This loss of nuclear competence is being cited by nuclear and national security experts in both the U.S. and in Europe’s nuclear weapons states as a threat to their military nuclear programs. The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. The memo states that the “entire US nuclear enterprise” including nuclear weapons and naval propulsion, “depends on a robust civilian nuclear industry.”
A Double First in China for Advanced Nuclear Reactors, https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/a-double-first-in-china-for-advanced-nuclear-reactorsBy Peter Fairley 5 July 18 Call it the world’s slowest photo finish. After several decades of engineering, construction flaws and delays, and cost overruns — a troubled birth that cost their developers dearly — the most advanced commercial reactor designs from Europe and the United States just delivered their first megawatt-hours of electricity within one day of each other. But their benefits — including safety advances such as the AP1000’s passive cooling and the EPR’s airplane crash-proof shell — may offer too little, too late to secure future projects.
Both projects are coming online years behind schedule, and they are still at least several months away from full commercial operation. But the real problem for the AP1000 and the EPR are the designs’ unfinished Western debuts.
The AP1000 is designed to passively cool itself during an accidental shutdown, theoretically avoiding accidents like the one at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi. But AP1000 developer Westinghouse declared bankruptcy last year due to construction troubles, particularly at dual-reactor plants for utilities in Georgia and South Carolina. The latter abandoned their pair of partially built AP1000s after investing US $9 billion. The Georgia plant, initiated in 2012, is projected to be completed five years late in 2022 and at a cost of $25 billion — $11 billion more than budgeted.
Delays for the EPR, whose dual-layered concrete shield protects against airplane strikes, contributed to the breakup of Paris-based nuclear giant Areva in 2015. And the first EPR projects in France and Finland remain troubled under French utility Electricité de France (EDF), which absorbed Areva’s reactor business, Fromatome. The Finnish plant, started in 2005 and expected to take four years, is currently slated for startup next year, and deadlines continue to come and go. In June, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj announced that startup had slid another four months to September 2019.
The troubled EPR and AP1000 projects show that U.S. and European firms have lost competence in nuclear construction and management. ”It’s no coincidence that two of the four AP1000s in the U.S. were abandoned, and that the EPRs that started much earlier than Taishan’s in Finland and France are still under construction,” says nuclear energy consultant Mycle Schneider, principal author of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. “The Chinese have a very large workforce that they move from one project to another, so their skills are actually getting better, whereas European and North American companies haven’t completed reactors in decades,” says Schneider.
This loss of nuclear competence is being cited by nuclear and national security experts in both the U.S. and in Europe’s nuclear weapons states as a threat to their military nuclear programs. The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. The memo states that the “entire US nuclear enterprise” including nuclear weapons and naval propulsion, “depends on a robust civilian nuclear industry.”
A letter sent to Perry last month by 75 former U.S. military, industrial and academic leaders adds to the nexus argument, citing a statement from the Trump Administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review about the United States’ inability to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. “Re-establishing this capability will be far easier and more economical with a strong, thriving civil nuclear sector,” write the signatories.
Heavy dependence on China, meanwhile, puts the global nuclear industry in a vulnerable position. Total nuclear generation declined last year if one takes out China, notes Schneider. And he says a Chinese nuclear growth gap is coming since it hasn’t started building a new reactor in 18 months.
For more than a decade, the AP1000 has been the presumed successor to China’s mainstay reactors, which employ a 1970s-era French design. Areva’s EPR was a fallback option. The Chinese government may now wait to see how the first reactors actually operate before it approves a new wave of reactor construction.
All the while, nuclear is falling further behind renewable solar and wind power. As Schneider notes, the 3.3 GW of new nuclear capacity connected to the grid worldwide in 2017 (including three in China and a fourth in Pakistan built by Chinese firms) pales in comparison to the 53 GW of solar power installed in China alone.
Air Force conducts flight testing on new nuclear bomb — but do they need it?SOFREP News, BY ALEX HOLLINGS07.04.2018 Late last week, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the U.S. Air Force announced two successful “end to end” non-nuclear system qualification flight tests aboard B-2 Spirits for the newest nuclear bomb to enter into the American arsenal, the B61-12 gravity bomb.
These tests are intended to determine how effectively the bombs can be loaded onto aircraft and deployed using existing methodologies and procedures. Incorporating this new bomb design into existing processes is important for multiple reasons: specialized training for specific weapons systems would dramatically increase the overall cost of the platform’s introduction, and because the B61-12 gravity bomb is slated to slowly replace America’s existing stockpile of B61 nuclear bomb variants, it’s important that the new bombs blend seamlessly into the force. It will take time to transition the old platforms into new ones, and in the meantime, the whole family of B61 bombs needs to be able to play well with one another.
……… Despite rising concerns about the growing expense related to the B61-12 program, these new platforms are expected to enter service within the next two years, phasing out existing B61-3, -4, -7, and -10 bombs by 2025. The last legacy bombs to remain in the arsenal will be the B83-1 and B61-11 gravity bomb, both of which possess superior penetration capabilities intended to access and destroy bunkers and other underground facilities.
…….. Unlike nuclear missiles, the B61 family of bombs are simply dropped over their targets the old-fashioned way, using a tail section for stability and offering no further propulsion or navigation.
With America looking to maintain its reliance on the B-52 Stratofortress as integral to the airborne portion of the nuclear triad, it’s hard to imagine a conflict that could see these bombs being dropped from the aging platform at all. The Air Force acknowledges that the B-52 is too slow and lacks the stealth to fly into contested airspace (where such a bomb would almost certainly be used), and the B-2 is currently slated for retirement once the new B-21 Raider enters service. ……..https://sofrep.com/105418/air-force-conducts-flight-testing-on-new-nuclear-bomb-but-do-they-need-it/
Plans for a controversial multibillion-dollar U.S. nuclear research reactor are coming together at lightning speed—much too fast, say some nuclear policy experts. With a push from Congress, the Department of Energy (DOE) has begun designing the Versatile Fast Neutron Source, which would be the first DOE-built reactor since the 1970s. It would generate high-energy neutrons for testing materials and fuels for so-called fast reactors. But U.S. utilities have no plans to deploy such reactors, which some nuclear proliferation analysts say pose a risk because they use plutonium, the stuff of atomic bombs.
Researchers are divided on whether the reactor, which would likely be built at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) near Idaho Falls, is badly needed or a boondoggle. “Definitely, there is a lack of capability in the U.S. and a shortage of such facilities worldwide,” says Massimiliano Fratoni, a nuclear engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. But Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist at Princeton University, says, “It’s a pork-barrel project.”
The reactor does enjoy extraordinary congressional support. In March, Congress gave the project $35 million for this year, although DOE only requested $10 million. The House of Representatives and the Senate have passed separate bills that call for completing the facility by 2025, with the House bill authorizing DOE to spend $2 billion. Von Hippel speculates that the cost could end up reaching $10 billion.
B-2 Flies First ‘End-To-End’ Tests With New Nuclear Bomb Amid Growing Cost Concerns
The B61-12 nuclear gravity bombs are set to enter service in 2020 and already cost nearly twice their literal weight in gold. The Drive, BY JOSEPH TREVITHICKJULY 2, 2018
The U.S. Air Force, in cooperation with the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, has completed the first end-to-end qualification flight tests of the new B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb on the B-2 bomber. This milestone comes amid continued concerns about the weapon’s cost, including the recent announcement that the Pentagon’s top internal watchdog has started its own audit of the program.
On June 29, 2018, the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, revealed the two successful test flights in an official press release. A B-2A Spirit stealth bomber from the Air Force’s 419th Test and Evaluation Squadron, situated at Edwards Air Force Base in California, had dropped the weapons, which did not carry live nuclear warheads, on the Tonopah Test…..
The full stockpile of approximately 400 bombs is supposed to be combat ready by 2025. The B-2A, along with various dual-purpose combat jets, such as the F-16C/D Viper and F-15E Strike Eagle, will be able to carry these weapons. The Air Force plans to integrate the B61-12 on the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and B-21 Raider bomber in the future, too.
………. while the U.S. military insists that the B61-12 offers superior capabilities compared to the existing bombs and will allow it to consolidate its inventory of B61 bombs, the project has proven to be time-consuming and very costly. On June 28, 2018, a day before NNSA announced the successful test flights, the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General announced it was reviewing the price and management of the tail kit portion of the program.
Our objective is to determine whether the Air Force is developing the B61-12 Tail Kit Assembly within cost, schedule, and performance requirements,” the office said in an associated press release. “We will consider suggestions from management on additional or revised objectives.”
This is hardly the first time a U.S. government agency has taken a look into the program, either. In May 2018, the Government Accountability Office, a Congressional watchdog, released its own review of the project.
“GAO recommended in a January 2018 report that NNSA document and justify such decisions, in part because GAO’s prior work has shown that independent cost estimates historically are higher than programs’ cost estimates because the team conducting the independent estimate is more objective and less prone to accept optimistic assumptions,” the May 2018 report said. “In response to the January 2018 report, NNSA agreed to establish a protocol to document management decisions on significant variances between program and independent cost estimates, but it has not yet provided evidence that it has done so.”
Providing an accurate scope of the costs for both the bomb and the tail kit, which are managed and therefore budgeted for separately, has been a major source of controversy from the beginning. Just between 2011 and 2012, NNSA’s estimate of the program’s price tag grew from $4 billion to $10 billion, which did not include the cost of the tail kit and various other ancillary components.
This prompted criticism both within sectors of the U.S. government and among advocacy groups. In 2012, the non-profit Ploughshares Fund, among others, noted that this revised cost split among the 400 700-pound nuclear bombs meant that each one would literally be worth more than its weight in gold. At the current price of gold at the time of writing, each one of the B61-12s could actually be worth nearly twice as much per pound.
A significant increase in cost could magnify existing criticisms, as well as questions about whether or not B61s of any kind still have a place in the U.S. military’s over-arching nuclear modernization plans. The Nuclear Posture Review argues that the gravity bombs, despite their low-yield settings, do nothing to deter potential opponents, primarily Russia, from engaging in a limited nuclear confrontation.
Though this basic premise is highly debatable, under this logic, the utility of the gravity bombs becomes particularly questionable. The U.S. military has deemed the B-52H bomber too vulnerable to deliver nuclear gravity bombs in a future conflict and is rapidly approaching that conclusion, right or wrong, with regards to dual-use combat jets.
Science Mag 3rd July 2018 , Plans for a controversial multibillion-dollar U.S. nuclear research reactor
are coming together at lightning speed—much too fast, say some nuclear policy experts. With a push from Congress, the Department of Energy (DOE) has begun designing the Versatile Fast Neutron Source, which would be the first DOE-built reactor since the 1970s.
It would generate high-energy neutrons for testing materials and fuels for so-called fast reactors. But U.S. utilities have no plans to deploy such reactors, which some nuclear proliferation analysts say pose a risk because they use plutonium, the
stuff of atomic bombs.
Researchers are divided on whether the reactor, which would likely be built at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) near Idaho
Falls, is badly needed or a boondoggle. “Definitely, there is a lack of capability in the U.S. and a shortage of such facilities worldwide,” says Massimiliano Fratoni, a nuclear engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. But Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist at Princeton University, says, “It’s a pork-barrel project.” http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/congress-pushes-multibillion-dollar-nuclear-reactor-critics-call-boondoggle
Natural gas pipelines can be targeted by cyberattacks. So can electric grids. And power plants. And hospitals, city governments, banks, entertainment companies, and virtually anything else that exists in the digital age.
Like most of those entities, pipeline companies have taken aggressive steps to better shield their infrastructure from hackers, isolate critical systems, and beef up physical security. Recent allegations by some that the natural gas industry is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack are unsubstantiated and not based on any factual evidence.
A recent incident affecting a third-party service provider, used for scheduling and nominations by some pipeline operators, demonstrates how the industry’s preparedness protects consumers. After an attack in March halted data exchanges from the company, the operators that used their services to facilitate gas deliveries and billing sprang into action. There was no impact on natural gas deliveries and gas never stopped moving through pipelines as a result of this incident.
Natural gas pipeline companies have a long standing track record of reliable service, and are dedicated to meeting the highest industry and federal standards for safety, security and resilience, ensuring the flow of natural gas. This is par for the course in an industry where the number of threats are increasing, but advances in security and system resilience have made inflicting any real damage increasingly difficult.
Compared to cyberattacks that shut down entire electric grids in the Ukraine and a ransomware virus that hobbled services in Atlanta for days, the natural gas industry has avoided any attacks causing a halt in services. Preparedness is key, and the industry has demonstrated its commitment through participation in programs like the Downstream Natural Gas Information Sharing and Analysis Center, as well as real-world training exercises like the NERC GridEx. There is still work to be done, but we are on the right track.
Despite this progress, a recently leaked “pre-decisional” memo from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Security Council argues that natural gas cybersecurity threats are proof that aging coal and nuclear power plants need to be propped up through unprecedented and legally-questionable use of federal national security powers.
This represents a solution to a problem that does not exist. If the Energy Department acts, consumers will be saddled with as much as $11.8 billion to pay for the uneconomic coal and nuclear plants.
That might be justifiable if these facilities increased the reliability of the grid. But they don’t. That’s why threepreviousattempts to find legal justification to subsidize these plants have failed. That’s also why PJM, the non-profit electric grid operator for the region that has seen most coal and nuclear retirements, dismissed the proposal as “damaging to markets and therefore costly to consumers.”
an inspection in 2017, after most of the waste was retrieved from the tank, found widespread pitting on the bottom of the inner shell, allowing waste to seep through. The finding pointed to a corrosion problem.
Experts don’t know enough about the issue yet to tell if the thinning is recent or definitely say what caused it.
More of Hanford’s newest waste storage tanks could be at risk of developing leaks, according to a new evaluation.
Tank farm contractor Washington River Protection Solutions compared the chemistry of the waste in the nuclear reservation’s oldest double-shell tank, which was discovered to be leaking, to the waste in the nuclear reservation’s other double-shell tanks.
The evaluation’s conclusion and other findings about the condition of the Hanford Site’s double-shell tanks suggest a need to build more waste storage tanks for 56 million gallons of waste, according to the Washington Department of Ecology.
“We need to start doing something, the sooner the better,” said Steve Lowe, Ecology’s double-shell tank lead engineer. “Cleanup depends on it.”
He characterized three of the double-shell tanks that still hold waste as having “very high risk factors” for corrosion, based on information in the new study.
But the finding doesn’t mean the three tanks are leaking or will leak, said Jeremy Johnson, deputy DOE project director for the Hanford tank farms, at a recent Hanford Advisory Board committee meeting.
The Department of Energy is emptying the radioactive and hazardous chemical waste from 149 leak-prone single-shell tanks into 28 newer double-shell tanks for storage until the waste can be treated for disposal. The waste is left from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
But the first of the double-shell tanks — Tank AY-102, which dates to 1971 — has been taken out of service and emptied after developing a slow leak from its inner shell into the space between its shells.
Corrosion risks identified
Initially, officials suspected the leak was caused by construction problems, including welds that had to be reworked as many as four times.
But an inspection in 2017, after most of the waste was retrieved from the tank, found widespread pitting on the bottom of the inner shell, allowing waste to seep through. The finding pointed to a corrosion problem.
Now the new study finds three other of the double-shell tanks — AY-101, AZ-101 and AZ-102 — have held waste with similar chemistry to what’s suspected of corroding the bottom of the inner shell of Tank AY-102.
Among the issues with the three tanks, as well as the tank that leaked and has been emptied, is a history of holding waste that generates high heat, which could accelerate corrosion.
The waste chemistry is one of three potential problems in the 27 remaining double-shell tanks that Johnson discussed with advisory board committee members.
Two of the tanks with possible waste chemistry issues also have spots with thinning in a ring around the wall of the inner shell. The ring is where condensate, or water from ventilation systems in the tank farms, was added and interacted with the air before it mixed into the rest of the waste.
In addition, ultrasonic testing has found thinning of the steel in the bottom of the outer shell of nine of 11 of the double-shell tanks checked.
In one spot of Tank AP-102, the steel bottom of the shell had thinned up to 70 percent, according to DOE.
Experts don’t know enough about the issue yet to tell if the thinning is recent or definitely say what caused it.
However, DOE suspects that moisture may be infiltrating and corroding the outside of the tank where it sits underground on a concrete foundation. The foundation has drains to a sump system.
High pressure water is sprayed to move waste around on the bottom of the inner shell of Hanford Tank AY-102. Bubbles may indicate some of the seven leaks found inside the inner shell. No waste is believed to have escaped the tank’s outer shell. Ed
McClatchyCourtesy Washington River Protection Solutions
DOE has relied on an independent Tank Integrity Expert Panel, which met last week, to provide recommendations on the Hanford tanks.
The panel has “found areas of interest in time to take action before they become a problem,” Johnson said.
Ecology raises concerns
But the state is concerned that double-shell tank space already is in short supply, with several of the tanks at risk.
Every double-shell tank that fails will take two out of use — the one that failed and the one that is filled with waste from the failed tank, Lowe said. Double-shell tanks have a capacity of at least 1 million gallons.
DOE has said that once the vitrification plant starts turning low-activity radioactive waste into a stable glass form, as soon as 2021, about 12 million gallons of space will be freed up during the following decade in the double-shell tanks to empty more single-shell tanks.
But by the time the vitrification plant starts treating waste, the oldest of the double shell tanks will already be 50 years old. And some of the tanks will remain in service as the plant operates for another 40 years, Ecology officials pointed out.
One of the tanks identified as at high risk for corrosion, Tank AZ-101, holds waste that is expected to be treated as high-level radioactive waste, according to Ecology officials. The waste is expected to remain in the tank until 2036, when the vit plant is expected to be fully operational.
The Tank Integrity Expert Panel discussed the new study on tanks at risk of corrosion this week, and members said they were concerned that it underestimated risk, according to the Department of Ecology’s account of the meeting.
The study did not consider that multiple risks, such as waste that generates high temperatures and waste with certain chemistry, could be synergistic, creating faster corrosion than predicted, according to Ecology.
DOE taking action
DOE and its tank farm contractor are taking steps both to prevent further deterioration and to learn more.
A chemistry-control program for the double shell tanks will be revised, DOE said. Core samples will be collected to analyze the waste at the bottom of the three most at-risk tanks.
To prevent pitting in a ring around tanks from ventilation system condensate, the liquid now will be treated elsewhere at the nuclear reservation, rather than going into the tanks.
DOE also is evaluating ways to prevent moisture from collecting under outer shells and is considering whether corrosion inhibitor could be added.
New robots small enough to be used in the ventilation spaces between the bottoms of the two shells are being developed and could be used later this year to learn more about the condition of the tanks.
There also is a possibility that some repairs could be made on the outer shell.
A broad coalition of 75 industry, government, and military dignitaries — a quarter of whom are retired admirals or vice admirals — has come out in support of President Trump’s plan to bail out the nation’s struggling nuclear plants, agreeing that more premature closures pose a national security threat.
“We urge you to continue to take concrete steps to ensure the national security attributes of U.S. nuclear power plants are properly recognized by policymakers and are valued in U.S. electricity markets,” according to the letter, which was addressed to U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and dated last week.
The letter could help stave off the planned closures of FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse nuclear plant east of Toledo, its Perry nuclear plant east of Cleveland, and its twin-reactor nuclear complex west of Pittsburgh.
FES has announced it will close Davis-Besse by May 31, 2020, unless a buyer or bailout emerges. The other three nuclear plants are to be closed by the end of 2021.
FES and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co., both subsidiaries of Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., are in bankruptcy proceedings because those plants — as well as several coal-fired power plants — have become unprofitable during the era of record-low natural gas prices and growth in the renewable energy sector. FirstEnergy has said it wants out of electricity generation, and that what’s left of the corporation will be focused on transmission.
The high-profile letter in support of saving nuclear plants is being circulated by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s lobbying arm on Capitol Hill.
Besides admirals and vice admirals, the signatories include former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former U.S. senators Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.), Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), Trent Lott (R., Miss.), Jim Talent (R. Mo.), and John Warner (R., Va.).
Also signing the letter was former New Jersey Gov. and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman as well as many former industry executives, such as Daniel Akerson, General Motors’ chairman and chief executive officer from 2010 to 2014; Thomas Christopher, former AREVA chief executive officer; Charles Pryor, retired Westinghouse Electric Co. and URENCO USA chairman, and Jeffrey Wadsworth, former Battelle Memorial Institute president and chief executive officer.
In addition, the letter is signed by three former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairmen, Nils Diaz, Dale Klein, and Richard Meserve; as well as some former NRC commissioners, and several former directors of national laboratories.
The Trump Administration plan to bail out struggling nuclear and coal-fired power plants came two months after FirstEnergy Solutions filed what many experts view as a historic and potentially landmark petition for relief under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws.
The bankruptcy filing has drawn national attention because FirstEnergy is one of America’s largest utilities. It appealed to Mr. Perry for help in late March when it filed for bankruptcy.
Those nuclear plants — in addition to numerous coal-fired power plants under FirstEnergy — represent a huge chunk of electricity for the regional electric grid that Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection operates in 13 states, including Ohio. That grid, which serves 65 million people, is the nation’s largest.
Mr. Perry is being asked to exercise emergency authority under a pair of federal laws typically reserved for wars or natural disasters.
According to The Associated Press, such a move is “unprecedented intervention into U.S. energy markets.”
PJM has said the planned shuttering of those plants pose “no immediate threat to system reliability,” and warned of higher prices, as have many others.
The Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, one of several parties that opposes such an emergency order, has called FirstEnergy’s request “extraordinary,” as well as “fundamentally unjust and unreasonable for Ohio consumers,” adding Ohioans will be subject to “paying subsidies and above-market prices for electricity” if a bailout is granted.
Also objecting have been attorneys general from nine states and the District of Columbia, calling the company’s justification “legally flawed” and “a grave abuse of the Federal Power Act,” a section of which provides for relief during national emergencies.
The Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center — which called upon the NRC to investigate the utility’s decommissioning trust fund days before FES filed for bankruptcy protection — also has filed a 96-page petition in opposition, which it prepared with the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, the Ohio Environmental Council, and Ohio Citizen Action.
The NRC found no shortfall during its last audit of the trust fund, completed in March, 2017.
The ELPC is one of several groups that have labeled Mr. Trump’s directive as an act of socialism, saying it goes against free market supply-and-demand principles. Those opposed include the American Petroleum Institute, which represents the industry benefiting most from expanded production of natural gas.
The United States is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Industry executives and government officials said at a conference in Washington last week that the country could expand its shale gas output another 60 percent in the coming decades.
The administration’s position is that America cannot become overly reliant on natural gas, renewable energy, and other sources of electricity that are now being sold at much cheaper prices. Natural gas in particular has made great inroads in the market because of how prices have fallen dramatically over the past decade once the modern era of fracking shale began.
Bolton: US has plan to dismantle NK nuclear program in year , WP ,By Matthew Pennington and Lolita C. Baldor | AP, July 1 Washington The United States has a plan that would lead to the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Sunday, although U.S. intelligence reported signs that Pyongyang doesn’t intend to fully give up its arsenal.
John Bolton said top U.S. diplomat Mike Pompeo will be discussing that plan with North Korea in the near future. Bolton added that it would be to the North’s advantage to cooperate to see sanctions lifted quickly and aid from South Korea and Japan start to flow.
Bolton’s remarks on CBS’ ”Face the Nation” appeared to be the first time the Trump administration had publicly suggested a timeline for North Korea to fulfill the commitment leader Kim Jong Un made at a summit with President Donald Trump last month for the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
Holtec International has proposed placing used fuel rods from all U.S. nuclear reactors in a shallow burial site near the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Recently, The New Mexican reprinted a Carlsbad Current-Argusarticle featuring the point of view of Holtec executives, who painted too rosy a view of the safety issues this proposed facility could present.
There is pressure from the public to move used fuel rods away from their current locations — the reactor sites — especially when reactors have been shut down. The risks of storage in casks are low, the risks of transport are higher; in either case, the failure of a single cask, whether through natural degradation processes or terrorism, could release more radiation than did the accidents at Chernobyl or Fukushima.
After removal from a reactor, the fuel rods are placed in pools of water, which allow this high-level waste to cool. After several years of cooling, they are placed into casks. Radioactivity given off by these fuel rods remains dangerous to all life for at least 10,000 years. They are much more radioactive than the waste at WIPP.
The canister design approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Holtec proposes is a thin-walled design, with an interior five-eighth-inch stainless-steel cask holding fuel rods. That is placed into another stainless-steel cask, with lead and boron in between to abate radiation. Two vent holes in the exterior cask allow cooling air to flow. Casks need to cool to 400 degrees Celsius to allow safe transport.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates very low risk of cask failure for at least 20 years. However, it will take 20-30 years for the casks to cool enough for transport. Given that cask cracking has been observed after 10 years, ultimate failure seems likely.
The long-term solution is likely to be underground burial at a well-researched location. It is unlikely that this high-level waste will be cool enough for a long-term underground repository until about 60 years after it is removed from the reactor.
The proposed Holtec interim storage facility has numerous fatal procedural and structural flaws. Alkaline soils there are corrosive. Fencing the site will not protect the area from armor-piercing artillery launched by terrorists from either of the two roads surrounding the site. There will be no continuous monitoring program to detect leaks. There is no plan on how to deal with leaking canisters. The data on radiation exposure to workers is proprietary. Transport vibration could cause cracking of the fuel rods, after which they cannot be safely transported at all. The best transport is via rail at low speeds, but the railroads have not been contracted. The transportation casks have not been tested to failure: What about a head-on collision of two trains, or trains falling off of a bridge?
The storage plan should be an integrated one, which industry experts admit is not the current approach. The movement of casks should be minimized. Unless a permanent repository is developed, the proposed interim site could become permanent. WIPP was studied as a transuranic radioactive waste site, not a high-level waste site, and no high-level waste repository exists.
It is no wonder that pecan farmers, dairy farmers and the oil, gas and tourism industries are worried. One accident could shut down the entire region. After 10,000 canisters have been sent to southeast New Mexico, at least one serious accident is likely to occur, based on Department of Energy analysis performed by Sandia engineers regarding shipping high-level waste to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Your grandkids might never get to visit Carlsbad Caverns. Are the 50-100 jobs that Holtec would bring worth the risk of 10 centuries of contamination?
The deadline for comments to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is July 30. Submit comments to: Holtec-CISFEIS@nrc.gov
For further information, go to riograndesierraclub.org/holtec. John Buchser of Santa Fe is the immediate past chairman of the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club. He is interested in seeking solutions to sustainable use of our water in New Mexico and West Texas.
Nuclear Gravity Bomb Completes First Qual Tests on B-2 Bomber ,Military.com 30 Jun 2018 By Oriana Pawlyk
The B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb has gone through its first series of tests on the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
The Air Force, together with the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, earlier this month released a B61-12 non-nuclear test assembly from the Spirit. The kit included a NNSA-designed bomb assembly and the Air Force’s acquired tail-kit to be used on the B61-12 variant of the bomb, according to a Department of Energy release……….
Using the B61-12 will help consolidate and replace the existing B61 bomb variants in the U.S.’s nuclear stockpile, the release said. The first completed bomb kits are scheduled to debut sometime in fiscal 2020.
In May, top Air Force officials announced trials with the B61-12 were progressing successfully.
“We’ve already conducted 26 engineering, development and guided flight tests,” said Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein, deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration. “The program’s doing extremely well.”
The B61-12 modification program, which has been in the works for at least seven years, is slated to be carried by the B-2, as well as the future B-21 Long Range Strategic Bomber, known as the Raider.
The F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office has also been working on integrating the latest modification into its weapons arsenal.
The F-35 was designed with a requirement to carry a nuclear payload. In 2015, an F-35 flew with the B61-12 to measure its vibration in the aircraft’s weapons bay.
David Lowry’s Blog 29th June 2018, Article I of the NPT starts with the following commitment on Russia, the US
and UK: “Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to
transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear
explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices
directly, or indirectly”
Extraordinarily, just two days earlier in
Washington, the US hosted a bilateral meeting with the UK to celebrate the
60th anniversary – from July 3, 1958 – of a hugely significant nuclear
defence agreement (commonly called the US–UK Mutual Defense
Agreement,(MDA) with defence spelled with an ‘s’ even in the official
UK version, hinting at the origin of its drafting). http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2018/06/naked-nuclear-hypocrisy.html
James Hansen and the whale, a tragi-comedy in four chapters, The Reality Based Community, By James Wimberley
“………..[James Hansen] he said : Nuclear, especially next-generation nuclear, has tremendous potential to be part of the solution to climate change. The dangers of fossil fuels are staring us in the face. So for us to say we won’t use all the tools [such as nuclear energy] to solve the problem is crazy.
At this stage, the position is harmless crankiness. Nuclear reactors, with their negative learning curve, regular delays, uncertainty, and long-tail risks drove off almost all private investors decades ago. There is no good reason to think new nuclear is essential or even useful to the energy transition. “Next-generation nuclear” doesn’t exist. The economics of the nuclear reactors that can be built, poor as they are, depend on use as “baseload”, a concept that cheap but variable wind and solar as primary generators have rendered obsolete. What these need is flexible despatchable backup, which can be supplied far more cheaply by storage, gas turbines, more trade (eg with Quebec or Norway), or paid-for demand response. On energy blogs like MIT Technology Review or GTM you can find a vociferous band of loyal pro-nuclear commentators, but they do not represent anybody with power or money. …..
Another group of prophets deserves to be honoured. ……… I cited earlier the fall in the cost of renewables as one key element in making possible the Paris Agreement and the energy transition it requires. This did not happen by accident or the magic of the free market. The slope of the learning curves of technologies like wind and solar power and batteries may be exogenous. But it’s a relationship between cost and volume, and depends on growth in volume and an appropriate level of R&D. Until wind and solar broke through cost parity with coal, oil and gas a few years ago, progress down the leaning curve depended on subsidised deployment and research. Car batteries are not quite there yet.
These crucial policy and technical developments were the fruit of a fairly small number of enterprising, determined and lucky individuals. They included:
Researchers on solar: Becquerel, Willoughby Smith, Fritts, Einstein, Czochralski, the Bell Labs team of Chapin, Fuller, and Pearson. On wind: Poul La Cour and Johannes Juul in Denmark. On batteries: John Goodenough, who coming up to his 96th birthday still unprized in Stockholm, has just announced a research breakthrough on a high-density solid-state lithium battery.
Politicians and bureaucrats: NASA in the 1960s, MITI in the 1970s; Hans-Josef Fell and Hermann Scheer, leaders of the Energiewende in Germany and instigators of the 2000 Renewable Energy Act (EEG); Jerry Brown of California; Barack Obama (through targeted ARRA funding and the bilateral deal with China that made Paris possible).
Businessmen: Tokuji Hayakawa of Sharp in Japan; Elon Musk of Tesla; Wang Chuanfu of BYD.
This is an incomplete list, and no doubt unfair from my lack of knowledge. But it is near-certain that without these 18, and the then leaders of MITI and NASA, renewable energy and electric transport would not be where they are today.
In Trump’s Russia Summit, Putin Holds All the CardsBy Jonah Shepp New York Magazine, 30 June 18President Donald Trump’s scheduled summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on July 15 is being billed by the White House as an opportunity to reduce diplomatic tensions, begin repairing relations, and address a number of international issues of concern to both the U.S. and Russia, such as Iran, Syria, and Ukraine. Moscow is already managing expectations, saying they hope the meeting will rekindle a dialogue between the two governments but not to expect any “breakthroughs.”
Then again, Putin doesn’t need any breakthroughs; he’s already getting most of what he wants out of Trump, and given our president’s oft-expressed admiration for authoritarian strongmen in general and for his Russian counterpart in particular, Putin surely aims to cross a few more items off his wish list in Helsinki.
American-Russian relations at this moment are somewhat schizophrenic. On paper, Trump’s government is continuing and even going above and beyond many of the tough policies pursued by the Obama administration, including sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, the sale of weapons to Ukraine to combat the ongoing Russian-backed insurgency, and the expulsion of Russian agents.
Yet no world leader has been so much a beneficiary of Trump’s “dictator envy” as Putin. The president has publicly flattered him and even congratulated him (against the advice of literally everyone) on his victory in a transparently rigged election in March. The two men’s previous contacts have been friendly and often advantageous to Putin; they even spent an hour alone together, with no other U.S. advisers or officials and only Putin’s translator present, on the sidelines of last year’s G20 meeting. Trump takes Putin at his word when he says Russia did not meddle in the 2016 election, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, and even as Russian state TV gloats about it.
With Trump, all business is personal, and deals are made or broken on the basis of his feelings about the people he is making them with. Earlier this month, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un — whose crimes against human rights include forced labor, torture, and murder — made such a good impression on Trump at a summit in Singapore that the president gifted him a unilateral halt to joint U.S.–South Korean war games, blindsiding both Seoul and the Pentagon. Calculated measures are for eggheads and losers; Trump’s gut trumps all. ……..
he is actively working to destabilize the European Union, encouraging key members to quit the organization and saying at a rally this week that the E.U. “was set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank” — an absolutely bonkers statement even if it were not based on an exaggeration of the U.S-E.U. trade deficit. Considering that Russia meddled in the Brexit referendum just as it did in our elections, it’s clear that weakening or dismantling that union is high on the Kremlin’s agenda.
Trump’s bootlickers like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may lamely spin Trump’s antagonism toward our allies as some kind of “disruptive” “reset” in service of U.S. interests, but no administration official has made a remotely persuasive case for why chipping away at these institutions is good for America. For a revanchist Russia, on the other hand, the upsides are crystal clear. With his bad relationships with European allies fresh in his mind, it’s easy to imagine Trump letting Putin talk him into taking more steps to undercut these alliances.
Whether Putin has some kind of kompromat or other form of personal leverage over Trump (a terrifying possibility that becomes more believable the more we learn about the depth of Russia’s machinations in the 2016 campaign), or whether the two men just so happen to agree that the transatlantic liberal order is better off discarded, Putin is already getting what he paid for from this president.
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