My Geiger counter is in the ship for maintenance.

         I have posted before about the trend among nuclear nations such as Russia, Japan, China, France and the United States to make export of nuclear technology and nuclear fuel a major part of their international trade in the near future. Recently there was a major announcement by Vladimir Putin at a BRICS summit meeting of a Russian plan to create an energy association that will include a fuel reserve bank and an energy policy institute. This new set of institutions will include the so-called BRICS states, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The BRICS states are pushing ahead aggressively with the construction of new nuclear reactors. Fifty five of the sixty six nuclear reactors under construction are in the BRICS states.

         Russia has just signed a number of nuclear power cooperation agreements with other nations that coincided with a visit by the Russian President to South America. Russia signed one such agreement with Argentina which is building its first reactor. Russia hopes to put forward a successful bid to work on the third stage of the new reactor construction.

         A Rusatom representative has just signed a memorandum of understanding with the president of Camargo Correa. The agreement includes construction of a spent fuel storage facility and a nuclear power reactor in Brazil. The document also supports the expansion of bilateral cooperation on the development of nuclear power in Brazil. One specific project in the agreement will be the expansion of technical and engineering facilities at the Brazilian Angra nuclear power plant and the construction of more new reactors in Brazil.

       Putin has also held meeting with the new Indian Prime Minister, Narenda Modi to discuss expanding cooperation on energy and defense. Putin has been invited to visit the Kudankulam Unit 2 reactor construction site. Last December, the two countries signed an agreement to with respect to the construction of Kudankulam Unit 3 and Unit 4 reactors.

       One of the most important parts of the new Russian plan is the launch of the New Development Bank and a Currency Reserve Pool for the BRIC nations. These two institutions together will have two hundred billion dollars in resources. The New Development Bank (NDB) with one hundred billion dollars is being seen as a BRICS alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The NDB will be headquartered in Shanghai, China. The top positions in the organization will be shared by Indian, Brazilian and Russian representatives. Putin said that the Currency Reserve Pool (CRP) with one hundred billion dollars is being created to “protect our countries from financial market crises.”

       Forty percent of the world’s population resides in the BRICS countries which share twenty one percent of the world’s GDP between them. In the past ten years, the BRICS states have seen their collective GDP grow by four hundred percent.

Officials in U.S. report “very rare mutations” in Pacific sea life.  enenews.com

Study says that multiple surges of radioactive substances have been detected far from Fukushima Daiichi. enenews.com

Russia plans to start construction of three BN-1200 sodium-cooled fast neutron reactors before 2030, the director general of Rosenergoatom, Evgeny Romanov, said on 21 July. world-nuclear-news.org

While the EPA considers changes to the way it regulates radiation at nuclear power facilities, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also announced a review of rules surrounding radioactive material for medical use. nuclearstreet.com

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         We usually think of radioactive contamination in terms of solid radioactive elements such as uranium and plutonium. However, there are also radioactive gases such as radon. This gas is created as naturally occurring uranium decays. In some parts of the country, natural radon can accumulate in basements and pose a health threat. When nuclear fuel is burned in a reactor, radioactive isotopes of xenon and krypton are generated. Radon, krypton and xenon are members of the noble gases in the periodic table of elements. Noble gases do not normally interact and form compounds with other elements. These three gases pose a human health threat and it is very important for us to develop an efficient and cost-effective way to remove them from air and water.

         A recent research report details how a newly discovered material is more efficient at removing radioactive gases from the atmosphere and water than any other material known. The new material is called CC3. There is an artist’s rendering of the CC3 molecule at the bottom of this post. The capability of CC3 to trap noble gases is surprising because of the normally non-reactive nature of these gases.

        The standard method of removing noble gases from air depends on cooling the air far below freezing. Because this process is complicated and expensive, scientists have been searching for an alternative. One avenue of research has focused on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that might be able to trap noble gases without the cooling now necessary. They did find MOFs that could remove noble gases in low concentrations at room temperature but they continued searching for a more efficient alternative.

        A different approach to capture of noble gases focused on what are called porous organic cages. These materials have a repeating three dimensional structure that forms “cages” that could hold atoms of xenon, radon or krypton. CC3 has cages that are just about the right size for these noble gas atoms. Computer simulations show that the cages open and close by about twenty percent. They are only open fully about seven percent of the time but that is enough for xenon atoms to enter. Xenon atoms are more likely to enter an empty cage than to leave a cage. This makes CC3 an excellent material to trap noble gases.

        The researches took a piece of CC3 and pumped a mixture of gases through the material to test its retention of specific gases. The mix contained oxygen, carbon dioxide, argon, krypton, xenon and nitrogen. The krypton and xenon were at very low concentrations. They found that while the O₂, CO₂, N₂ and Ar passed freely through the CC3, xenon and krypton were trapped. CC3 trapped twice as much xenon as the best MOF material tested. The CC3 also trapped twenty times as much xenon as krypton. This property is known as selectivity and it is a very important capability.

        CC3 has been identified as the best noble gas trapper developed so far. The researches do not yet know exactly how CC3 functions when it traps noble gases. When they do understand the way that CC3 functions, it may be possible to fine tune this type of noble gas trapping material to trap different noble gases as desired.

Artist’s rendering of the CC3 molecule:

Official says that “death ashes” have dispersed everywhere after recent Fukushima releases. enenews.com

An International Atomic Energy Agency report confirms that Iran has converted its inventory of 20% enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) into forms that are less of a proliferation risk. world-nuclear-news.org

News from the UK says that, should things go as planned, it might not be all that long before the country moves to dispose of its nuclear waste by turning it into a clean energy source.  news.softpedia.com

The top nuclear regulator in the United States says the watchdog agency may shuffle its staff as fewer nuclear plants are built and more are taken offline. ajc.com

 

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

Leaks plaguing Fukushima Unit 5 reactor which indicates deterioration in the system. enenews.com

There is a new poster circulating in Fukushima City that says “Let’s Get Irradiated!” rense.com

Hot water and algae blooms have threatened to shut down two of Florida’s nuclear power reactors in the middle of the high-demand summer season. nuclearstreet.com

Fresh on the heels of an expanded partnership with China’s state-controlled nuclear enterprise, Chicago Bridge & Iron last week announced $100 million in contracts to help upgrade Entergy nuclear plants in the U.S. nuclearstreet.com

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the operator of the Japanese nuclear power plant Fukushima-1, has reported another leak of radioactive water at the fifth unit, according to a company’s press release Saturday. en.ria.ru

Fukushima radioactive material still being found in U.S. soil. enenews.com

The contractor that operates the federal government’s underground nuclear waste dump in southeastern New Mexico received a $1.9 million bonus just five days after an underground truck fire closed the facility. foxnews.com

AMEC Nuclear UK has been chosen as technical adviser to provide support for the program to build Poland’s first nuclear power plant, PGE EJ1, a subsidiary of Polish state-owned energy group Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE), said in a statement. nucnet.org