42 Hanford workers contaminated with radiation, Seattle Times, March 24, 2018 The final results of worker tests after a December spread of contamination found that 11 Hanford workers had inhaled or ingested radioactive particles from demolition of the nuclear reservation’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. By Annette Cary Tri-City Herald ioactive contamination from demolition of the nuclear reservation’s Plutonium Finishing Plant.
The final results of worker tests after a December spread of contamination at the plant found 11 Hanford workers had inhaled or ingested radioactive particles, according to information released Thursday
That’s on top of the 31 positive test results after a similar spread of contamination in June at the plant in the center of the nuclear reservation.
Demolition at the plant has been halted since December. It will not restart until the Department of Energy approves a new demolition plan, and a plan is approved and implemented to prevent the airborne spread of small radioactive particles.
The Washington Department of Ecology, a regulator on the project, also has said it will not allow demolition to continue if it is not convinced it can be done safely.
Open-air demolition on the plant began in late 2016 using heavy equipment to tear down its walls. Extensive work already had been done to remove as much contaminated equipment as possible from the plant.
According to a draft report issued earlier in the month by CH2M/Jacobs Engineering with input from the U.S. Department of Energy, an air-monitoring system last fall failed to pick up the spread of radioactive contamination, giving management false assurance that controls were effective.
State monitoring has found that plutonium and americium particles traveled as far as 10 miles from the demolition site, near Richland. Vehicles, office buildings and workers have been tested for traces of radioactive contamination.
A plan for safer demolition has yet to be released.
The project has been troubled with radioactive contamination found outside worker offices at the plant and on worker cars and government vehicles.
Mabna Institute Hackers Penetrated Systems Belonging to Hundreds of Universities, Companies, and Other Victims to Steal Research, Academic and Proprietary Data, and Intellectual Property, USA Department of Justice, 23 Mar 18
An Indictment charging Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38; Ehsan Mohammadi, 37; Abdollah Karima, aka Vahid Karima, 39; Mostafa Sadeghi, 28; Seyed Ali Mirkarimi, 34; Mohammed Reza Sabahi, 26; Roozbeh Sabahi, 24; Abuzar Gohari Moqadam, 37; and Sajjad Tahmasebi, 30, all citizens and residents of Iran, was unsealed today. The defendants were each leaders, contractors, associates, hackers-for-hire or affiliates of the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company that, since at least 2013, conducted a coordinated campaign of cyber intrusions into computer systems belonging to 144 U.S. universities, 176 universities across 21 foreign countries, 47 domestic and foreign private sector companies, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the State of Hawaii, the State of Indiana, the United Nations, and the United Nations Children’s Fund……..https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/nine-iranians-charged-conducting-massive-cyber-theft-campaign-behalf-islamic-revolutionary
Saudi Prince’s Nuclear Bomb Comment May Scuttle Reactor Deal, Bloomberg By Ari Natter
Fresh scrutiny for plan to build U.S. reactors in Saudi Arabia
Lawmakers say Saudis shouldn’t be allowed to enrich uranium
Opposition to a deal for the U.S. to provide nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia is growing after Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said the kingdom would develop a nuclear weapon if Iran did.
The potential for U.S. companies to participate in the construction of as many as 16 nuclear reactors sought by the kingdom has been seen as a potential lifeline to Westinghouse Electric Co. and others suffering from the flagging nuclear industry at home.
To further that effort, the Trump administration is said to be considering allowing the Saudis the right to enrich uranium, a break from the so-called “gold standard” included in the nuclear-sharing agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which allows power generation but prohibits the enrichment and reprocessing of uranium.
But that idea ran into a buzzsaw during a House hearing on Wednesday, with lawmakers from both parties saying prince’s admission that his country might seek to build nuclear weapons was cause to halt negotiations between the two nations. Energy Secretary Rick Perry met with Saudi officials earlier this month in London to begin talks on the deal. …….https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/saudi-prince-s-nuclear-bomb-comment-may-scuttle-reactor-deal
State Department Approves $1 Billion Arms Sale With Saudi Arabia , Daily Caller HENRY RODGERS Political Reporter 24 Mar 18
The State Department announced it had approved the sales of more than $1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia Thursday, which includes 6,700 missiles.
The announcement comes two days after President Donald Trump met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of a three week trip in the U.S. The Saudi Arabian government requested to purchase 6,700 U.S. built anti-tank missiles as well as supplies and parts for old tanks and helicopters, which the State Department approved.
The sale will “support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives by improving the security of a friendly country, which has been and continues to be an important force for political stability and economic growth in the Middle East,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said in a statementThursday, adding it “will not alter the basic military balance in the region.”
One of the people MBS told about the discussion with Kushner was UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, according to a source who talks frequently to confidants of the Saudi and Emirati rulers. MBS bragged to the Emirati crown prince and others that Kushner was “in his pocket,” the source told The Intercept.
The Washington Post reported this week that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster “expressed early concern that Kushner was freelancing U.S. foreign policy.” According to the Post, Tillerson once asked staffers in frustration: “Who is the secretary of state here?”
Indeed, Kushner has grown so close to the Saudi and Emirati crown princes that he has communicated with them directly using WhatsApp, a reasonably secure messaging app owned by Facebook and popular in the Middle East, according to a senior Western official and a source close to the Saudi royal family.
UNTIL HE WAS stripped of his top-secret security clearance in February, presidential adviser Jared Kushner was known around the White House as one of the most voracious readers of the President’s Daily Brief, a highly classified rundown of the latest intelligence intended only for the president and his closest advisers.
Kushner, who had been tasked with bringing about a deal between Israel and Palestine, was particularly engaged by information about the Middle East, according to a former White House official and a former U.S. intelligence professional. Continue reading →
Reuters 21st March 2018, U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday to ensure that countries
striking deals with Washington on sharing nuclear power technology abandon
fuel-making activities that could be altered to make material for nuclear
weapons. U.S. Representatives Ilea Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Brad
Sherman, a Democrat, introduced the bill as officials from Saudi Arabia
work with the administration of President Donald Trump on a deal that could
relax safeguards on nuclear proliferation. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-nuclearpower/u-s-lawmakers-launch-bill-bolstering-nuclear-proliferation-safeguards-idUSKBN1GX2YB
FirstEnergy Solutions bankruptcy restructuring likely, power plants would be closed or sold, Cleveland.com, 23 Mar 18 By John Funk, The Plain Dealer The Perry nuclear power plant, a source of jobs and tax revenues for 30 years in Northeast Ohio, could be shutdown or sold in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding. The FirstEnergy Corp. subsidiary that owns the company’s power plants has an accumulated debt of more than $2.8 billion. The old plants cannot generate power as cheaply as new gas turbine plants and wind farms. FirstEnergy has not been able to persuade state lawmakers or federal authorities to create special fees to subsidize its nuclear power plants and has made it clear in recent months that it wants to become a fully regulated company again. A bankruptcy case could be filed within a week. (Plain Dealer file )
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Brutal competitive financial forces are poised to remake FirstEnergy into a utility without power plants and focused solely on delivering electricity.
The Akron-based power company that a decade ago hired former George W. Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson to bullystate lawmakers who were considering a return to state-regulated power prices now appears ready to sell or close its remaining coal and nuclear power plants because the state won’t subsidize them and neither will federal authorities.
Those include Perry nuclear plant in Lake County east of Cleveland and Davis-Besse in Ottawa County near Toledo.
The draconian move may come in a corporate “restructuring” plan that could get under way next week in a federal bankruptcy court, either here or any other federal jurisdiction where the company has offices.
NBC 20th March 2018, With reports of American power plants across the country having their
systems accessed by hackers, one group of scientists are calling out the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Southern California Edison for
their recent decision to remove enhanced cyber-security systems at the San
Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
Daily Energy Insider 20th March 2018, Energy Secretary Rick Perry testified to a Senate panel on Tuesday about the Trump administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) budget request for fiscal year 2019, a plan that prioritizes nuclear security while making
large cuts to energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.
The budget proposal, a $500 million increase in funds over FY 2017, promotes
innovations like a new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and
Emergency Response (CESER) and gains for the Office of Fossil Energy.
Investments would be made to strengthen the National Nuclear Security
Administration and modernize the nuclear force, as well as in weapons
activities and advanced computing.
The U.S. military wants more plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads WP, By Paul SonneMarch 22 Email the author
The U.S. military is concerned that the government isn’t moving quickly enough to ramp up American production of the plutonium cores that trigger nuclear warheads, as the Trump administration proceeds with a $1 trillion overhaul of the nation’s nuclear force.
Questioning about production of the warhead cores is likely to figure into a testimony that Energy Secretary Rick Perry is slated to give Thursday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, a rare appearance by the top energy official at the Senate body that oversees the military.
Plutonium cores are often called plutonium pits because they rest inside nuclear bombs like pits inside stone fruits.
At issue is the Pentagon’s demand that the National Nuclear Security Administration — overseen by the Department of Energy — be able to produce 80 plutonium pits a year by 2030 to sustain the military’s nuclear weapons. Roughly the size of a grapefruit, plutonium pits that trigger warheads sometimes need to be replaced as they degrade or end up destroyed during evaluation……….
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has discontinued many of the nuclear weapons capabilities the nation built up during the Cold War. The United States began to rely largely on dismantling existing nuclear weapons for plutonium pits and stockpile management, as defense spending priorities diverted to the global war against terrorism.
Now the United States is facing a reckoning as Russia and China also race to advance their nuclear arsenals and much of the infrastructure the military relies on to support its nuclear capabilities ages out. The U.S. no longer operates the full range of facilities capable of producing new nuclear weapons.
……….Now the NNSA must decide how to expand production of plutonium pits to meet the Pentagon’s requirements by 2030. Under one option being considered, less ambitious “module” buildings would be constructed at the existing Los Alamos site.
An alternative would include repurposing one of the most problematic projects the Department of Energy has ever undertaken, the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility in South Carolina, to make pits.
Originally designed to turn weapons grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel, the MOX facility is billions of dollars over budget and still only partially built.
Both the Obama and Trump administrations have tried to kill the project, but Congress has declined to discontinue construction owing primarily to political support from powerful members of the South Carolina delegation. Some have suggested transforming it to produce plutonium pits.
When the US entered the nuclear age, it did so recklessly. New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000American deaths from 1951 to 1973.
From 1951 to 1963, the US tested nuclear weapons above ground in Nevada. Weapons researchers, not understanding the risks—or simply ignoring them—exposed thousands of workers to radioactive fallout. The emissions from nuclear reactions are deadly to humans in high doses, and can cause cancer even in low doses. At one point, researchers had volunteers stand underneath an airburst nuclear weapon to prove how safe it was:
The emissions, however, did not just stay at the test site, and drifted in the atmosphere. Cancer rates spiked in nearby communities, and the US government could no longer pretend that fallout was anything but a silent killer.
The cost in dollars and lives
Congress eventually paid more than $2 billion to residents of nearby areas that were particularly exposed to radiation, as well as uranium miners. But attempts to measure the full extent of the test fallout were very uncertain, since they relied on extrapolating effects from the hardest-hit communities to the national level. One national estimate found the testing caused 49,000 cancer deaths.
Those measurements, however, did not capture the full range of effects over time and geography. Meyers created a broader picture by way of a macabre insight: When cows consumed radioactive fallout spread by atmospheric winds, their milk became a key channel to transmit radiation sickness to humans. Most milk production during this time was local, with cows eating at pasture and their milk being delivered to nearby communities, giving Meyers a way to trace radioactivity across the country.
The National Cancer Institute has records of the amount of Iodine 131—a dangerous isotope released in the Nevada tests—in milk, as well as broader data about radiation exposure. By comparing this data with county-level mortality records, Meyers came across a significant finding: “Exposure to fallout through milk leads to immediate and sustained increases in the crude death rate.” What’s more, these results were sustained over time. US nuclear testing likely killed seven to 14 times more people than we had thought, mostly in the midwest and northeast.
A weapon against its own people
When the US used nuclear weapons during World War II, bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, conservative estimates suggest 250,000 people died in immediate aftermath. Even those horrified by the bombing didn’t realize that the US would deploy similar weapons against its own people, accidentally, and on a comparable scale.
And the cessation of nuclear testing helped save US lives—”the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty might have saved between 11.7 and 24.0 million American lives,” Meyers estimates. There was also some blind luck involved in reducing the number of poisoned people: The Nevada Test Site, compared to other potential testing facilities the US government considered at the time, produced the lowest atmospheric dispersal.
The lingering effects of these tests remain, as silent and as troublesome as the isotopes themselves. Millions of Americans who were exposed to fallout likely suffer illnesses related to these tests even today, as they retire and rely on the US government to fund their health care.
“This paper reveals that there are more casualties of the Cold War than previously thought, but the extent to which society still bears the costs of the Cold War remains an open question,” Meyers concludes.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180320/p2g/00m/0dm/023000c(Mainichi Japan) TOKYO (Kyodo) — Some 200 U.S. residents filed a suit against Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and a U.S. firm seeking at least $1 billion to cover medical expenses related to radiation exposure suffered during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the utility said Monday.
The lawsuit was filed last Wednesday with U.S. federal courts in the Southern District of California and the District of Columbia by participants in the U.S. forces’ Operation Tomodachi relief effort carried out in the wake of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that crippled TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Many of the plaintiffs are suing TEPCO and the U.S. company, whose name was withheld by TEPCO, for the second time after a similar suit was rejected by the federal court in California in January.
They are seeking the establishment of a compensation fund of at least $1 billion to cover medical and other costs, the utility said.
The plaintiffs claim that the nuclear accident occurred due to improper design and management of the plant by TEPCO. They are also seeking compensation for physical and psychological damage suffered as a result of the disaster, said the utility.
In Operation Tomodachi, which began two days after the natural disasters, the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan and other U.S. military resources and personnel were deployed to deliver supplies and undertake relief efforts at the same time as three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi complex suffered fuel meltdowns.
With Russia building floating nuclear reactors and possibly testing nuclear-powered cruise missiles, there are good reasons for this training.The Drive, BY JOSEPH TREVITHICKMARCH 20, 2018The U.S. military, along with other federal and state authorities, has been training to respond to potentially dangerous releases of radioactive material in and around the Arctic. Though there is no clear indication of a direct link between Russia’s reported tests of nuclear-powered missiles or expanding use of nuclear power in the region, it is hard not to see these exercises in connection with those developments.
Earlier in March 2018, members of the U.S. National Guards from 10 different states arrived at the Donnelly Training Area, situated near the U.S. Army’s Fort Greely in Alaska. Alaska state authorities and members of Canada’s reserve 39 Canadian Brigade Group joined the exercise, nicknamed Arctic Eagle 2018, as well.
The drills included a number of different mock crises, including an overturned fuel truck creating a hazardous material spill, the potential for attacks on the Trans Alaskan Pipeline System, and even cyber attacks. But especially notable was a scenario involving the need to locate a crashed satellite and contain the radiological material it had deposited across a wide area as it plummeted to earth. ………
t’s definitely no secret that the U.S. military has become increasing interested in preparing for potential conflicts and other contingencies above and near the Arctic Circle in recent years. As global climate change has shrunk the polar ice cap and otherwise reduced the amount of ice buildup that occurs during certain parts of the year, the region has become increasingly important economically and various countries, especially Russia, have moved to enforce their territorial claims.
“The growing concerns regarding the increased number of nations competing for Arctic resources are well justified,” U.S. Air Force General Lori Robinson, head of U.S. Northern Command, which oversees operations in the region, and the designated “Advocate for Arctic Capabilities” within the Pentagon, reiterated to members of Congress during a hearing in February 2018. “Diminishing sea ice provides opportunities for significantly expanded access to a region that had previously been inaccessible to all but a handful of northern nations.”
…….. the idea of a crashing satellite creating a radiological disaster isn’t an entirely fictional scenario. In 1978, the Soviet Union’s Kosmos 954 reconnaissance satellite, which had a nuclear reactor as its power source, crashed into Canadian territory, touching off an international incident and prompting an expensive response and clean-up operation.
….. U.S. military and other agencies practicing specifically to handle a radiological incident in the region seems even more noteworthy in light of a number of recent events. Most importantly are Russian claims that it has been testing a cruise missile with theoretically unlimited range that uses a nuclear reactor-powered propulsion system in the Arctic. Anonymous U.S. government officials have since told various media outlets that this is true, but that the weapons have been crashing, potentially spreading radioactive material and components.
…… The Russians have also been dramatically expanding their use and plans to employ small and mobile nuclear reactors to support activities in the Arctic.
……..If any of these nuclear power systems were to fail, it could potentially cause a serious radiological incident that would impact both the United States and Canada. The same procedures American military and other government personnel have been training to employ in response to a crashed satellite would undoubtedly be applicable in those situations, too.
NASA to allow nuclear power systems for next Discovery mission, Space News by Jeff Foust — WASHINGTON — Citing progress in producing plutonium-238, NASA will allow scientists proposing missions for an upcoming planetary science competition to use nuclear power sources.
In a statement issued March 17, Jim Green, director of NASA’s planetary science division, said the agency was reversing an earlier decision prohibiting the use of radioisotope power systems for spacecraft proposed for the next mission in the agency’s Discovery program.
A “long-range planning information” announcement about plans for the competition, issued Dec. 12, said that the use of such power systems would not be allowed, although missions could use radioisotope heater units, which use a very small amount of plutonium to keep spacecraft elements warm.
NASA made that decision based on projected use of existing stocks of plutonium-238 for upcoming missions, such as the Mars 2020 rover. Dragonfly, one of the two finalists for the next New Frontiers medium-class planetary science mission, also plans to use a radioisotope power system, as well as potential future missions the moon that require nuclear power to operate through the two-week lunar night.
“We have some liens against the radioisotope power,” Green said at a Feb. 21 meeting of NASA’s Planetary Science Advisory Group, citing those upcoming missions. The agency, he said, needed to balance mission demands against existing stocks of plutonium and efforts currently ramping up to produce new supplies of the isotope, which should reach a goal of 1.5 kilograms a year by around 2022. “The last thing we want to do is to select a mission and then not be ready to fly it.”
At the time of the meeting last month, though, Green said the agency was reviewing the prohibition against using nuclear power for the Discovery competition at the request of the scientific community, but didn’t offer a schedule for completing that review……. http://spacenews.com/nasa-to-allow-nuclear-power-systems-for-next-discovery-mission/
This earthquake expert dodged Russian surveillance to try to halt nuclear testing , How a scientist studying earthquakes spent his career working to prevent nuclear explosions, The Verge By Rachel Becker@RA_Becks
At 5AM on a June morning in 1974, seismologist Lynn Sykes awoke to a phone call from the Department of Defense. The voice on the other end of the line asked Sykes to be ready to leave for Moscow that evening. The DoD needed his help to negotiate a treaty that would cap the size of the US and Russia’s underground nuclear explosions.
Sykes, now a professor emeritus at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, was invited because of his unusual expertise. Sure, he was an expert on earthquakes. But he was also an expert on underground nuclear explosions, which — like earthquakes — can send vibrations ringing through the Earth. So the same devices that monitor and measure quakes can do double duty as secret nuclear test sensors.
But there was an ongoing debate about whether it was possible to tell the size of an underground nuclear explosion from the seismic wiggles picked up by monitoring stations. If there were no sure way to check if someone was cheating on the deal, then neither the US nor Russia wanted to stop underground tests altogether. That’s why Sykes was in Russia: to confirm that detecting underground tests was scientifically possible, and to help negotiate a treaty that would limit underground nuclear tests to 150 kilotons or less.
The negotiations were a success, and President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev signed the treaty about a month later. But the quest for a complete ban on nuclear testing continues. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban all nuclear tests of all sizes, was finalized in 1996. But the US, China, Iran, and North Korea still need to ratify it in order for the treaty to enter into force.
nuclear-news 