U.S. was hit with the worst fallout during the year AFTER Fukushima began. enenews.com

A huge increase in US Navy sailors suffering injury occurred after their Fukushima exposure. enenews.com

A study by the Nuclear Energy Institute has tallied up the economic impact of Exelon’s nuclear plants in Illinois as the utility threatens to close several unprofitable reactors unless changes are made to the state’s energy market. nuclearstreet.com

The growing energy demands of Kenya’s 40 million population cannot be met or sustained without the addition of nuclear energy, the executive chairman and chief executive officer of Kenya’s Nuclear Electricity Board has said. nucnet.org

 

 

         What to do with spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste is the great unanswered question of nuclear power. The spent nuclear fuel pools in the one hundred U.S. nuclear power reactors will all be full in five years unless massive amounts of temporary storage casks are built to hold the spent fuel until a permanent repository is built. Best estimates are that there will not be a permanent geological nuclear repository in the United States before 2050. Other nations with nuclear power face similar problems.

         France, Sweden, and Finland have selected preferred sites for geological repositories for high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel and begun construction. The U.K., Germany and Switzerland are involved in site selection for a repository. A 2004 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency urged all countries with nuclear waste disposal problems should cooperate in exploring multinational repositories. The report said that such multinational repositories would improve world safety and security. The International Panel of Fissile Materials issued a report in 2011 that stated that although the idea of multinational spent fuel geological repositories has been discussed, there has been very little progress in exploring that possibility. The benefits of multinational geological repositories include taking advantage of economies of scale, providing more time for nations to consider different fuel cycles and help to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.     

         A report titled ‘Management of spent nuclear fuel and its waste’ has just been published by the European Commission’s in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre, and the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council. The report points out that even with a closed fuel cycle where the spent fuel is recycled to create more fuel, there will still be nuclear waste generated that will have to disposed of in geological repositories. Although there has been a great deal of research around the world on deep geological repositories for nuclear waste, there is still no operational geological repository anywhere. All European nations with nuclear power are encouraged to immediately implement deep geological repositories.

         The report pointed out that specifying a policy for dealing with spent nuclear fuel is an important part of planning for nuclear power and that there must be financial and technical support for developing ways of dealing with spent nuclear fuel. The report said that a nuclear power program must be a long term commitment that includes permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel as well as operation of nuclear reactors. The waste disposal will have to monitored for a century or more. Any permanent geological repository must ” guarantee the very long term safety of long-lived and high level waste.” Any safety functions must not depend on human intervention which will be problematic at best and must be able to withstand changing circumstances such as seismic activity and extreme weather conditions. Of course, education and training of staff are critical for safe long-term storage of nuclear waste and the report says that sharing of training materials and research facilities will be important.

https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/sites/default/files/jrc-report-anagement-spent-fuel-and-waste.pdf

The operator of Spain’s Garoña nuclear power plant, Nuclenor, has submitted documents to the country’s nuclear regulator detailing how it plans to meet requirements for the plant’s restart. world-nuclear-news.org

Wylfa unit 1 – the world’s last operating Magnox reactor – will be able to continue generating electricity until the end of 2015 after the UK nuclear regulator approved the plant’s latest periodic safety review. world-nuclear-news.org

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday that he must make sure that any final nuclear deal with Iran does not leave it at the threshold” of being able to develop nuclear weapons. in.com

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom has signed a draft agreement for the construction and operation of the first commercial nuclear power station in Kazakhstan, the company said today. nucnet.org

 

 

         I have often mentioned that the nuclear industry enjoys special treatment from the U.S. government. The Nuclear Regulatory Agency is not enforcing regulations rigorously for the operators of nuclear power plants. Billions and billions of dollars have been handed out in grants and loan guarantees.

         In February of this year, the DoE announced a six billion five hundred million loan guarantee for the new Vogtle nuclear power reactors which are the first new reactors to be built in the U.S. in thirty years. There is concern that some of the other projects will not be able to find full financing because of investors’ fears of risks associated with new nuclear projects that rely on technology that has never been deployed before. The program of loan guarantees is intended to help these new project get the financing that they need to proceed.

         The U.S. Department of Energy has just announced that it is releasing a draft of a twelve billion six hundred million dollar loan guarantee solicitation for advanced nuclear projects. It claims that this is a “significant step” in helping the U.S. meet future low-carbon goals. The loan guarantee is coming through the DoE Loan Programs Office (LPO). In support of that goal, DoE has identified four key technology areas of interest – advanced nuclear reactors; small modular reactors; uprates and upgrades at existing facilities; and advanced nuclear facilities for the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle.

         According to the executive director of the LPO “If you want to fight climate change, nuclear power has to play a role. This solicitation can help build new nuclear power plants with enhanced safety features and zero emissions. That’s a win for the climate, our energy mix, and American innovation.” He also said that “The nuclear industry used to be one-size fits all – but no more. We designed our new solicitation around the activity we’re seeing in the marketplace. That includes traditional reactors, SMRs, and innovative uprates that can increase output at existing facilities.”

         Unfortunately there is a lot of debate over just how “low-carbon” a nuclear power plant is. A great deal of carbon dioxide is released in the construction of a nuclear power plant. The mining, refining and transportation of fuel and the construction of temporary containers for spent nuclear fuel also release carbon dioxide. The U.S. would have to build hundred of nuclear power plants to have any appreciable impact on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Given that this would require at least a decade to accomplish, it will be too slow to really help with our carbon dioxide emissions. The money being spent to prop up the aging and ailing nuclear power industry in the U.S. would be better spent on renewable energy sources.

Containment vessel for Vogtle Reactor 3:

 

U.S. Government says that Fukushima was an unprecedented wide-area disaster and that nuclear power threatens human existence. enenews.com

Fukushima chief was pleading for help from U.S. military during the disaster in March of 2011. enenews.com

Russia has designed an advanced core melt trap, or core catcher, for the Akkuyu nuclear power plant that is specific to conditions in Turkey, Atomenergoproekt (AEP), the principal designer for the project, said today. world-nuclear-news.org

On Monday, 17 anti-nuclear groups said they are preparing to file a federal court challenge if a recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision on waste storage at power plants takes effect. nuclearstreet.com

         I have mentioned nuclear batteries in past blog posts. They are especially useful for long term low power devices such as space probes or medical implants. Research into the betavolatic version of nuclear battery technology is over fifty years old. Early cardiac pacemakers used a nuclear battery based on promethium until lower cost lithium ion batteries became available.

          Betavoltaics are a type of nuclear battery that utilizes beta particles (high energy electrons). In the conventional designs, the beta particles move through a semiconductor and produce an electric current. The semiconductor material in early betavoltaics was inefficient in producing electricity so high energy and dangerous radioactive isotopes had to be used. As time went by, better and better semiconductor materials were developed and less dangerous radioactive isotopes such as tritium could be used. There was still the problem with the slow degradation of the semiconductor material as it was damaged by the high energy electrons. As the semiconductor deteriorated, the production of electricity decreased.

        In 2012, City Labs introduced its NanoTritium betavoltaic power source. This device is configured in the form of an electronic chip that can be plugged into a circuit board. The half life of tritium is about twelve years and City Labs says that it NanoTritium battery can provide energy to electronic devices for up to twenty years. It is sturdy and hermetically sealed with a solid form of tritium that should increase safety and reliability. It can withstand temperatures over a hundred degree Celsius range as well as severe vibrations and a large ranges of altitudes. The NanoTritium battery is the first commercially available betavoltaic nuclear battery for companies that do not have a license to handle radioactive materials. This will make it attractive for a much wider range of applications than the old betavoltaics. The current price of the battery is a few thousand dollars and that is expect to drop with increased production.

        Recently, researchers at the University of Missouri announced the development of a new type of betavoltaic battery. Instead of being based on solid semiconductor material that was vulnerable to degradation, the new batteries utilize water. Water can absorb a great deal of nuclear energy, generating free radicals. These ionized versions of hydrogen, oxygen and water molecules make it possible to use the solution to generate power. The new battery utilizes a strontium-90 isotope. A titanium dioxide electrode with structures at the nano level and a platinum coating converts the electrochemical energy in the water into electrons that generate a flow of electricity.

        These new betavoltaics could be game-changers for a number of industries as their features such as small size, high output, reliability, safety, cost and relaxed licensing make them candidates for power sources for a wider variety of devices. They could be a boon to medical equipment manufacturers who are constantly inventing new implantable devices that need small reliable long lived batteries.

Fukushima worker says that all sorts of troubles are going on in the damaged Fukushima plant and officials won’t tell public what is really happening. enenews.com

Lettuce from the US West Coast nearly tops Chernobyl contamination limit. enenews.com

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) will shut its reprocessing plant in Tokai, reportedly due to the costs of modifications required under post-Fukushima safety regulations. world-nuclear-news.org

The Department of Energy has changed the agency responsible for waste cleanup at Los Alamos National Laboratory and will hire a different contractor to handle the work following the accident at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.  nuclearstreet.com