Ernst Kuipers is the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sports for the Netherlands. He has confirmed that full funding has been allocated for the one billion eight hundred thousand dollars of estimated public investment required for the Pallas research reactor in Petten, the Netherlands.
    Kuipers said last September that his ministry was set to spend one hundred and thirty-seven million dollars per year. He also said that the process of getting approval under European Union state aid rules was also under way.
     Berthold Leeftink is the CEO of NRG-Pallas. NRG and Pallas are being fused together to form a single organization. He said, “This decision is confirmation that the Pallas reactor is of strategic importance for the Netherlands and Europe. It will strengthen the security of medical isotopes supply for nuclear medicine. For patients, it means faster access to innovative (cancer) treatments.”
     Leeftink went on to say that it would help the Netherlands expand its position in the world market for medical isotopes and nuclear research. “It will preserve high-quality knowledge and employment in the North Holland headland”.
     Peter Dijk is the Pallas program director. He called the announcement “tremendous news … with this decision we can proceed with the preparatory works and attract a contractor for realization of the new build”.
     The Pallas research reactor is to be constructed at Petten to replace the existing High Flux Reactor (HFR). The forty-five-megawatt HFR started operating in September of 1960. Since then, its use has largely been shifted from nuclear materials testing to fundamental nuclear research and production of medical radioisotopes. The reactor is operated by NRG on behalf of the European Union’s Joint Research Center. It has been providing about sixty percent of Europe’s and thirty percent of the rest of the world’s medical radioactivity sources for decades. Pallas will be a “tank in pool” type reactor with a thermal power of around fifty-five megawatts. It will be able to deploy its neutron flux more efficiently and effectively than the old HFR.
     In May of this year, work began on the foundations of the research reactor building after the Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection granted a construction license for the research reactor last February.
      NRG-Pallas claims that the reactor “will guarantee large-scale diagnostic and therapeutic isotopes for millions of patients worldwide over the next 60 years”. It goes on to say that around two hundred thousand patient treatments with therapeutic isotopes take place every years in Europe. This number is expected to rise by about eight percent a year. “Targeted and personalized therapies are very promising because they can be used much more precisely than traditional treatments – this innovative approach has fewer harmful side effects, and is more effective and less stressful for the patient”.
     The research reactor will be located at the Energy & Health Campus in Petten. Construct will be able to proceed if the Netherland parliament does not object to the creation of a new state-owned company and if the European Commission approves of the public investment.

     Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, and his inner circle have frequently boasted about the size of Russia’s huge nuclear weapons arsenal since the beginning of the Ukrainian war. World War III fears have exploded once more after Putin ordered thousands of troops from Russia’s nuclear mission force to engage in “combat readiness” exercises.
     The nuclear combat drills were held in the Sverdlovsk region on Thursday. Three thousand Rocket Division soldiers were trained on the “highest degrees of combat readiness.” Video footage of the nuclear mission division’s combat drills were presented on the Russian defense ministry TV channel, Zvdzda.
     The clip showed thousands of soldiers training and Yars thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. These missiles have a huge range of six thousand eight hundred thirty-five miles. The drills covered several elements. These included how to “maneuver on combat patrol routes” in the nearby Ural mountain range. They also trained the thousands of soldiers on how to fight back against attacks from the West on Putin’s devastating arsenal of nuclear weapons.
     The use of such nuclear weapons on Ukraine and the West would be a very drastic step for the Russian President. It would force NATO to immediately retaliate in a scenario that would likely trigger World War III.
     Putin and Russia have increasingly found themselves with their backs against the wall as Ukraine significantly intensifies its counteroffensive. They have been smashing vital Russian infrastructure in a bid to reclaim regions and cities from the enemy.
     This progress has ignited fears that Putin could eventually resort to desperate measures by involving his country’s huge nuclear weapons arsenal. He has been warned repeatedly against making such a drastic move. Even some of his closest allies such as China have cautioned against such action.
     Last week’s meeting between Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un have increased fears that two nuclear armed nations have grown closer.
     Russia and Putin suffered a massive blow after U.S. President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the U.S. will send Ukraine devasting long-range missiles. The U.S. President made the announcement to his Ukrainian counterpart in the latest round of strategic talks between the two leaders. This is a massive win for Ukraine and Zelensky who have been requesting Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, for a long time.
     The ATACMS would give Ukrainian troops the ability to hit targets as far away as one hundred and eighty miles. They will be able to destroy Russian supply lines, railways, and command and control locations far behind the Russian front lines. Defense officials have conceded that the U.S. does not have a large stockpile of excess ATACMS because they are more expensive to provide to Ukraine than traditional artillery.
     The Biden administration has significantly changed its position on what it is going to send to Ukraine. It had previously been accused of being too slow when compared to weapons shipments from other countries.      The White House had initially withheld approval for Ukrainian requests for weapons such as stinger anti-aircraft missiles, Howitzer artillery pieces, anti-ship missiles, and HIMARS systems, before eventually deciding to provide them.
 

     Construction workers stole and sold potentially radioactive scrap metal from the area around the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant according to the Japanese environmental ministry. The material was taken from a museum being demolished in a special zone about two and a half miles from the nuclear plant in northeast Japan that was destroyed by a tsunami in 2011.
     Residents were allowed to return to the area in 2022 after intense decontamination work. However, the radiation levels can still be above normal, and the Fukushima plant is surrounded by a no-go zone.
     Kei Osada is an official of Japan’s Ministry of the Environment. The ministry was informed of the theft by workers from a joint venture conducting the demolition work in late July of this year. Osada said the ministry is continuing to exchange information with the police. Osada went on to say that the stolen metal may have been used in the frame of the building “which means that it’s unlikely that these metals were exposed to high levels of radiation when the nuclear accident occurred.”
      If radioactivity levels of the metals are high, the metals must go to an interim storage facility or be properly disposed of. If the radioactivity levels of the metals are low, they can be reused. The stolen scrap metals had not been measured for radiation levels, according to Osada. It was reported that the workers sold the scrap metal to companies outside the Fukushima zone for about six thousand dollars.
      It is not exactly clear what volume of metal went missing, where it is now or if it poses a health risk. Japan’s national broadcaster NHK reported over the summer that the police in the Japanese prefecture of Ibaraki which borders Fukushima, had contacted scrap metal companies to ask them to scrutinize their suppliers more carefully as metals thefts surged there. Ibaraki authorities reported that there were over nine hundred incidents last June alone. This is the highest number of metal thefts for any of Japan’s forty seven prefectures.
     Officials in Chiba, east of Tokyo, stated that metal grates along more than twenty miles of roadway had been stolen. This terrified motorists who use the narrow roads with the prospect of falling into an open gutter, especially at night. Maintenance workers with the city of Tsu, in Mie prefecture, west of Tokyo, have started patrolling roadside grates and installing metal clips in an effort to thwart thieves.
    Infrastructure crime may not pay as much as it once did. The World Bank and other sources say that base metal prices have peaked. They will continue to decline through 2024 as global demand falls.
     The March 11, 2011, tsunami caused multiple meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Numerous areas around the plant have been declared safe for residents to return after extensive decontamination work. Only two and two tenths of a percent of the Fukushima prefecture is still covered by no-go orders.
     Japan just began releasing into the Pacific Ocan more than a quarter of a billion gallons of wastewater that had been collected in and around one thousand steel tanks at the site. Plant operator TEPCO says that the released water is safe. The IAEA agrees with TEPCO. However, China has accused Japan of treating the Pacific Ocean like a “sewer”.

     An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team of nuclear experts has just completed a follow-up review of long-term operational safety at the Ascó nuclear power plant in Spain. The team reviewed the plant’s owners and operators’ responses to recommendations and suggestions made during a Safety Aspects of Long-Term Operation (SALTO) mission in 2021.
     A SALTO peer review is a comprehensive safety review that addresses strategy and key elements for the safe long-term operation (LTO) of nuclear power plants. SALTO missions complement IAEA Operational Safety Review Team (OSART) missions. OSART missions are designed as a review of programs and activities essential to operational safety. SALTO peer reviews can be executed at any time during the lifetime of a nuclear power plant. However, according to the IAEA the most suitable time lies within the last ten years of the plant’s originally licensed operating period. SALTO and OSART reviews are undertaken at the request of the IAEA member country in which the review is to take place.
     The Ascó plant consists of two Westinghouse pressurized water reactor units with an installed capacity of about one thousand thirty megawatts. Unit 1 entered commercial operation in 1984. Unit 2 entered commercial operation in 1986. Operator Asociación Nuclear Ascó-Vandellós II (ANAV) plans to extend the operation of both units beyond the initial forty-year lifetime. Unit 1 is currently authorized to continue to operate until 2030. Unit 2 is licensed until 2031. A September 5 to September 8 review was requested by the plant’s operator. The SALTO team focused on aspects essential to the safe LTO of both units. The team reviewsed implementation of recommendations made during the SALTO review mission. It had built upon an initial Pre-SALTO mission in 2019.
     The review team was comprised of four experts from the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Sweden as well as two IAEA staff members. They concluded that twelve of the fourteen recommendations and suggestions made in 2021 have already been resolved by ANAV. Work is being done with an appropriate progression for the complete implementation of the remaining two issues. The first of these is a comprehensive program to confirm the resistance of electrical components to harsh conditions, referred to as the equipment qualification program. The second is a comprehensive strategy for managing the aging of structural elements of electrical cabinets and panels. The IAEA noted that plant management expressed a determination to address the remaining areas of concern and to continue cooperating with the IAEA on LTO.
     Jorge Martínez Casado is the Director of the Ascó plant. He said, “For us this is the last step of the IAEA’s supporting service to ensure safe operation of our reactors in the LTO period. The IAEA SALTO missions, and technical cooperation helped to improve our focus on safe operation. We have worked together with the IAEA for the past five years carrying out three missions and several technical discussions. We appreciate the IAEA’s support of our plant in managing ageing and preparation for safe LTO, and we will continue to improve our processes to further comply with IAEA safety standards.”
     The IAEA team provided a draft report to ANAV and the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN), Spain’s regulatory authority, at the end of the mission. ANAV and CSN will have the opportunity to make factual comments on the draft report. A final report will be provided to ANAV, CSN and the Spanish government within three months.