In my last post, I talked about how the U.S. had been converting uranium for old Soviet warheads into nuclear fuel for U.S. nuclear reactors. There are also other radioactive isotopes that the U.S. is buying from Russia.

          Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) were developed to provide low power reliably for years. They are used in applications where there will be little or no human monitoring. These generators utilize a pellet of a radioactive isotope to provide the heat to generate the power. Plutonium-238 requires the least shielding and has the longest life of the isotopes that have been used in RTGs. All U.S. space exploration has been powered by Pu-238 RTGs. Solar panels are too big and inefficient, nuclear reactors are too big and complicated and there are no chemical batteries that could supply the power needed for space exploration.

          The first satellites launched by the U.S. were powered by plutonium created by the U.S. However, U.S. military plutonium production stopped in 1992 and our supply of Pu-238 is rapidly dwindling. The Russians shut down their military production of Pu-239 in 2010. They are currently the only country that is still producing plutonium isotopes for industrial purposes. The most recent satellites launched by the U.S. are powered by Russian plutonium.

          The U.S. has been buying Russian plutonium for years to power satellites but in 2009, after Russia wanted to renegotiate the contract and raise the price, the U.S. stopped purchasing from Russia. The situation at NASA is getting desperate. Space missions have already been cancelled because of a shortage of Pu-238. NASA currently has only sixteen kilograms of Pu-238 which it says is sufficient for the rest of this decade. That seems unlikely because a single satellite launched in 2006 needed eleven kilograms of Pu-238. In addition, U.S. military satellites also require Pu-238. Pu-238 has a half-life of about ninety years so if there are old stockpiles sitting around, they have already loss some of their energy.  Without new sources of Pu-238, all future U.S. space missions may have to be cancelled.

           NASA is forbidden from making its own Pu-238 so it is dependent on U.S. government programs for future production. It is estimated that the program will cost about a hundred million dollars. In 2012, only ten million dollars were spent. The Advanced Test Reactor near Idaho Falls, ID and the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee will be used to create about two kilograms of plutonium annual starting in 2017 if things proceed on schedule. Considering that a single satellite can require over ten kilograms of plutonium, that does not seem to be enough plutonium production to support the U.S. space program in the future.

           The production of isotopes for industrials purposes is critical for the technologies of the twenty-first century. The United States is falling behind in the production of isotopes and really needs to focus money and resources on developing internal isotope production. If this is not done soon, then the U.S. will be at the mercy of other producers who will be able to charge whatever the market will bear. The U.S. will have to buy foreign produced isotopes or do without them.

Water 6,700 times more radioactive than the legal limit spills from Fukushima water tank. worldnews.nbcnews.com

Steam has been observed on 5 of previous 6 days at Fukushima Unit 3 reactor site. enenews.com

The government shutdown prompted this week by the failure of Congress to pass a fiscal year 2014 budget has kept employees home across the federal workforce, although the people charged with ensuring the safety of America’s nuclear stockpile and civilian reactors will remain on duty. nuclearstreet.com

Bangladesh has formally begun work on its first nuclear power plant. nuclearstreet.com

Ambient office = .108 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .117 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .110 microsieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Top Foods =  .097 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .099 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .085 microsieverts per hour

          Yesterday, I posted an entry about costing electricity generated by nuclear reactors in the United States. In the entry, I mentioned that the U.S. and Russia had an agreement to decommission old Soviet nuclear warhead. Today I am going to drill down into the subject of the Russian source of U.S. nuclear fuel.

           In 1993, the U.S. and Russia signed the HEU-LEU agreement which is also known as the Megatons to Megawatts Program. HEU stands for highly enriched uranium which is used to create nuclear warheads. It consists of uranium in which the natural one percent level of U-235 has been raised ninety percent. LEU is low enriched uranium which is suitable for fuel in nuclear reactors. The natural one percent level of U-235 has been raised to four percent. The agreement meant that five hundred tons of HEU from twenty thousand nuclear warheads would be downblended with natural uranium to make LEU for nuclear fuel. The HEU-LEU agreement ended in 2013.  

           The nuclear fuel from Soviet nuclear weapons over the past twenty years has supplied about forty percent of the fuel for the one hundred and four U.S. nuclear reactors. That represents about eight percent of the electricity generated during that time in the U.S. The Russians supplied HEU was made into U.S. nuclear  fuel below the open international market price for uranium. The U.S. also began converting one hundred seventy five tons of its stockpile of HEU from warheads into nuclear fuel in 1996.  

           The Russians made almost nine billion dollars on the sales of the HEU they inherited from the Soviet Union. The Russians made good use of that money by investing in nuclear research and infrastructure focused on new uranium enrichment technology and nuclear fuel manufacture. Today, the Russians have four advanced gaseous centrifuge enrichment facilities in Siberia and the Ural mountains. This represents about forty percent of the uranium enrichment facilities in the world. The U.S. is the biggest consumer of nuclear fuel in the world.

           The Soviet Union ended HEU production in 1996 when it had accumulated forty four thousand nuclear warheads. The U.S. stopped producing HEU for warheads in 1964 when our stockpiles reached thirty thousand warheads. The U.S. did continue to produce some HEU for submarine nuclear reactors but that ended in 1992. The U.K. and France stopped HEU production in the 1990s. India and Pakistan are still producing HEU for their arsenals. The estimated total world production of HEU since the nuclear age began is about two thousand tons. It at least a third of it has been recycled into nuclear fuel so far. The nuclear armed nations are not going to recycle all their HEU into fuel so there is a limit to how much fuel can be obtained by downblending.

          The United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) which contracts with the Russian company TENEX for nuclear fuel has just signed a new contract for LEU which will start being delivered in 2013. However, this LEU is from the Russian enrichment facilities and will cost considerably more than the fuel made from Soviet HEU. This price increase will have an impact on commercial nuclear power prices in the United States. The USEC has been working on their own enrichment facilities but their equipment is not as advanced as the Russian equipment and, despite huge investments, the USEC facility is behind schedule and racked with problems.

United States Enrichment Corporation logo:

Over 3,000 people mostly of age under 30 are suffering from recurring massive nose bleeding in Japan. facebook.com

Every bluefin tuna tested in the waters off California has shown to be contaminated with radiation that originated in Fukushima. samuel-warde.com

Westinghouse announced a multimillion-dollar contract with Spanish regulators Tuesday to help build an interim storage site for spent fuel and other nuclear waste. nuclearstreet.com

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu accuses Iran’s new president of nuclear deceit. latimes.com

Ambient office = .106 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .081 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .083 microsieverts per hour

Hass avacado from Top Foods =  .096 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .081 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .069 microsieverts per hour 

           The cost of generating electricity is a complex issue. We get electricity from a variety of sources and have to compare apples and oranges as the saying goes. How do you cost electricity from hydro? Aside for maintenance and staff, there is not a fuel cost. On the other hand, when you have oil, coal or natural gas plants, there is a well defined cost for the fuel that you burn. Nuclear power plants also burn fuel, but it is not like an oil plant which has to constantly be fed fuel. Nuclear power plants are loaded with nuclear fuel which powers the plant for eighteen to twenty four months and then the plant has to be shut down and refueled. There are about one hundred operational nuclear power reactors in the United States. With about a two year cycle which can be lengthened if the reactor is shut down for months for repairs and upgrading, that makes the market for nuclear fuel a lot less certain than fossil fuels. There appears to be a three year cycle in nuclear refueling with 2013 at the bottom of the cycle.

           The cost of fuel for nuclear reactors in 2012 was about three quarters of a penny per kilowatt hour. The cost of fuel for a natural gas power plant is about three cents per kilowatt hour.  Last year, thirty U.S. power reactors were shut down for refueling. This year only twenty one will be shut down. That number is about twenty percent below the ten year average for nuclear refueling. Like dominoes falling, this low number of shutdowns will cause a chain of effect in the price of electricity in the U.S. Because there are fewer nuclear reactors being shut down this year, the demand for fossil fuels is going to drop. The futures market for natural gas is already falling. Oil and natural gas have been competing with each other but lower cost nuclear electricity is cheaper than either. Stockpiles of natural gas are increasing as demand falls.

          The United States has been burning plutonium from Russian nuclear warheads for the past eighteen years but that arrangement is ending this year. The Russians are moving aggressively into nuclear fuel production. They have eight breeder reactors going that can produce more nuclear fuel than they burn. However, the cost of new nuclear fuel from the Russians will definitely be higher than the price of nuclear fuel has been in the past of U.S. power reactor operators. In addition, there have been reports that the production of uranium from global mining has reached a peak and will begin to fall. Either there will be a shortage of nuclear fuel and a sharp rise in the price which will make nuclear power generation more expensive or the Russians will begin to control the market and price which could lead to political complications.

Russia’s Rosatom logo:

Extraordinary amount of kids have thyroid cancer in the Fukushima area. enenews.com

A Russian ban on fish and seafood imports from Japan, introduced on April 6 2011 in connection with the accident at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant, will remain in effect in full, the federal veterinary and phytosanitary oversight service Rosselkhoznadzor has reported. voiceofrussia.com

A mass of jellyfish has threatened to clog the water intake at a reactor in Sweden, forcing the plant offline. nuclearstreet.com

The two reactors for the first floating nuclear power plant being built in Russia have been installed in the vessel’s hull, marking a major milestone in the plant’s construction. world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = .091 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .152 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .131 microsieverts per hour

Carrot lettuce from Top Foods =  .093 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .099 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .091 microsieverts per hour

           I have written about small modular nuclear reactors before. There are some in the nuclear industry who feel that these new designs will be the salvation of their business. One idea is to build the reactors in factories and then ship them to the site which would substantially reduce construction costs. The new reactor designs can also be used in countries where the electrical grid would not be able to accept the output of a traditional billion watt nuclear reactor. They are supposed to be safer, more secure and cheaper than the current nuclear power reactors. The U.S. Government has been doling out grants for research and development to private companies from a fund of about four hundred and fifty million dollars and expects to see a commercial version of the small modular reactors on the market by 2020.

           There are other who are not so convinced that these new small reactors can fulfill their promised benefits. The Union of Concerned Scientists recent released a report with the title Small Isn’t Always Beautiful which suggests that the small reactors will not be any safer, more secure or produce electricity more cheaply than the current operating nuclear reactors.

            The currently operating fleet of nuclear power reactors generate gigawatts of electricity because the utilities wanted to take advantage of economies of scale when they were built. It might sound like a good deal to say that a new modular reactor will cost half of what a standard reactor would cost but if the new reactor can only generate one third of the electricity generated by the big reactors, then the buyer does not come out ahead on price.

              Another big concern is that the developers and manufacturers of small modular reactors may cut corners on design and operation in an attempt to reduce the cost of the reactors and make them competitive. Apparently, the developers are also petitioning the NRC to reduce the requirements for staffing of operators and security forces as well as emergency planning. The report also points out that the negotiations between the new reactor vendors and the NRC over regulations is being held in private on the claim that proprietary information is being discussed at the meetings. Obviously, if the regulations are weakened and the “private” designs are cutting corners, these reactors will not be safer and more secure that the currently operating reactors.

            Supporters of the new reactor designs point to the efficiency and economy of producing components on a factory production line. Critics point out that there are issues of quality control on a production line and that if there is a design flaw in the components being produced , all the reactors being produced in the same factory will have the same flaw.

            The UCS report concludes that they support the design of new reactors if the designers are careful and do not cut corners to reduce the price of their product. The report also calls on the Federal government to hold to the current NRC standards and exercise thorough oversight on the design, certification and operation of any new reactor type.

This is the logo of the organization that issued the report mentioned in the article above: