NRC inspection finds ‘substantial weaknesses’ in TVA safety culture at new nuclear plant, Times Free Press, November 1st, 2016 by Dave Flessner The Tennessee Valley Authority has improved the environment for workers to raise safety concerns at its newest nuclear plant, but a new regulatory review of TVA’s work environment at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant concludes the utility still is not maintaining an adequate safety culture.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission met with 136 workers in 17 focus groups at Watts Bar this summer after concluding in March that TVA had “a chilled work environment” at the Spring City, Tenn., plant that could discourage employees or contractors from raising safety concerns.
“Focus groups within and outside of the operations department indicated the existence of broader, previously unrecognized challenges to the maintenance of a positive safety culture, which continued to challenge the safety conscious work environment,” Alan Blamey, branch chief of reactor projects in the Atlanta office of the NRC, said in a letter to TVA last week. “The (NRC inspection) team identified substantial weaknesses in various attributes which were found to be pervasive across various work units.”
Blamey said nearly half of those interviewed by the NRC at Watts Bar “believed retaliation was a potential outcome for raising concerns.”
Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working for a nuclear free world. What follows is our October edition, which is dedicated to Judy Friedman of Connecticut’s Peoples Action for Clean Energy (PACE)!
Hurricane Matthew Imperils US Nukes As It Threatens Millions
Hurricane Matthew, which brought death and destruction from Haiti to the Carolinas in October, also had an impact on a number of aged nuclear facilities in the US. There are no nuclear plants in Haiti, Cuba or the Bahamas, which suffered the worst of the hurricane’s wrath.
On October 4, as Matthew approached Florida, Florida Power & Light, the electrical utility that runs the St. Lucie nuke plant in the southeast part of the state, declared an “unusual event” at the plant.
On a scale of 1 to 5, an Unusual Event is a 1, with the worst such nuclear plant emergency being mandatory evacuation.
All US nuclear plants producing electricity also depend on outside electrical power sources to operate. In the case of St. Lucie, the storm caused loss of its outside power. When this happens, backup diesel powered generators are supposed to kick in.
This is critical, because a reactor’s nuclear fuel must constantly be covered with water. If it isn’t, it will begin to heat up, and, in the worst case, melt down, causing a nuclear catastrophe.
This is what happened at Fukushima in 2011. The earthquake destroyed the outside electrical system, and then the tsunami overwhelmed the backup diesel system, leading to multiple meltdowns at the plant that are still ongoing.
Fortunately the emergency at St. Lucie was short-lived. But it demonstrates the vulnerability of the aging US nuclear industry. The two reactors at St. Lucie began operating in 1976 and 1983. They were designed to operate for only 40 years. On October 6 the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) declared it “had dispatched additional inspectors to St. Lucie,” as well as to Turkey Point, another nuke in southeast Florida operated by FP&L, and to the Brunswick plant in North Carolina.
Like St. Lucie, Turkey Point ‘s two reactors are ancient, only more so. They started up in 1973 and 1974. They are located on Biscayne Bay, adjacent to Biscayne National Park.
According to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), “no other place” besides Turkey Point “uses an unlined porous industrial sewer to cool water” for a nuclear plant, resulting in “polluting ground water and the waters of Biscayne Bay.”
SACE also states that “the Biscayne acquifer provides drinking water for more than three million people” and that Turkey Point’s polluted waters “contain a slew of pollutants including arsenic, phosphorus. total nitrogen, high salinity levels, and tritium (radioactive hydrogen, all migrating in all directions.”
Unfortunately, the hurricane’s storm surge accelerated this toxic pollution.
Other nuke plants that had to close temporarily because of Hurricane Matthew were the 43 year old Robinson reactor 2 in South Carolina. and the Harris nuke on central North Carolina.
In addition, World Nuclear News reported on October 14 that –
“Storm Preparations were also put in place at Global Nuclear Fuel near Wilmington, North Carolina, a nuclear fuel fabrication plant that also designs nuclear reactors.”
That corporation, operated by General Electric (which built the Fukushima nuke plant), Toshiba and Hitachi, also operates in Europe, Mexico, Taiwan and Japan.
Before Hurricane Mathew turned east out into the Atlantic, it was projected to head up the East Coast towards New York City and Boston, meaning it might have threatened coastal nuke plants in Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut and New Hampshire.
Sources: Florida Power and Light, fpl.com; Nuclear Regulatory Commission; nrc.gov; World Nuclear News; world-nuclear-news.org, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Grand Gulf Nuclear Station stays closed as feds inspect Geoff Pender , The Clarion-Ledger October 31,2016 Grand Gulf Nuclear Station has been shut down since Sept. 8 as Entergy makes a “thorough review” of the power plant after several maintenance issues, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection after “several recent operational events.”……..
the plant’s current outage is the fifth this year. This includes a planned refueling outage, which happens every 18 months to 24 months, that lasted 38 days starting in February. The plant had an automatic safety shutdown for two days while coming back online after refueling. In June it was shut down for about two days to repair turbine controls, then later that same month was shut down for 25 days for more repairs on turbine controls……..the plant’s current outage is the fifth this year. This includes a planned refueling outage, which happens every 18 months to 24 months, that lasted 38 days starting in February. The plant had an automatic safety shutdown for two days while coming back online after refueling. In June it was shut down for about two days to repair turbine controls, then later that same month was shut down for 25 days for more repairs on turbine controls.
On Thursday (October 27) a US military spokesperson confirmed the exercise had been carried out in a rare public announcement.
They said: “Troops of South Korean Air Force’s combat control team, an infiltration commando unit, and the US Air Force’s 353rd Special Operations Group staged a joint exercise at Gunsan Air Base recently.”
Part of the operation saw military transport aircraft practising flying low – something that has been done since the 1990s to test infiltrating North Korea.
These aircraft are apparently used to transport special forces who are on a mission to destroy Kim Jong-un’s missiles and nuclear weapons.
According to a South Korean news network, the 353rd Special Operations Group, which is based at the Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, completes missions to send commandos into the closed country.
The military spokesperson added: “The latest Teak Knife exercise focused on infiltrating an inland area in the North to destroy key facilities.
“It’s different from a decapitation strike operation targeting the North Korean leadership.”
There have been calls in the US to launch pre-emptive strikes in North Korea following numerous incidents of despot leader Kim Jong-un testing his countries nuclear power.
Groundwater 90 tons of contamination cleaner Tri City Herald BY ANNETTE CARY acary@tricityherald.com. 30 Oct 16 Hanford workers removed more than 90 tons of contaminants from groundwater beneath the nuclear reservation in the fiscal year that just ended, surpassing the amount removed the year before.
“There is an entire groundwater cleanup infrastructure our workers have been fine tuning to make sure we treat and remove the most amount of contamination practical,” said Michael Cline, director of the soil and groundwater division for the Department of Energy at Hanford.
In fiscal 2015 and 2016, a little more than 2.1 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater were pumped out of the ground for treatment at Hanford’s six “pump and treat” facilities.
But more contamination was removed in fiscal 2016 than the previous year, when the Department of Energy gave the total with fiscal 2015 not quite completed as exceeding 75 tons of contaminants removed……..
Activists recount pioneering win over nuclear power on Sonoma Coast ROBERT DIGITALE THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | October 29, 2016
The anti-nuclear activists standing in the rain Saturday morning at Bodega Head displayed some similarities to a pair of cyclists pedaling south a few miles away on Highway 1: Both parties were resolute, exposed and increasingly getting drenched.
The activists had come to Bodega Bay to remember two long-ago battles against nuclear power and to consider how their future struggles could affect global efforts to safely reduce greenhouse gases and limit climate change. One past struggle resulted in a striking victory, forcing the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. in 1964 to halt plans for a proposed nuclear plant on the very spot the soggy activists stood: Bodega Head. That triumph has long been described as a major advancement for what became California’s environmental movement, a force that, among other things, passed a voter initiative to preserve the state’s coastline.
However, the second campaign failed in the early 1980s to stop the construction of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo. That plant, which opened in 1985 and is now the sole operating nuclear facility in California, was slated this summer for closure by 2025, when its permits expire.
One aim for Saturday’s gathering was “for the Bodega generation to talk to the Diablo generation,” said Mark Evanoff, one of the event’s organizers……….
Looking forward to Diablo’s planned closure, two speakers Saturday told the audience that California must show the world it can shut down a nuclear plant without turning to coal, oil or natural gas to meet the state’s energy needs.
By doing so, “we really pierce a big hole in the argument” of those climate change advocates who suggest that perhaps nuclear power should remain part of the solution to ending reliance on fossil fuels, said Carl Ziechella, a senior policy advocate in Sacramento with the National Resources Defense Council……..
The groups are concerned that the “interim” storage facility may become the de facto permanent home
for the highly toxic waste……. taxpayers footing the entire bill, those that generated the waste would have no incentive to ensure its safe disposal in a permanent geologic repository.
‘storage sites’ likely would create a de facto high level national waste sacrifice zone.
Four Groups Urge NRC To Halt Review Of License Application For High-level Nuclear Waste Dump In Texas https://www.yahoo.com/news/four-groups-urge-nrc-halt-review-license-application-143000265.html WASHINGTON and AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 27, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ –– Opposed to an industry scheme that risks a proposed short-term nuclear waste storage site becoming a permanent site while sticking taxpayers for the bill, four leading national and Texas groups — Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), Public Citizen, and the Texas-based Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition — are calling on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to follow the law and terminate its review of the license application for the controversial plan by Waste Control Specialists (WCS) to construct an interim high-level nuclear waste dump in Andrews County, TX.
WCS seeks a permit to build and operate the supposedly short-term storage facility for up to 40,000 metric tons of highly dangerous nuclear waste in Andrews County, but only if the U.S. government first assumes responsibility for the waste and further agrees to ship it to the Texas site by rail. The license application is for the first 5,000 metric tons but the company’s promotional materials show they are planning on expanding the site to accommodate more than half of the estimated 75,000 metric tons of commercial nuclear waste currently in the U.S.The groups are concerned that the “interim” storage facility may become the de facto permanent home for the highly toxic waste. Given the long battle over Yucca Mountain, the groups have zero confidence that Congress or federal regulators would have the stomach for fighting to move the nuclear waste a second time from WCS or any other “interim” site. And, with utilities totally off the hook and taxpayers footing the entire bill, those that generated the waste would have no incentive to ensure its safe disposal in a permanent geologic repository.
Available online at http://pubc.it/2eMSaXM, the letter from the four groups to the NRC’s top executive argues that the WCS proposal would require the NRC to break federal law, which bars the U.S. government from assuming responsibility for interim waste storage in the absence of a federal repository for permanent disposal. They contend that, until a long-term geological repository is ready, federal law forces utilities to solve their own interim storage problems, including bearing the economic burden for facility construction and operation, and liability for accidents.
The groups’ letter demands that NRC immediately drop its review of the WCS application, including its plans to embark on an environmental study.
High-level radioactive wastes are irradiated nuclear fuel rods, and short-term exposure at close range, with no shielding, can cause immediate death. Lesser exposure can cause death or cancer for over a million years. It is so dangerous that Congress required that it be buried deep underground in geologically isolated repository for millennia. This danger also prompted federal lawmakers to prohibit putting taxpayers on the hook for “interim” solutions that could become de facto permanent surface storage sites.
According to the groups, there is no safety imperative for moving the waste to a consolidated storage facility. The safety and security of our toxic nuclear waste stockpile, not financial gain for this private entity, should drive NRC waste storage activity. Rather than reviewing this premature and illegitimate proposal the NRC should focus its efforts on safeguarding the onsite storage of waste at nuclear facilities across the country.
“By requiring a permanent deep geological repository to be operating beforecentralized interim storage could be opened, Congress wanted to prevent the very real danger of a de facto permanent parking lot dump – a nuclear waste storage site that would be designed for the short-term but be there forever,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist, Beyond Nuclear. He added: “WCS is a cynical shell game and taxpayers are sure to lose. Congress was right that liability for the costs of storing commercial irradiated nuclear fuel belongs with the generators and should not be shifted onto the backs of the American public.”
Diane D’Arrigo, radioactive waste project director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), said: “Moving nuclear power waste over roads, rails and waterways to a supposedly temporary site puts us all at risk and creates only an illusion of a solution.”
Karen Hadden, executive director, SEED Coalition, added: “Due to risks of radioactive contamination from leaks or accidents or potential terrorist actions, nuclear waste should only be moved once, and only when a deep underground permanent repository is in place that could safely isolate the dangerous waste for the million years that it will remain hazardous.”
Tom “Smitty” Smith, director of the Public Citizen Texas office, said: “Texans do not consent to the risky plan to store high-level radioactive waste at private sites on an open pad above ground in Texas. Another company near Hobbs New Mexico – less than 50 miles away — is expected to file an application to open a storage site that would accept the rest of the nation’s high level nuclear waste. These twin ‘storage sites’ likely would create a de facto high level national waste sacrifice zone. This proposal invites disaster because the private owners will be cutting costs at every turn to maximize profits. If there was radioactive contamination our land, air, water, and human health could be harmed for millennia.”
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Oct. 8 that the situation between the U.S. and Russia today is more dangerous than it was during the Cold War. As he put it, “It’s a fallacy to think that this is like the Cold War. The current times are different and more dangerous.” Since most of us think of the Cold War as by far the most dangerous time we have known, Steinmeier’s view is startling. It is important to understand what he is saying, not simply because he is the foreign minister of an important country, but because he is a smart man.
On paper, the United States remains committed to the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while the Russians are protecting it. There is now combat in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria. Russian and Assad regime forces seem to be trying to take control of the city. The United States sees Aleppo as a bastion of anti-Assad forces and doesn’t want to see it fall. The U.S. has the option to try to block the Russian and Assad advance. Russia has to decide whether to stand and fight or withdraw. Neither side is confident it knows the other’s intentions, but both believe that Aleppo is a critical if not decisive battle. The chances of intentional conflict are real, as is the possibility of an unintended clash escalating.
At the same time, Syria is not essential to the national security of Russia or the United States. It is not without importance, but a defeat or capitulation there will not change the balance of power between them at all. It would of course affect psychological and political perception, but in the long run, perception ultimately comes down to substantial military and economic power. The United States can afford to back off. The Russians will find it more difficult, but can contrive reasons for slowing or halting the attacks.
In Ukraine, the issue is fundamental to Russia and secondary to the United States. Therefore, it is far more dangerous than Syria. For Russia, a Ukraine dominated by a third power, with forces deployed in Ukraine, represents a fundamental threat to its national security. For the United States, it is a secondary issue that can rise to a primary one.
As I have written, the foundation of U.S. foreign policy since World War I was preventing any single power from dominating Europe and Russia, as their combined strength in technology and resources would threaten American interests. Therefore, Russia returning to its prior position, with the potential to dominate the European Peninsula, would rise to a primary issue. If Russia invaded Ukraine and used it as a base to threaten its former satellite states, this would begin escalating to a primary level. But that is several steps from happening, and if it did, it would still not constitute a direct threat to the entire European Peninsula.
The Cold War focused on the center of Germany, and the possibility of a Soviet seizure of Western Europe did not appear far-fetched. Since the U.S. was defending Western Europe at a distance, its conventional forces facing the Soviets appeared to be inferior. Therefore, part of U.S. strategy, at least officially, was the use of nuclear weapons, both strategically and on the battlefield, to stop a Soviet offensive. That meant that should the Soviets have chosen to undertake an offensive, or if they detected a U.S. offensive, they had to go nuclear at the earliest possible moment.
This is what kept the Cold War from turning into a shooting war. The Soviets and the Americans, along with their allies or subordinates in Europe, saw themselves in an existential crisis. The deterrence against conventional war in Europe, as opposed to proxy wars elsewhere such as Vietnam or Afghanistan, was nuclear war. Wars that did not involve primary and overwhelming interests did not involve the risk of nuclear war. There was no military target worth a nuclear strike in either country, nor would either country risk immolation over Vietnam or Afghanistan. Therefore, these wars could take place.
I think this is Steinmeier’s point. The confluence of extremely critical fears and interests paradoxically reduced the chance of conflict, because it increased the chance of nuclear war. Today, none of the friction points between the United States and Russia are of primary interest to both countries. Syria is at best secondary to both, and Ukraine really matters only to Russia. This cannot result in nuclear war, and therefore, each side will take greater risks than they would have in Central Europe during the Cold War.
Therefore, the situation is more dangerous now precisely because the stakes are lower. In lowering the stakes, the risks decline and the possibility of serious conflict between U.S. and Russian forces rises. That direct clash did not occur during the Cold War, at least not on any significant scale. That means that the risk of nuclear war is diminished, but the risk of direct conflict is higher. This would not be proxy wars, but direct war. Undisciplined crises are the most dangerous.
Steinmeier’s observation seems valid. The mystery, of course, is what he is planning to do about that. Having made the declaration, it would seem reasonable that Germany would try to defuse the U.S.-Russian confrontation. Is Germany announcing that it is shifting its role in global politics to a more active role, albeit mediation? These crises raise the question of what Germany will do. That is a question with an ominous past. But if the German foreign minister is speaking for Germany, then this is exactly where his logic would lead him.
Carlyle’s outlook comes as nuclear plants are retiring
Cost of building a reactor may be five times that of gas unit
Nuclear power will come to an end in the U.S. if the industry doesn’t get more government support, according to Carlyle Group LP, one of the world’s largest investment firms………“We will see the end of the nuclear industry in the next coming decades” without legislation, incentives or other support to keep reactors open or encourage new builds, Mancini said at S&P Global Platts’s Financing U.S. Power Conference on Tuesday.
The cost of building a nuclear plant may be more than five times that of a gas-fired one based on U.S. government data, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Stacy Nemeroff said in a report earlier this month
Cold war 2.0: how Russia and the west reheated a historic struggle
As chasm grows between a resurgent Russia and a divided US and Europe, diplomats say conflict is now more dangerous, with ‘no clear rules of the road’, Guardian, Patrick Wintour and Julian Borger Washington 25 October 20160
Gen Sir Richard Shirreff remembers the moment he realised Nato was facing a new and more dangerous Russia. It was 19 March 2014, the day after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
Shirreff, then deputy supreme allied commander Europe, was at Nato’s military HQ in Mons, Belgium, when an American two-star general came in with the transcript of Putin’s speech justifying the annexation. “He briefed us and said: ‘I think this just might be a paradigm-shifting speech’, and I think he might have been right,” Shirreff recalled.
The Russian president’s address aired a long list of grievances, with the west’s attempts to contain Russia in the 18th to 20th centuries right at the top.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said: “The reality is that behind the appearance of consensus … a form of world disorder took hold. We are now paying the price for that error of assessment that gave westerners a feeling of comfort for two decades”.
In the UK, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said in his party conference speech that the west had been mistaken in its belief that “the fall of the Berlin Wall meant the world had come to a moment of ideological resolution after seven frozen and sometimes terrifying decades of communist totalitarian rule”.
Others such as Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6, warned: “We are moving into an era that is as dangerous, if not more dangerous, as the cold war because we do not have that focus on a strategic relationship between Moscow and Washington.” But unlike the cold war, there are now “no clear rules of the road” between the two countries.
The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, an advocate of dialogue, made the same point: “It’s a fallacy to think that this is like the cold war. The current times are different and more dangerous.”………
Many acknowledge the west must take its share of the blame for the collapse of relations. The mistakes are real, notably the scale of Nato expansion to the east and in the Baltics. Russia also feels deeply that it was duped into accepting a UN resolution criticising Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, only to find it was used as cover for regime change. Hillary Clinton, then at the State Department, did little to mange the Russians. Russia has not voted for humanitarian action at the UN since……….
The issue in Europe and the US now is how to respond to Putin? Some believe Russian statehood requires a more aggressive foreign policy. The Kremlin, faced by an ailing economy and declining population, needs external threats of war and violence in the media because Putin “has no civilian project to offer to society”, said Dr Andrew Monaghan at Chatham House. Putin instead offers a mobilisation strategy. The answer is to confront and push back, acknowledging that Putin sees offers of dialogue as a sign of weakness.
Others insist the west must continue to engage and keep pressing the reset button because coexistence is the only option.
In the US and Europe, the question about what to do with Russia is far from settled, something Putin is likely to continue to exploit……
The German chancellor, who has probably devoted more hours to the Putin relationship than any other western politician, is exasperated. She is a dealmaker, but in 2014 – following a conversation with Putin on Ukraine’s annexation – she told Obama that the Russian president was “living in a different world”. But a second round of sanctions in an election year is not attractive.
In Britain, the pre-eminent home for anti-Russian rhetoric since Cameron’s failed attempt at detente in 2011, Johnson has warned Russia that if it continues on its path it could be deemed a rogue nation.
But there are British voices urging calm. Tony Brenton, Britain’s ambassador to Moscow from 2004 to 2008, calls for realism. He argues that the post-war international system – or “liberal hegemony” as he puts it – no longer works. “We have failed with Russia and we are failing with China,” he said.
Brenton’s answer is to accept the limits of 21st-century western influence. “We are going to have to moderate our own ambitions. We can defend ourselves. We can protect our interests. But telling other bad countries how they should behave is less and less possible,” he said.
What’s next? How the west could respond to Russian threatsThe EU, in search of a policy response, is reaching again for sanctions. They have been estimated to have cost the Russian economy $280bn in capital inflows and to be taking roughly 0.5% a year off the GDP. In a society devoid of internal political and institutional constraints on the behaviour of the elite, extended sanctions could weaken Putin’s grip on power………
ultimately the key decisions will be taken in the new White House. Anthony Cordesman, a strategic analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said the new administration must confront three realities. “First, Russia is a now broad strategic rival and is likely to remain so at least as long as Putin is in power. Second, the US can’t rebalance to Asia away from Europe or the Middle East. And third, short of being chased off the stage, the United States will have to play out a weak hand in Syria to limit and contain Russian influence.”
“There are no easy answers to the Russians,” said a Washington-based European diplomat. “They are deploying such aggressive rhetoric and policy. During the cold war there was an accepted vocabulary between the sides. There was a game, there was an accepted game,” the diplomat said. “Now the danger is there is no order. There is no accepted language. We are not talking the same language”. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/24/cold-war-20-how-russia-and-the-west-reheated-a-historic-struggle
Unofficial US-N. Korea talks held in Malaysia https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/32991266/unofficial-us-n-korea-talks-held-in-malaysia/#page1 October 24, 2016 Seoul (AFP) – A group of former US diplomats held closed door talks at the weekend with senior Pyongyang officials, even as international efforts gather pace to further isolate North Korea, diplomatically and economically.
The two-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur, which was confirmed by the South Korean and US governments, was the latest in a series of unofficial talks commonly referred to as Track 2 that are closely monitored in the absence of any official contact between Washington and Pyongyang.
In July, the North cut off its only remaining official channel of diplomatic communications with the United States in retaliation for American sanctions against its leader, Kim Jong-Un.
The so-called “New York channel” had previously served as a key point of contact between North Korean and US diplomats at the United Nations.
American participants at the talks in the Malaysian capital included Robert Gallucci, who had led the US negotiating team that brokered a 1994 deal with Pyongyang on freezing its nuclear weapons programme.
Among those on the North Korean side was vice foreign minister Han Song-Ryol, who previously served as deputy ambassador to the UN.
The meeting came after North Korea on Thursday test-fired a powerful new medium-range missile and Leon Sigal, an academic specialising in the Koreas who attended the talks, said the North’s nuclear weapons programme had dominated the discussion.
Sigal told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that the North had reiterated the need to sign a peace treaty with the United States before moving on its weapons programme.
The US side stressed that the moves to scrap the nuclear programme had to come first, said Sigal. Under President Barack Obama, the United States has eschewed an official dialogue with the North, but with a looming change in the White House, there is growing speculation as to whether a new administration might adopt a different track.
Critics of the current policy say sanctions and non-engagement have done nothing to prevent the North’s accelerated drive towards a credible nuclear deterrent that could directly threaten the US mainland.
South Korea, which has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the US hardline on Pyongyang, stressed that the talks with North Korea had no governmental involvement.
“We are aware that the US government maintains a firm stance that rushing into dialogue in the absence of North Korea’s will to denuclearise will only justify their wrong behaviour,” a foreign ministry official told AFP.
The UN Security Council is currently discussing a new resolution to punish North Korea over its fifth nuclear test in September — having already imposed tough economic measures after a fourth test in January.
The Track 2 talks have been taking place sporadically for years, with meetings in Singapore, Berlin, Beijing and elsewhere.
Power plant closing just the start of decades-long processFORT CALHOUN, Neb. 25 Oct 16 – The nation’s smallest nuclear power plant permanently shuts down Monday after 43 years of service. The Omaha Public Power District’s board decided in June that the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant is no longer financially sustainable due to market conditions with consumers using less energy and low natural gas prices.
By ceasing operations, the district expects to save between $735 million and $994 million over the next 20 years.
The shutdown is just the first step in a decommissioning process that could stretch on for as long as 60 years and cost more than $1 billion. During that process, the utility will have to decontaminate and disassemble elements of the power plant north of Omaha.
The Omaha Public Power District’s closure of its Fort Calhoun nuclear plant today clears the way for new renewable generation to fill the void left by the 478-megawatt plant, even though the utility plans to replace just a portion of its output.
OPPD will have virtually doubled the portion of energy it receives from renewable sources by the time the new year rolls around. Renewables refers to sources of energy that aren’t depleted when they’re used — wind, sun and water, for instance.
The largest wind project in state history — the 400-megawatt Grande Prairie wind farm — now is mostly online. When it’s fully up and running, OPPD will eventually increase its total renewable generation portfolio to more than 818 megawatts.
With the nuclear plant at Fort Calhoun set to churn out its last gasp of energy today, renewables’ share of total generation at OPPD will be about 31 percent once Grande Prairie comes fully online. That’s a rise from its current 15 percent.
And that share stands to grow: OPPD will replace about 42 percent of the nuclear plant’s 478-megawatt output with wind and other renewables. The remaining void left by the nuclear plant’s shutdown will go unfilled because the utility is already generating more electricity than ratepayers use.
OPPD isn’t yet taking energy produced at Grande Prairie, but it will soon — most likely by the beginning of the year, at the latest. Grande Prairie is on 45,000 acres east of O’Neill, which is about 185 miles northwest of Omaha.
Thomas Budler, president of Des Moines-based BHE Wind, told The World-Herald that 78 of 100 turbines at its Grande Prairie project in Holt County are “commissioned and up and operating.”
“We’re really in good shape to deliver the project at its fully commissioned operating date by Nov. 30,” Budler said. BHE Wind is a division of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.
The privately built project — which will sell 100 percent of its electricity output to OPPD — cost about $610 million.
Once Grande Prairie is fully online, its generation will be enough to increase Nebraska’s total statewide wind capacity by about 40 percent. With the recent approval of an additional 300 megawatts of wind in Saline County by Lincoln-based Aksamit Resource Management, wind developers are building even more momentum in the state.
OPPD in July issued a request for proposals up to 400 megawatts for wind or up to 100 megawatts for solar, though the request is not confined to projects only within Nebraska.
BHE Wind’s Budler said his organization is looking at additional projects in Nebraska but would neither confirm nor deny whether it responded to the recent OPPD request.
The Omaha utility has gotten responses to backfill the gap left by Calhoun from projects both inside and outside of Nebraska. Wind proposals ranged from 10 megawatts up to 400 megawatts; solar proposals ranged from 1 megawatt to 100 megawatts
Moniz: Congress Should Authorize Interim Nuclear Fuel Storage, Morning Consult, JACK FITZPATRICK|OCTOBER 24, 2016 Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz warned Monday that Congress and businesses need to act with more urgency to work out a medley of challenges in promoting nuclear power.
The United States is on track to experience a wave of nuclear plant retirements around 2030. …… Because raising capital and making the necessary business decisions on nuclear power is a slow process, there are only about five years left to start relicensing before many nuclear plants close. If more nuclear plants can extend their licenses to run for 80 years rather than 60, that would be “a very big deal” in terms of keeping nuclear power available, Moniz said.
This is important because the lack of a clear solution for storage of spent nuclear fuel creates a “significant headwind” for opening new nuclear facilities, Moniz said. He called on Congress to pass legislation creating an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel.
Moniz previously told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee the department might be allowed to store nuclear waste at a privately managed facility without congressional approval.
Even so, Moniz said Monday that it would help if Congress acted on the issue. “If Congress acted to give us the authorities — and whether public or privately held storage — we could be having a pilot facility running in not much more than five years,” he said…..
“I believe that consolidated storage, sometimes called interim storage, is absolutely essential,” Moniz said. “No matter when a geological repository is realized, interim storage should be part of the system.”……
US nuclear secrets trial cools co-operation with China Arrest of an energy consultant spurs concern over racial profiling, Ft.com by: Lucy Hornby in Beijing and David J Lynch in Washington
Allen Ho was still reeling from his arrest during a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, when armed Federal Bureau of Investigation agents began interrogating the nuclear energy consultant about his work in China, without any lawyer present.
That business involved hiring retired US nuclear engineers and consultants to advise China General Nuclear Power Corp, the state-owned company that plans to invest in an £18bn reactor in the UK.
Mr Ho, born in Taiwan and a US citizen since 1983, was charged with violating a statute designed to prevent American scientists from helping other countries develop an atomic bomb. The case comes during an era of unprecedented nuclear co-operation between the west and China, but also a time of growing trade friction and accusations of cyber crime and espionage.
After his arrest in April, Mr Ho’s imprisonment for six monthsin a maximum security cell in Tennessee has chilled Chinese technical co-operation with the international nuclear industry and raised accusations of racial profiling in the US.
Along with Mr Ho, CGN was also indicted on charges of producing “special nuclear material” outside the US without the required approval from the US Department of Energy.
The company said in an emailed statement that it “has long been adhering to the principle of lawfulness and compliance in all our business operation and international exchanges and will carry on following such a principle”.
Wary of being indicted if they step foot on US soil, CGN executives have since skipped meetings run by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Asme), which sets international standards for everything from school heating boilers to nuclear reactors
This is an issue because engineering decisions made in China affect the world’s reactor fleet. China is the furthest ahead in constructing the European Pressurized Reactor destined for Hinkley Point in the UK as well as the AP1000, an American-designed reactor under construction in China and the US. And under bilateral accords CGN and other Chinese groups will supply components for US and UK reactors.
“China is the only country that can provide the information at present” for the AP1000, said Zhang Qiang, Asme’s chief representative in China. Other forms of international co-operation continue.
Mr Ho does not deny helping CGN improve operations at its nuclear plants but his defence insists that is a far cry from making material for nuclear weapons. Frank Wu, chairman of the Committee of 100, an advocacy group, said the indictment had inflamed fears of “racial profiling” in the Chinese-American scientific community.
The engineers Mr Ho employed told the FBI that they shared only publicly available information with Chinese nuclear companies, according to court documents. Some helped inexperienced Chinese engineers decipher technical manuals at Daya Bay, the French-designed reactor that supplies electricity to Hong Kong.
Others advised on developing a nuclear fuel process so that CGN could avoid paying hefty royalties to the French. They have not been publicly charged.
The case against Mr Ho will rest on testimony from a Taiwanese-American consultant he employed who secretly pleaded guilty 18 months ago to selling subscription-only research reports on nuclear power to China………
Two prosecutions of US citizens of Chinese birth have already unravelled. The Department of Justice in March dropped all charges against Sherry Chen, a hydrologist accused of illegally sharing information about US dams with Chinese contacts. Months earlier, prosecutors abandoned an espionage case against Xi Xiaoxing, acting head of Temple University’s physics department.
“There’s nothing about this case that’s normal,” said Peter Zeidenberg of Arent Fox, Mr Ho’s lawyer who also represented Mr Xi. “There’s an undercurrent running through all these cases and it’s because of these individuals’ association with China.”
