Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     EDF is over forty-five billion dollars in debt. It has fallen further into financial difficulty and announced that its 2022 profit would drop by thirty billion dollars because of the problems with its reactors. In addition, there is a government effort to force EDF to provide artificially cheap electricity for business and households.
      Even as EDF is working hard to comply with the demand for accelerated repairs to its reactor fleet, the company cut its 2022 nuclear power production estimate last week. The announcement caused the cost of French and European electricity to jump.
      Efforts to repair corrosion in pipes that cool the cores of four reactors are taking longer that expected. Those reactors will not start until January or February.
      A strike late last month by French nuclear plant workers demanding higher wages to keep up with inflation caused more disruptions to power generation. EDF said it  was already behind in performing required maintenance on several aging reactors because of lockdowns related to the coronavirus. The labor strikes put it even further behind schedule.
     The company’s recent problems began late last year as it starting working through the backlog of needed repairs. The inspections unearthed alarming safety issues at an older-generation nuclear reactor in southwest France called Civaux 1. This involved corrosion and micro-cracks in the systems that cool a reactor’s radioactive core. As EDF investigated its nuclear facilities, it discovered sixteen reactors that faced similar risks and closed them down. This is especially concerning because most of the sixteen reactors are newer generation model.
     Officials suspected that the corrosion resulted from design changes that EDF had made to reactors designed by Westinghouse Electric that EDF had used in its older generation nuclear power plants. Bernard Doroszczuk is the head of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority. He testified to French lawmakers this summer that the modifications, used in later generation reactors, appeared to have caused abnormal corrosion and stress on critical cooling pipes.
     The crisis has caused French nuclear power production to drop to a thirty year low. France is generating less than half of the sixty-one gigawatts that the reactors should be able to produce. (EDF also uses gas, coal and renewable sources to generate electricity.) Even when more reactors are restarted in the coming months, French nuclear output will only be about forty-five gigawatts. This is lower than usual for winter months and will compound the impact of Russian gas cutoff.
     Fabian Ronningen is a senior analyst at Rystad Energy which is an independent consultancy. He said that the situation “increases the risk of supply shortages for the coming winter, with availability standing at record-low levels for this time of the year.” 
     The energy shortfall has turn France into a net importer of electricity instead of the continent’s biggest exporter of electricity. One fourth of Europe’s electricity comes from nuclear power plants in about a dozen countries. France used to produce more than half of the total.
Please read Part 3 next

Finnish nuclear plant full start-up delayed to January argusmedia.com

China’s Moon Base To Be Powered By New Nuclear System: Report ndtv.com

PNRI exec welcomes nuke talks with US, says others can offer tech too gmanetwork.com

Putin launches massive nuclear-powered icebreaker in race to control the Arctic telegraph.co.uk

 

 

 

Ambient office = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 68 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 3 Parts
     Engineers have spread out through nuclear power plants across France in recent months. They are inspecting reactors for signs of wear and tear including cracks and corrosion. Hundreds of expert welders have been recruited to repair any problems they find in cooling circuits. Stress tests of metals in reactors are being conducted to check for any safety problems.
     Europe is bracing for a winter without Russian gas. France is move rapidly to repair a series of problems that have been plaguing its fleet of nuclear power reactors. Currently, twenty-six of its fifty-six reactors are offline for maintenance or repairs after the discovery or cracks and corrosion in some pipes used to cool reactor cores.
     The crisis is threatening the role that France has long played as the biggest producer of nuclear power in Europe. Questions are being raised about how much its nuclear reactor fleet will be able to help bridge Europe’s looming power crunch.
     Électricité de France (EDF) is the state-backed nuclear power company that runs France’s nuclear power industry. Last week it said that it was working on an accelerated schedule to get all but ten of its power reactors back in operation by January. It added that there were no safety risks and that nuclear regulators were monitoring every step. French president Macron’s government has been pressuring the company to improve performance before freezing weather arrives.
     Regis Clement is EDF’s deputy general manager of nuclear production. He said, “We were faced with an unprecedented situation and have gotten past the worst. We are doing our best to play a role in the energy crisis.”
      The problems facing EDF include a fresh outbreak of safety-related incidents combined with unforeseen delays to the company’s repair schedule. They could not be hitting at a worse time. Russian President Putin is withholding energy to punish countries supporting Ukraine. This is pushing Europe to transform how it generates and saves power. Countries are banding together to stock additional power supplies. Major conservation programs are being pushed out.
     Europe’s energy security remains on a thin edge. This has created a sense of urgency in France to get its nuclear power program back on track. President Macron’s government introduced a new measure this month in Parliament to speed up an ambitious plant to build six big power reactors starting in 2028. They are moving to fulfill a pledge he called a French “nuclear renaissance.”
     France pivoted to nuclear power in the 1980s and it boasts the biggest nuclear fleet behind the U.S. France generates seventy percent of its electricity from nuclear energy. It also exports electricity to other countries. That has made France less dependent on Russian gas that neighbors such as Germany.
      However, France’s nuclear power crunch has become so sever that President Macron is preparing to have the government take over control of the remaining sixteen percent of EDF that it does not already own. This will cost about ten billion dollars.
Please read Part 2 next

Ukraine nuclear power plant attacked by Russia, worker tells CBS News, as IAEA warns of “close call” cbsnews.com

Construction begins for El Dabaa unit 2 world-nuclear-news.org

Japan nuclear watchdog considering extending reactor life federalnewsnetwork.com

North Korea’s Kim oversees ICBM test, vows more nuclear weapons reuters.com

Ambient office = 133 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 99 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 107 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 112 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

     Some believe that nuclear energy is a key component of decarbonizing our economy. However, big conventional nuclear power reactors are complex and expensive. In order to make nuclear energy more available and attractive, developers have designed a variety of small modular reactors (SMRs) that have more flexibility and offer lower initial costs. Different types of SMRs with advanced design features are currently under development in the U.S. and around the world.
     Researchers believe that SMRs could be deployed at a variety of scales for locally distributed generation of electricity. SMR have an output of three hundred megawatts or less. This is about one fourth of the one and two tenths’ gigawatts of the conventional pressurized light water nuclear power reactors. The economics and technologies of SMRs have been broadly studied. However, there is less information about their implications with respect to nuclear waste. Take Kyum Kim is a senior nuclear engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) Argonne National Laboratory. He said, “We’ve really just begun to study the nuclear waste attributes of SMRs.”
     Kim and his team from Argonne and DoE’s Idaho National Laboratory recently issued a report that attempts to measure the potential nuclear waste attributes of three different SMR technologies. They used metrics developed through an extensive process during a comprehensive assessment of nuclear fuel cycles published in 2014. Although SMRs are not yet in commercial operation, several companies have collaborated with the DoE to explore different possibilities for SMRs. The three designs studied in the report are all scheduled to be constructed and operational by the end of this decade.
     One type of SMR is called VOYGR. It is being developed by NuScale Power. It is based on a current pressurized water reactor design but has been scaled down and modularized. A second SMR is called Natrium and is being developed by TerraPower. It is sodium cooled and runs on a metallic salt fuel. The third SMR is called the Xe-100 and is being developed by X-energy. It is cooled by helium gas.
     With respect to nuclear waste, each reactor offers both advantages and disadvantage over large light water reactors (LWRs). Kim said, “It’s not correct to say that because these reactors are smaller, they will have more problems proportionally with nuclear waste, just because they have more surface area compared to the core volume. Each reactor has pluses and minuses that depend upon the discharge burnup, the uranium enrichment, the thermal efficiency and other reactor-specific design features.”
     One important factor that influences the amount of nuclear waste produced by a reactor is called burnup. It refers to the amount of thermal energy produced from a certain quantity of nuclear fuel. The Natrium and Xe-100 reactors have significantly higher burnup than LWRs. A higher burnup is correlated with lower nuclear waste production. This is because the fuel is converted more efficiently to energy. These designs also have higher thermal efficiency. This refers to how efficiently the heat produced by the reactor is converted into electricity. The VOYGR pressurized water reactor design has a slightly lower burnup and thermal efficiency than a big conventional pressurized water reactor.
      The spent fuel attributes vary somewhat between the designs. VOYGR is similar to the LWRs. Natrium produces a more concentration waste with a different mixture of long-lived isotopes. Xe-100 produces a lower density but a higher volume of spent fuel.
     Kim said, “All told, when it comes to nuclear waste, SMRs are roughly comparable with conventional pressurized water reactors, with potential benefits and weaknesses depending on which aspects you are trying to design for. Overall, there appear to be no additional major challenges to the management of SMR nuclear wastes compared to the commercial-scale large LWR wastes.”

Pair receive lengthy sentences in nuclear submarine espionage case wvnews.com

Germany Says It Echoes U.S. in Shifting Iran Focus From Nuclear to Rights Issues usnews.com

Officials in Kyiv have been accused by the Russian Foreign Ministry of being the ones really responsible for targeting the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant euroweeklynews.com

No federal aid to restart Michigan nuclear power plant apnews.com

 

 

Ambient office = 113 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Avocado from Central Market = 109 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

IAEA concern over conflicting instructions for Zaporizhzhia staff world-nuclear-news.org

Simulator For Underwater Decommissioning Developed nuclearstreet.com

Rolls-Royce Chosen As Provider For West Cumbria SMR nuclearstreet.com

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