America now producing medical radioisotopes without use of a nuclear reactor
– First U.S. source of medical radioisotope Mo-99 in more than 25 years –
Netherlands project to produce medical isotopes with no need of a nuclear reactor
Steve Dale No Nuclear Waste Dump Anywhere in South Australia, 10 Feb 18 There is also a promising electron accelerator approach too (started in the Netherlands) . Search for “Lighthouse” and you may have to translate the pages. Here is snippet “Lighthouse: next phase production of medical isotopes without a reactor
January 23, 2018
Chip machine manufacturer ASML has found a partner in the Belgian National Institute for Radio Elements (IRE) for the further development of LightHouse, a technology that makes it possible to make medical isotopes in an easy way without the release of radioactive waste. LightHouse was declared the (Dutch) National Icon last year, but is now being further developed by a Belgian company. With this, the phase of feasibility research seems to have been completed and the development is entering a new phase. First production of medical isotopes is expected in 2020.” https://www.facebook.com/groups/1314655315214929/
USA budget will benefit the nuclear industry
Congress To Pass Budget Deal Benefitting Biofuels And Nuclear Sectors https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Congress-To-Pass-Budget-Deal-Benefitting-Biofuels-And-Nuclear-Sectors.html,
President Trump has, last night, signed a budget deal to raise spending and reopen the government. In its current form, the biofuels and nuclear power industries are set to benefit from the compromise deal.
A two-year agreement would provide tax incentives for the two energy sectors as well as credits for energy efficient car purchases of models manufactured in 2017. Another $1-a-gallon tax credit applies to refiners who mix biofuel in their products. Cellulosic ethanol, produced from garbage, algae, and corn stover, will also get an extension on its $1.01 per gallon credit.
An energy production tax credit for Southern Co.’s nuclear plants in Georgia will help the facilities there get off the ground.
In the last 20 years, the U.S. has seen only one new nuclear reactor that is functional, constructed by a government entity – the Tennessee Valley Authority. Further, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shows that there are only four reactors currently under construction in the entire country. Two would be at the Alvin W. Vogtle station in Georgia, and two at the Virgil C. Summer plant in South Carolina.
These projects are implementing reactors manufactured by Westinghouse. Construction on all four are currently delayed over three years and are billions over-budget. Westinghouse itself was one of the last private companies to be commissioned for the manufacture of nuclear reactors—before over-budget, inefficient projects such as these pushed them into ruin. So far, Westinghouse remains committed to completing the projects.
Southern Co. also recently abandoned a coal-gasification plant project in Mississippi, which countered President Donald Trump’s plans to increase clean coal’s grip on the American energy mix.
“They’ve got the conundrum of having spent billions of dollars [on nuclear projects],” Glenrock Associates analyst Pail Patterson told Bloomberg over the phone. “That’s why abandonment in the middle of a project usually looks unattractive.”
Idaho politics – differences between governor candidates on nuclear issues
Gov. candidates weigh in on nuclear cleanup deal, Post Register, Idaho, February 8, 2018 , By NATHAN BROWN nbrown@postregister.com
Good news: White House withdraws environmental nomination of fossil fuel shill Kathleen Hartnett White
Trump’s environmental good news, Religion News, | The good news out of Washington is that the White House has withdrawn the nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to head the President’s Council of Environmental Quality. A leading shill for the carbon industry, the one-time chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would have joined Energy Secretary Rick Perry and EPA Administrator Greg Pruitt in a troika of climate change deniers driving the Trump Administration’s environmental policies.
Hartnett White’s confirmation hearing in November did not go well, and although President Trump resubmitted her nomination last month, it can be presumed that he reversed course in the face of threats from at least a couple of Senate Republicans to vote her down……….
while the cause of climate change is hardly restricted to religious folks, it is perhaps the most religiously motivated of all progressive social causes today. Leading the way has been Pope Francis, with his great 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. But it is a cause that has enlisted the full spectrum of the religious community — Jews and Muslims, Eastern Orthodox and Mainline Protestant, Hindu and Buddhist.
Except for white evangelicals. Outliers, they are now in thrall to a political party that over the past decade has increasingly opposed all efforts to address climate change. Their religious rationalization is that they are standing with a God who promised no more floods against pagan “Earth worshippers.”
“Slavery degrades the Religious Activity of the People,” preached Boston’s leading abolitionist minister Theodore Parker on July 4, 1858. Today it is climate change denial that is degrading the religious activity of the evangelical people. https://religionnews.com/2018/02/06/trumps-environmental-good-news/
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham keen for “nuclear renaissance”
Sen. Lindsey Graham wants ‘nuclear renaissance,’ thinks Republican memo has no Mueller consequence
He also said he would put up “one hell of a fight” to keep MOX at SRS, Aiken Standard, By Colin Demarest cdemarest@aikenstandard.com
Very dangerous to put low-yield nuclear weapons on submarines
THE DISCRIMINATION PROBLEM: WHY PUTTING LOW-YIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS ON SUBMARINES IS SO DANGEROUS, VIPIN NARANG , War on the Rocks, 8 Feb 18
The American Bomb was the white MEN’s bomb
The atomic age bears America’s original sin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 6 FEBRUARY 2018, Yangyang Cheng
“……..The invention of nuclear weapons was in itself a process of creation conflated with the ultimate destructive power. Upon the success of Fermi’s experiment, the nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence telegraphed his colleagues in Chicago, “Congratulations to the new parents.” The Manhattan Project scientists chose phrases of male progeny, “it’s a boy”, to describe successful bomb tests, while “a girl” would mean the bomb was a dud. The misogynistic convention carried on in the names of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.”
With only one woman, and everyone of European heritage, the scientific team at the creation of the Bomb shared the same gender and racial makeup as the American military and political leadership. The American Bomb was the white men’s bomb. As with many of the ugliest episodes in the history of America, the groups absent from the decision-making process bore the consequences of choices made by people who deemed themselves superior by birth……” https://thebulletin.org/atomic-age-bears-americas-original-sin11487
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister says that USA’s new Nuclear Posture, if adopted, will destroy global strategic stability
Adoption of revamped nuclear doctrine by US destroys global strategic stability — diplomat http://tass.com/politics/989106, It’s important to pinpoint the fact openly, the Russian deputy foreign minister said , NOVOSIBIRSK, February 8. /TASS/. Adoption of a revamped nuclear doctrine by the US destroys global strategic stability, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday.
“By passing the revamped nuclear doctrine, the US Administration undermines strategic stability if not simply destroys it in the most immediate way,” he said. “It’s important to pinpoint the fact openly and that’s what we’ll be doing.”
“I hope we’ll have an opportunity to discuss it with my counterpart [US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas] Shannon shortly,” Ryabkov said.
Donald Trump Wants to Make It Easier to Start a Nuclear War. This Should Petrify Us
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/08/donald-trump-nuclear-war/ Mehdi Hasan, 9 Feb 18,
SHE DID TRY and warn us.
“Imagine, if you dare … imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis,” Hillary Clinton said in her speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2016, referring to her then-Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Yet four months later, in November 2016, almost 63 million of her fellow Americans voted to put the short-tempered, thin-skinned former reality TV star in charge of their country’s 6,800 nuclear warheads. Never forget: As president of the nuclear-armed United States, Trump — Trump! — has the power to destroy humanity many times over, while rendering the planet uninhabitable in the process.
If that wasn’t terrifying enough, last week, less than 72 hours after the State of the Union speech, in which Trump ramped up his war of words with North Korea, his administration announced that it wanted to make it much easier for the president to start a nuclear holocaust.
You might have missed that rather important piece of news. Last Friday, while cable news channels rolled on the Nunes memo, the Pentagon published the latest Nuclear Posture Review, or NPR, which includes two pretty alarming new components.
First, while Barack Obama’s 2010 NPR for the first time ruled out a nuclear attack against non-nuclear weapon states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, Trump’s NPR goes in the opposite direction and suggests that the U.S. could employ nuclear weapons in “extreme circumstances” to defend the “vital interests” of the United States and its allies. The document states:
Extreme circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks. Significant non-nuclear strategic attacks include, but are not limited to, attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.
Got that? Trump wants to be able to retaliate against a non-nuclear and perhaps even non-military attack on U.S. infrastructure — say, a cyberattack on the power grid? — with a nuclear strike that could kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
To call such a move disproportionate would be a severe understatement.
Second, the new NPR calls for the development of a new generation of so-called low-yield nuclear weapons. These smaller nukes, the document suggests, would be tactical, not strategic; deployed to the battlefield, rather than dropped on a city. The problem with this argument is that the atomic bombs used against Hiroshima (200,000 dead) and Nagasaki (70,000 dead) could also be considered low-yield nuclear weapons, in terms of their explosive capacity.
There is also the clear lowering of the threshold for nuclear weapons use: It becomes easier to justify the launch of a small nuclear weapon on the basis of a supposedly lower explosive force. Yet “a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon,” as Ronald Reagan’s former Secretary of State George Shultz testified in front of the Senate Armed Services Committeethe day before the release of Trump’s NPR. “One of the alarming things to me is this notion that we can have something called a small nuclear weapon … and that somehow that’s usable,” Shultz added. “Your mind goes to the idea that, yes, nuclear weapons become usable. And then we’re really in trouble, because a big nuclear exchange can wipe out the world.”
It would be a worrying development if any president of the United States announced, with little debate or discussion, a plan both to build more tactical nuclear weapons and use them in response to non-nuclear attacks; a nuclear strategy that makes the use of nukes more, not less, likely. But when that president is Donald J. Trump, it should be deemed a national, if not a global, emergency.
Lest we forget, this is a president who, during his election campaign, displayed complete ignorance about the “nuclear triad”; called for an “unpredictable” nuclear weapons policy, while refusing to rule out using nukes against the Islamic State or even in Europe (because “it is a big place”); and asked a foreign policy adviser three times, during a single hourlong briefing, “Why can’t we use nuclear weapons?” This is a commander-in-chief, who since coming to office a year ago, has demanded a tenfold increase in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons; casually threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen”; and began 2018 by bragging on Twitter about his “much bigger & more powerful” nuclear button.
“Giving Trump new nukes AND new ways to use them is like giving matches and gasoline to Curious George,” wrote nuclear weapons expert Tom Collina of the Ploughshares Fund on CNN’s website last Friday. “It will not end well.” Or as one retired senior Army officer told the American Conservative, the NPR provides Trump with “a kind of gateway drug for nuclear war.”
Indeed. And even prior to the publication of this hawkish nuclear strategy document, a Washington Post-ABC News poll in mid-January revealed that 60 percent of Americans did not trust Trump to responsibly handle his “authority to order nuclear attacks on other countries,” while 52 percent of them were “very” or “somewhat” concerned the president “might launch a nuclear attack without justification.”
Remember: The courts may be able to strike down his executive orders as unconstitutional, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller may be able to indict him over collusion or obstruction of justice, but there are no checks or balances on the president’s authority to wage nuclear war. None. Zero. To quote Bruce Blair, a former nuclear missile launch officer and research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University: “We all need to confront the fact that [the U.S. political system] gives one person the God-like power to end the world.”
The questions, therefore, that matter far more than any other in 2018: Does the narcissist-in-chief plan on using this “God-like power?” Will an impulsive and aggressive Trump get us all killed by launching a nuclear war? Everything else is noise.
Elon Musk’s Space Tesla Will Be Destroyed by Radiation
The Drive, BY KYLE CHEROMCHAFEBRUARY 7, 2018 Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Tesla Roadster. Its billion-year mission: To circle the sun, to hopefully not crash into Mars, to boldly go where no car has gone before.
That is, unless the cosmic radiation eats it first.
Elon Musk’s old Roadster became the first car in history to be blasted into space on Tuesday, riding the successful test launch of the Falcon Heavy mega rocket to an orbital path that’s projected to send it out to Mars—or maybe even further. In a tweet, Musk reported that the “third burn” procedure to push the Roadster out of Earth’s orbit worked a little too well, with the trajectory now slated to reach the edge of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (Someone didn’t listen to C-3PO.)
But as Live Science reported, big space rocks aren’t really the most significant threat to the spacefaring sports car. No, that would be good ol’ radiation, which has the potential to mostly disintegrate the Tesla Roadster within a year or two, according to William Carroll, an Indiana University chemist and molecular expert. Without the protection afforded by the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, the Roadster will be bombarded by radiation that will eventually tear apart anything not made of metal on the car.
“All of the organics will be subjected to degradation by the various kinds of radiation that you will run into there,” Carroll said, noting that the term “organics” in this case includes not only fabric and leather but all plastic components as well as the car’s carbon fiber body. “Those organics, in that environment, I wouldn’t give them a year.”…….http://www.thedrive.com/news/18301/if-asteroids-dont-destroy-elon-musks-space-tesla-radiation-will-experts-say
Utility Sues Nuclear Energy Institute For Extortion
We aren’t lawyers, but extortion sounds like a serious charge. NextEra Energy, parent of Florida Power and Light and owner of several nuclear power stations around the country recently launched a lawsuit against the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear industry’s trade group.
NextEra, which is also a major player in the renewable energy business, withdrew from NEI after that group backed the Trump Energy Department’s ill-fated proposed rulemaking. This measure was designed to prop up less-than-economically-viable nuclear and coal-fired power generating stations disguised as a reliability booster for the nation’s power network. However, the proposed rule did not even pass muster with the President’s own Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Nevertheless NextEra was not happy about the NEI’s stance, accusing the organization of trying to instill a false panic about reliability.
Disputes within trade organizations are not unusual, although the organization usually manages to keep them in house. Outright member withdrawals though occur less frequently. There are real downsides to withdrawing from a trade group like NEI.
NextEra as a major nuclear plant operator depends on a data base maintained by the NEI on existing and prospective nuclear workers. Like many nuclear facilities operators, NextEra hires outsider contractors and consultants to aid in refueling its nuclear power stations. And it cannot do so without a thorough personnel evaluation–which NEI’s data base conveniently provides.
According to the lawsuit, NEI denied NextEra access to its nuclear personnel data base without an $860,000 payment. NextEra claimed this was like being forced to pay for membership yet again. That’s where the charge of extortion comes in.
Let’s assume the name calling is the work of over-excited corporate litigators. It’s in both parties interest to allow NextEra access to the data they need to hire qualified workers. But there’s another, bigger issue here.
What does this say about nuclear policy issues and splits within the industry? Do we have two warring industry groups: regulated nuclear power generators, who are plugging along just fine, economically versus nuclear power generators experiencing difficult conditions in competitive power markets. The latter group look desperate for any lifeline. This is often the fate of high cost producers in a commodities market. (Not to be unsympathetic, but these firms willingly chose to enter competitive wholesale electricity markets. Nobody forced them.)
Under its previous leadership the NEI carefully parsed its arguments and lauded the improvements in nuclear operations for example. Attempting always to look and sound like a voice of industry reason (not always an easy task for an organization in an often controversial industry). And even attempting to paper over intramural differences so to speak.
Jumping into the polar vortex/reliability fracas and taking the easy political “bait” may have affected the credibility of the organization. But it also ends up discrediting the nuclear power endeavor by presenting such a weak or bogus rationale for keeping aging nuclear plants running. The nuclear industry still provides one fifth of our nation’s electricity. It needs to get its act together.
What’s next for the West Lake Landfill
St Louis Public Radio, By KAE M. PETRIN & ELI CHEN • FEB 6, 2018 , The Environmental Protection Agency has released the full details of its proposal to remove radioactive waste from the West Lake Landfill. The agency will make a final decision after a public comment period.
Last week, the agency announced plans to remove 70 percent of the radioactivity at the landfill, in northwest St. Louis County. The site sits about 600 feet from an underground smoking fire at the Bridgeton Landfill.
Residents have tried to convince the EPA to clean up the site for years, and to many, the agency’s decision is a victory. But activists and some people who live near the site worry that removing only some of the waste may not be enough…… http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/whats-next-west-lake-landfill#stream/0
San Onofre nuclear waste moved closer to beach
CBS 8 Feb 08, 2018 By David Gotfredson, Investigative Producer SAN ONOFRE, Calif. (NEWS 8) — Millions of pounds of nuclear waste is being moved closer to the ocean at the closed-down San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
News 8 recorded video at San Onofre State Beach on the morning of January 31, the first day workers started moving canisters full of spent fuel rods to dry storage at the nuclear power plant.
We were met by armed security guards on the public beach.
“You guys are at your own risk being in this area. It’s your own risk, radiation risk,” one unidentified guard warned.
From the fence line, the video shows a huge crane used to transport stainless steel canisters filled with highly-radioactive waste.
The dry storage area is about 100 feet from the beach.
“What you’re looking at are 73 silos that are going to hold very large cans filled with very heavy nuclear waste,” explained Charles Langley, the executive director of Public Watchdogs.
The group opposes the waste move near the beach.
Once stored in pools of cold water inside the plant, the hot fuel rods will now be kept outside in silos protected by a cement bunker.
“If you look at this, you can see that it’s 108 feet from the water. The one thing you don’t do is put nuclear waste close to the water,” said Langley.
The canisters are welded shut before the move. It will take more than a year to slowly relocate all of them – one by one – into the silos.
Opponents worry the canisters will eventually corrode and crack in the salt air. And, if water gets inside, they say, a meltdown could result.
“These cans are literally a few feet above the salt water table. They’re made of steel. It’s good quality stainless steel but it’s only about the diameter of dime,” Langley said.
A 28 foot high sea wall protects the San Onofre facility from tidal wave action.
But what about an earthquake or a tsunami?
Scientists say they’ve studied the risks and there’s nothing to worry about…….. http://www.cbs8.com/story/37441429/san-onofre-nuclear-waste-moved-closer-to-beach
Research into effects of uranium waste exposure on Native Americans
Albuquerque Journal 5th Feb 2018, Researchers hope to measure the effects of mixed metals and uranium waste
exposure on Native American populations living in close proximity to
abandoned mines, and better understand how these toxins spread through the
environment.
That’s the objective of the newly created Superfund Research
Center at the University of New Mexico, which is funded by $1.2 million a
year for five years from the National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences.
There are more than 4,000 abandoned uranium mines — some 500 on
the Navajo Nation alone — and some 160,000 abandoned hard rock mines
scattered throughout the West, and some 600,000 Native Americans who live
within about six miles of those sites, said center director Johnnye Lynn
Lewis, a research professor in the UNM College of Pharmacy.
https://www.abqjournal.com/1129580/researchers-to-measure-mixed-metals-mining-contamination-on-native-americans.html
Chairman of USA nuclear weapons oversight agency steps down amid internal turmoil
Chairman of nuclear weapons oversight agency steps down amid internal turmoil,
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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