Journalist says that the Pacific Ocean is dying. enenews.com

Mother from Fukushima says that she bought deformed vegetables with huge flowers and giant stems. enenews.com

During an official visit by Kazakh prime minister Karim Massimov to China, commercial terms agreements were signed between the Kazakh national nuclear company and China General Nuclear (CGN) for the fuel assembly plant and development of uranium projects. world-nuclear-news.org

New drone footage shows the colossus that is the containment structure – and structures – at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine that was the site of the world’s worst radioactive accident in history as of April 1986, when an explosion destroyed Unit 4 at the plant. nuclearstreet.com

         I have blogged before about the quest to develop small modular reactors (SMR) to replace the current generation of gigawatt plus nuclear power reactors. By definition, these SMR reactors will generate less than three hundred megawatts. Another aspect of SMR projects is the intention to build these reactors in modules in factories. The argument being that their costs will be lower and their quality higher because they will be coming off a factory production line. Once basic site preparation has been carried out, the modules can be trucked to the location and quickly assembled. It is hoped that this approach can lower capital investment requirements, shorten construction time and open up a wider range of possible locations. The existence of small reliable and safe nuclear reactors in naval vessels such as submarines has helped to ignite interest in SMRs for domestic power generation.

       The U.K. has plans to spent over three hundred and seventy six million dollars in the next five years in nuclear research and development. Part of that money will be spent on a competition to select the best SMR design for U.K. needs. This competition will be launched at the start of 2016 and, it is hoped, will result in the construction of the first U.K. SMR in the 2020s.

       The Magnox nuclear power plant was located near the village of Trawsfynydd in Wales but it has been decommissioned. A study by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in 2014 identified Trawsfynydd as a potential  site for the production of SMRs. The Snowdonia Enterprise Zone Advisory Board has been actively exploring the potential of Trawsfynydd for the siting of a SMR production facility.

          Dr John Idris Jones, chairman of the SEZAB, says that “As chair of the Advisory Board, and supported by officials from Welsh Government and Gwynedd County Council, I continue to engage with key SMR stakeholders to explore this opportunity and to promote Trawsfynydd as an ideal location to host the first SMR of its kind in the UK. We have a unique location with an established nuclear site at Trawsfynydd with potential for future SMR deployment and associated R&D. It is the ultimate environment for businesses involved in new, sustainable and secure low carbon energy generation. The workforce has an excellent reputation for technological expertise and decommissioning involves cutting edge technology and mission critical engineering capabilities. The local community has strong links to the nuclear industry and the decommissioning of the nuclear plant on site will release a potential transferable workforce of hundreds of skilled personnel. “While this option will not deliver job opportunities in the short term it would appear to offer some potential in the medium to longer term.”

         There have been meetings with local stakeholder in Trawsfynydd to discuss the development of an SMR factory in the area. A report on the proposed site concluded that there are no physical constraints that would cause problems. There was a U.K. SMR conference last fall and the idea of locating a facility at Trawsfynydd was well received.

       Critics of the SMR concept point out that while it is possible to have tight quality controls at a factory, the nuclear industry does not have such a great record with respect to monitoring the procedures and equipment at nuclear power plants. If a problem is missed on the production line, then instead of a single nuclear reactor having potential problems, a whole series of reactors produced at the factory could have similar problems. With respect to reduced costs, the licensing process, the cost of module production, the site preparation and the final assembly of a SMR producing just under three hundred megawatts will not be anywhere near as low as thirty percent of the cost of constructing a one gigawatt power reactor of current design. The nuclear industry is trying frantically to find a way to continue to profit from the sale of nuclear reactors but the development and sale of SMRs may not turn out to be successful for that goal.

Small modular reactor diagram:

small-modular-reactor – diagram.png

The South African national treasury will only spend money on projects – such as the controversial nuclear deal – if it has the money, incoming Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Monday. mg.co.za

Chinese state nuclear power company CGN on Monday announced the signing of an agreement with Kazakhstan to build a power plant in that Central Asian nation. latino.foxnews.com

Not long after signing the nuclear deal, the ruling clerics of the Islamist state of Iran have clearly breached the agreement and several of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions. frontpagemag.com

One of the two nuclear reactors at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station near Harrisburg in Pennsylvania has been taken offline for repairs, the plant’s owner Exelon Generation said Monday. pennlive.com

        The nuclear industry likes to brag about how safe it is. They like to say that almost no one has died as a result of nuclear accidents or operational problems at nuclear power reactors and research laboratories. However, they are not so vocal about the death toll from the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons for the U.S. arsenal. One of the big problems with health dangers of nuclear radiation is the fact that if a dose is not great enough to cause immediate and obvious serious tissue damage, it may take years for an exposure to result in a cancer or other serious health problems.

        A recent study states that while working in the U.S. nuclear weapons program over one hundred and seven thousand workers have been diagnosed with cancers and other possibly radiation related diseases since World War II. Almost thirty forty thousand of the workers have died A special fund was established in 2001 to compensate workers and their survivors for health problems caused by workplace exposure. The numbers quoted in this post come from records that were compiled for that program.

        Originally, the government estimated that it would cost about one hundred and twenty million dollars to compensate about three thousand people. However, in the fourteen years of the program, over twelve billion dollars have been spent on fifty three thousand people. Only about half of those who have been applied for compensation have been approved. Sadly, even though the dangers of nuclear weapons work have been known for decades, the current safety standards for workers against regular exposure and day-to-day accidents have not improved much. More than one hundred and eighty thousand nuclear employees have suffered radiation exposure since the compensation program was established in 2001. Here are a few examples of worker exposure and compensation at specific worksites.

        The federal government has just acknowledged that work done at the Idaho National Laboratory “likely caused or contributed to” the deaths of 396 employees. Hundreds of employees and former employees have filed health insurance claims stating that the work they did with nuclear materials at the INL caused them to become ill. Fifty three million dollars has been paid out to cover health care costs for some of the workers injured by radiation exposure. Another one hundred and eighty eight million dollars has been paid to the survivors of four hundred and seventy one former INL employees who have died from radiation exposure during their work. Some INL employees have found it difficult to get compensations with over two thirds of claims being rejected.

       In Kansas, almost three hundred former workers at the Kansas City Plant have collectively received over fifty five million dollars in compensation for health problems related to their work with radioactive materials. Over half of the money was received by the survivors of workers who had already died from their radiation related illnesses. A total of four thousand four hundred and forty workers have applied for compensation but less than three hundred approved and received compensation. The approval rate for claims at the Kansas City Plant is twenty three percent which is less than half of the national average for such claims.

       Since 2000, over thirteen hundred workers and their families have been given compensation for work related illness at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant in Texas. More than one hundred and seventy million dollars has been paid out on claims. A few years ago, the approval rate for claims was under twenty percent. With the growing body of evidence of the health dangers of radiation exposure, the number of claims approved has risen to about fifty percent which is the national average. However, over half the claims that have been paid have gone to survivors after workers have died. Critics of the program claim that the claims process is deliberately dragged out because it is cheaper to pay survivors than to pay for long term care while the claimant is alive.

       While the compensation rate of nuclear weapons workers with illnesses caused by their exposure to radioactive materials has been improving, there are still many ill workers and their families who have had difficulty proving that their illnesses are related to their work. The process must be streamlined so that more deserving claims are approved. The safety measures at nuclear weapons plants must be improved.

Texas Pantex Plant:

Texas Pantex plant.png

On 12/5/2015, a citizen’s radiation measurement station “Fujimiiru” announced they detected 62.5 Bq/Kg of Cs-134/137 from the dust sample in Osaka. fukushima-diary.com

After many years of negotiations, India and Japan have signed a memorandum on cooperating in nuclear energy. However, certain technical and legal issues must be resolved before a final agreement can be signed. world-nuclear-news.org

India’s Lok Sabha today passed, by voice vote, a bill to amend the Atomic Energy Act to “overcome difficulties encountered in the setting up of new nuclear projects and enhancement of nuclear power generation”. ndtv.com

THE South African Cabinet has approved the start of the nuclear procurement program, clearing the way for the Department of Energy to call for proposals to provide SA with 9.6GW of nuclear power without first doing a cost-benefit analysis. bdlive.co.za

The Japanese industry ministry will consider the feasibility of burying high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants under the seabed, which a working panel said Dec. 11 could be a “highly appropriate” solution. ajw.ashai.com

AMID speculation about SA’s nuclear build program, the French special envoy for the French-South African nuclear partnership Pascal Colombani was in the country recently punting his country for the highly anticipated program. bdlive.co.za

POLICE protecting Britain’s nuclear sites, army bases and train network could be cut after it emerged a pledge by George Osborne to protect force budgets does not include defense, transport and nuclear officers. express.co.uk

The long-held dream of producing power from nuclear fusion, the ultimate energy source, may be realized within decades following a breakthrough experiment in Germany. smh.com.au