Finnish firms target Chinese radwaste market, WNN, 23 August 2018
Finnish utility Fortum and consulting engineering company AINS Group have signed a memorandum of understanding to provide radioactive waste management services to China’s rapidly expanding nuclear industry. Through the MoU, the companies will provide services for the management of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste in China. The agreement also enhances cooperation between the firms and other Finnish companies and organisations, including VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd and Posiva Solutions.
Based on expected installed nuclear generating capacity of 50 GWe by 2020, China’s annual used fuel arisings will amount to about 1200 tonnes at that stage, the cumulative total being about 14,000 tonnes then.
“As China becomes increasingly mindful of environmental integrity and reduces its use of fossil fuels, [its] zero-carbon nuclear energy solution requires enhanced focus on radioactive waste management,” the companies said in a joint statement. “Finnish expertise has an important role in disposing of Chinese radioactive waste and building a cleaner future together with shared respect for nature and the environment.”……….Finnish waste management company Posiva – jointly owned by Fortum and TVO – launched Posiva Solutions in June 2016. The business, it said, would “focus on the marketing of the know-how accumulated from the design, research and development efforts in the final disposal of used nuclear fuel, as well as on associated consulting services”. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Finnish-firms-target-Chinese-radwaste-market
Further safety fears at nuclear weapons site, Basingstoke Gazette, By Dan Whiteway @Dan_Whiteway 23 Aug 18 FURTHER safety concerns have been raised in regards to the running of the UK’s nuclear warhead assembly facility. The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has required immediate safety changes to be put in place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE).
If sufficient progress is not made on reducing risk at the facility, the ONR has said that operations may need to stop altogether.
There has been a series of announcements related to safety concerns at AWE, including the ONR placing the Aldermaston and Burghfield facilities into special measures. This is the sixth consecutive year that Aldermaston has been in special measures, and the third year in a row for the Burghfield site.
Russia is preparing to search for a nuclear-powered missile that was lost at sea months ago after a failed test, CNBC 221 Aug 18
Moscow is preparing to recover a nuclear-powered missile lost at sea, according to sources with direct knowledge of a U.S. intelligence report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged earlier this year that the new missile had unlimited range.
The missile was tested four times between November and February, each resulting in a crash, according to sources who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity.
Amanda Macias | @amanda_m_macias ………..Crews will attempt to recover a missile that was test launched in November and landed in the Barents Sea, which is located north of Norway and Russia. The operation will include three vessels, one of which is equipped to handle radioactive material from the weapon’s nuclear core. There is no timeline for the mission, according to the people with knowledge of the report……
Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled the new nuclear-powered missile in March, boasting it had unlimited range. Yet, the weapon has yet to be successfully tested over multiple attempts.
Russia tested four of the missiles between November and February, each resulting in a crash, people who spoke on the condition of anonymity previously told CNBC. The U.S. assessed that the longest test flight lasted just more than two minutes, with the missile flying 22 miles before losing control and crashing. The shortest test lasted four seconds and flew for five miles. Russia has denied the missile test failures. ……..https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/21/russias-nuclear-powered-missile-that-putin-claimed-had-infinite-range-is-currently-lost-at-sea.html
Sweden calls for nuclear reactors to be shielded from hot weather, Business Times, AUG 21, 2018
[OSLO]Sweden’s nuclear energy regulator SSM has asked plant operators to produce plans in the coming months to shield their reactors from harmful hot weather, its director told Reuters on Monday.
A number of Swedish reactors had to shut down or reduce output as the summer heatwave sent temperatures to record highs in July, with the sea water that is used to cool them becoming much warmer than normal, exceeding safety levels. The last time that SSM, the Swedish radiation safety authority, asked operators to produce plans to modify their reactors was after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011. The cost of those changes, which are due by 2020, was in the hundreds of millions of euros.
“We really have to take into consideration what happened this summer … We have asked them orally to come with suggestions. Of course there will be a cost. I do not know how much at this stage,” said SSM chief Mats Persson said.
Walthamstow Guardian 18th Aug 2018, A prominent anti-nuclear campaigner has died, aged 90. Sarah Hipperson of
Wanstead rose to national attention in 1983 after she joined a protest at
Greenham Common. She passed away on Wednesday (August 15).
The mother-of-five was best known for her role at a women’s camp at the Royal
Air Force station in Berkshire to prevent cruise missiles from being stored
at the site. She was involved in direct action, such as cutting fences and
obstructing vehicles. She served 22 prison sentences, the longest being 28
days, for criminal damage but would proudly boast that she “never paid a
fine.”
U.S. firm pulls out of building Hitachi nuclear plant in Britain, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, August 17, 2018 Major U.S. construction firm Bechtel Corp. is to withdraw from its key role in building a nuclear power plant in Britain due to concerns over the Hitachi Ltd.-helmed project’s profitability, sources said Aug. 16.
Bechtel made the decision based on its assessment that the drastic rise in construction costs would make it hard to make money on the project, the sources said.
The withdrawal deals a blow to Tokyo-based Hitachi, which lacks experience in nuclear power plant construction. The conglomerate could now face further difficulties in financing the project.
The Japanese government supports the construction project as an “export of nuclear power generation technologies,” but even so, its future is becoming more and more uncertain……..
if Horizon replaces Bechtel, it faces the risk that the construction costs will become higher than anticipated.
Hitachi is aiming to lower its stake in Horizon from the current 100 percent to less than 50 percent as a condition for the start of construction of the nuclear plant, and so it is asking other companies to invest in Horizon.
But if other companies are concerned over Horizon’s risk, they will hesitate to invest in it. As a result, Hitachi will face bigger difficulties in raising funds for construction and proceeding with the project.
Fierce debate sparked by ‘nuclear mud’ digging on Bristol Channel coast, Mud is being dug up and moved from Hinkley Point nuclear power station, Bristol Live By David Williamson, Daniel Chipperfield , 16 Aug 18
Plans to dig up mud from Hinkley Point nuclear sites on the Somerset coast and dump it in South Wales have been met with controversy.
Work will start next month dredging roughly 300,000 tonnes which will be moved to land near Cardiff, but protesters say there’s a chance the mud could be contaminated with radiation, making it unsafe…. Wale’s Online’s poltiical editor David Williamson has been investigating the issue as protesters call on Natural resources Wales to suspend the licence for the dredging.
Hinkley Point A Stopped Producing Electricity In 2000 After 35 Years Of Operations; Hinkley Point B Has Been Generating Electricity Since 1976.
EDF Now Wants To Take Mud And Sediment So It Can Drill Six Vertical Shafts For The Cooling Water System For The New Hinkley Point C Power Station.
The Energy Giant Claims The Material Is “No Different To The Sediment Already At The Cardiff Grounds” And Is “Not Classed As Radioactive Under UK Law”.
But Campaigners Do Not Believe Detailed The Tests That Have Been Carried Out Are Sufficiently Thorough…….Dr Richard Bramhall Of The Low Level Radiation Campaign – A Former Member Of The UK Government’s Committee Examining Radiation Risks Of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) – Has Voiced Worries About The Tests.
In A Letter To NRW He Raised Concerns The Tests Did Not Assess Whether Uranium, Plutonium And Other Alpha-Emitting Elements Were Present In Minute “Particulate” Form.
As Larger Fragments Break Up, Any Given Amount Of Particulate Matter Will Become More Mobile, Be More Easily Inhaled Into The Deep Lung And The Lymphatic System, And Will Emit More Radiation,” He Said.
Tim Deere-Jones, A Self-Employed Marine Pollution Consultant, Argues Years Of Discharges From The Existing Nuclear Stations Mean More Detailed Study Is Needed.
He Said: “Those Sediments Had Been In Receipt Of Discharges From The Hinkley A Nuclear Station And The Hinkley B Nuclear Station… If You’ve Got 300,000 Tonnes Of That Stuff Being Dredged And Dumped So Close [To South Wales] You Need To Know Exactly What You’ve Got In It In Terms Of Radioactivity.”
Tim Deere-Jones, A Self-Employed Marine Pollution Consultant, Argues Years Of Discharges From The Existing Nuclear Stations Mean More Detailed Study Is Needed.
He Said: “Those Sediments Had Been In Receipt Of Discharges From The Hinkley A Nuclear Station And The Hinkley B Nuclear Station… If You’ve Got 300,000 Tonnes Of That Stuff Being Dredged And Dumped So Close [To South Wales] You Need To Know Exactly What You’ve Got In It In Terms Of Radioactivity.”
The Government have issued a clear commitment to developing the UK’s capacity to produce nuclear energy in 2018.
But some MPs are reticent and believe the UK is being taken down the wrong path in its pursuit of a robust sustainable energy mix, writes Dods Monitoring’s Josh White. SNP MPs such as Drew Hendry and Alan Brown have encapsulated this sentiment in the Commons, often taking the Government to task on its decision to prioritise new nuclear over alternatives such as oil and gas and offshore wind.
In July, Hendry accused the Government of locking consumers into paying £20 to £40 more per megawatt-hour and called on it to end to its “obsession with outdated, expensive and risky nuclear”.
Does Hendry have a point? – At face value, there’s no denying that a higher strike price represents a poorer public investment, however, new nuclear stakeholders have argued that the reliability of nuclear energy sets it apart from other cheaper forms of low carbon energy production.
Whilst it is evident that the Government seeks to establish new nuclear as the core of the future UK energy mix, the success of the project will be contingent on finding a solution to the pressing issue of what to do with nuclear waste – a problem unique to nuclear energy.
Currently, the solution on thetable is to store radioactive waste in geological disposal facilities (GDFs) that would be built with community consent, bringing jobs and skills to affected localities whilst also providing a long-term solution to the legacy of higher-activity waste.
The scheme failed to gain traction in 2008 when it was launched as part of the Managing Radioactive Disposal white paper, however, with the need to transition towards a sustainable energy mix greater than ever, the Government is hoping the initiative will attract
more support and uptake this time around.
Populists May Rip Up Sweden’s Nuclear Code of Conduct, Bloomberg, By Jesper Starn,
Five party bi-partisan agreement from 2016 under threat
Energy system will be tested this winter after atomic closures
Sweden’s biggest ever cross-party energy deal was designed to provide stability for utilities for almost three decades, but the 2016 accord is now at risk of being ripped up after next month’s general election.
The Sweden Democrats, which some polls show could emerge as the biggest party, would revoke nuclear-plant closures central to the agreement if they came to power. The Christian Democrats, one of the accord’s co-signers, on Tuesday echoed that view and pressed for key parts of the deal to be renegotiated.
The agreement ended more than 30 years of bickering over nuclear power, extended support for renewable energy and stated that there should be zero emissions impacting the climate by 2045. It effectively boosted the lives of the nation’s six newest reactors until at least 2040, but didn’t address how the capacity of four older Vattenfall AB and EON SE units will be replaced. …….https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/nuclear-revival-talk-could-upend-historic-swedish-energy-accord
Thousands of tonnes of material needs to be dredged from the Hinkley Point C building site in Somerset.
The developer wants to dispose of 300,000 tonnes of mud across the Bristol Channel in the Cardiff Grounds, a little over a mile out to sea from Cardiff Bay.
Natural Resources Wales (NRW) will monitor it, but it has been delayed.
We were initially told by the licence holder, NNB Genco, that they intended to begin the dredging/disposal operations on 16 August,” said NRW’s John Wheadon.
“We were subsequently informed that, due to external constraints, the dredging is now expected to begin in early September, although no specific date has yet been provided.”
An enormous floating dock given to Russia by Italy has been put to use transferring a radioactive barge from the Zvezdochka Shipyard in Severodvinsk to safe storage at the Sayda Bay facility near Murmansk. by Charles Digges
An enormous floating dock given to Russia by Italy has been put to use transferring a radioactive barge from the Zvezdochka Shipyard in Severodvinsk to safe storage at the Sayda Bay facility near Murmansk.
The radioactively contaminated barge, called the PM-124, was built in 1960 and used as a floating dock for servicing nuclear submarines in the Soviet Northern Fleet. Slated for use until 1985, it continued collecting fuel assemblies for another 20 years. Since 2005, the fuel assemblies have been removed, but but for a time the barge was used used for storing other forms of solid radioactive waste at Zvezdochka.
While nearly all decommissioned submarines from the Soviet Northern Fleet have been dismantled by a variety of international agreements, a number of other military nuclear hazards still lurk on Russia’s Kola Peninsula, and the PM-124 was one of them.The Itarus is one of two nuclear-waste transport vessels that Italy provided for Russia under its Global Partnership obligations. The other, called the Rossita, a €70 million container ship, is now engaged in ferrying spent nuclear submarine fuel away from Andreyeva Bay, another major radioactive hazard left over after the Cold War.
For its part, the Itarus, which arrived in Russia in 2016, was designed specifically for shuttling reactor compartments from dismantled nuclear submarines to Sayda Bay, a facility run by SevRAO, the northern branch of RosRAO, one of Russia’s state nuclear waste handling contractor.
Rosatom has also billed it as a valuable tool in retrieving nuclear reactors and other radioactive debris intentionally scuttled in Arctic waters by the Soviet Navy.
No storage site for these underwater nuclear artifacts has yet been selected, but the Russian government has promised for years to raise them, and Rosatom’s submarine decommissioning chief, Anatoly Zakharchyov, has often suggested the Itarus, with its submersible dock features, would be handy for this endeavor.
In 2014, the Russian government revealed that the sunken waste in the Arctic includes 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships containing radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radioactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.
Joint Russian and Norwegian expeditions to the K-27 and another sunken sub, the K-159, suggest neither pose imminent contamination risks. But experts on both sides agree it’s better to get them out of the water sooner than later, before radioactive leakage becomes an urgent problem.
Zakharchyov has said the reinvigoration of the Gremikha naval nuclear waste storage facility could be a critical storage site for undersea nuclear hazards eventually netted by the Itarus.
Ekklesia 13th Aug 2018, *Burghfield** The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has required immediate safety
changes to be made at the UK’s nuclear warhead assembly facility and has
said that even with the changes, operations at the site can only continue
for a limited period of time.
If sufficient progress is not made on
reducing risk at the facility, ONR have said that operations may need to
stop altogether. The UK’s nuclear warheads are assembled in the Assembly
Technology Centre at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Burghfield,
using components manufactured at nearby AWE Aldermaston.
The work is carried out in buildings known as ‘Gravel Gerties’ which are designed
to collapse inwards and trap radioactive material if there is a partial
explosion during the assembly process. Burghfield’s Gravel Gerties are
thought to have been built in the 1950s. In May the National Audit Office
revealed that a replacement building is six years late and is expected to
cost £1.8 billion, an increase of 146 per cent over the £734 million
approved for the project in 2011. http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/26557
Trib Live 9th Aug 2018 The volunteer efforts of a Hyde Park environmental activist and a retired
Washington Township engineer helped about 300 former nuclear workers in the
region collect $60 million from the federal government for cancers likely
caused by their jobs.
A federal entitlement program that was enacted in 2000, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program pays$150,000 tax-free, plus medical benefits, to workers who became ill,
because of their work for the government or contractors for nuclear weapons
and Cold War-related work.
Nation Cymru 13th Aug 2018, Plaid’s leadership contest is an opportunity to banish the nuclear
elephant in the room. Given the contempt shown by Labour for Wales after
twenty years of rule, and the systematic neglect by successive governments
in London, voters should be turning to Plaid en masse for the first time.
And yet what will they turn to find? A party in the middle of a leadership
contest. But if we must have a leadership contest, let’s turn it into a
positive and clarify, if not solidify, the party’s message and policies
with no compromises. The Plaid leadership contest is an opportunity to
banish the nuclear elephant in the room once and for all. Nuclear power has
to be and needs to be a central part of the debate during the leadership
election.
If not now, when? This issue cannot be allowed to undermine the
party, its current or future leaders any longer; it has become Plaid’s
ball and chain. How can we welcome voters old and new to believe manifesto
promises or have faith in any single AM, MP or Councillor when the party is
simultaneously against and pro one of the biggest issues of our time?
Nuclear power is a great distraction from Plaid Cymru’s progressive
politics and progressive energy policies, a black hole sucking time and
resources Wales doesn’t have, denying communities and the country a real
chance of a sustainable and secure future. How can any party simultaneously
be pro-independence and seriously entertain or endorse any new nuclear
build?
As many parts of the Northern hemisphere continue to experience an unprecedented heat-wave, with near-record temperatures in Spain and Greece this weekend, the heat-wave is having an effect on the continent’s nuclear reactors.
But first let’s keep joining the dots. What we are witnessing this summer is climate change in action.
For many people trying to understand why we are having record temperatures this year, there is further evidence contained in the annual “Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,” which is for actually for last year but gives us further evidence of our warming world.
The “State of the Climate 2017” report, as it is known, is compiled by over 500 scientists from sixty five countries. It states:
“In 2017, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth’s atmosphere — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — reached new record highs. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth’s surface for 2017 was 405.0 ± 0.1 ppm, 2.2 ppm greater than for 2016 and the highest in the modern atmospheric measurement record and in ice core records dating back as far as 800 000 years. The global growth rate of CO2 has nearly quadrupled since the early 1960s.”
The report adds: “Notably, it was the warmest non-El Niño year in the instrumental record.”
My hunch is that 2018 will be warmer that 2017, but we will have to wait to see. And this year it is not just people dying in wild-fires or mountains in Sweden literally melting in the heat, but now the excessive temperatures have forced the closure of over half a dozen nuclear reactors.
The French energy company, EDF has halted four nuclear reactors at three different power plants in France due to the heat, a spokesman confirmed yesterday.
The force of the closure was the high temperatures registered in the Rhone and Rhine rivers, which are used to cool the nuclear reactors, according to Reuters.
But these are not the only nuclear reactors suffering in the heat. Due to increased sea temperatures in Nordic region, Reuters is also reporting that the heat “has forced some nuclear reactors to curb power output or shut down altogether, with more expected to follow suit.”
One of those plants struggling is Vattenfall’s Ringhal’s plant in Sweden. The company, which operates seven reactors in Sweden, shut a 900 megawatt PWR unit — one of the four located at its Ringhals plant — earlier this month, as water temperatures exceeded 25 degrees Celsius, according to Reuters.
The short-term nuclear shut downs raise numerous issues.
Vegard Willumsen, section manager at Norway’s energy regulator NVE, told Reuters. “If nuclear reactors in the Nordics shut down or reduce power due to the heatwave, it could also put pressure on the supply and consequently on the Nordic power prices.”
But more importantly, there is an obvious question that needs answering. For the last decade the nuclear industry has been telling us it is the solution to climate change. But if their reactors can’t work in our rapidly warming world, are we just building a whole new generation of expensive white elephants?
