“FUSION NET GAIN” is manufactured ignorance.
The only thing limitless and free about fusion power is the hype it generates
ARENA ONLINE, DARRIN DURANT, 16 DEC 2022 On 5 December 2022, fusion power researchers at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved two technical milestones which by 12 December had encouraged a media-fuelled, gigantically unfounded and exaggerated projection about impending cheap, carbon-free, infinite electricity supply. Yes, ‘ignition’—a sustained, lab-controlled fusion reaction—was achieved. So too was ‘gain’, [?really] as the energy released by the fusion reaction was greater than that required by the lasers used to heat and compress a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet.
But we are light years away, at minimum, from fusion power contributing electricity into a grid and in any way helping to resolve the climate crisis. What is going on in all the pretending otherwise?
Almost every word written about ‘net energy gain’ from a fusion reaction is a species of manufactured ignorance generated by managing uncomfortable knowledge, which is complicated by a tension between the desire to trust fusion experts but the knowledge that those experts operate under powerful incentives to engage in hype.
INERTIAL CONFINEMENT
We have been at the doorstep of fusion hype before. In fact, ever since the 1950s fusion power has been just over the horizon. The fusion illusion has become its own cottage industry, with competing fusion research teams over-calling each other in a series of breakthroughs and decisive advances that generate hype, but no electricity.
For instance, on 9 February 2022 the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in the UK announced that it had produced 59 Megajoules of energy and that this indicated ‘powerplant potential’. Yet JET consumed significantly more power than it produced. Hence I suggested that the claim of a net power gain was a form of hyped science communication in which future promise colonises present limitations.
Researchers at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) are the most recent hype-mongers. In fusion research, there are two main approaches: doughnuts and lasers. The ITER tokamak reactor in France is a doughnut-shaped machine that uses high-temperature magnetic confinement to create a stable and continuous plasma in which fusion can occur. By contrast, in the inertial confinement approach, discrete fusion reactions produce bursts of energy. In NIF experiments, a weak laser pulse is created, split, amplified, converted from infrared to ultraviolet energy, and then, in the form of 192 beams, focused onto a capsule containing deuterium and tritium, heating and compressing (fusing) the nuclear fuel to create alpha particles and release neutrons.
In their 13 December announcement of NIF’s experimental result, the US Department of Energy (DOE) advertised the result as a ‘game changer’ and quoted a host of US politicians directly linking the result to commercial fusion power and the goal of a ‘net-zero carbon economy’. Media outlets which really should adopt stricter editorial standards gushed about the result implying ‘limitless, zero-carbon power’ or stating that it ‘changes everything’ and heralds a decisive step towards ‘carbon-free energy’ for ‘everyone’ for ‘millions of years’.
The only thing limitless and free about fusion power is the hype it generates.
Back in reality, the DOE specified that ‘LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output’. The DOE suggested ‘there is momentum to drive rapid progress towards fusion commercialization’, but what does that 1.10 MJ ‘gain’ in fact mean?
Even science magazines regurgitated the hype, suggesting the fusion reaction released ‘roughly 54% more than the energy that went into the reaction’. Yet when any of these media sources came up for air, typically late into the triumphant narrative, there were somewhat grudging estimates of total energy input, always attributed to some scientists who otherwise had gushed about technological promise. These scientists estimated that the total energy consumed by NIF’s 192 lasers was between 300 megajoules and 500 megajoules. Multiple credulous sources split the difference at 400 megajoules. As one sceptical physicist noted, ‘consuming 400 MJ and producing 3.15 MJ is a net energy loss greater than 99%’, akin to you giving me $400 and me returning to you $3.15, then trying to pump your tyres about how wealthy you just became.
UNCOMFORTABLE KNOWLEDGE
I am not a particle or theoretical physicist, and am admittedly biased by finding nuclear fission as a commercial electricity option to be a kind of technological creationism, and certainly a white elephant for Australia. Moreover, my field of Science and Technology Studies is known more for deconstructing facts than building them up. But as a sociologist of knowledge interested in theorising the positive, ‘partnership’ role experts can play in democratic decision-making, I ask, could experts with specialist knowledge relevant to fusion engineering be doing a better job of reining in the unwarranted hype about fusion net gain?
Specialist commentators on fusion power could do worse than get more comfortable with uncomfortable knowledge. Uncomfortable knowledge is information or understanding that is available but unevenly distributed or acknowledged, inadvertently or strategically obscured or left undone, and actually or potentially disruptive for the goals and interests of select organisations and institutions.
In fusion research, the fact that net energy gain is not the goal of either magnetic confinement or laser inertial confinement is the most salient piece of uncomfortable knowledge. ITER recently withdrew its claim of net energy gain—of 500 MW of fusion power from 50 MW of input power (a Q value of 10)—and now says that ITER is ‘the investigation and demonstration of burning plasmas’, in which the energy of helium nuclei produced by fusion reactions is enough to maintain plasma temperature.
The LLNL team admitted as much as well, describing the NIF result as a ‘proof of concept [not designed] to plug the NIF into the grid’, with other physicists adding that NIF was designed to be a big laser that could ‘give us the data we need for the [nuclear] stockpile research programme’.
Given the hype about limitless clean energy just over the horizon, another type of uncomfortable knowledge involves the judgements about the feasibility of commercial electrical power from fusion. Put differently, rather than being regaled by hyped milestones and heroic assumptions about future developments, why not cold, hard assessments of uncertainties and obstacles?
While it seemed easy to find a dozen experts willing to gush on record about how remarkable it was to spend $3.5 billion to produce an energy output that might boil a few kettles, frank assessments of future prospects are confined to scattered observations by disconnected critics.
But the list of uncertainties includes: how to increase the fusion reaction frequency from 1 per day to maybe 10 per second; how to reduce the cost of the capsule ‘target’ from tens of thousands of dollars to a few cents, especially as production ramps up from one capsule per week to up to one million per week; how to ensure the laser can reliably fire ten times per second, not once per day; whether energy out can increase versus energy in from 1.54x to 30x; how the heat produced by the fusion will be extracted; whether the efficiency of the yield can be increased by least two orders of magnitude; and whether it is possible to breed enough of the tritium fuel for a commercial industry.
Where such uncomfortable knowledge about feasibility is tackled in depth, it is only by critics. One physicist thus suggested commercial feasibility would demand an increase in fusion output of 100,000 per cent, a mastery of exceedingly strict conditions vis a vis temperature, shape of target capsule and vacuum chamber, a solution to the problem that the machine breaks when it works and requires hours to recover, and an overcoming of the low supply of tritium fuel and its prohibitive cost.
A final form of uncomfortable knowledge includes drawbacks, which are typically managed through practices that include denial (avoiding acknowledging information even if others bring it to collective attention), dismissal (manufacturing justifications for rejecting a counter-claim), diversion (distracting via a decoy issue) and displacement (swapping problems).
Two examples will suffice. One is the deuterium-tritium fuel needed for any future fusion reactor. It scarcely exists in nature (a fact met with denial) and must be produced either in heavy water reactors or by breeding it from enriched lithium-6, which is in short supply (met with dismissal), and, no, it is not solved by speculations about extracting the fuel from sea water (a diversion).
A second drawback is that nuclear fusion may be not the perfect energy source for a climate crisis but, as a former fusion physicist put it, is ‘in some ways close to the opposite’. Put succinctly, the fact that neutron streams comprise 80 per cent of fusion energy output in deuterium-tritium reactions makes it an odd electrical energy source. The neutron streams damage the structure of the machine, produce relatively bulky radioactive waste, require biological shielding, and constitute a proliferation risk (Pu-239). The fusion reactor itself has a high parasitic power consumption, a scarce fuel supply, and likely high operating costs due to continual radiation damage…………………………………… more https://arena.org.au/fusion-net-gain-is-manufactured-ignorance/
‘We are all downwinders’: New film discusses Nevada’s nuclear fallout
https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/movies/we-are-all-downwinders-new-film-discusses-nevadas-nuclear-fallout-2695496/ By Taylor Lane Las Vegas Review-Journal, December 16, 2022
“At the end of the day, we are all downwinders.”
That’s the message directors Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller hope viewers take away from their upcoming film “Downwind,” a documentary on the health consequences of nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site (now called the Nevada National Security Site).
The test site saw over 900 nuclear detonations between 1951 and 1992, including 100 atmospheric tests that could be seen from as far as Las Vegas, 65 miles south of the test site, and St. George, Utah, which has above-average rates of radioactivity compared to the U.S. average.
The film centers around the areas closest to the blasts in Utah and western Nevada, where communities officials once deemed a “low-use segment of the population” bore the brunt of the fallout — mainly Mormon communities, Native Americans and other rural residents, Shapiro said.
Because of its Utah focus, the filmmakers wanted to debut it in the Beehive State at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.PauseUnmute
The film premieres Jan. 23 and will be preceded by a panel featuring Miller and Shapiro, along with downwinder advocates Claudia Peterson and Mary Dickson, Nevada Shoshone Nation Principal Man and spokesperson Ian Zabarte and Scott Williams, a nuclear policy consultant from Heal Utah.
Shapiro and Miller said they became interested in researching nuclear fallout after reflecting on their families’ history of cancer, which is found in higher rates in communities in proximity to the test site.
The two descended down a rabbit hole of research on the widespread impacts of radiation from nuclear testing, and found out radiation is not exclusive to the Southwest.
“Even if you don’t live in St. George, the radiation impacts us globally,” Shapiro said.
Miller said he was awestruck by a map from researcher Richard Miller (no relation) that shows how far the winds blew the radiation across the U.S.
“It blasted the entire country, minus Los Angeles because of the way the wind was blowing. … It just changes your whole mindset of ‘Is this real?’ And then you continue to dig,” Miller said.
Talking with Nevadans
Miller and Shapiro spoke with many Nevadans about their experiences with nuclear fallout, including members of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians such as Zabarte. The test site is on the traditional homelands of the Western Shoshone.
“We wanted to make sure that we had the perspective of Ian and others from the community to talk about the significance of testing on land that they still consider theirs and theirs by treaty,” Shapiro said.
The duo found support from late Review-Journal reporter Keith Rogers, whose career at the newspaper focused on the test site, military issues and the environment. Rogers died in October.
“We looked at him as a significant contributor to this film,” Shapiro said. “(For) both Doug and I, he was like a father figure to us. He really helped guide a lot of the story.”
Rogers is featured in the film, and behind the scenes helped Miller and Shapiro connect with people who work at Atomic Testing Museum and to past test site employees.
The greatest resource Rogers gave the team, Shapiro said, was a U.S. nuclear test booklet from the Department of Energy, which detailed every test ever done at the test site.
“Each one of them has a name, it has a date, it has a location, it has the yield range — some of these bombs were several times larger than the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Shapiro said. “This booklet that he gave me, you see notes from the government saying ‘accidental release of radiation detected off site.’ It almost gives you shivers — it’s the rabbit hole effect.”
The film also stars actor Martin Sheen, who serves as the film’s narrator and has spoken out against nuclear testing, and comedian Lewis Black, who adds humor to a dark story about America’s past and has joked about duck-and-cover drills in his stand-up routines.
“(Black) is a political commentator, and his comedy is a reflection of the time we live in,” Shapiro said.
Holding accountability
Miller hopes the film shows that residents whose lives have been changed by testing should be compensated and that Americans can find ways to prevent testing from happening again, he said.
“We have to make sure that we’re holding our government accountable for what’s happening,” Shapiro said. “While we recognize how much we love living here (in the U.S.), still, there’s accountability.”
For more information on the film, visit backlotdocs.com.
Contact Taylor Lane at tlane@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tmflane on Twitter.
Fusion “breakthrough” is largely irrelevant to the climate crisis
Gordon Edwards 15 Dec 22
Just a short commentary on the “fusion breakthrough” this week.
The experiment took place at the Lawrence Radiation Lab, a pre-eminent weapons Laboratory in California once directed by Edward Teller.
Jubilation is felt because, for the first time in over 60 years of effort costing many billions of dollars, a greater amount of energy came out of an extremely short-lived fusion reaction than the amount of energy needed to trigger it in the first place. The net energy gain was about 50 percent.
It all happened very quickly. “The energy production took less time than it takes light to travel one inch,” said Dr Marvin Adams, at the NNSA. (NNSA = National Nuclear Security Administration)
Here are a few details –
1) In an earlier email (www.ccnr.org/fission_fusion_and_efficiency_2022.pdf )I described the “magnetic confinement” concept, whereby an electromagnetic force field holds a very hot plasma of hydrogen gases inside a doughnut-shaped torus (typical of the Tokamak and its close relatives). In this case, “very hot”. Means about 150 million degrees C.
But the breakthrough that is being bally-hooed now, since Tuesday December 13, is a different kind of process altogether, using a concept called “inertial confinement”.
The experiment involved a small pellet about the size of a peppercorn. This pellet contained, in its interior, a mixture of deuterium and tritium gases, two rare hydrogen isotopes. In the experiment, the pellet’s exterior was blasted by x-rays triggered by a battery of 192 very powerful lasers, all targeted on the inner walls of a cylinder made of gold. The lasers generated x-rays on contact with the goldatoms, and those x-rays were focussed by the curving cylinder walls on the little peppercorn-sized pellet in the middle of the gold cylinder.
The x-rays heated the outer shell of the pellet to more than three million degrees, making the exterior of the pellet explode outwards, and (by Newtons “action-reaction” principle) causing the inner gases to be compressed to a very high density at an extremely high temperature, presumably to over 100 million degrees. It is a high-energy kind of implosion, causing fusion to occur in the very centre. The peppercorn “pops”.
2) The experimenters input 2.05 megajoules of energy to the target, and the result was 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output – that is over 50% more energy than was put in (for a net gain of 1.1 megajoules). This suggests that the fusion reaction inside the pellet may have triggered other fusion reactions.
How much energy is that? Well, a typical household uses about 100,000 megajoules of energy per year, or an average of 273 megajoules per day. So 1.1 megajoules is not much. But it is greater than the input energy.
The Tokamak project now under construction in France for the ITER project, using magnetic confinement, is hoping to have a net energy gain factorof 10 or more (i.e. 10 times as much energy output as energy input).
Earlier this year, in February 2022, the UK JET laboratory announced thatthey had managed to have a fusion reaction last for five seconds. Thereaction produced 59 megajoules of energy, but without a net gain in energy.
3) Most of the news stories about this event state, erroneously, that fusionreactors will not produce any radioactive wastes. This is untrue.
It is true that fusion reactors will not produce high-level; nuclear waste(irradated nuclear fuel), but It is expected that fusion reactors will release an enormous amount of tritium (radioactive hydrogen) to the environment— far more than is currently released by CANDU reactors, which in turn release 30 to 100 times more tritium than light water fission reactors.
Moreover, because of neutron irradiation, the structural materials in a fusion reactor will beome very radioactive. The decommissioning wastes will remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
4) Many experts believe it will take at least 20-30 years to have a prototype fusion reactor in operation, even if things go quite well, and more decades will be required to scale it up to a commercial level. Thus fusion energy will be largely irrelevant to the climate emergency we are now facing as all of the critical decision points will have passed before fusion is available.
And, of course, there are no guarantees even then. As one commentator sardonically remarked, fusion energy is 20 years away,it always has been, and perhaps it always will be.
Fusion breakthrough thrills physicists, but won’t power your home soon.
A nuclear fusion milestone (with frickin’ laser beams!) is a big deal.
Alas, it could be decades before fusion might actually help clean up our
energy system. A reported breakthrough in fusion energy is generating
enormous excitement amongst scientists and the general public alike — but
you might not want to bet on fusion providing usable energy during your
lifetime.
Experimental results set to be announced by the U.S. Department
of Energy on Tuesday are being hyped as potentially heralding a new era of
zero-carbon energy from the power of a controlled fusion reaction, the same
reaction that powers our sun. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has
evidence of a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time,
according to people with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent
experiment, as first reported by the Financial Times. The lab confirmed to
the paper that a successful experiment had recently been conducted at its
National Ignition Facility but said analysis of the results was ongoing.
Canary Media 13th Dec 2022
The SECOND suburban husband indicted for smuggling nuclear weapon tech to Russia
- Vadim Yermolenko helped smuggle tech used in nuclear weapons into Russia, according to court documents
- DailyMail.com can reveal his double life after it emerged co-defendant Alexey Brayman runs an online craft store in New Hampshire with his wife
- They are allegedly part of the ‘Serniya Network’, run by Russia’s security service
- Yermolenko lives in a luxury home with his wife, Diana, and their young children
- He allegedly used his wife’s signature to create forged documents for the plot
- The men, who were indicted and appeared in court on Tuesday, have been released after posting bail and will appear in court again in February
By LEWIS PENNOCK FOR DAILYMAIL.COM . 15 December 2022 …………………………… more https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11538183/SECOND-suburban-husband-indicted-smuggling-nuclear-weapon-tech-Russia.html
Point Lepreau nuclear plant taken offline after power loss
Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon · CBC News · Dec 14, 2022
The Point Lepreau nuclear generating station has been taken offline, following a partial loss of power.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was informed of the incident Wednesday around 5:30 a.m. and has staff onsite, closely monitoring the situation, according to a news release late Wednesday afternoon..
“At the time of this update, NB Power has not identified any reports of injuries, radiation contamination or spills into environment,” said the commission, whose mandate includes protecting health, safety, security and the environment.
N.B. Power says further assessments are underway to perform the maintenance required to reconnect the station to the grid…….. N.B. Power spokesperson Dominique Couture did not immediately respond to a request for more information, such as when and why the power loss occurred, or how long it’s expected to take to get the plant back online……………
‘Major equipment replacement’ delayed until April
Point Lepreau was shut down for a week in August due to an undisclosed “equipment issue.”
That outage came only five days after the generating station came back online following scheduled spring maintenance, which dragged on for more than 100 days and wasn’t completed as planned.
Supply and personnel shortages and more significant problems with station equipment than anticipated all contributed to the delay, Couture had said.
She said a 22-day outage is planned for April 2023 to deal with the unfinished work — a “major equipment replacement … to ensure predictable, reliable station operations going forward.”
According to N.B. Power’s annual reports, unscheduled outages at the nuclear plant cost the utility between $28,500 and $45,700 per hour, depending on the time of year and market conditions, plus the cost of any required repairs.
According to filings with the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board, Lepreau has experienced 8,000 more hours of downtime than projected since it underwent a 4½-year, $2.4-billion refurbishment in late 2012, not including the spring outage.
Lepreau’s operating licence was renewed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in June for 10 years. N.B. Power had sought an unprecedented 25-year licence renewal. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/point-lepreau-offline-power-loss-canadian-nuclear-safety-commission-nb-power-1.6686212
Military Groomers Are Increasingly Infiltrating US High Schools
Caitlin Johnstone more https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/military-groomers-are-increasingly?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=90145807&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email 3 Dec 22.
Protect your kids.
A New York Times report has found that enrollment in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), a Pentagon-funded program designed to groom children for military service, is increasingly becoming mandatory in US high schools.
“J.R.O.T.C. programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said that requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines,” the report says. “But The New York Times found that thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.”
“While Pentagon officials have long insisted that J.R.O.T.C. is not a recruiting tool, they have openly discussed expanding the $400 million-a-year program, whose size has already tripled since the 1970s, as a way of drawing more young people into military service. The Army says 44 percent of all soldiers who entered its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered J.R.O.T.C.,” the Times reports.
And before you ask, no, the Pentagon’s grooming program is not being forced on kids in Malibu and the Hamptons.
“A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households,” the Times reports, naming Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, and Mobile, Alabama as cities where high schools are funneling kids into the program en masse.
Defenders of mandatory JROTC enrollment reportedly cite the need to “divert students away from drugs or violence” and “the allure of drugs and gangs” in urban areas, as though corralling them into the single most violent gang on Earth is a deterrence from violence and gangs. Grooming students to go kill foreigners for crude oil is not my idea of a healthy diversion from youthful error, but maybe that’s just me.
This would probably be a good time to remind readers that poverty in the United States is one of the Pentagon’s most effective recruiting tools, with Army officials explicitly acknowledging that young people’s inability to afford a college education on their own is responsible for their success in meeting recruitment goals, and US lawmakers warning that helping people pay off crushing student debt will hurt recruitment. US military recruiters have an established record of targeting poorer schools, because impoverished communities often see military service as their only chance at upward mobility.
The New York Times describes a cult-like environment in these JROTC programs where “parents in some cities say their children are being forced to put on military uniforms, obey a chain of command and recite patriotic declarations in classes they never wanted to take,” with special textbooks which “at times falsify or downplay the failings of the U.S. government.” And if even The New York Times believes you’re falsifying and downplaying the failings of the US government, it’s got to be pretty bad.
Victims of the military grooming program told the Times that they were put in frequent contact with military recruiters who pushed the idea of enlisting to pay for college, with one student saying a male recruiter “still texts me to this day” even well after graduation.
I’m not sure how American parents could possibly read of such things without being intensely creeped out.
Every day I see US conservatives mindlessly bleating about “groomers” in the LGBT community trying to turn children into sexual deviants, claiming kids are being “indoctrinated” in school by learning about gay marriage and respect for trans people, but none of them seem to have any problem with the real-life indoctrination and grooming kids are subjected to by the most murderous and depraved institution in the world.
US Nuclear Bomber Erupts In Flames After Emergency Landing; US Air Force Confirms Mishap With B-2 Spirit
https://eurasiantimes.com/us-nuclear-bomber-erupts-in-flames-after-emergency-landing/—ByAshish Dangwal, December 12, 2022
On December 10, a USAF B-2 Spirit stealth bomber made an emergency landing due to an in-flight emergency at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
The incident occurred at Whiteman AFB in Missouri, which serves as the primary base for the fleet of only 20 B-2s currently operating. The news first appeared on the internet and was subsequently verified by the US Air Force.
A fire broke out following the landing. However, the damage suffered by the aircraft is still unclear. A base spokesperson confirmed that Whiteman’s fire department suppressed the flames.
The 509th Bomb Wing Public Affairs office said, “A US Air Force B-2 Spirit experienced an in-flight malfunction during routine operations today and was damaged on the runway at Whiteman Air Force Base after it completed an emergency landing.”
Meanwhile, Whiteman Airbase recently released a video displaying the readiness of the B-2 bomber fleet. A few weeks ago, the Air Force also published images of an unprecedented “elephant walk” of eight B-2s taxiing on the runway.
The latest incident looks to be similar to a B-2 emergency landing that took place at the same base in September 2021. The B-2 involved in that incident had its left wing down on the ground after skidding off the runway during an emergency landing.
The ‘Demon Core,’ The 14-Pound Plutonium Sphere That Killed Two Scientists
By Kaleena Fraga | Checked By Erik Hawkins https://allthatsinteresting.com/demon-core December 10, 2022
Physicists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin both suffered agonizing deaths after making minor slips of the hand while working on the plutonium orb known as the “demon core” at Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.
To survivors of the nuclear attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, the nuclear explosions seemed like hell on earth. And though a third plutonium core — meant for use if Japan didn’t surrender — was never dropped, it still managed to kill two scientists. The odd circumstances of their deaths led the core to be nicknamed “demon core.”
Retired to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaski, demon core killed two scientists exactly nine months apart. Both were conducting similar experiments on the core, and both made eerily similar mistakes that proved fatal.
Before the experiments, scientists had called the core “Rufus.” After the deaths of their colleagues, the core was nicknamed “demon core.” So what exactly happened to the two scientists who died while handling it?
The Heart Of A Nuclear Bomb
In the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan. One fell on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and one fell on Nagasaki on August 9. In case Japan didn’t surrender, the U.S. was prepared to drop a third bomb, powered by the plutonium core later called “demon core.”
The core was codenamed “Rufus.” It weighed almost 14 pounds and stretched about 3.5 inches in diameter. And when Japan announced its intention to surrender on August 15, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory were allowed to keep the core for experiments.
As Atlas Obscura explains, the scientists wanted to test the limits of nuclear material. They knew that a nuclear bomb’s core went critical during a nuclear explosion, and wanted to better understand the limit between subcritical material and the much more dangerous radioactive critical state.
But such criticality experiments were dangerous — so dangerous that a physicist named Richard Feynman compared them to provoking a dangerous beast. He quipped in 1944 that the experiments were “like tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.”
And like an angry dragon roused from slumber, demon core would soon kill two scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory when they got too close.
How Demon Core Killed Two Scientists
On Aug. 21, 1945, about a week after Japan expressed its intention to surrender, Los Alamos physicist Harry Daghlian conducted a criticality experiment on demon core that would cost him his life. According to Science Alert, he ignored safety protocols and entered the lab alone — accompanied only by a security guard — and got to work.
Daghlian’s experiment involved surrounding the demon core with bricks made of tungsten carbide, which created a sort of boomerang effect for the neutrons shed by the core itself. Daghlian brought the demon core right to the edge of supercriticality but as he tried to remove one of the bricks, he accidentally dropped it on the plutonium sphere. It went supercritical and blasted him with neutron radiation.
Daghlian died 25 days later. Before his death, the physicist suffered from a burnt and blistered hand, nausea, and pain. He eventually fell into a coma and passed away at the age of 24.
Exactly nine months later, on May 21, 1946, demon core struck again. This time, Canadian physicist Louis Slotin was conducting a similar experiment in which he lowered a beryllium dome over the core to push it toward supercriticality. To ensure that the dome never entirely covered the core, Slotin used a screwdriver to maintain a small opening though, Slotin had been warned about his method before.
But just like the tungsten carbide brick that had slipped out of Daghlian’s hand, Slotin’s screwdriver slipped out of his grip. The dome dropped and as the neutrons bounced back and forth, demon core went supercritical. Blue light and heat consumed Slotin and the seven other people in the lab.
“The blue flash was clearly visible in the room although it (the room) was well illuminated from the windows and possibly the overhead lights,” one of Slotin colleagues, Raemer Schreiber, recalled to the New Yorker. “The total duration of the flash could not have been more than a few tenths of a second. Slotin reacted very quickly in flipping the tamper piece off.”
Slotin may have reacted quickly, but he’d seen what happened to Daghlian. “Well,” he said, according to Schreiber, “that does it.”
Though the other people in the lab survived, Slotin had been doused with a fatal dose of radiation. The physicist’s hand turned blue and blistered, his white blood count plummeted, he suffered from nausea and abdominal pain, and internal radiation burns, and gradually become mentally confused. Nine days later, Slotin died at the age of 35.
Eerily, the core had killed both Daghlian and Slotin in similar ways. Both fatal incidences took place on a Tuesday, on the 21st of a month. Daghlian and Slotin even died in the same hospital room. Thus the core, previously codenamed “Rufus,” was nicknamed “demon core.”
What Happened To Demon Core?
Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin’s deaths would forever change how scientists interacted with radioactive material. “Hands-on” experiments like the physicists had conducted were promptly banned. From that point on, researchers would handle radioactive material from a distance with remote controls.
So what happened to demon core, the unused heart of the third atomic bomb?
Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory had planned to send it to Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, where it would have been publicly detonated. But the core needed time to cool off after Slotin’s experiment, and when the third test at Bikini Atoll was canceled, plans for demon core changed.
After that, in the summer of 1946, the plutonium core was melted down to be used in the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Since the United States hasn’t, to date, dropped any more nuclear weapons, demon core remains unused.
But it retains a harrowing legacy. Not only was demon core meant to power a third nuclear weapon — a weapon destined to rain destruction and death on Japan — but it also killed two scientists who handled it in similar ways.
Nuclear waste permit ‘more stringent’ New Mexico says as feds look to renew for 10 years
Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus, 12 Dec 22
Tougher rules for a nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad could be on the way as New Mexico officials sought “more stringent” regulations as the federal government sought to renew its permit with the state for the facility.
The State sought new requirements to prioritize nuclear waste from within New Mexico for disposal, called for an accounting of all of the waste planned for disposal in the next decade and regular updates on federal efforts to find the location for a new repository as conditions of the permit.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy which holds a permit with the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) that must be updated every 10 years.
The facility sees transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste from DOE facilities around the country disposed of via burial in an underground salt formation about 2,000 feet beneath the surface.
The upcoming renewal, expected by the end of next year, involved negotiations between NMED and the DOE, months of public comments and hearings and multiple expected revisions.
A draft permit was scheduled for public release Dec. 20, and the NMED released on Dec. 8 several conditions it proposed to add to the permit.
The release of the draft will be followed by a 60-day period when NMED will accept comments from the public, and the agency intended to hold a public hearing next summer.
NMED Cabinet Secretary James Kenney said the State wanted a permit with stronger regulations moving forward, to better protect people and the environment from the impacts of nuclear waste disposal.
“It will be more stringent, full stop,” Kenney said. “The conditions were adding to it are designed to add more accountability to the whole complex that are sending waste to WIPP.”………………………………..
State of New Mexico says priority should go to New Mexico nuclear waste
Key among the revisions was prioritizing nuclear waste held at Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico, where the DOE develops nuclear weapons.
More:Nuclear waste from Tennessee filling new disposal area at repository near Carlsbad
The facility was recently planned by the DOE to increase production of plutonium pits, used as the triggers for nuclear bombs, as part of efforts to modernize the U.S.’ weapons arsenal.
Kenney said space should be saved at WIPP for New Mexico waste, as the state hosts the repository and he said should receive the most benefit. He said agreements between the DOE and the State of Idaho to prioritize waste from Idaho National Laboratory and another prioritizing waste from Savannah River Site in South Carolina – a facility also set to ramp up pit production – unfairly “leap-frogged” New Mexico for waste disposal.
More:Gov. Lujan Grisham demands President Biden block nuclear waste site in southeast New Mexico
The waste Kenney hoped to target in this provision, he said, was “legacy waste” held at Los Alamos for decades, posing environmental risks in the area and in need of permanent disposal at WIPP.
“We want to make sure we preserve enough space at WIPP for the entirety of New Mexico’s legacy waste,” Kenney said. “I’m significantly concerned that the notion of cap and cover and leaving things around Los Alamos while continuing to emplace waste at WIPP around the country will squeeze out and leave behind waste that should have been there from legacy issues.”
New Mexico aims to hold feds ‘accountable’ for nuclear waste disposal
Another significant change proposed by NMED in the permit would require a full accounting of waste planned to be disposed of at WIPP for the decade following the permit to justify keeping the facility open after the permit expires.
This would better hold the federal government accountable, Kenney said, for future planning at WIPP.
In past proposal for the upcoming permit renewal, the DOE removed a 2024 closure date, opting to leave WIPP’s lifetime open-ended as worked to its statutorily maximum capacity of 6.2 million cubic feet of nuclear waste specified by the federal Land Withdrawal Act (LWA).
The DOE estimated the site could be open until 2085 based on the potential future availability of nuclear waste.
That ambiguity was unacceptable, Kenney said in proposing the added condition.
“We’re not satisfied. That is a completely unacceptable answer. There’s a presumption that if they’re going to continue to operate the underground in New Mexico, they’re going to have to inventory all of the waste that could come to WIPP,” he said.
“They are going to be accountable to every state where they do business including ours. Full accounting, no switching numbers.”
He said he believed WIPP will stay open past the next 10-year permit term, but that the DOE must do a better job at planning future waste streams.
“We know there’s going to be a need for this kind of facility. I don’t think WIPP will reach the LWA limits in 10 years,” Kenney said. “We can’t blindly go down the path of not knowing what they’re doing in every state regarding clean up.”
Nuclear waste facility will ‘run out of volume one day’ state says
As for finding a location for a new nuclear repository to continue disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste, Kenney said he has not seen “anything substantive” from the DOE, but that he did not believe WIPP could be the only repository in the nation for an unlimited amount of time.
But to do that, or to increase WIPP’s capacity, would take an act of Congress, and Kenney said the State of New Mexico should be kept updated on such activities as it held the only deep geological repository for nuclear waste in the U.S.
“There’s an irony with it being called a pilot plant and extending it out to 2080,” Kenney said. “We believe there is a need for this kind of facility. We have legacy waste and we have pit production that has waste that needs a place to go.
“(WIPP) will run out of volume one day. Someone, somewhere in (Washington), D.C. needs to be thinking about where that repository will be.”
Should Congress choose to increase the capacity at WIPP beyond the LWA limit, NMED’s proposal would automatically revoke WIPP’s permit.
This would protect New Mexico, Kenney said, from the being the sole resting place for U.S. nuclear waste.
“That’s a deal breaker for us,” he said. “We’re reclaiming our authority to not let the federal government pull the rug out from under New Mexicans.”
Ricardo Maestas, WIPP program manager at NMED’s Hazardous Waste Bureau also pointed out that the WIPP facility’s proximity to nearby oil and gas operations in the growing Permian Basin region, was so far unaddressed in the permit, and the state should be kept update on fossil fuel operations as they grow around the site. https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/2022/12/10/new-mexico-proposes-tougher-rules-for-nuclear-waste-site-near-carlsbad/69711594007/
Revealing He Too Had Manning Leaks, Ellsberg Dares Justice Dept to Prosecute Him Like Assange
“Let’s take this to the Supreme Court,” says the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, taking aim at what he argues is an unconstitutional use of the Espionage Act.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/07/revealing-he-too-had-manning-leaks-ellsberg-dares-doj-prosecute-him-assange JESSICA CORBETT, December 7, 2022
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg on Tuesday dared U.S. prosecutors to come after him like they have Julian Assange by revealing in a BBC News interview that the WikiLeaks publisher sent him a backup of leaked materials from former military analyst Chelsea Manning.
“Let me tell you a secret. I had possession of all the Chelsea Manning information before it came out in the press,” Ellsberg said to BBC‘s Stephen Sackur in the on-camera interview. “I’ve never said that publicly.”
Assange had sent him the materials—which include evidence of U.S. war crimes—in case “they caught him and they got everything,” the 91-year-old explained. “He could rely on me to find some way to get it out.”
Australian-born Assange is currently detained in London and fighting in British and European courts against his extradition to the United States, where he could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted under Espionage Act charges.
Inviting action by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Ellsberg said that “I am now as indictable as Julian Assange and as everyone who put that information out—the papers, everybody who handled it.”
“Yes, I had copies of it and I did not give them to an authorized person. So, if they want to indict me for that, I will be interested to argue that one in the courts—whether that law is constitutional,” he continued, referring to the Espionage Act.
Highlighting that the highest U.S. court has never held that it is constitutional to use the Espionage Act as if it were a British Official Secrets Act, Ellsberg said that “I’d be happy to take that one to the Supreme Court.”
The Espionage Act, “used against whistleblowers, is unconstitutional,” he asserted. “It’s a clear violation of the First Amendment.”
Ellsberg’s public confession comes after editors and publishers at five major media outlets that collaborated with WikiLeaks in 2010 for articles based on diplomatic cables from Manning released a letter late last month arguing that “it is time for the U.S. government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.”
“This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press,” the letter states. “Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.”
The new Ellsberg interview also follows the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) confirming earlier this month that 51-year-old Assange has asked the tribunal to block his extradition to the United States.
Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton told Reuters last week that “I would imagine the U.S. wants to avoid” a case going before the ECHR for “trying to extradite a publisher from Europe for publishing U.S. war revelations when the U.S. is asking Europe to make all sort of sacrifices for the war in Ukraine.”
Five ways the Biden DOE is spending tax-payers money big on nuclear energy
THe Hill, BY SAUL ELBEIN – 12/08/22
The Department of Energy is spending big to keep America’s old nuclear reactors online while laying the foundations of the nuclear energy industry of the future.
The investment into America’s long-declining nuclear industry — which includes tens of millions of funding announced this week — builds on a far-broader package of federal subsidies invested in the nuclear sector, which remains America’s leading single source of zero-carbon electricity [ not zero in full nuclear fuel cycle].
One program — a $6 billion fund established under the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure plan — will help to keep otherwise uneconomic nuclear plants from shutting down.
But other programs announced by the Energy Department look beyond the current generation of nuclear plants to build out foundations for the next generation of nuclear energy.
Here are five nuclear goals that the Energy Department is pouring money into.
Advanced and theoretical research
One grant announced on Wednesday will pay $12 million to fund scientists across America’s national laboratories as they work on advanced research into problems at the edges of our understanding of nuclear physics.
The five projects funded “span topics like the 3-dimensional internal structure of nucleons, the exotic states of quarks and gluons, the microscopic properties of quark-gluon plasma and neutrino and nuclear interactions,” according to a statement from the Energy Department…………………………….
Training nuclear-electric engineers
The Energy Department is also funding universities to educate “the next generation nuclear security work force.”
The department announced on Wednesday that $5 million will go to three state universities to help them create curriculum to train electrical engineers to work on nuclear reactors. ……………
Keep old plants online
The infrastructure legislation passed into law earlier this year contained $6 billion in Civil Nuclear Credits to help keep online nuclear plants that would otherwise be replaced with fossil-fuel infrastructure.
The Energy Department paid out its first disbursement last month, sending $1.1 billion to keep southern California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant running. …………….
Build nuclear fuel supply chains
The Energy Department is putting $150 million into producing nuclear fuel essential to advanced reactors, officials announced in November.
So-called high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) is uranium that is far more enriched than the nuclear fuel used in current reactors. It’s only low-enriched in contrast to the kinds of enriched uranium used in nuclear weapons.
Since it’s essential to smaller, more efficient nuclear reactors, the Energy Department estimates that the U.S. will need about 40 metric tons of HALEU per year by the end of the decade……………………………
Catching up on fusion
The Energy Department in October announced $47 million for research into fusion — the process by which stars like our sun create energy.
Unlike fission, fusion energy is created by forcing atoms together, rather than splitting them — a process that releases no radioactive pollution.
But the extreme temperatures and pressures needed to convince atoms to fuse have so far kept fusion as a theoretical energy source, rather than a practical one.
At the superheated temperatures and pressures required for fusion, gas turns into plasma — which is extremely difficult to control.
“We can’t just put it in a vessel because it will melt anything it touches,” said Eugenio Schuster of Lehigh University, who had received $1.75 million to work with researchers on this problem.
The money helps pay for collaborative experiments between U.S. and international scientists at research “tokamaks” at sites in China, the European Union and South Korea
How to scale rooftop community solar in cities
New York has over 1 gigawatt of community solar, more than any other
state, with another 700 projects in the pipeline that will add another 2
gigawatts of solar capacity.
Yet few of these projects are in the state’s
most iconic city, home to more than 8 million people. “It’s not because
they don’t pencil out” economically, Russell Wilcox, co-founder and CEO
of Urban Energy, said of siting urban community-solar projects in New York
City and its surroundings. “It’s the complexity of the market.”
But despite this market complexity, rooftop community solar is garnering more
attention, and not just in New York state, which has a goal of 10 gigawatts
of distributed solar. A number of affordable housing agencies, including
the New York City Housing Authority, are investing in rooftop community
solar projects. In Washington, D.C., the Solar for All program installed
more than 160 community solar rooftop projects from 2019 to 2021 that
provided utility bill credits to 6,000 income-qualified families.
Canary Media 8th Dec 2022
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/sponsored/how-to-scale-rooftop-community-solar-in-cities
Missouri Community and Its Children Grappling With Exposure to Nuclear Waste
In the 2022 report, BCDC took 32 soil, dust, and plant samples throughout the school buildings and campus. Using x-ray to analyze the samples BCDC found more than 22 times more lead-210 than the estimated exposure levels for the average US elementary school in the Jana Elementary playground alone. There were also more than 12 times the lead-210 expected exposure in the topsoil of the basketball courts alone.
Radioactive isotopes of polonium-210, radium-266, thorium-230, and other toxicants were also found in the library, kitchen, ventilation system, classroom surfaces, surface soil and even soil as far as six feet below the surface.
https://blog.ucsusa.org/chanese-forte/missouri-community-and-its-children-grappling-with-exposure-to-nuclear-waste/ Chanese Forte, December 8, 2022
The families, students, and school officials in Florissant, Missouri have been living a modern nightmare for the past several weeks, learning that Jana Elementary school and the surrounding region has high levels of radiation, a problem caused decades ago by the production of nuclear weapons
Radiation exposure can damage the DNA in cells leading to a host of health problems including cancer and auto-immune disorders. What’s more troubling is that the Centers for Disease Control reports that children and young adults, especially girls and women, are more sensitive to the effects of radiation.
Jana Elementary school has 400 students and a predominantly (82.9%) Black student body. Unfortunately, the United States has a long history of environmental racism which results in harming Black, Indigenous and Brown communities much more in the process of creating and maintaining nuclear weapons.
When science cannot agree, the community suffers
The suburban school north of St. Louis, Missouri, was thought to be safe for students based on research completed in 2000 by the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
Specifically, USACE has been in the Coldwater Creek region for the last 20 years attempting to remediate radioactive waste associated with the creek (which does not include Jana Elementary).
Toward the start of the 2022 semester, as part of an ongoing lawsuit in the region the Boston Chemical Data Corp (BCDC), an environmental consulting group, reported the elementary school as having radioactive waste levels far above the estimated national levels.
These radioactive waste exposures—like lead-210—are associated with decreased cognition, brain defects, thyroid disease, and cancer, and can accumulate in the body over time.
Following the BCDC report, all Jana Elementary students were sent home for the rest of the semester in hopes their homes were less toxic.
By the Thanksgiving holiday break, the USACE returned to test inside and on the playground of the school and found no radiation on the campus, news which many community members and organizers unsurprisingly expressed as suspicious.
The School Board then hired SCI Engineering, a private engineering firm, to sample Jana Elementary who came to a similar conclusion as USACE.
Now returning to classes from Thanksgiving break, many wary students joined classes at new schools in the area per the school board’s decision related to BCDC’s radiation exposure assessment. Many parents also expressed to National Public Radio they felt left out of discussions for decisions being made.
How did radioactive waste end up in Florissant, MO?
The region near Jana Elementary was first contaminated by the US Department of Energy’s decision to make St. Louis one of the processing sites for uranium during the Manhattan Engineering District project. These nuclear weapons were built through World War II and originally stored at the St. Louis Lambert International Airport.
Unfortunately, the waste was later illegally dumped in 1973 at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, MO, which lies about 10 miles Southwest of Jana Elementary. The West Lake Landfill is located near the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works Company which regularly floods, causing these harmful chemicals to be carried away by nearby water ways like Coldwater Creek.
Coldwater Creek runs for 19 miles throughout the area and flows directly into the Missouri River. Jana Elementary, just North of St. Louis, is bordered by the creek on two sides but has to date not been included in any clean-up efforts by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
US Army Corps of Engineers initially didn’t sample inside or outside of Jana Elementary
Prior to the Boston Chem Data Corp 2022 report, the USACE did not take any samples within 300 feet of the school building in their 2017 assessment. According to BCDC’s report, this doesn’t follow US Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR) standards for radioactive sampling.
In fact, it ignores the conclusion ATSDR made that most exposures in the region will be indoors and just outdoors of buildings.
Indoor samples from creek-facing homes in the same neighborhood as Jana Elementary had similar radioactive waste both indoors and outdoors. ATSDR also noted in a 2019 report that radioactive wastes are routinely moved from Coldwater Creek into homes due to flooding. The region floods frequently which is only increasing due to climate change in the region.
New radioactive sampling methods used to understand student exposure
In the 2022 report, BCDC took 32 soil, dust, and plant samples throughout the school buildings and campus. Using x-ray to analyze the samples BCDC found more than 22 times more lead-210 than the estimated exposure levels for the average US elementary school in the Jana Elementary playground alone. There were also more than 12 times the lead-210 expected exposure in the topsoil of the basketball courts alone.
Radioactive isotopes of polonium-210, radium-266, thorium-230, and other toxicants were also found in the library, kitchen, ventilation system, classroom surfaces, surface soil and even soil as far as six feet below the surface.
Marco Kaltofen, an environmental engineer who is leading the BCDC team, collected roughly 1,000 samples from across the region as a part of law suit efforts. There are several businesses and homes also indicated as exposed in the lawsuit as well.
Overall, Kaltofen suggests that BCDC’s unprecedented x-ray method better picks up the microscopic radioactive materials. However, he also asserts both studies are essentially saying the same thing, which is of course confusing for many community members.
Community organizers fight for testing and clean-up
Just Moms STL activist Dawn Chapman has worked tirelessly since 2014 to get the federal government to test for radioactive material in more regions where the creek floods.
The co-founder of Just Moms STL, Karen Nickel, also attended Jana Elementary School and has reported currently living with several autoimmune disorders. She uses her experience and love of the area to battle these exposure injustices.
In a 2017 Nation Public Radio report, Ms. Chapman says,
“They [The US Government] fought us for years. Finally, they [tested] parks that had flooded, and found [radioactive waste]. They started testing some backyards and found it. We pushed for Jana Elementary, because it is the closest school to the creek.” Just Moms STL activist, Dawn Chapman
We reached out to Just Moms STL to understand what the next steps are. Just Moms STL Recommends:
- The sites in St. Louis should be expeditiously cleaned up.
Unfortunately, Jana Elementary School is not the only place to be concerned about near St. Louis.- Since remediation of nuclear weapons waste in the area has already taken decades, many of these students will likely age out of Jana Elementary School before there is full remediation of radioactive waste in the St. Louis area.
While there is guidance on defining “safe” or acceptable radioactive exposure levels as it relates to human health, scientists also calculate “expected” levels from the Earth naturally (like radon in sediment).
Unacceptable levels are frequently defined as radiation exposure above natural levels by communities.
- However, legally the Army Corps is allowed to leave some radioactive residue above naturally occurring levels, and Just Moms STL would like this to no longer be the case.
- Residents near nuclear weapon processing sites like the St. Louis area should be included in federal radiation compensation programs, such as the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA). UCS also suggests consideration of St. Louis in the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Program Act (EEOICPA), and other forms of compensation as well.
Expanding radiation compensation programs is complicated because the list of communities that want to be included who currently qualify is long. Moreover, Just Moms STL says the RECA program needs to be expanded to include processing sites like St. Louis, which has previously only applied to nuclear testing exposure sites and uranium workers, or EEOICPA, which has only covered nuclear site workers, but not surrounding communities.
There are currently two bills being proposed to the House and Senate to extend and strengthen RECA. Just Moms STL is working to get Missouri elected officials to help sponsor and carry RECA as well. And your representatives may also be interested in supporting adjustments to RECA or the EEOICPA.
USA and UK welded together firmly in the grip of the nuclear lobby, with their Small Nuclear Reactor folly.
UK and US ‘like-minded’ on nuclear power as key to energy security,
SMR, Rob Harris, December 7, 2022 British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his counterpart, US President Joe Biden, have announced a new venture to secure supply and reduce price volatility, with the US promising to more than double the amount of gas it exported to the UK last year.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his counterpart, US President Joe Biden, have announced a new venture to secure supply and reduce price volatility, with the US promising to more than double the amount of gas it exported to the UK last year.
The new “UK-US Energy Security and Affordability Partnership” will aim to reduce global dependence on Russian energy exports, stabilise energy markets and step up collaboration on energy efficiency, nuclear and renewables.
But the focus on nuclear sharpens the divide between Australia’s attitudes towards a civil nuclear power industry and those of its two closest allies – governments of all persuasions in Canberra have outlawed a domestic industry and resisted calls to overturn the ban for decades……………..
In a joint statement, Sunak and Biden said their new agreement would promote nuclear energy as “a safe and reliable part of the clean energy transition”.
“This includes deepening global collaboration on nuclear fuels and advanced nuclear technologies.”
They said both nations would work to deepen global collaboration between “like-minded countries” on small modular reactors (SMRs) and support a resilient and diversified nuclear fuel supply chain………………………………….
Nuclear power is now firmly back on the agenda, particularly in Britain and France, amid new fears for energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ever-greater need to reduce global carbon emissions.
The US, with 92 commercial reactors, is the world’s largest producer, accounting for more than 30 per cent of the nuclear-generated electricity worldwide.
Large reactor projects are still facing financial and construction problems, with the UK’s 3.2 gigawatt Hinkley Point C plant hit by delays and cost overruns. But analysts believe [for “analysts” read “nuclear salesmen”]the time may be right for SMRs – which could also prove affordable to nations unable to fund large nuclear plants…………
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week rebuffed a push by South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, to restart the nuclear debate in Australia, citing waste and safety concerns as key reasons nuclear should not be considered as an energy option………
“I haven’t changed my view that it’s a huge distraction from what we need to do. It just doesn’t add up,” he said on Adelaide radio 5AA. “That’s essentially the problem. Every five years or so we have this economic analysis of whether nuclear power stacks up and every time it’s rejected.”……….. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/uk-and-us-like-minded-on-nuclear-power-as-key-to-energy-security-20221207-p5c49q.html
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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