nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Indigenous opposition to uranium milling and the import of radioactive material

Indigenous activists speak out against plans to import radioactive material to southeast Utah. Residents complain of health problems and believe the environment is being damaged.   https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/12/10/indigenous-activists/

By Zak Podmore,  Dec. 11, 2020, 

When locations were chosen more than half a century ago for the dozens of uranium mills that dot the Four Corners landscape, one common factor was almost always considered: proximity to productive uranium mines.

The region’s best uranium deposits typically only contain a small percentage of the valuable radioactive mineral, and being able to process the material at a nearby mill was critical to saving on transportation costs.

For the last conventional uranium mill still operating in the United States, however, the business model has changed. San Juan County’s White Mesa Mill, which is owned by the Denver-based company Energy Fuels Resources, hasn’t processed ore from local mines in recent years. Instead, it has survived primarily by accepting uranium-bearing material from around the country and, more recently, as far away as Japan. State regulators are also considering an application from the company to import material from Estonia.

Members of the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa, which is located three miles from the mill site, spoke out against the mill’s continued operation on Tuesday at an annual town hall event that was held virtually this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The event, which was sponsored by a coalition of 12 grassroots community groups and environmental organizations, featured presenters from across Indian Country who spoke about the legacy of uranium production and nuclear waste storage on Native Americans as well as the White Mesa Mill.

“The White Mesa Mill was originally designed to run for 15 years before being closed and cleaned up, but the mill is still in operation 40 years later,” said Talia Boyd, cultural landscapes program manager for the Grand Canyon Trust and a member of the Navajo Nation, who noted uranium production has had a disproportionate impact on Indigenous peoples. “Community members are concerned about public health impacts and contamination of land, air and water as well as the mill’s ongoing desecration of cultural and sacred sites.”

The mill has accepted radioactive material from the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, and Energy Fuels has expressed interest in processing tailings from the more than 500 abandoned uranium mines that have yet to be cleaned up on the Navajo Nation.

Scott Clow, environmental programs director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, said that such proposals address a real need to remediate contaminated sites on tribal lands, but that they also “pit tribes against tribes.”

“We all want those places to be cleaned up, but we don’t want it to go to White Mesa,” Clow said.

Thelma Whiskers and Michael Badback of the White Mesa Concerned Community group said emissions from the mill can be smelled in White Mesa on a regular basis, adding they believe the facility has had negative health impacts on local residents.

“Let’s just keep … fighting to not have [the mill] close to the reservation,” Whiskers said. “I care for the community members and the children and the grandchildren.”

Energy Fuels has repeatedly told The Salt Lake Tribune the mill is in compliance with all environmental regulations and both air and water quality are actively monitored, but Clow expressed concerns about the state’s repeated decision to relax compliance limits for certain contaminants present in the groundwater directly beneath the mill. The company has argued the contaminants, including chloroform and nitrate/chloride, are nonradioactive and originated with previous industrial activity on the site or are naturally occurring.

In an effort to better understand both the potential environmental and health impacts of the mill, Clow said the tribe has projects underway with both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Two new monitoring wells were drilled this fall between the mill and the community with EPA funding in order to better track potential water quality changes, Clow said, and a branch of the CDC is helping the tribe plan epidemiological work in the White Mesa community that could provide more information about health concerns among residents.

Other speakers at the event addressed the legacy of uranium production elsewhere in Indian Country.

Taracita Keyanna of the Red Water Pond Road Community Association spoke about the 1979 Church Rock Spill on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, which remains the second-largest radioactive disaster in world history after the Chernobyl meltdown in the former Soviet Union.

“A lot of the land in our community has been disrupted and we can no longer use it [for livestock],” she said. “We can’t grow crops because the EPA has stated that if we grow crops we’ll be further exposed to uranium contamination. We can’t drink the water.”

Keyanna added the uranium contamination has had not only physical health consequences but has caused spiritual and mental health impacts as well, all of which have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

“It feels like a prison,” Keyanna said. “We’re not only prisoners during this pandemic, but we’ve kind of always been prisoners [since] this uranium industry started in our community.”

Leona Morgan, co-founder of the Indigenous-led group Haul No!, which opposes Energy Fuels’ plans to mine for uranium near Grand Canyon National Park and haul ore across the Navajo Nation, encouraged meeting participants to oppose a separate proposal currently being considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that could result in radioactive material being hauled from the Church Rock area to the White Mesa Mill for processing.

Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, called the mill’s activities near the Ute Mountain Ute land, like the mining and milling that took place on the Navajo Nation decades ago, an example of “environmental racism and environmental injustice.”

“It’s not just an individual human rights issue,” he said, addressing the residents of White Mesa. “It’s a collective rights issue for your people to live in a safe and healthy environment: your homeland.”

Zak Podmore is a Report for America corps member and writes about conflict and change in San Juan County for The Salt Lake Tribune. 

December 14, 2020 Posted by | indigenous issues, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Japanese govt trying to entice people by money grants, to come and live in Fukushima

December 14, 2020 Posted by | Japan, politics | Leave a comment

Beware the nuclear road to nowhere

Nuclear power is the slowest and most expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, per kilowatt hour. Choosing new nuclear therefore impedes and supplants renewable energy development, which would save more carbon far sooner and faster and at a lower cost.

Beware the nuclear road to nowhere

December 14, 2020 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Dr Helen Caldicott on the nuclear lessons of the past – time to take note of them

 

HELEN CALDICOTT: Time to learn lessons of the past on nuclear, Independent Australia, 13 Dec 20, By Helen Caldicott | 13 December 2020

“………What rained down on those two Japanese cities seventy-five years ago was destruction on a scale never seen before or since. People exposed within half a mile of the atomic fireball were seared to piles of smoking char in a fraction of a second as their internal organs boiled away. The small black bundles stuck to the streets and bridges and sidewalks of Hiroshima numbered in the thousands.

A little boy was reaching up to catch a red dragonfly with his hand against the blue sky when there was a blinding flash and he disappeared. He turned into gas and left his shadow behind on the pavement, a haunting relic later moved to the Hiroshima Museum. A woman was running while holding her baby; she and the baby were turned into a charcoal statue.

In all, about 120,000 people were killed immediately by the two bombs and tens of thousands more died later due to radiation exposure………..

in medical school I learned about radiation biology — the classic experiments of Hermann J. Muller, who in the 1920s irradiated Drosophila fruit flies inducing genetic mutations and morphological abnormalities. Concurrently, the United States and the Soviet Union were testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, bombarding huge populations with radioactive fallout.

In my naiveté, I couldn’t understand what these men thought they were doing because the mutagenic and carcinogenic effects of ionizing radiation were well known in scientific circles. Madame Curie had died of aplastic anaemia secondary to radium, an alpha emitter polluting her bones; her daughter died of leukemia, and many of the early radiologists who exposed themselves randomly to X-rays died from malignancies.

Einstein wrote:‘The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.’

Robert Oppenheimer, watching the world’s first nuclear explosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1945, muttered to himself: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.

The scientists knew that they had discovered the seeds of human destruction.

So, in full awareness of its newfound ability to destroy the human race, what did the world do next?

The United States and the Soviet Union decided to outdo each other by conducting a nuclear arms race, building tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Between 1945 and 1998, the United States conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests, producing cancer in tens of thousands of people. It has built more than 70,000 atomic and hydrogen bombs; the Soviets and later the Russian Federation had tried to keep up, building at least 55,000 of their own.

Arms control agreements over the years have managed to reduce stockpiles to about 14,000 nuclear weapons today, in the possession of nine nations: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. The United States and Russia still lead the pack, each with more than 6,000 total weapons, including about 1,600 each that are actively deployed.

A nuclear “exchange” between these two superpowers would take little over one hour to complete. A twenty-megaton bomb (the equivalent of twenty million tons of TNT) would excavate a hole three-quarters of a mile wide and 800 feet deep, converting all buildings and people into radioactive fallout that would be shot up in the mushroom cloud.

Within six miles in all directions, every living thing would be vaporised. Twenty miles from the epicentre, huge fires would erupt, as winds of up to 500 miles per hour would suck people out of buildings and turn them into missiles travelling at 100 miles per hour. The fires would coalesce, incinerating much of the United States and causing most nuclear power plants to melt down, greatly exacerbating radioactive fallout.

Potentially billions of people would die hideously from acute radiation sickness, vomiting and bleeding to death. As thick black radioactive smoke engulfed the stratosphere, the Earth would, over time, be plunged into another ice age — a “nuclear winter,” annihilating almost all living organisms.

Seventy-five years after the dawn of the nuclear age, we are as ready as ever to extinguish ourselves. The human race is clearly an evolutionary aberrant on a suicidal mission. Our planet is in the intensive care unit, approaching several terminal events.

Will we gradually burn and shrivel life on our wondrous Earth by emitting the ancient carbon stored over billions of years to drive our cars and power our industries, or will we end it suddenly by creating a global gas oven?

The International Energy Agency said recently that we only have six months left to avert the effects of global warming before it is too late. Earlier this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been.

Australia’s coal and nuclear lobbies have just recruited a new puppet,  Mining Council CEO Tania Constable has been championing nuclear power at a time when we should be discussing renewables.

In truth, the U.S. Department of Defense is a misnomer; it is actually the Department of War, Death and Suicide. Hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money are spent annually by corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems and Raytheon Technologies Corporation to create and build the most hideous weapons of destruction.

Brilliant people employed by these massive corporations, mostly men, are deploying their brainpower to devise better and more hideous ways of killing.

President Donald Trump is right when he says we need to make friends with the Russians, for it is Russian bombs that might well annihilate the United States. Indeed, we need to foster friendship with all nations and reinvest the trillions of dollars spent on war, killing and death, saving the ecosphere by powering the world with renewable energy including solar, wind, and geothermal and planting trillions of trees.

Such a move would also free up billions of dollars that could be reallocated to such purposes as providing free medical care for all U.S. citizens, along with free education, housing for the homeless and care for those with mental illness.

The United States needs to rise to its full moral and spiritual height and lead the world to sanity and survival. I know this is possible because, in the 1980s, millions of wonderful people rose up, nationally and internationally, in opposition to the arms race and the Cold War.

But what is the present reality in the United States?

There are 450 Minuteman III missiles operational on the Great Plains — in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. In each missile silo are two missileers, who control and launch the missiles which contain one or two hydrogen bombs. Planes armed with hydrogen bombs stand ready to take off at any moment, and nuclear submarines silently plough the oceans ready to launch.

Both the United States and Russia have nuclear weapons targeted at military facilities and population centres. Nuclear war could happen at any time, by accident or design. The late Stephen Hawking warned in 2014 that artificial intelligence, now being deployed by the military, could become so autonomous that it could start a nuclear war by itself.

This threat is largely ignored by politicians and the mainstream media, who continue to practice psychic numbing as we stumble blindly toward our demise.

How come the physicists, engineers and military personnel who have laced the world with nuclear weapons ready to launch never factored into their equations the probability that an immature, petulant man-baby could hold the trigger for our destruction in his hands?  https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/helen-caldicott-time-to-learn-lessons-of-the-past-on-nuclear,14614

You can follow Dr Caldicott on Twitter @DrHCaldicott. Click here for Dr Caldicott’s complete curriculum vitae.

December 14, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | 2 Comments

Biden’s opportunity to make much needed changes on nuclear weapons policy

December 14, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran clearly wants to maintain the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)

December 14, 2020 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

U.S.  House Armed Service Committee calls for new National Defense Strategy, including “no first use” nuclear policy. 

HASC Chair Smith Calls For New National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Policy Review, USNI News, By: John Grady

December 11, 2020  The House Armed Service Committee chairman’s advice to the incoming Biden administration is to put together a National Defense Strategy in its first six to nine months in office that will provide direction for further review of nuclear policy and budget-building.

As part of that strategy, “I think we should have a no-first-use policy” because “nuclear weapons are a special case. They are “weapons that could destroy the planet.” Rep. Adam Smith, (D-Wash.) said while speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies online forum Friday said he also wants the United States to maintain “robust deterrence” but delivered with “a more cost-effective approach.”

mith recognized the strong opposition he has from progressives in the Democratic Party and also among some Republicans to spending on military projects, modernization, basing and operations. Left-leaning Democrats see these efforts “as pivoting to a new Cold War” that will “come into conflict with Russia and China.”

Smith said later that “there are plenty of other ways of deterring our adversaries” other than engaging them in war.

He said three questions needed to be asked when building a “robust” and “cost-effective” defense:

What is the goal; what is the objective; and what are the tools you need to get there.

mith recognized the strong opposition he has from progressives in the Democratic Party and also among some Republicans to spending on military projects, modernization, basing and operations. Left-leaning Democrats see these efforts “as pivoting to a new Cold War” that will “come into conflict with Russia and China.”

Smith said later that “there are plenty of other ways of deterring our adversaries” other than engaging them in war.

He said three questions needed to be asked when building a “robust” and “cost-effective” defense:

What is the goal; what is the objective; and what are the tools you need to get there………… https://news.usni.org/2020/12/11/hasc-chair-smith-calls-for-new-national-defense-strategy-nuclear-policy-review

December 14, 2020 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran Awards Military Medal To Nuclear Scientist Assassinated Last Month

Iran Awards Military Medal To Nuclear Scientist Assassinated Last Month NDTV  13 Dec 20, Tehran: 

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday posthumously awarded a prestigious military decoration to top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated last month, state television reported.

Fakhrizadeh was killed on a major road outside Tehran in late November in a bomb and gun attack that the Islamic republic has blamed on its arch foe Israel……. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/iran-awards-military-medal-to-nuclear-scientist-mohsen-fakhrizadeh-assassinated-last-month-2338031

December 14, 2020 Posted by | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

British government’s “perpetual” lack of knowledge about £130bn clean-up of 17 old nuclear sites.

MPs attack ‘lack of knowledge’ over UK nuclear power clean-up
Public accounts committee calls for ‘clearer discipline’ in managing sites,   Nathalie Thomas in Edinburgh Ft.com  NOVEMBER 27 2020   MPs have warned there is a “perpetual” lack of knowledge in government about the state of Britain’s 17 earliest nuclear power sites, which are expected to cost taxpayers about £130bn to clean up over the next 120 years.

 This lack of knowledge about the retired facilities, which include Sellafield in Cumbria and 12 early nuclear power sites known as the “Magnox” stations, has already wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer money and “continues to be a major barrier to making progress” with the clean-up, according to the House of Commons’ public accounts committee.
 The spending watchdog called for “clearer discipline” in managing the 17 sites, which were all built before privatisation of the electricity system in the 1990s and are the responsibility of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a public body overseen by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
  Decommissioning of the earliest nuclear power reactors and research facilities has been a long-running and torturous saga in Britain.
 Responsibility for cleaning up the two Magnox research sites and 10 Magnox nuclear power stations was brought back in-house last year following a bungled tender process in 2014, which handed a lucrative contract to a joint venture between UK-based Babcock International and Fluor of the US but was later challenged in the courts.
 That botched process cost the taxpayer more than £140m, including settlements with unsuccessful bidders, legal costs and staff time, but MPs warned the NDA still did not have “full understanding of the condition” of those Magnox plants as well as other sites under its responsibility, including the Dounreay nuclear power research facility in Scotland.
The latest estimate for cleaning up all of the 17 earliest sites stands at £132bn, the MPs said, the lion’s share of which falls on Sellafield — where the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall, was developed in the 1950s and housed major civil nuclear fuel reprocessing facilities.
The committee is pressing the NDA to “exploit” opportunities to reduce the amount of time it will take to clean up sites and reduce costs to the taxpayer, including prioritising plans to find a location for a permanent “geological disposal facility” for nuclear waste deep under ground, which would replace current storage at Sellafield and elsewhere and would be designed to prevent the release of harmful quantities of radioactivity to the surface.
The UK went from leading the world in establishing nuclear power to this sorry saga of a perpetual lack of knowledge about the current state of the UK’s nuclear sites. With a project of this length and cost we need to see clearer discipline in project management,” said Meg Hillier MP, chair of the committee…….
Nuclear industry executives are hoping the government will soon agree to enter negotiations over financing a new nuclear power plant, Sizewell C in Suffolk, although the plans are contested by environment campaigners. Developers of new nuclear power plants are now required to pay towards the eventual decommissioning of their sites. https://www.ft.com/content/6f6ef7c2-84cf-4f2c-ab80-34eeab954e71

December 12, 2020 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear developers keenly await UK government support for new reactors large and small

Nuclear Developers Dust Off Plans for More Reactors in U.K. Bloomberg,By Rachel Morison, 11 December 2020,
Industry sees shift to allow more reactors to be built
Government is due to release a paper on financing projects.   Nuclear power developers are refreshing plans for new reactors in the U.K. after speculation that the government could be willing to support building more plants than the industry had been  expecting.

A little-noticed paper issued by the Treasury on Nov. 25 said it is important that the U.K. can “maintain options by pursuing additional large-scale nuclear projects,” assuming they can be done in a cost-effective way. That wording, with a notable plural on the word “projects,” went beyond a recommendation made two years ago that Britain should build only one more major atomic facility.

After years of waiting for a signal, the document was read by nuclear industry executives as evidence that energy policy could be shifting their way. They anticipate the government may soon look more favorably on nuclear after more than a decade of tilting toward renewables. Electricite de France SA, Hitachi Ltd. and China General Nuclear Power Corp. are looking at ways to revive designs that were shelved in the past few years.

“Large-scale projects have a bright future in Britain if the government backs a financing model to cut the cost of capital,” said Tom Greatrex, chief executive officer of the Nuclear Industry Association. “There are a number of viable sites.

For its part, government insists its policy on nuclear hasn’t changed — even with all the debate about exiting the European Union. It’s allowing EDF to seek planning permission for the Sizewell plant in east England, but ministers have been quiet about what, if any, further plants might win favor.………

China’s Bid

One of the biggest question marks is whether China will be able to move ahead with a long-planned reactor in the U.K. despite a political chill toward investment from that nation. Under pressure from the U.S., the government has clamped down on the spread of 5G mobile technology from Huawei Technologies Ltd.

China General Nuclear’s Chief Executive Officer Rob Davies said the company is willing to self-finance the Bradwell B project in southeast England. His remark suggests the company would take a market power price for electricity sold from the plant, a break from EDF’s move at Hinkley Point to secure a long-term contract before moving ahead.

The project would be a Chinese-designed reactor, called HPR1000. It would showcase the nation’s technical skill in Europe. Davies said CGN is committed to nuclear development in the U.K. regardless of the political winds.

We plan to maintain our support for Hinkley Point C, to help Sizewell C to reach a Final Investment Decision, to complete the general design assessment for the HPR1000 and to continue with Bradwell. That’s our plan and that’s our offer to the U.K. And we’ll self finance,” he said at an industry event this month.Hitachi in Wales

The CEO of Hitachi Ltd.’s Horizon Nuclear Power Ltd. subsidiary said he’s lining up a project for the Wylfa site in Wales. His remark is an indication that the project may still be revived even after Hitachi exited it in September after failing to agree on financing.EDF’s Work in Moorside

In June, EDF revamped plans for the Moorside site in Cumbria that Toshiba Corp. pulled out of in 2018. The proposed Clean Energy Hub includes a large nuclear plant, the same design as Hinkley Point and Sizewell, small modular reactors and advanced modular reactors…….

Not all of these projects will be built. In the U.K., EDF is building the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset and next in line is the Sizewell site in Essex northeast of London. The government is keen on small modular reactors that are quicker [?} to build and cheaper [?]. If it gets enough of those, there may not be a need for any more large scale stations. That’s what policy makers will hope to avoid tying themselves into. ……https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-11/nuclear-developers-dust-off-plans-to-build-more-reactors-in-u-k

December 12, 2020 Posted by | politics, UK | 1 Comment

Trying to test for cracks in nuclear waste containers that have to last for over a million years

Waste from nuclear fuel must be stored for more than a million years/

“Salt can be present in the ambient air and environment anywhere, not just near the ocean. We need to be able to plan for extended long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at nuclear power plants for the foreseeable future — it’s a national reality,”

Sandia to put nuclear waste storage canisters to the test,   https://www.newswise.com/articles/sandia-to-put-nuclear-waste-storage-canisters-to-the-test, Scientists will explore science of cracks caused by corrosion, 10-Dec-2020 , by Sandia National Laboratories    Newswise — ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories is outfitting three 22.5-ton, 16.5-feet-long stainless-steel storage canisters with heaters and instrumentation to simulate nuclear waste so researchers can study their durability.

The three canisters, which arrived in mid-November and have never contained any nuclear materials, will be used to study how much salt gathers on canisters over time. Sandia will also study the potential for cracks caused by salt- and stress-induced corrosion with additional canisters that will be delivered during the next stage of the project.

Currently there is not an operating geologic repository in the U.S. for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel. As a result, spent fuel is being stored at commercial nuclear power plants in both storage pools and dry storage canisters. The storage canisters currently holding the spent nuclear fuel were designed to have a useful life of a few decades but will now likely need to be used longer than planned, said Tito Bonano, Sandia’s nuclear energy fuel cycle senior manager.

Data is urgently needed to validate and guide how industry should manage storage canisters for longer than originally anticipated, Bonano said.

“Salt can be present in the ambient air and environment anywhere, not just near the ocean. We need to be able to plan for extended long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at nuclear power plants for the foreseeable future — it’s a national reality,” he said.

The researchers expect the project could have long-reaching implications for public health and safety, industry practices, regulatory framework and defining future research paths, said Bonano.

The three-year project is funded by the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy office. Overall, fifteen never-used, never-irradiated DOE-owned canisters are being distributed for large scale testing to Sandia and two other national laboratories, an industry research institute and an independent storage facility at an existing nuclear power plant.

Waste from nuclear fuel must be stored for more than a million years

Nuclear power plants use uranium pellets inside a metal-cladded tube, called a fuel rod, to power reactors to create the heat needed to make electricity. After the fuel rods can no longer be used in the reactor, they need to be stored onsite until they are taken offsite to another facility and eventually permanently disposed because they will be radioactive for a long time, said Samuel Durbin, a mechanical engineer and Sandia’s canister project lead.

“When fuel is removed from a reactor, it’s very hot, both in temperature and radioactivity” Durbin said. “The utility loads it into a pool for about five years to cool down. After that, the spent fuel can be offloaded into a dry storage canister.”

A storage canister starts as a flat piece of stainless steel that is rolled into a cylinder and then welded where the seams come together. The heat from the welding creates heat-affected zones in the seams of the canister that experience tensile, or pulling, stress. This stress makes these areas around the welds more susceptible to corrosion from salt over time, said Durbin.

Research will test how much salt deposits on canisters over time

Sandia received three canisters Nov. 13. The research team will outfit each of them with 32 electrical heaters to simulate the decay heat, which is heat released as a result of radioactive decay, from the 32 spent fuel assemblies that would typically be stored in this type of canister. No radioactive materials will be used in the testing, Durbin said.

Instruments called thermocouples, which measure temperature, and other sensors for diagnostic testing and surface sampling also will be added, he said.

Once the outfitted canisters have been tested and repacked for transport at Sandia, the team plans to move them to a storage pad at an independent spent fuel storage installation on the West Coast where they will experience the same real-life conditions of in-use canisters. The Sandia team, led by managers Sylvia Saltzstein and Geoff Freeze, Durbin, and chemists/corrosion scientists Charles Bryan and Rebecca Schaller, along with partners from other national laboratories will monitor the test canisters and record surface deposits, especially chloride-bearing salts, for three to more than 10 years, depending on how much the data varies over time.

“Sodium-chloride, or salt, that settles on the surface of spent nuclear-fuel canisters can lead to chloride-induced stress corrosion cracking, and right now there is inadequate data on these surface deposits,” said Durbin.

In real-life storage of nuclear waste, Durbin said the decay heat from the spent fuel creates natural convection around the storage canisters, causing outside air to be drawn over the canister surface. This process helps cool the spent fuel over time. As ambient air is drawn in, salt and other particulates in the air are drawn in as well and can settle on the canister surface. During the test, the electrical heaters installed inside the canisters at Sandia will replicate this decay heat-driven convection without using nuclear materials.

In hot, dry conditions, Durbin said salt deposits alone don’t cause any issues, but over time, as the decay heat decreases and the canister cools, water can condense on the canister surface and a brine can form.

“These conditions can occur nationwide and are seen as precursors to chloride-induced, stress-corrosion cracking. Back when these canisters were being designed, people weren’t thinking about this as an issue because we had a plan for permanent disposal. The current national nuclear waste situation forces canisters to be stored onsite for the foreseeable future, which could be 100 years or longer, so stress corrosion cracking becomes more of a concern,” Durbin said.

In addition to the long-term heating and surface deposition test, Sandia will use up to another three canisters for laboratory-based tests to conduct fundamental research on cracking caused by salt and stress, especially on the welded seams and intersections of the canisters. Researchers will measure the effectiveness of commercially available crack repair and mitigation coatings.

To test these seams, the team will cut the canisters into small segments and test pieces with and without welded seams to study the pre-cursor conditions for salt and stress to cause the corrosion that leads to cracks, he said.

December 12, 2020 Posted by | Reference, safety, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Shutdown of 3 uranium mines in midst of dispute could lead to ecological disaster in Ukraine

World Socialist Web 10th Dec 2020, Three uranium mines have been shut down in the Kirovohrad region of central Ukraine over disputed payments between the state nuclear energy company Energoatom and the state-owned enterprise operating the mine, Eastern Mining and Processing. As a result of the alleged nonpayment, approximately 5,000 miners have been placed on unpaid leave. They are still owed approximately $5 million in months of back pay.

The shuttering of the mines could also lead to an ecological catastrophe if the mines lose power and water pumps fail to operate, creating a toxic mixture of radioactive uranium-contaminated groundwater that could spread throughout the vast river systems of central Ukraine.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/12/11/ukr-d11.html

December 12, 2020 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Sizewell C nuclear power station, thrown into doubt as China ponders pulling out of £20bn project

Sizewell C nuclear power station, thrown into doubt as China ponders pulling out of £20bn project, This Is Money, By FRANCESCA WASHTELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL 12 December 2020 

China is considering pulling out of the Sizewell C nuclear plant in a move that throws the future of the project into doubt.

The country’s nuclear agency, China General Nuclear Power (CGN), is planning to duck out of the next phase of the £20billion project, claim industry sources.

CGN holds a 20 per cent stake in the Suffolk plant and has spent years developing it with French energy giant EDF.

The agency has not revealed how much it has invested in the Sizewell C development phase, though it is estimated to be hundreds of millions.

Its departure at the construction stage could leave a huge hole in the project’s funding – and could deal another body blow to the Government’s energy strategy.

The reports come as tensions between London and Beijing have flared since the Government’s decision to exclude Huawei’s equipment being used in new 5G networks.

The recent clampdown on foreign investment and takeover rules have also added to the hostility.

An industry source said: ‘If the UK were to lose Chinese know-how in nuclear it would be a shame given their expertise in building and operating the reactors that would be used at Sizewell C.’………. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9044795/Sizewell-C-nuclear-plant-doubt-China-ponders-pulling-out.html

 

 

December 12, 2020 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Growing political opposition in Canada to Small Nuclear Reactors

December 10, 2020 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

For safety the 40 year limit on nuclear reactor’s life should be kept

Limiting life of nuclear plants to 40 years should be continued, http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13964250?fbclid=IwAR1_ti6_xxCiBWrXIU94MSDTh6c6mKSygmlV4FVvNORcpuAJU4Cn_QCn708 November 26, 2020   Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, new nuclear safety regulations were created to impose a 40-year limit on the operational lifespan of nuclear reactors in Japan.The rule was designed to ensure decommissioning of aging reactors that are more vulnerable to accidents and make Japanese society less dependent on nuclear power.

But a provision that allows one extension of the legal lifespan by up to 20 years in exceptional cases, introduced in response to concerns about a power shortage, has been widely exploited to gain permission to extend operations years or even decades beyond the 40-year cap.

This troubling trend should not be ignored. The original principle should be maintained.

The municipal assembly of Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, on Nov. 25 approved the restarts of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s (KEPCO) Takahama nuclear plant, which first went into service in the 1970s.

The move came four years after the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), a government agency to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants, gave the green light to plans to extend operations of these aging reactors, which went offline in 2011 following the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

While the consent of the Takahama mayor, the Fukui prefectural assembly and the Fukui governor is still needed to bring the reactors back on stream, the municipal assembly’s approval is a first step toward operating a reactor that is more than 40 years old for the first time in Japan.

Behind the town assembly’s decision is the fact that the nuclear power plant has been supporting the local economy. But the move has raised the question of whether the assembly has given sufficient consideration to issues concerning the safety of local residents.

In a meeting to explain the plans to residents in Takahama held at the end of October, some attendees voiced concerns about the risk of multiple natural disasters disrupting traffic on the prefectural road designated to be used as part of the evacuation route in the event of serious accidents at the plant. There remain serious safety concerns as to the planned operations of the reactors.

Even more questionable is the government’s stance toward the issue.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s administration has vowed to reduce Japan’s reliance on nuclear power generation as much as possible by making all-out efforts to promote energy conservation and use of renewable energy sources.

But the Suga administration’s stance toward nuclear power generation is showing no notable difference from the policy of the previous government led by his predecessor, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The Abe administration left decisions concerning reactor restarts to the NRA and the local governments involved and didn’t hesitate to bring reactors back online once the procedures for the step were completed.

In a sign that casts doubt on the administration’s commitment to reducing nuclear power generation, a senior official at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, an industry ministry body, has repeatedly visited the local governments of the host communities in Takahama to seek their consent for the plans.

In Fukui Prefecture, another aging reactor, the No. 3 unit of KEPCO’s Mihama nuclear power plant in Mihama, located along the coast of the Wakasa Bay, has been cleared by the NRA for operation beyond the 40-year legal lifespan. The Mihama town assembly is expected to decide on the restart in December.

KEPCO, which has been operating 11 reactors in Fukui Prefecture, including those at its Oi nuclear plant in the town of Oi, has decided to decommission four reactors at the Mihama and Oi plants. But it will still have seven reactors in service in the prefecture if the lives of three reactors are extended beyond the 40-year limit.

This means the local communities will continue being threatened by the safety risks posed by a concentration of reactors, which were underscored in a graphic way by the Fukushima calamity.

The government should demonstrate a clear commitment to scrapping aging reactors while supporting private-sector investment in renewable energy sources. It also should work with the local administrations in areas that have been dependent on nuclear plants for their economic well-being to carve out futures not dependent on atomic energy and provide policy support to their efforts to achieve the visions.

It is time for KEPCO to change its business strategy.

The utility is still halfway to its goal of regaining the public confidence that has been deeply undermined by a series of scandals including one in which company executives received gifts from a former top official at the Takahama municipal government.

The utility has promised the prefectural government to find a location outside the prefecture for an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at its nuclear plants in Fukui Prefecture. But the outlook of this mission remains murky.

A responsible utility would pull the plug on the operations of aging reactors whose viability is in doubt economically as well as technologically and reinvent its business strategy accordingly.

December 10, 2020 Posted by | Japan, safety | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »