supporting Iran in the Iran-Iraq War.
In addition, Pakistan’s nuclear capability led the West to handle the country with kid gloves. The United States provided millions of dollars of material assistance to guard Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile, including helicopters and nuclear detection equipment. Pakistan’s nuclear capability is also one reason why Washington continued to provide billions of dollars in military and economic aid, even though Islamabad supported the Taliban insurgency that battled U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, Pakistan gained prestige as the only Muslim-majority country with nuclear weapons. The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the nuclear program as “Pakistan’s finest hour.” The nuclear program is also domestically popular. The nuclear tests in 1998 that shook mountains led to jubilant street celebrations.
Of course, all of this came at a cost. The money poured into Pakistan’s nuclear program could have been spent on health or education. The nuclear tests in 1998 were condemned around the world. After refusing to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Pakistan faces restrictions on importing civili
civilian nuclear technology. Nuclear weapons may deter India, but they also risk accidents and even escalation to nuclear war.
But for North Korea, the balance sheet still favors the Pakistan model: a poor country that ate grass to build a nuclear deterrent, seeks to be accepted as a recognized nuclear power, supports denuclearization in principle but only as part of a broader international disarmament effort (that will likely never happen), successfully deters a more powerful rival, and gains domestic prestige and international status.
Saddam and Qaddafi made their choices, and they’re both dead. North Korea wants to follow a different path. Why not become the Pakistan of East Asia?
A government-affiliated financial institution balked at an agency’s request to pump 75 billion yen ($688 million) into Hitachi Ltd.’s nuclear power project in Britain, while the entire plan came under fire from citizen groups.
The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry asked the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) for the investment to help finance a new nuclear power plant designed by Hitachi Ltd. on the island of Anglesey off northwest Wales.
A DBJ executive expressed a willingness to invest but is reluctant to finance more than half of the requested amount, saying of the original figure, “The risk is big.”
Under the plan, Hitachi subsidiary Horizon Nuclear Power Ltd. will be in charge of constructing two reactors for the new nuclear power plant.
Hitachi plans to disperse the risk of loss and slash its investment ratio from the current 100 percent to less than 50 percent as preconditions for the start of construction.
After the company held an extraordinary board meeting on May 28 to discuss the project, Toshiaki Higashihara, president and CEO of Hitachi, told reporters, “We have not decided anything yet.”
The company intends to make an official decision in 2019 on whether to proceed with the project. The DBJ’s reluctance to invest the full amount requested is clouding Hitachi’s financing plan.
The economy ministry, however, considers Hitachi’s project the “touchstone for exports of nuclear power technology.”
The Japanese and British governments reached a broad agreement around the end of 2017 on providing financial support for Hitachi’s project, but they have not decided on specific measures to come up with the estimated 3 trillion yen in total costs.
Under a proposed blueprint, the British government will guarantee loans worth 2 trillion yen. British companies and institutions, Hitachi, and other Japanese companies and institutions would invest 300 billion yen each to cover the remaining costs, sources said.
However, it may not be enough. Construction costs for nuclear power plants have continued to increase as tighter safety standards are being adopted around the world.
Hitachi intends to recover the construction costs through sales of electricity generated from the plant. But if it cannot sell the power at high prices, the plant could become unprofitable.
The project faces criticism from outside sources.
A community group on the island of Anglesey and a Japanese nongovernmental organization submitted to the ministry on May 28 hastily collected signatures calling for the halt of the use of taxpayers’ money for the new nuclear plant.
They also sent a letter to Hitachi, asking the company to withdraw from the project.
Objections to the nuclear plant in Wales were also expressed through a joint program of PAWB, (Pobol Atal Wylfa-B or the People Against Wylfa-B), and FoE Japan, a member of Friends of the Earth International. About 6,000 individuals or members of groups in 37 countries provided their signatures to call for the scrapping of the nuclear power plant project.
They are also demanding that the Japanese government will not guarantee loans for the project and that Japanese government-affiliated banking institutions will not extend loans.
Mei Tomos, a member of PAWB, told a meeting in Japan that it would be irresponsible to proceed with the project when there is still no solution on how to deal with radioactive waste.
Tomos urged Japanese at the gathering to express their opinions, keeping in mind the experience of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Korea’s “Season of Summits”https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/39598748/posts/5355-29 May 18The upcoming “will they—won’t they” US-DPRK summit, either by accident or by design, has the potential to re-set the strategic atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula…but only if Washington and Pyongyang can find a convergence of common interest.
There are limitations on American action on the Korean peninsula that constrain its menu of choice vis-à-vis North Korea (DPRK). The absence of a substantive relationship between the US and North Korea limits Washington’s economic and diplomatic leverage. However, as the more powerful party with overwhelming nuclear superiority and clear capacity to deter the DPRK nuclear threat, the US does have capacity to re-set the terms of the relationship by reducing the heat in negotiations. Washington can do this by changing the focus for the negotiations.
The long game
North Korea can be deterred as a nuclear power. A peace treaty to formally end the Korean War represents the best pathway to managing regional security and ensuring the safety of the people who live in the region. Under the umbrella of a formalised peace regime, human security concerns within North Korea are more likely to be constructively addressed. Engagement and interaction is the best vehicle for this, based on an understanding of complex systems and social change processes within the DPRK.
Summits are symbols that act as markers in a much broader process of relationship-building, based on confidence-building measures and clear, achievable implementation steps. Confidence-building measures develop the relationship between negotiating parties and gradually evolve the level of trust necessary to progress to subsequent steps on the negotiation pathway.
Depth of relationships are also a source of leverage; one of the reasons why the United States has struggled to influence the DPRK is that it does not have substantive economic links through which to influence the government in Pyongyang. This lack of leverage is why US officials have argued for China to play a more substantive role in pressuring North Korea, because China has a relationship with the DPRK that it can leverage. Rightly or wrongly, the US has dealt itself out of direct influence over North Korea through its various policies of strategic isolation and maximum pressure.
We should also understand that from a complex systems perspective, relationships—be they economic, governmental, institutional, or people-to-people—create flows of information, wealth and resources in and out of the DPRK. Those flows interact with and turbo-charge social change processes already underway in the DPRK, as we have seen with such flows between the DPRK and China. The result is a change, developing over time, in the relationship between the North Korean state and its people over time through the marketisation and Yuan-isation of the economy, and proliferation of information technologies into the country.
Focusing on the wrong prize
Regardless of whether or not the US-DPRK summit ultimately goes ahead, it is concerning that the Trump administration could blow an opportunity to meaningfully change the strategic goalposts on the Korean Peninsula by focussing on the wrong prize.
The only real trinket of value that Washington has to offer Kim Jong Un is a formal treaty to conclude the Korean War. It is likely that North Korea very much wants to negotiate an agreement with the United States, but under Pyongyang’s terms. It is no revelation to long-term North Korea watchers that those terms do not include “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation” (CVID).
The problem with Trump’s insistence on CVID is that there is no mutually agreeable starting point for a discussion with North Korea on those terms. There is no outcome in which the regime willingly relinquishes its nuclear weapons program because the Kim regime is so heavily invested in nuclear weapons as the foundation of its security strategy, economic development pathway, and domestic political legitimacy.
The negotiations surrounding the summit need to find a lowest common denominator that both parties can agree on. We saw this in the inter-Korean summit where Moon and Kim settled on easy-win engagement measures and mutually-beneficial security measures as the starting point for a confidence-building pathway.
CVID is a dead-end
The US and the DPRK clearly do not trust each other, and both parties have good reasons to be guarded ahead of a “will they—won’t they” summit. Most media attention coming out of the inter-Korean summit focused on Article 3.4 of the Panmunjom Declaration, which called for “complete denuclearisation” and “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula,” building on the call in Article 1.1 for both parties to work together on implementing the 2005 Joint Statement on denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and the 13 February Agreement of 2007.
However, this clause does not mean North Korea has committed to denuclearisation as that concept is understood by the Trump administration. In the wake of his second meeting with Kim Jong-un, Moon Jae-in insisted that the North Koreans are committed to denuclearisation, clearly hoping to maintain the diplomatic momentum to ensure the US-DPRK summit takes place. However, the North Korean interpretation of a nuclear-free Korea implies the full nuclear weapons relinquishment of the United States and ultimate fulfilment of the spirit of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
North Korea’s recent demolition of tunnels at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site are a gesture of goodwill to Washington, offering up a now-obsolete facility with an eye toward the upcoming US-DPRK summit. We have seen this kind of offering before, when the North Koreans demolished the cooling tower at their Yeongbyeon reactor in 2008.
Moon Jae-in’s tactical ego-stroking comments about Trump deserving the Nobel Peace Prize aside, one can argue that South Korea does not have high confidence in the Trump administration. South Korea’s diplomatic efforts in 2018 have been geared to guiding the US into a more conciliatory position with North Korea and make it politically safer for Trump to negotiate for an agreement with Pyongyang, knowing that there are influential American officials in Trump’s ear counselling for war.
Fears of American bellicosity in Seoul are not unwarranted. American hawks view any kind of engagement with North Korea as a “loss,” as “appeasement”—one of the most juvenile and misapplied terms in the international relations lexicon—and are well aware of the difficulty of getting any negotiated deal ratified in a Republican-majority Congress (recalling the fate of the Agreed Framework). National Security Advisor John Bolton’s recent comments comparing North Korea to Libya reinforce this perception. The irony of the present moment is a deal is more likely to stick in the US if it is owned by a Republican president. Such are the ironies and opportunities of Korean Peninsula diplomacy in 2018.
The Korean nuclear roller coaster: Has time run out for a summit? Brookings, Jonathan D. Pollack Tuesday, May 29, 2018 The turbulence and drama on the Korean Peninsula over the past week defies imagination. On May 24, President Trump withdrew from his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, acting almost as impulsively as when he first agreed to the meeting in early March. Following a conciliatory response from Pyongyang’s senior nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan, the president two days later sharply reversed course and said that the summit might still take place.
Not to be outdone, on May 26 Kim Jong-un abruptly convened a second meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the North Korean side of the truce village of Panmunjom. The next day, American and North Korean officials began to interact on the language of a possible communiqué. Separate consultations between the United States and North Korea in Singapore were expected to begin today, on May 29, with North Korea represented by Kim Jong-un’s de facto chief of staff, Kim Ch’ang-soon. Additional discussions have taken place between Chinese and North Korean officials in Beijing, perhaps connected to a possible stopover by Kim Jong-un while traveling to Singapore, which would be his third visit to China in less than two months. One of Kim Jong-un’s closest aides and a vice chairman of the Korean Workers Party Central Committee, General Kim Yong-chol, is now en route to New York, and is expected to serve as the lead point-of-contact with U.S. officials in deliberations over the Singapore meeting.
These heightened activities all suggest that the summit will indeed go forward, though there has been no formal announcement to this effect.
However, two facts remain incontestable. There is as yet no U.S.-North Korea agreement on the terms of a summit, and time is running out to reach such an understanding. An unspoken but unmistakable anxiety thus pervades these intensified political and diplomatic maneuvers. Only 10 days before President Trump’s presumed departure for Singapore, it is stunning how little remains agreed to, even in broad conceptual terms. Advocates of diplomacy argue that this is the purpose of face-to-face negotiations. But the contrasts in the language and expectations of the two leaderships remain glaring, even after two visits by Mike Pompeo to Pyongyang, first as CIA director and subsequently as secretary of state.
The fundamental issue is what the summit is supposed to be about. ……….
New Delhi only recognizes UN sanctions, foreign minister said
Throughout previous sanctions, India purchased Iranian oil
President Donald Trump may have ordered the re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, but one of Asia’s biggest oil importers — and a strategic partner of the U.S. — plans on ignoring them.
India, a long-time buyer of oil from both Iran and Venezuela, only complies with United Nations-mandated sanctions and not those imposed by one country on another, said foreign minister Sushma Swaraj at a press conference in New Delhi on Monday.
“India will comply with UN sanctions and not any country-specific sanctions,” Swaraj said at an annual briefing, flanked by her two junior foreign ministers and India’s foreign secretary.
Swaraj later met Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, where they discussed Trump’s plan to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Swaraj said “all parties to the agreement should engage constructively for peaceful resolution of the issues,” according to a foreign ministry statement. ……
India’s post-independence history as a leader of the “non-aligned” movement — developing nations not allied with the U.S. or the then-Soviet Union — means New Delhi maintains economic relationships that raise eyebrows in western capitals, including with Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. India also ignored U.S. requests to close its embassy in North Korea, Swaraj said at her briefing.
In February, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani visited India and met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss energy cooperation and New Delhi’s investments in Iran’s Chabahar port.
A petition against the Wylfa Newydd nuclear plant signed by almost 6,000 people was handed to Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Pawb’s (People against Wylfa B) trip comes amid reports of UK and Japanese government investment in the project.
Technological giant Hitachi said there had been “no changes to disclose”.
Hitachi’s Horizon Nuclear Power wants to start building on Anglesey in 2020, but recent reports say the British government is to offer £13.3bn to support the project.
Prime Minister Theresa May met Hitachi’s chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi earlier this month to discuss support.
Speaking to BBC Wales from Japan, Meilyr Tomos from Pawb, said: “There’s huge uncertainty. It’s a scheme that requires two governments to prop it up, so there’s no certainty on anything at this stage.
“It’s not a commercial proposition. You need the biggest bang for your buck, that’s not something nuclear can deliver, it’s far too expensive.
N Korea’s Destroyed Nuke Site Lays Basis for Denuclearization Talks – Expert https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201805261064829259-north-korea-site-destruction-talks-prospect/ WASHINGTON 27 May 18, – North Korea’s dismantling of its nuclear weapons test site should be seen as a positive step towards resolving the crisis on the Korean peninsula, Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright said in a statement on Friday.
“North Korea’s action should not be trivialized but viewed as an important step to reduce tensions and lay the basis for denuclearization negotiations,” Albright said. “It is not fair to portray it as part of an effort to hide or disguise its nuclear weapons capabilities.”
North Korea’s action, he added, is even better than a freeze because it represents a permanent disabling of the site. Three minutes of film footage taken by a journalist makes it clear that major buildings and tunnel entrances were destroyed, according to Albright.
But like many disabling steps, North Korea could likely resume nuclear weapons tests within a few months by digging tunnels in nearby mountains, Albright said. Moreover, the action does not affect North Korea’s existing stockpile of nuclear bombs and its ability to make additional weapons, even if the lack of a test facility could inhibit the nation’s ability to field reliable and deliverable warheads, according to the release.
On Friday, Trump signaled that the meeting with Kim may actually go forward after the US president received a “warm” letter from Pyongyang. In comments published by North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA, Kim said on Friday that he wanted the United States to know Pyongyang wants to sit down at “any time” to solve problems with Washington.
Before founding the institute, Albright worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 1992 to 1997 and was the first non-governmental inspector of the Iraqi nuclear program. He was also a Senior Staff Scientist at the Federation of American Scientists.
China’s Nuclear Weapons: Everything You Always Wanted to Know National Interest, Steve Weintz, 25 May 18,
With its first nuclear test on October 16, 1964, China joined the other victorious allies of World War II in the nuclear club, both cementing and unsettling the postwar order. Hard experience of the American nuclear threat during the Korean War and the divorce from the Soviet Union, propelled China towards the bomb in ways familiar to those observing North Korea’s current quest. Mao Zedong himself said in 1956, “…if we don’t want to be bullied, we have to have this thing.”
But China for all its size has made itself a limited nuclear power. It has demonstrated its ability to build very big bombs but chose to test and make few of them. The size of China’s arsenal is a highly guarded state secret, but estimates put it in the several hundreds, not thousands. Beijing can hold armies and cities at risk, but not make the rubble bounce several times over…………
One H-bomb test nearly went horribly wrong. When test pilot Yang Guoxiang lined up his Q-5A fighter-bomber for its drop maneuver and pulled the weapon release, the bomb failed to drop. After three attempts Yang returned to base with a live hydrogen bomb slung beneath his plane. The whole airbase – all 10,000 crew – sheltered in underground tunnels while a lonely Yang carefully climbed out of his cockpit and awaited assistance. All ended well this time and Yang later successfully carried out his mission.
The three independent candidates for Niigata governor are, from left: Chikako Ikeda, Hideyo Hanazumi and Satoshi Annaka.
May 25, 2018
NIIGATA–The election for a new governor of Niigata Prefecture was triggered by a sex scandal, but the key issue facing voters is where the candidates stand on restarting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, one of the world’s biggest nuclear facilities.
Campaigning officially kicked off May 24.
The outcome of the June 10 vote could have a bearing on the Abe administration’s moves to bring more nuclear plants back online.
Although the candidates are running as independents, two are supported by political parties.
In early speeches, they all outlined their position on the nuclear plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co., but residents are calling on them to be less cautious and state where they truly stand.
“Many people are still suffering (because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster), and there are still many people living as evacuees,” said a female resident, 66. “Some kids have even been bullied. So I really want the candidates to state clearly that Niigata doesn’t need a nuclear plant anymore.”
On the other hand, a 70-year-old female resident argued that local people “cannot flatly oppose the restart of the nuclear plant because of the impact it will have on economy.”
For this reason, she said, “I cannot easily say I am against it.”
The election is expected to come down to a battle between Hideyo Hanazumi, 60, a former vice commandant of the Japan Coast Guard, and Chikako Ikeda, 57, a former member of the prefectural assembly.
Hanazumi is supported by the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, while Ikeda is backed by five opposition parties.
The other candidate is Satoshi Annaka, 40, a former member of the Gosen municipal assembly.
The election was triggered by the April resignation of Ryuichi Yoneyama after he admitted to paying women for sexual favors.
Yoneyama, 50, had taken a cautious stance on restarting the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa complex.
Hanazumi declared that he would take over an investigation started by Yoneyama to understand the fundamental cause of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in 2011, and reach his decision on the issue when the investigation ends in several years.
Ikeda stressed the significance of reviewing the Fukushima nuclear disaster, stating that continuing with the investigation is “the most basic of basics.”
She said the matter must be pursued rigorously.
Ikeda added that she would make a final decision on the restart issue after careful discussions with residents and other parties.
“I will seek a zero-nuclear Niigata Prefecture,” she said.
North Korea claims it has demolished its nuclear testing site North Korea has carried out what it said is the demolition of its nuclear test site, setting off a series of explosions over several hours in the presence of foreign journalists. ABC News, 25 May 18
Key points:
Closing of North Korea’s nuclear test site was announced by Kim Jong-un before planned summit with US President Donald Trump
North Korea brought in a small group of foreign journalists to witness the event
Demolition comes after North Korea labelled US Vice President Mike Pence a “political dummy”
The explosions at the nuclear test site deep in the mountains of the North’s sparsely populated north-east were centred on three tunnels at the underground site and a number of buildings in the surrounding area.
North Korea had completely dismantled its Punggye-ri nuclear test ground “to ensure the transparency of discontinuance of nuclear test,” state news agency KCNA said.
The dismantling of the nuclear test ground “completely closed the tunnel entrances,” it said, adding that two tunnels there had been ready for use in “powerful underground nuclear tests”.
There was no leakage of radioactive material or adverse impact on the surrounding environment from the dismantling, the agency added.
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
nuclear-news 