There is a great deal of uncertainty about the future of nuclear power. On one side, the critics point to problems at nuclear power plants, lax regulation, environmental and health dangers, problems of waste disposal and dangers of proliferation. On the other side, proponents point out that nuclear reactors have a small carbon footprint which would help to reduce anthropogenic climate change and they produce reliable baseload power as compared to intermittent wind and solar power sources. Then there are political, social and economic factors which may support or work against the construction of new nuclear power plants. Covering all these issues has been one of the reasons that I have been writing these blogs.

         The International Energy Association has recently released their annual World Energy Outlook report in which they predict the growth potential of nuclear power in the next 25 years. They estimate that the share of world energy production produced by nuclear power will rise by one percent by 2040. The report predicts that the global primary energy demand will rise thirty seven percent by 2040. They expect that the demand for coal and oil will level off around 2040. The report assumes that world energy production from fossil fuels will be roughly equal to the energy being produced by nuclear and renewables such as wind and solar. One of the authors of the report is quoted as saying that renewable are on the way to becoming the number one source of global electricity.

         Although the report stressed the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it also suggested that fifteen billion dollars a year should be invested in oil development with an additional nine billion dollars a year slated for coal. The report called for most oil development to take place in the Middle East. Nuclear power will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about four years worth of the use of fossil fuels by 2040, according to the report.

        The report estimates that the cost of decommissioning aging nuclear power plants will exceed one hundred billion dollars in the next twenty five years. (Governments and the nuclear industry regularly underestimate the cost of decommissioning.)  One problem with estimating decommissioning costs is the fact that since the dawn of nuclear power, only ten nuclear power plants have been decommissioned so the nuclear industry does not have much experience with the process. Of the four hundred and thirty four nuclear power reactors currently operating, almost half are scheduled to be decommissioned by 2040.

         The estimate of the cost of decommissioning two hundred nuclear reactors does not include the creation of a permanent geological repository for disposing of nuclear waste. Many billions of additional dollars will be required to create and fill future repositories. It is estimated that seven hundred thousand metric tons of spent nuclear fuel will have been generated by 2040.

         It is beneficial for agencies interested in power generation to estimate future demand and supply. However, it is entirely possible that the dropping cost of renewables will eventually remove the need for building additional nuclear power plants by 2040.

 

Fukushima student says “It seems like we are about to get killed.” enenews.com

Japanese government says nuclear energy is still needed, but environmentalists are wary of another Fukushima. aljazeera.com

Babcock & Wilcox Nuclear Energy, a major subcontractor in an 18-month upgrade project at Prairie Island nuclear power plant in Red Wing, Minn., has filed a $45 million lawsuit against Xcel Energy Inc. over alleged overruns incurred while replacing two massive steam generators. nuclearstreets.com

New York’s Public Services Commission ordered Rochester Gas & Electric to negotiate a deal to purchase electricity from the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant, which is struggling to remain profitable with a glut of natural gas putting downward pressure on prices. nuclearstreets.com

 

 

         I have been blogging lately about national nuclear arsenals. After talking about Israel and China. Today, I am going to discuss aspects of the Russian nuclear arsenal. The U.S. State Department published a report on September 1st of this year about Russian nuclear weapons developments. The report stated that Russia has now reached parity with U.S. strategic nuclear weapons. Russia now has five hundred and twenty eight delivery vehicles that can carry one thousand six hundred and forty three nuclear warheads as compared to seven hundred and ninety four delivery vehicles that can carry one thousand six hundred and fifty two nuclear warheads.

        The Russian strategic nuclear forces are actually more sophisticated than the U.S. which permits the Russians to deliver more warheads with fewer delivery vehicles. Russian officials are promising to add more advanced missiles to their nuclear arsenal which will put them ahead of the U.S. In spite of the progress that the U.S. and Russia have made on nuclear disarmament through a series of treaties, Russia is improving their nuclear arsenal.

       The Start-3 treaty that was signed by the U.S. and Russia Presidents went into force in February of 2011. It called for both countries to reduce their nuclear warheads to one thousand five hundred and fifty and cut their delivery vehicles to seven hundred by 2021. The Russians gained strategic advantages from the treaty that were not granted by the Start-1 and Start-2 treaties. While they were increasing their warheads, the U.S. decreased the number of their warheads. In addition, the Russians ceded no ground with respect to the number of multiple warhead ICBMs they were allowed awe well as the opportunity to develop rail carried ICBMs and other mobile ICBM deployment. The Russians have also deployed a new generation of long-range nuclear cruise missiles on submarines of the Black Sea Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla.

        With respect to NATO forces, the Russians are also gaining ground. Russia has twenty thousand tanks to the six thousand heavy tanks that the U.S. had stationed in NATO countries during the Cold WAr. In order to make up for the imbalance, NATO had deployed tactical nuclear weapons. Seven thousand tactical nuclear devices were sent to NATO by the U.S. in the 1970s to defend NATO against a possible ground invasion from Russia. These included ammunition for 203-mm and 155-mm caliber launcher as well as Lance missiles with one to ten kiloton nuclear warheads. The U.S. has withdrawn all of its tanks from NATO countries. Currently, NATO countries have two hundred and sixty nuclear weapons. The U.S. has two hundred nuclear bombs in Europe on six air bases. France has sixty nuclear bombs in its arsenal. These are the only nuclear devices available to defend NATO countries.

       Russia now has at least five thousand tactical nuclear devices including torpedo, aerial and artillery warheads. The U.S. has three hundred bombers in U.S. territories but has destroyed its tactical nuclear missiles, land based missiles and nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles that can be launched from submarines. Strategically, Russia is better armed than NATO. Given that Russia has embarked on a risky strategy of threatening its neighbors following its annexation of Crimea, this imbalance of forces between Russia and NATO is very troubling.

       No one can win a nuclear war and that includes a war with tactical nuclear weapons. Not only is the land where the battles take place going to be a radioactive wasteland, prevailing winds will carry fallout far beyond the battle field. And either side could decide to escalate to full nuclear war with long range missiles if it felt that it was losing the ground battle. Unless the Russian leadership is insane, they are bullying neighboring countries with the assumption that everyone is so afraid of nuclear war that they will wring concessions out of NATO without actually using any nuclear devices. While this may seem like a sound strategy to them, it could very easily start World War Three and destroy human civilization. It is a dangerous game that Russia is playing.

 NATO countries in blue:

Japan has chosen to incinerate tons of Fukushima radioactive waste. nuclear-news.not

Japanese doctors threatened for revealing data on how bad Fukushima-related illnesses have become. enenews.com

Westinghouse Electric Company said Wednesday it had been contracted by energy companies RWE and E.ON to supply the Gundremmingen and Emsland Nuclear Power Plants in Germany with fuel assemblies between 2016 and 2018. nuclearstreet.com

The U.N. atomic agency has corrected data to lower its estimate of the size of Iran’s uranium stockpile, a figure watched ahead of this month’s deadline for Tehran and six world powers to settle a dispute over Iran’s nuclear program. in.reuters.com

         I have blogged about the Yucca Mountain geological repository in Nevada for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear wastes. The U.S. Department of Energy spent over ten years working on the creation of the repository but President Obama cancelled the project in conjunction with Henry Reid (D-Nevada), the current Senate Majority Leader. In 2013, a court ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to finish a uncompleted study of the suitability of Yucca Mountain for nuclear waste disposal. The NRC finished the study and has issued a report that the Yucca Mountain repository is sufficiently isolated from the environment so that it would be safe to store nuclear waste. In order to renew work on the Yucca Mountain repository, it would be necessary for Congress to allocate new funding to the project.

        The Bulletin of Atomic Sciences recently published an opinion piece about the safety of Yucca Mountain which concluded that it is not really as safe as the NRC report stated. The main question that concerned the author of the op-ed piece has to do with what the DoE calls a “drip shield.” The Yucca Mountain repository is intended to store thousands of sealed containers of waste in the tunnels under Yucca Mountain. The DoE plan calls for putting a corrosion-resistant titanium cover over each of the waste containers to prevent water from dripping onto the containers and possibly corroding them. If the corrosion ate through the storage containers, radioactive materials could seep out into the ground water. The covers  would be necessary because there is more water moving through the Yucca Mountain site than originally estimated by the DoE.

       This sounds good but the plan calls for the covers to be installed in one hundred years. Even supposing that our civilization still exists in a hundred years, this is long after the Yucca Mountain repository is supposed to be permanently sealed. Human beings would not be able to do the work because the radiation would be too high inside the repository. The op-ed writer was skeptical that there would be any support or interest in spending huge sums of money to re-enter the collapsed tunnels of the Yucca Mountain repository to install the covers in one hundred years.

          The op-ed writer speculated that the idea of delaying the installation of the titanium covers for a hundred years may well have been raised in order to reduce the cost of finishing and filling the repository. He criticized the NRC for going along with the proposal instead of alerting the government and the public to the danger of radioactive materials leaking out into the environment.

          With the capture of the U.S. Senate by the Republican party, there will likely be renewed calls for the completion of Yucca Mountain. If a Republican wins the White House and they maintain control of Congress in 2016, it is almost a certainty that the Yucca Mountain repository will be completed.

Artist’s diagram of the Yucca Mountain Repository:

A Letter Hand-delivered to the UN and UNSCEAR, Requesting Revision of UNSCEAR Report And a New UN Mandate for UNSCEAR. fukushimavoice-eng2.blogspot.jp

As news came out about yet another finding of Fukushima radioactive contamination offshore of North America, TEPCO published a rather bizarre press release. fukuleaks.org

A series of drone flights over French nuclear power plants remains unexplained as three persons detained near a power plant south of Paris were reportedly caught up in the affair, like a deliberately misleading plot turn in a movie. nuclearstreet.com

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency have confirmed that the environmental impact assessment for the Baltic nuclear power station under construction in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad complies with international standards, Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom said. nucnet.org