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Dismay at safety risks of restarting Hunterston Nuclear Reactor 4

Largs and Millport Weekly News 19th Aug 2019 A SERIES of safety failure at Hunterston could have had ‘serious
consequences’ if the reactors had been in full operation, it was claimed
this week. The Nuclear Free Local Authorities group, which is made up of
councillors around the UK concerned about nuclear power, described the
incidents as ‘notable’. The incident which prevented cooling gas from being
circulated around a reactor was highlighted by the group as ‘a real
concern’. However the nuclear regulators described the incident as ‘minor’
as both incidents happened when both reactors were offline. n relation to
the incident, a spokesperson for Nuclear Free Local Authorities said:
“Whilst there were no radiological consequence from them, this is largely
due to the reactors not being in operation. “A loss of cooling is of real
concern as the consequences of such an eventuality when the reactors are in
full operation could have been extremely serious.”

https://www.largsandmillportnews.com/news/17833610.anger-series-safety-failures-hunterston/

The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) is disappointed with the decision
of the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to permit resumption of
electricity generation at Reactor 4 in the EDF-owned Hunterston site in
North Ayrshire. NFLA believes the age, the amount of keyway root cracks in
both Reactors 3 and 4, and the precautionary principle should have been
considered in the reactors not being reopened for generation.

NFLA 21st Aug 2019

http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-disappointed-onr-decision-resume-operations-reactor-4-hunterston-b/

August 23, 2019 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Bitcoin Hackers Charged As Nuclear Power Plant Security Compromised

August 23, 2019 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Kremlin cover up on weapon tested, and radioactive contamination?

Russian radiation detectors ‘go dark’ after mystery explosion
The mysterious shutdown of four nuclear monitoring stations after a fatal blast at a military site has fuelled fears of radioactive contamination. news.com.au 22 Aug 19

Russian officials have dismissed concerns, declaring on Tuesday the country had no obligation to share its data with the CNTBTO — raising fears of a Kremlin cover up on the type of weapon involved and the extent of contamination.

Elevated radiation levels — of up to 16 times the average — were detected 40 km away in the city of Severodvinsk in the aftermath of the event, according to The New York Times.

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday there was no risk to the public, although officials have yet to disclose how much radiation was released………

US National Nuclear Security Administration former deputy William Tobey said it was “at least an odd coincidence” Russian sensors stopped transmitting data about the same time as the explosion occurred.

“Power outages, other failures, can knock down a particular place, but if more than one site is out, it would seem that that is a less likely explanation,” Mr Tobey said.

Russian authorities have offered changing and contradictory information about the explosion fuelling speculation about what really happened and what type of weapon was involved.

While the Russian Defense Ministry said no radiation had been released in a rocket engine explosion, officials in the nearby city of Severodvinsk reported a brief rise in radiation levels.

The contradiction drew comparisons to Soviet attempts to cover up the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

In his first comments on the explosion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that it hasn’t posed any radiation threat. Putin added that experts are monitoring the situation to prevent any “unexpected developments.”

He didn’t say what weapon was being tested when the explosion occurred, but described the

test as a “state mission of critical importance.”…….

The Russian military said the explosion killed two people and injured six, while the state nuclear corporation Rosatom acknowledged later that it also killed five of its engineers and injured three others.

Rosatom said the explosion occurred on an offshore platform during tests of a “nuclear isotope power source.”……

Rosatom’s mention of a “nuclear isotope power source,” led some observers to conclude that the weapon undergoing tests was the “Burevestnik” or “Storm Petrel,” a prospective nuclear-powered cruise missile first mentioned by Putin in 2018 and was codenamed “Skyfall” by NATO.

US President Donald Trump backed that theory in a tweet last week, saying America is “learning much” from the Skyfall explosion.

The US worked to develop a nuclear-powered missile in the 1960s under Project Pluto, but the idea was discarded as impractical and risky. Mr Tobey said Russia’s apparent revival of the concept raises significant risks.

“Effectively, Russia is thinking about flying around nuclear reactors,” he told AP.

“The very idea of this system is, I think, a risky system. It probably poses more risk to the Russian people than to the American people. If it crashes, it could spread radiation.”

Nuclear expert Michael Krepon, who co-founded the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan public policy research body, said it was not surprising that Russia might take steps to conceal its activities because “they just can’t accept transparency when it comes to screw ups”.

“This weapon poses a danger first and foremost to the people who are working on it,” Mr Krepon said.

“It’s dumb, it’s stupid, it’s expensive, and there are so many other ways that you can deliver nuclear weapons long distance. The more Putin advertises this system, the more he’s likely to be embarrassed by it.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/russian-radiation-detectors-go-dark-after-mystery-explosion/news-story/4ab6ce7b4b3926379381a9a7d20baab3

August 22, 2019 Posted by | Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Two victims of mysterious Russian missile blast ‘died of radiation sickness’

August 22, 2019 Posted by | health, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

UK’s nuclear regulator allows EDF to restart Hunterston B nuclear reactor, despite cracks

Nuclear regulator permits restarting of reactor 4 at Hunterston B

EDF Energy is expected to restart reactor a year after it was shut down over safety concerns, Guardian, Jillian Ambrose. 21 Aug 19,  Britain’s nuclear watchdog has agreed to allow one of the country’s oldest nuclear reactors to restart, one year after it was shut down to investigate cracks in its graphite core.

EDF Energy is expected to restart reactor 4 at its 40-year-old Hunterston B nuclear plant on the Firth of Clyde in North Ayrshire within weeks after the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said the plant was safe.

The regulator will allow the reactor to run for four months after proving that the reactor cores can still fulfil their fundamental safety requirements, despite the cracks in its graphite bricks……..

The reactor was shut down last March after investigators discovered more than expected cracks in the graphite core of reactor 4 and reactor 3 at the Scottish nuclear plant. Its application to restart reactor 3, which was found to have more than 350 hairline cracks in its graphite core, is still pending. ……..

The French-owned energy company owns and operates all of the UK’s existing nuclear power plants, which provide about a fifth of the UK’s electricity. It is hoping to extend the reactors’ expected running lives and build new nuclear plants at the Hinkley Point C and Sizewell B nuclear sites.

The company said in 2016 it would extend the lives of its Heysham 1 and Hartlepool nuclear plants, which were due to close this year but will continue to run until 2024. The closure dates of the Heysham 2 and Torness nuclear plants will both be delayed by seven years to 2030.

EDF Energy hopes to run the Hunterston nuclear plant until 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/20/edf-nuclear-reactor-restarting-hunterston-b

August 22, 2019 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Safety concerns about floating nuclear reactors, and Rosatom admits that electricity from small floating nuclear reactors is more expensive.

August 22, 2019 Posted by | ARCTIC, business and costs, Russia, safety, technology | Leave a comment

Burevestnik, SKYFALL nuclear weapons – “of course, it’s a dick-measuring contest,”

The Absurd Strategy Behind Russia’s Nuclear Explosion, A radioactive mess near the Arctic Circle suggests our next superpower arms race will be even more foolish than the last one. New Republic , By ANKIT PANDA, August 22, 2019, The United States and Russia are entering a new arms race, and the costs aren’t just monetary. On August 8, Russian civilians around the remote village of Nyonoksa found themselves downwind of a military nuclear propulsion experiment gone wrong in the White Sea, just outside the Arctic Circle. According to the Russian ministry of defense, a liquid propellant rocket engine had gone awry and exploded.
This by itself was alarming, but not unprecedented: Liquid propellants, long preferred in many Russian missiles, are volatile and have exploded when prematurely brought into contact with oxidizing agents. What made this month’s explosion more significant was Russia’s acknowledgement that a “nuclear isotope power source” was involved. Seven people—including five scientists from Sarov, one of Russia’s secret nuclear complexes—were killed in the explosion. Russian state weather monitors reported   heightened background radiation levels around the site and beyond. A press release from a Norwegian monitoring agency a week after the incident noted that “tiny amounts of radioactive iodine”—a common byproduct of the sort of nuclear fission that might take place in a reactor—had been detected in northern Norway.

The exact sort of weapon Russia may have been testing is unknown, but the balance of evidence points to a probable culprit: the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile. Nuclear nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis and his team of researchers out in Monterey, California, have done much of the work in compiling this evidence, which includes the presence of a nuclear fuel carrier ship that was known to have been involved in recovery efforts after a previous failed test of the missile. Known in NATO countries as the SSC-X-9 SKYFALL, the Burevestnik’s atomic propulsion is said by Russian state media to give the missile “almost unlimited range, non-predictable trajectory and high air defense penetration capacity.”……..

In the end, much of what may be driving investment and research on this weapon—beyond Putin’s chest-thumping—may be the sprawling and influential Russian defense bureaucracy. (Overspending on exotic military systems is not an exceptionally American trait.)

That’s the shaky strategic logic behind it. But the common-sense logic, as the radioactive Nyonoksa explosion shows, is even less kind. If a nuclear-powered cruise missile sounds exotic and a little dangerous, that’s because it is. Missiles go boom—usually intentionally, but often enough not—and whatever nuclear power source they might be using onboard wouldn’t be immune.

There’s still little consensus among American experts about how exactly the Burevestnik might leverage nuclear power for propulsion. If you thought nuclear fission weapons were complex, nuclear rocket propulsion is more arcane and mysterious still. In the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. scientists drafted fanciful plans to give missiles nuclear engines, on the assumption that they’d be able to fly longer and farther than any weapon yet conceived. But the Americans eventually gave up; the technical challenges and environmental risks weren’t worth it. The Russians haven’t given up just yet, but they may someday…..

For the Russian leadership, a weapon like Burevestnik is a prestige project, a way to set Moscow apart from its competition……

Of course, Donald Trump couldn’t stomach another head of state flaunting his fancy rocket. The president tweeted on August 12 that the United States has “similar, though more advanced, technology.”  As nuclear chemist Cheryl Rofer observed, this was a rare tweet by Trump’s standards: one that criticized Russia. “And of course, it’s a dick-measuring contest,” Rofer added. (Trump’s done this before, chiding North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Twitter over the size of his “nuclear button.”) To the extent he grasps the salient issues, it’s likely the president has already asked Pentagon officials why the United States doesn’t have a nuclear-propelled cruise missile of its own.

A spokesperson for the Kremlin was blasé about the Nyonoksa explosion, stating that “accidents happen.” Yes, they do, but nuclear-powered cruise missile programs don’t just happen. They represent dangerous and unnecessary choices to goose a nation’s theoretical military supremacy, incentivizing other nations to follow suit, risks be damned. The arms control regimes that once moderated U.S. and Russian decisions are already crumbling, and another big one—the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START—may expire in 2021. What exactly transpired in the White Sea on August 8 may remain fuzzy, but what is becoming increasingly clear is the risk to life associated with a new generation of nuclear arms proliferation between the U.S. and Russia. With ultranationalist leaders and weapon fetishists in control of Washington and Moscow, buttressed by military yes-men and mercenary defense contractors, there’s little to stand in the way of a new, irrationally exuberant buildup of bizarre new nuclear forces.

Ankit Panda is an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and a senior editor at The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter at @nktpnd.

https://newrepublic.com/article/154815/absurd-strategy-behind-russias-nuclear-explosion

August 22, 2019 Posted by | Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russia Tells Nuclear Watchdog: Radiation From Blast Is ‘None of Your Business’

August 22, 2019 Posted by | Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Authorities Seize Crypto Mining Equipment from Nuclear Power Plant

August 22, 2019 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce in talks to sell French nuclear business to Framatome

Rolls-Royce in talks to sell French nuclear business to Framatome

Aero-engine group’s restructuring under chief Warren East continues, Ft.com  Sylvia Pfeifer

Rolls-Royce is in talks to sell its French civil nuclear business to Framatome, a company controlled by France’s EDF, in the latest move by the FTSE 100 engineer to reshape its operations. Two people close to the sales process said on Tuesday night that talks with the French company were continuing. The aero-engine group confirmed in March it had hired consultants from KPMG to review options for its international civil nuclear business, estimated by analysts to be worth up to £200m.

The business makes instruments and controls to monitor radiation and temperature. Its operations in France employ about 600 people and produce instrumentation systems for nuclear reactors around the world. It also has sites in North America focused on services such as the provision of data analytics tools. Rolls-Royce initially wanted to dispose of the operations as one package but failed to find a buyer, so decided to market them separately, according to one person familiar with the situation. France’s EDF holds a 75 per cent stake in Framatome. The balance is held by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, with a 19.5 per cent stake and another French company, Assystem, holding a 5 per cent share.
  The civil nuclear business is a small part of Rolls-Royce’s overall operations, which generated underlying revenues of £15bn last year. The sale also does not include the bulk of Rolls-Royce’s civil nuclear work in the UK, in particular its work on Hinkley Point in Somerset, the first nuclear power plant to be built in Britain in a generation. It also does not include its project to develop small modular reactors or its nuclear submarine reactor business.  ……..https://www.ft.com/content/5bb29a36-c386-11e9-a8e9-296ca66511c9

August 22, 2019 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Brexit proving a problem for the nuclear industry – shortage of welders for Hinkley Point C project,

Energy Voice 19th Aug 2019 , Britain’s plan to revitalize its aging nuclear energy infrastructure is
likely to take a hit if Brexit jeopardizes a crucial supply of welders. The
skilled workers have been in short supply for years, a strain that will
likely worsen as new nuclear projects are built.
About 13% of Britain’s welders come from other countries in the European Economic Area, according
to the Migration Advisory Committee, which keeps a list of occupations with
a shortage of workers.
Without those additional workers, it’s likely to
become more difficult and costly to build and operate multi-billion-dollar
atomic plants, which are crucial to the U.K.’s target to produce net-zero
carbon emissions by 2050.
The stress is already apparent at Electricite de
France SA’s 19.6 billion-pound ($24 billion) Hinkley Point C project, the
only nuclear plant now under construction in Britain. “Hinkley requires a
large number of welders,” said Peter Haslam, who retired on Friday as
head of policy at the Nuclear Industry Association. “They come from
Europe. We need these people to have easy access to the U.K.”

https://www.energyvoice.com/otherenergy/nuclear/205758/lack-of-welders-threatens-johnsons-uk-nuclear-renaissance/

August 20, 2019 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

Absolutely no need for Russia and the US to be adversaries and enemies

I visited Russia’s nuclear city and don’t want to relive the Cold War  

Commentary: One era of nuclear brinksmanship was enough for CNET’s Stephen Shankland, who visited the Russian nuclear weapons center of Sarov just after the first Cold War ended. CNET, BY STEPHEN SHANKLAND
AUGUST 18, 2019  I spent more than five years as a reporter in Los Alamos, New Mexico, birthplace of the atomic bomb, home to a major national laboratory, and the 18,000-person town where I grew up. I covered everything from President Bill Clinton visiting the lab to mostly harmless radioactive cat poop triggering radiation alarms at the county landfill. But the story that made the biggest impression on me took place thousands of miles away, in Russia.

In May 1995, I was part of a seven-person civilian delegation that traveled to Los Alamos sister city Sarov, about 230 miles east of Moscow. It’s the home of the institute where Russia developed its first atomic bomb. Our visit was timed to coincide with a 50th anniversary celebration of the end of the Great Patriotic War, aka World War II, which for the Russians ended when the Germans capitulated in May 1945.

It was a sobering visit — the economic devastation; the Soviet-era microphones bugging away in our hotel; the angry and impoverished veterans; and the daunting quantities of vodka, champagne and cognac that accompanied us during a weeklong series of banquets. I spoke with Viktor Adamsky, one of the designers of the biggest nuclear bomb of all time, the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, which was more powerful than all the bombs dropped in World War II.

I’m remembering it now because I’ve recently interviewed Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and a key leader of the US-Russian lab collaboration that led to my trip.

Back when US-Russian relations were thawing

During the time of my trip, relations between Russia and the US were warming, but now they’re cooling once again. That troubles Hecker — even though he spent much of his career designing the nuclear weapons the US aimed at the then-USSR.

It troubles me, as well. I grew up during the Cold War, and I’m not eager to introduce my children to concepts like nuclear winter and megadeath. And even as treaties between the US and Russia fizzle out and the two countries rev up another arms race, worries are piling up about the nuclear weapons capabilities of Iran and North Korea, too.

But Hecker stresses the similarities between the US and Russia — “They’re so much like us,” he says……

Each city benefited from its government’s largesse during the Cold War. “When I first came here, I thought it was a paradise. Such food!” one Sarov man told me. Meanwhile, Los Alamos received a federal funding boost for its schools and its police and fire departments. Each city suffered when government funding dropped with the end of the Cold War. Both cities teem with elite researchers who play important military roles and are curious about what makes the universe tick. Both cities have nuclear weapons museums showing off the hulking casings of early bombs…….

Hecker has a lot more of those connections. He’s friends with plenty of Russians and sees their cultural values as very similar to ours. And he’s keeping his communication links alive even though the US-Russia lab-to-lab collaboration project he helped begin is now all but dead. He’ll take his 57th trip to Russia in November.

The two countries can move past sticking points like NATO’s eastward expansion and Russia’s military action in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Hecker says. Today’s nationalistic fervor might make it hard to defrost the relationship, but seeing the world from the other side’s perspective will help, he says.

“There is absolutely no need for Russia and the US to be adversaries and enemies,” Hecker tells me. “Absolutely none.” https://www.cnet.com/news/i-visited-russia-nuclear-city-sarov-dont-want-to-relive-cold-war/

August 20, 2019 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Renewables – onshore wind from Europe- enough to power the world

August 20, 2019 Posted by | EUROPE, renewable | Leave a comment

Russia Testing Nuclear-Powered Mega-Torpedo Near Where Deadly Explosion Occurred

Russia Testing Nuclear-Powered Mega-Torpedo Near Where Deadly Explosion Occurred  https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2019/08/17/russia-testing-nuclear-powered-mega-torpedo-near-where-deadly-explosion-occurred/#7f3e00632d7fH I Sutton,     Aerospace & DefenseI cover the changing world of underwater warfare.  Details are still emerging of the explosion of a nuclear-powered engine that killed at least seven people in northern Russia last week. Conflicting reports, rumors and speculation center around whether the engine was for a nuclear-powered cruise missile, codenamed Skyfall by NATO, or some other weapon-related reactor. One of the possible weapons in the frame is the Poseidon mega-torpedo. This new weapon is described as an Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedo by the U.S. government

One of the possible weapons in the frame is the Poseidon mega-torpedo. This new weapon is described as an Intercontinental Nuclear-Powered Nuclear-Armed Autonomous Torpedo by the U.S. government.

The unique drone-like weapon is in an entirely new category. Launched from a large submarine, potentially from under the protection of the arctic ice cap, it would have virtually unlimited range and Russia claims that it will run so deep that it cannot realistically be countered with existing weapons. It’s designed to be armed with a nuclear warhead, reportedly of 2 megatons, which represents a slow but unstoppable death-knell for the residents of coastal cities such as New York or San Francisco in the event of a nuclear war. The Russian Ministry of Defense also claims that it will be usable against high value maritime targets such as the U.S. Navy’s carrier battle groups.

It is massive, around 30 times larger than the heavyweight torpedoes commonly used aboard submarines, and twice as large as submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Specially constructed submarines will be able to carry six Poseidon each. Unlike existing missile submarines, which are termed SSBNs, this type of submarine doesn’t even have a designation yet. Possibly SSDN will be used to denote a nuclear powered drone-carrying submarine.

Poseidon is being tested in the region, my analysis of information gathered from public sources shows. For trials it is being launched by a special submarine based in Severodvinsk, near the Nyonoksa testing site where the explosion occurred. The submarine is named Sarov after the city where the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, which developed the nuclear engine involved in the explosion, is based. Sarov is also the city where the victims of the blast were laid to rest. In recent years the Russian Ministry of Defense has been open about Sarov’s role in the tests. The submarine rarely puts to sea but my analysis of information gathered from public sources shows that it did venture out into the White Sea in June, pointing to possible recent test launches.

Poseidon was first revealed to the public in dramatic fashion by Russian state media in the fall of 2015, when a slide on the new weapon was visible during a meeting with President Putin.  The apparent security lapse was probably not by accident.

The project itself has since been traced back much further to the end of the Cold War, and defense watchers had an inkling of a giant torpedo-like weapon under development for about five years prior to the staged leak.

The weapon has been in testing since around 2014 and is likely to be nearing the production phase with deployments at sea from the early 2020s. The first submarine slated to carry the weapon operationally was launched in April in Severodvinsk. The gigantic Belgorod submarine is still undergoing fitting out and will not be operational for a few years. The second submarine, Khabarovsk, is also nearing completion and two more SSDNs are expected to follow, providing Russia with a new dimension in nuclear deterrence.

August 19, 2019 Posted by | Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Radiation from a missile explosion has not spread beyond Russia

No sign radiation from a missile explosion has spread beyond Russia, New Scientist :   12 August 2019, By Adam Vaughan, An explosion at a missile testing range in north-western Russia killed five people working for the state nuclear energy agency and saw radiation levels spike locally, but there is no sign the radiation has spread to other countries……

“Russian authorities have confirmed the involvement of radioactive materials in the accident, but not the specific weapons system that was being tested,” says Ankit Panda at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C. “It’s important to clarify that the radiological event in this case is not due to the presence of nuclear weaponry, but what may be a prototype nuclear propulsion unit for a cruise missile.” He believes the difficulties and dangers of such a system mean it may never see deployment.

Radiation levels in Severodvinsk, 25 miles away, jumped for nearly an hour, at levels of up to 2 microsieverts per hour, which is below levels considered dangerous. A statement on the city’s website reported a “short-term” spike on Thursday, but the statement had been removed by Friday…….

no radiation from the recent incident appears to have reached Europe. The Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority says it has detected nothing unusual yet, and the UK’s radiation monitoring network, RIMNET, told New Scientist it has had no reports of other countries recording increases in radiation levels.

“Lack of detection by Norway and Finland so far makes us assume only trace concentrations may reach Europe,” says Rashid Alimov at Greenpeace Russia. Modelling by Ivan Kovalyets at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine suggests only small concentrations might reach into Ukraine.  https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213200-no-sign-radiation-from-a-missile-explosion-has-spread-beyond-russia/

August 19, 2019 Posted by | environment, Russia | Leave a comment

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