The biggest concern at Fukushima is the huge source of radioactivity from molten fuel and spent fuel pools winding up in ocean because the health of the entire Northern Pacific is at stake. cbc.ca

Fukushima plume of radioactivity is headed to Southern Hemisphere and will enter the South Pacific and Indian Ocean after 2 decades. Enenews.com

Scientists study using low-dose radiation to cure cancers that have spread through the body. philly.com

South Korea and the United States draw up a North Korean nuclear deterrence plan. globalpost.com

Ambient office = .089 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .133 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .122 microsieverts per hour

Mango from Costco =  .095 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .067 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .055 microsieverts per hour

The UK has opened a new £20 million ($31 million) facility that aims to deliver world-leading nuclear research and transfer that knowledge to industry. world-nuclear-news.org

Two nuclear plants in Oswego County, N.Y. are receiving additional oversight from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission following too many unplanned shutdowns and power changes. centralny.ynn.com

French nuclear company AREVA signs a services contract with the American utility PSEG Nuclear. yournuclearnews.com

The European Union and the U.S. are moving closer to resuming international talks with Iran on its disputed nuclear program, buoyed by recent changes in Tehran’s leadership, officials said Friday. news.yahoo.com

Ambient office = .087 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .100 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .066 microsieverts per hour

Red seedles grapes from Costco =  .099 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .121 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .104 microsieverts per hour

          Molten salt reactors have been explored in the past. They were originally seen as a possible power source for airplanes because they could be small enough for that application. In one type of molten salt reactor, fuel in the form of uranium tetraflouride is mixed with other chemicals and the heat generated by nuclear reactions turns the mixture molten. A graphite core serves the moderator. The molten salt circulates through a heat exchanger to create steam to power turbines. While the reactor operates at high temperature, it also operates at low pressure which reduces the complexity of the reactor and the wear on the components. Unfortunately, the power density of the molten salt reactors is much lower than the light water reactors that currently supply commercial nuclear power. Although the U.S. and other countries including Russia and China have explored molten salt reactors they have never caught on for any major commercial application. The old designs for molten salt reactors are simply not cost competitive for power generation.

          Leslie Dawan has invented a new type of molten salt reactor and has started a company called Transatomic Power to develop the new design. In her design, with new materials and a new shape, she has managed to increase the power density thirty times to the point where her smaller molten salt reactors can compete in the market place with existing reactor designs. In her design, there is a plug made of the salt mixture that is cooled to keep it solid. If the power to the reactor fails, the plug melts and the molten salt fuel pours out into a big chamber under the reactor. The mixture spreads out and the nuclear fuel is no longer compact enough to react so the mixture cools and solidifies posing no threat of a meltdown. An additional benefit of her molten salt reactor is that it can burn nuclear waste. One ton of nuclear waste can be consumed in a year to generate power and only about eight pounds of waste will remain at the end of the year. This could help with the disposal of nuclear waste.

         At this point in time, the design only exists as a document, a series of computer simulations and some patent filings. Dawan needs about four million dollars to runs a series of experiments to validate her design. After that, if she wants to sell reactors in the U.S., it will take a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to go through the certification and licensing process of the Nuclear Regulator Commission. Dawan has decided that her design is a better choice for carbon dioxide reduction than sustainable sources such as wind and solar. Unfortunately, climate change is accelerating and waiting ten years to even start selling her reactors may be too late to have a meaningful impact. She has decided that she might have better luck taking her design to China where they could move faster with implementation. While I admire her enthusiasm and engineering skills, she might be a bit naïve when it comes to the Chinese nuclear industry. As I outlined in my article yesterday, there are some serious problems in China that could interfere with her good intentions.   

There is increasing international concern about the removal of the spent fuel from the pool atop the Unit 4 reactor building at Fukushima.  Enenews.com

South Korea bans all fishery products from 8 Japan prefectures. Enenews.com

South California Edison Publishes 3,200 Pages of Documentation on Faulty SONGS Steam Generators purchased from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for San Onofre. nuclearstreet.com

Uranium Energy Corporation will reduce output at its Palangana mine in Texas while it focuses efforts on developing its nearby Goliad and Burke Hollow projects. The move is in response to low uranium prices. world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = .079 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .102 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .100 microsieverts per hour

Packaged ham slice from Costco =  .103 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .075 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .058 microsieverts per hour

          Yesterday, I posted an article about the nuclear reactor building boom going on in China. They currently have twenty seven reactors operating, twenty eight under construction, fifty more reactor projects scheduled and a hundred more being planned. This is a very ambitious program and I mentioned some concerns that I had about their reactor buildingplans.

          Many different factors played into the inflating of the Chinese real estate bubble in the last decade. Banks loans became easier to get, people wanted to own homes, newly wealthy Chinese were looking for lucrative investments, and the government wanted to stimulate economic growth and pumped money into development projects. The end result was the creation of entire empty cities full of expensive condos that were mainly seen as investments by the owners. One of the big problems is that people either don’t want to move to the new cities or they cannot afford the price of the housing. The bubble has been deflating for the past year and some of the big projects were simply abandoned uncompleted.  What will happen if reactors get half built and then resources dry up? Worse yet, what will happen if reactors get built and fueled but operations become too expensive? Decommissioning is very expensive and they may just have to put up fences if the money isn’t there.

        China is currently ranked eightieth in Transparency international’s Corruption Perceptions Index. This index includes “graft, bribery, embezzlement, backdoor deals, nepotism, patronage, and statistical falsification.”  Consider for a moment how every one of these could lead to problems with the nuclear reactor program. With the enormous amount of capital that will be expended in reactor construction, does anyone serious believe that there will not be bribes to government officials to look the other way as substandard materials are used on poorly constructed reactors. And, as the reactors are operated, does anyone believe that proper safety regulations will be followed when a bribe can get the regulators to ignore infractions? The Chinese public believes that there are more corrupt government officials than honest ones. Unprecedented levels of corruptions that came with the shift to a market economy are considered to a major threat to China’s future economic and political stability. Reactors construction sites might become a target for enraged citizens fed up the corruption.

         China is faced with a mounting water crisis. Frequent and severe shortages along with disasterous flooding threaten China. Forty four percent of China’s population and fifty eight percent of its cultivated land are in the north and northeastern provinces but this area has only fourteen percent of the country’s water resources. Reactors will be built in the most populated areas and they require enormous amounts of water to cool. Operations of some reactors may be suspended because there is not enough water to cool them. In addition, global warming is increasing the temperature of rivers, lakes and the oceans. Reactors in the U.S. have had to be shut down because the water they used for cooling became too hot to use. In addition, reactors can be vulnerable to floods as has been shown at Fukushima. Water could definitely become a major problem for Chinese reactors.

            China has announced that it wants to have a closed fuel cycle which means that it will be mining its own uranium. China’s record on mining toxic metals is horrible. For every one of the hundreds of thousands of tons rare earths extracted from the Bayan Obu mine near Beijing, about four hundred thousand cubic feet of waste gas (including dust, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid), twenty five hundred cubic feet of acidic waste water and a ton of radioactive waste residue are also produced.  Some rivers in China are so polluted with toxic chemicals from mining and industrial operations that all the fish in them have died.  Is it likely that China will be any more careful with the toxic waste from uranium mining that it has been with the waste from other mining operations? I will leave aside the question of disposing of spent nuclear fuel because I think I have made my point. If all the planned reactors get built and go into operation, big areas of China will become a radioactive wasteland from uranium mining, reactor accidents and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

Bayan Obu open pit rare earths mine near Beijing:

Errors Cast Doubt on Japan’s Cleanup of Nuclear Accident Site. nytimes.com

Conflicting reports have left many baffled, and now nuclear experts have highlighted that no one really knows the true severity of the radioactive water leaks at Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. huffingtonpost.co.uk

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman warned any military intervention in Syria would create a nuclear disaster.  Washington.cbslocal.com

Iran transfers nuclear talks to foreign ministry from security council. washingtonpost.com

Ambient office = .085 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .114 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .072 microsieverts per hour

Vine ripened tomato from Costco =  .107 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .095 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .077 microsieverts per hour