The Energy 202: Hurricane Florence blows hole in Trump team’s case for helping coal and nuclear power, critics say, WP, By Dino Grandoni,18 September 18 Hurricane Florence has blown a hole in the Trump administration’s argument that bolstering nuclear and coal-fired power is essential to providing reliable electricity to homes and businesses, especially during times of crisis, according to energy experts long critical of the plan.
For months, the Department of Energy has considered throwing a lifelineto that sector of the power market to make the electric grid more resilient to natural and man-made disasters. The Trump administration has been preparing to use a Cold War-era law, once marshaled by President Harry S. Truman to secure U.S. steel production, to compel regional grid operators to buy electricity from nuclear and coal plants.
The rationale is that only these two types of generation regularly have enough fuel on site to run for when national security is threatened. Wind turbines and solar panels only generate electricity when the weather is right while natural gas stations often have their fuel pipelined in from afar.
But hours before the once powerful hurricane made landfall in North Carolina on Friday, Duke Energy shut down its two reactors at the Brunswick Nuclear Plant near Wilmington, N.C. in anticipation of high winds. The temporary shutdown illustrates how many other factors beyond just fuel stored on site affect grid reliability.
“There are so many flaws to their argument, we hardly need this to add,” said David Hart, professor of public policy at George Mason University. “There are lots of better ways to get reliability than to stockpile a lot of fuel.”
……..The Energy Department has yet to detail exactly what the plan to bolster coal and nuclear will look like after Trump ordered aid in June. The request comes as expensive coal and nuclear assets are retiring across the country in the face of competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy resources……..https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2018/09/18/the-energy-202-hurricane-florence-blows-hole-in-trump-team-s-case-for-helping-coal-and-nuclear-power-critics-say/5ba022621b326b47ec9596b9/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.66a830d4f690
September 19, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
Leave a comment
Ars Technica 16thSept 2018 , Though economics might not favor nuclear power in the US, policy makers do.
Last week, the House passed a bipartisan bill that originated in the Senate
called the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (S. 97), which will
allow the private sector to partner with US National Laboratories to vet
advanced nuclear technologies.
The bill also directs the Department of
Energy (DOE) to lay the ground work for establishing “a versatile,
reactor-based fast neutron source.” The Senate also introduced a second
bill called the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (S. 3422) last Thursday,
which would direct the DOE actually establish that fast neutron reactor.
That bill also directs the DOE to “make available high-assay, low-enriched
uranium” for research purposes. The Nuclear Energy Leadership Act has not
yet made it past a Senate vote.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/09/us-congress-passes-bill-to-help-advanced-nuclear-power/
September 18, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
Leave a comment
Congress looking for money for cities hit by nuclear plant closures — including Diablo Canyon,The Tribune BY KAYTLYN LESLIE, kleslie@thetribunenews.com, September 17, 2018
Congress wants to find money to support communities where nuclear power plants are being decommissioned — which could mean some funding for San Luis Obispo County once Diablo Canyon starts the process itself in the coming years.
Congressman Salud Carbajal announced Monday that Congress directed the U.S. Department of Energy to study public and private funding sources available to help those communities, as part of its Fiscal Year 2019 Energy and Water, Legislative Branch and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act (HR 5895).
“With the impending Diablo Canyon Power Plant closure, I am working to secure all available federal resources to help offset the economic impact of this decommissioning,” Carbajal said in a news release. Carbajal, a Democrat, represents California’s 24th Congressional District, which spans between San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties.
The Department of Energy study will focus on identifying public and private funds to support municipalities where a nuclear power plant is decommissioned, in the process of decommissioning or plans to shut down within three years of the act’s enactment, and contains nuclear waste within its boundaries, according to the news release.
The bill passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate and is set to be signed into law by President Donald Trump sometime before the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30……. https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article218563600.html
September 18, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
decommission reactor, USA |
Leave a comment
The country doesn’t need “parking lot dumps for interim storage,”
“We as communities want it out of here. We want it to be in safe place where its never moved again. We think it’s lunacy to move it twice.”
Waste Control Specialists has been lobbying federal officials to establish an interim high-level waste repository
Anti-nuclear groups urge action against national waste dump https://www.recorder.com/CAN-plans-nuclear-waste-speaking-tour-20148074 By RICHIE DAVIS
Staff Writer, September 15, 2018
With closure and dismantling of the Yankee Atomic plant in Rowe and now Vermont Yankee and other New England nuclear sites pretty much a fait accompli, watchdog groups like Citizens Awareness Network are focused on the one tremendous remaining issue: the high-level nuclear waste remaining on the reactor sites.
CAN is planning a tour with a giant can — a 32-foot-long wooden mock-up of a radioactive waste cask — and an array of speakers to speak about what the organization calls “the abdication by the federal government and the nuclear industry” to deal with high-level nuclear waste “stranded” at nuclear sites around. Continue reading →
September 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
Leave a comment
Why NASA wants to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon, techradar, By Jamie Carter 16 Sept 18,”………“Safe, efficient and plentiful energy will be the key to future robotic and human exploration,” says Jim Reuter, NASA’s acting associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) in Washington. “I expect the Kilopower project to be an essential part of lunar and Mars power architectures as they evolve.”
The tech was successfully demonstrated between November 2017 and March 2018 as part of NASA’s Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY) experiment……….
Why do we need nuclear power on the moon?
Before you say something like ‘we shouldn’t be polluting space with nuclear waste’, know that almost every single space mission you’ve even heard of has used radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which have Plutonium-238 as their electricity source. That’s true for everything from Apollo and Voyager to New Horizons and Cassini…………
Marc Gibson, lead Kilopower engineer at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “When we start sending astronauts for long stays on the Moon and to other planets, that’s going to require a new class of power that we’ve never needed before.”
Can’t we use solar power on the moon?
…….. Japanese company Shimizu has a concept to construct a massive belt of solar panels a few kilometres wide around the moon’s entire 11,000-kilometre-long equator. It reckons that half of this ‘solar belt’ would always be in sunshine, and given that the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, so is never cloudy, solar power generation would theoretically be five times more efficient than it is on Earth.
Is NASA going to the Moon or not?
It’s an on again, off again commitment that keeps changing with every new US president. The Trump administration’s Space Policy Directive 1 proposes robotic missions on the lunar surface ahead of crewed missions, as well as a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway to help astronauts on missions beyond the moon, either going to Mars or to asteroids. NASA is asking private companies to develop new tech to deliver payloads to the Moon………https://www.techradar.com/news/why-nasa-wants-to-build-a-nuclear-reactor-on-the-moon
September 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
technology, USA |
Leave a comment
Yucca nuclear dump a threat to Nevada military bases, Rosen says By Ray Hagar, Nevada Newsmakers, Las Vegas Sun, Sept. 16, 2018
Nevada 3rd Congressional District Rep. Jacky Rosen looks at the controversy over a proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain through the eyes of a member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee. The transportation and storage of nuclear waste at the site — less than 100 miles from Las Vegas — would pose a threat to national security because of the U.S. military bases that surround the area, Rosen said Thursday on Nevada Newsmakers.
“We have Nellis Air Force Base, the premier pilot-training (facility) throughout the world. We have the Nevada Test and Training Range where we do all that training — 70 percent of the Air Force’s live munitions lives there,” Rosen said.
“We have Creech Air Force Base, where we have our unmanned aerial system,” she said. “We train those Topgun naval aviators in Fallon. We have a Hawthorne Army Depot, a Nevada Test Site and Area 51.”
“Yucca Mountain sits right in the center of all that,” Rosen said. “Nevada is critical to our national security, our homeland security and safety. And anything that could compromise that, moving nuclear waste through the Nevada Test and Training Range or any of those other routes, could put us at risk.”
Storage of nuclear waste near U.S. military installations is only one problem with Yucca, Rosen said. Another is moving it there through wide swaths of the United States.
“There are 75,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. At three loads a week via trains or trucks on our freeways, going through over 44 states and 300 counties, it will take 50 years to transport it,” Rosen said. “So don’t tell me that within that 50 years, there is not going to be some kind of accident.”………https://lasvegassun.com/news/2018/sep/16/yucca-nuclear-dump-a-threat-to-nevada-military-bas/
September 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
safety, USA, wastes |
Leave a comment
Nuclear waste bill that could aid Zion awaiting presidential signature , Chicago Tribune, 15 Sept 18 Legislation to help communities such as Zion with stranded nuclear waste issues has passed both houses of Congress, and now awaits President Donald Trump’s signature to become law, according to a statement released Friday by U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider.
The 10th District Democrat said the measure — included in H.R. 5895, the Energy and Water, Legislative Branch, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act of 2019 — would require a report by the Department of Energy on existing public and private resources and funding available for municipalities in which a nuclear power plant is decommissioned, in the process of decommissioning, or plans to shut down within three years.
“Communities like Zion have been saddled with storing our nation’s stranded nuclear waste while the federal government has failed to meet its legal obligation to find a permanent repository,” Schneider said in a statement. “They deserve compensation, and this new report is a step toward connecting these communities with critically needed federal assistance.”
In May, Schneider said, he introduced a legislative amendment requiring the Secretary of Energy to assemble a task force to work across all federal agencies to identify existing resources and funding opportunities that could assist communities with decommissioned plants where nuclear waste is being stored.
Last October, Schneider introduced the Sensible, Timely Relief for America’s Nuclear Districts’ Economic Development (STRANDED) Act with Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.
“I urge President Trump to sign (H.R. 5895) into law,” Schneider added in Friday’s statement, “and I will continue to work to build on this progress by advancing the STRANDED Act to finally compensate communities like Zion what they deserve.”
In addition to forming a task force, the STRANDED proposal would compensate communities storing waste through economic impact grants and would establish tax credits to encourage development and homeownership in affected communities.
Last year, ZionSolutions, which is part of Utah-based EnergySolutions, said it will finish deconstructing and demolishing the deactivated Zion nuclear power plant and its 20-story containment silos in 2018, according to EnergySolutions Vice-President Mark Walker, but 61 casks full of spent nuclear rods will remain on-site until a repository is found.
H.R. 5895 does not address long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel, but it does require the Department of Energy to “submit to Congress and the State of Nevada a report on the potential of locating a reprocessing or recycling facility for spent nuclear fuel near the Yucca Mountain site.”………http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-lns-schneider-nuke-bill-st-0915-story.html
September 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
Leave a comment
Work to demolish Hanford plutonium plant could resume next week https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/hanford/work-to-demolish-hanford-plutonium-plant-could-resume-next-week/281-594811180
Demolition work on Hanford’s plutonium finishing plant could resume next week after the U.S. Department of Energy stopped work at the site last December. September 15, 2018
Work to demolish a former nuclear weapons production plant in Washington state could resume next week, nearly nine months after a spread of radioactive contamination forced a shutdown.
Demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was halted in December after a spread of radioactive particles. In all, 42 workers were found to have inhaled or ingested small amounts of radioactive particles and workers drove contaminated cars off the nuclear site.
Also see | “It was complete chaos” says Hanford worker who inhaled plutonium
The Tri-City Herald reports that the planned restart is limited, focusing on less hazardous work.
The U.S. Department of Energy this week approved the resumption of demolition.
The plant for decades helped make plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.
September 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
Leave a comment
Daily Mail 15th Sept 2018 ,A unique wildlife refuge on the site of a former nuclear weapons plant in
Colorado is opening its gates on Saturday, after a confusing day when
officials first said they would not open the refuge and then said they
would.
The opening of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge, where the U.S.
government made plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs, has been in the works
for months, surviving court challenges and protests.
But the plans were upended Friday when Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said he would keep the
refuge closed until he could get more information about public safety.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-6170525/Former-nuclear-site-open-public-wildlife-refuge.html
September 17, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
Leave a comment
Here’s how climate change is fueling Hurricane Florence A novel forecast looks at the size and fury of the storm with and without human-caused warming, Science News, BY CAROLYN GRAMLING , SEPTEMBER 13, 2018
Even as Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolinas, bringing fierce winds and heavy rains, one team of scientists has undertaken a different kind of forecast: Understanding the influence of human-caused climate change on a storm that hasn’t made landfall yet.
Real-time storm forecasts continuously update as new data become available. But what would happen if, from a single starting point — in this case, the state of the atmosphere on September 11 — Florence roared ahead in two parallel worlds: one with and one without the influence of human-caused climate change?
In that hypothetical scenario, Florence was bigger than if it would be if it had occurred in a world with no human-caused warming, climate modeler Kevin Reed of Stony Brook University in New York and colleagues conclude in a study posted on the university’s website September 12. And thanks to warmer sea surface temperatures and more available moisture in the air, it would dump 50 percent more rain on the Carolinas, the researchers predict.
The goal of such climate change attribution studies is to determine whether — and by how much — human-driven climate change might have caused a particular extreme event, such as a hurricane, a heat wave or a flood. It’s an increasingly high-profile area of research, particularly after three studies last year found that a trio of extreme events in 2016 simply could not have happened without climate change (SN: 1/20/18, p. 6).
Until now, such studies have been conducted only when the event is long over. Reed and his colleagues got a jump on that question, conducting the first attribution study for an extreme event that is still in progress. It’s not yet clear what role such real-time attribution studies might play in society; they could aid emergency planning, policy making and even climate-related litigation.
In the meantime, what this study reveals is that “dangerous climate change is here now,” says study coauthor Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. “The chances and magnitude of dangerous extreme weather have already been significantly increased.”
Reed talked with Science News about what a forecast attribution study is, how the new study suggests climate change may have altered Florence’s rainfall and size, and the future of real-time attribution. His responses are edited for space and clarity………https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-climate-change-fueling-hurricane-florence
September 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, USA |
Leave a comment
America’s Oldest Operating Nuclear Power Plant to Retire on Monday OilVoice Press – OilVoice 14-Sep-2018 The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, located 50 miles east of Philadelphia in Forked River, New Jersey, is scheduled to retire on Monday, September 17. The plant first came online on December 1, 1969, making it the oldest commercially operated nuclear power plant in the United States. Oyster Creek was previously expected to retire on December 31, 2019, but its retirement was accelerated by more than a year to coincide with the plant’s fuel and maintenance cycle…………
Oyster Creek will be the sixth nuclear power plant to retire in the past five years. After Oyster Creek’s retirement, the United States will have 98 operating nuclear reactors at 59 plants. Twelve of these reactors, with a combined capacity of 11.7 gigawatts, are scheduled to retire within the next seven years.
Oyster Creek is one of four nuclear power plants—along with Palisades Power Plant, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, and Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station—that have planned retirement dates more than a decade before their operating licenses expire. Economic factors have played a significant role in decisions to continue operating or to retire nuclear power plants, as increased competition from natural gas and renewables has made it increasingly difficult for nuclear generators to compete in electricity markets……..
According to Exelon, Oyster Creek will undergo a six-step decommissioning process. The typical decommissioning period for a nuclear power plant is about 60 years, so parts of the Oyster Creek plant structure could remain in place until 2075. …..https://oilvoice.com/Opinion/22263/Americas-Oldest-Operating-Nuclear-Power-Plant-to-Retire-on-Monday
September 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
decommission reactor, USA |
Leave a comment
U.S. needs a safer way to store nuclear waste, As Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolinas, the country is confronting a reality it normally ignores. Newsday, The Editorial Board, September 13, 2018
As Hurricane Florence bears down on the Carolinas, the United States is confronting a reality it normally ignores. This nation has no permanent, safe disposal site for the 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste it has created in power and weapons plants. This waste is largely stored where it was generated, often in vulnerable above-ground tanks — at 80 sites in 35 states, including New York.
Nine of those sites, from northern Georgia to North Carolina, are in the potential path of Florence. Several were built with the same technology as the Fukushima power plant in Japan, whose reactors and waste storage were tragically compromised by a tsunami in 2011……..
September 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
safety, USA, wastes |
Leave a comment
A NUCLEAR PLANT BRACES FOR IMPACT WITH HURRICANE FLORENCE, Wired, MEGAN MOLTENIMEGAN MOLTENI 13 Sept 18 I N MARCH 11, 2011, a one-two, earthquake-tsunami punch knocked out the safety systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, triggering an explosion of hydrogen gas and meltdowns in three of its six reactors—the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. Fukushima’s facility was built with 1960s technology, designed at a time when engineers underestimated plant vulnerabilities during natural disasters. In the US, 20 plants with similar designs are currently operating.
One of them is slated for a head-on collision with Hurricane Florence. Duke Energy Corp’s dual-reactor, 1,870-megawatt Brunswick plant sits four miles inland from Cape Fear, a pointy headland jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean just south of the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. Brunswick has survived decades of run-ins with hurricanes, but Florence could be its biggest test yet. The plant perches near the banks of the Cape Fear River, which drains 9,000 square miles of the state’s most densely populated regions. Like Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Florence is predicted to stall out for days, pounding the Carolinas with unrelenting amounts of water, leading to life-threatening storm surges and catastrophic flooding. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center is projecting 110 mile-per-hour winds, waves as high as 13 feet, and in some places, up to 40 inches of rain.
Duke Energy Corp’s dual-reactor, 1,870-megawatt Brunswick plant sits four miles inland from Cape Fear, a pointy headland jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean just south of the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. Brunswick has survived decades of run-ins with hurricanes, but Florence could be its biggest test yet. The plant perches near the banks of the Cape Fear River, which drains 9,000 square miles of the state’s most densely populated regions. Like Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Florence is predicted to stall out for days, pounding the Carolinas with unrelenting amounts of water, leading to life-threatening storm surges and catastrophic flooding. NOAA’s National Hurricane Center is projecting 110 mile-per-hour winds, waves as high as 13 feet, and in some places, up to 40 inches of rain.
They’re part of a sweep of changes nuclear plants around the US have adopted post-Fukushima……….
Duke predicted a maximum storm surge of 7 feet at the plant’s safety-related buildings. But the plant was originally designed to cope with only 3.6 feet of expected surge, according to the NRC’s 2017 summary assessment of Duke’s hazard reevaluation report, which has not been made public.
In a letter earlier this year, the NRC reminded Duke that the plant’s current design falls short of the reevaluated flood risks. According to Burnell, Duke has since submitted an assessment of how it will cope—including the use of those steel door reinforcements—which the NRC is still evaluating. “The review is not complete but there’s nothing in there to this point that causes us any concern,” says Burnell………….
Storms can be unpredictable, however. Dave Lochbaum, who directs a nuclear safety watchdog group at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has spent a lifetime studying nuclear failures. Brunswick troubles him because in 2012, Duke found hundreds of missing or damaged flood protections at the plant, such as cracked seals and corroded pipes. According to the group, none of the NRC’s subsequent reports have mentioned repairs. “Hopefully they’ve been fixed,” says Lochbaum. “But we’ve not been able to confirm that with the available documentation.”………
In its 2012 post-Fukushima review, Florida Power & Light told the NRC that flood protections at its St. Lucie plant on South Hutchinson Island were adequate, despite failing to discover six electrical conduits with missing seals in one of the emergency core cooling systems. Two years later, a freak storm inundated Florida’s central coast with record rainfall, flooding one of the plant’s reactors with 50,000 gallons of stormwater. The deluge submerged core cooling pumps, rendering them useless. Had the reactor faltered during the storm, the plant would not have been able to maintain a safe and stable status beyond 24 hours, according to an NRC notice of violation issued to FPL after the incident………https://www.wired.com/story/a-nuclear-plant-braces-for-impact-with-hurricane-florence/
September 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, safety, USA |
Leave a comment
Officials prep toxic waste sites, nuclear power plants ahead of Hurricane Florence’s arrival, By Amanda Schmidt, AccuWeather staff writer, September 12, 2018, Hurricane Florence could cause an environmental and public health disaster, as heavy rains may overwhelm pits holding toxic waste from power plants, industrial sites or animal-manure lagoons. This toxic waste could wash into homes and threaten drinking water supplies………
Hurricane Florence could cause an environmental and public health disaster, as heavy rains may overwhelm pits holding toxic waste from power plants, industrial sites or animal-manure lagoons. This toxic waste could wash into homes and threaten drinking water supplies. …….
September 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
safety, USA |
Leave a comment
Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 14 Sept 18 This report on North Carolina reactors by the Union of Concerned Scientists –
“Today more than 3,400 metric tons of spent fuel is stored in North Carolina. Over 85% of that spent fuel is stored in large pools of water called spent fuel pools, which are equipped with systems to cool the water that surrounds the hot fuel rods.”
“While concerns about nuclear power safety often focus on the fuel in the reactor core, spent fuel stored in pools also can be a major source of radioactivity during an accident. If water drains from the pool for even a few hours or the cooling system is interrupted for several days, the spent fuel could overheat and its cladding could break open, releasing radioactive material. And because the pools are located outside the thick, concrete containment walls, it is more likely that this radioactive material would reach the environment”
The report was done back in 2011, so not sure if things have improved since then. https://www.ucsusa.org/…/nuclear-power-safety-in-north…
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/permalink/2113650401999939/?comment_id=2114177665280546¬if_id=1536813900482985¬if_t=group_comment
September 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
safety, USA, wastes |
Leave a comment
nuclear-news 