What can we learn from America’s historic response to a nuclear crisis? Deseret.com

Biden administration fears North Korea building up to a new nuclear test, but hampered by lack of intelligence cnn.com

License renewal sought for Comanche Peak world-nuclear-news.org

CNL invites academia to join CNRI program world-nuclear-news.org

 

 

 

 

 

Ambient office = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 110 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 91 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 113 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 101 nanosieverts per hour

     KBR is a U.S. based company that provides full life-cycle professional services, project delivery and technologies. It was recently awarded a contract to support the U.K. Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) for development of a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). The NWS is part of the U.K.’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The facility is expected to create more than four thousand jobs for the local host community.
     The three-year agreement calls for KBR to deliver expert project, program and portfolio support to NWS. KBR will coordinate work across the GDF program of work within NWS. This includes project management, communication and community engagement support, technical design, and digital and transformation strategy development.
     KBR said that the new contract with NWS will leverage its “decades of experience and growing domain knowledge of the nuclear energy sector, including the deep technical expertise provided by Frazer-Nash Consultancy, a wholly-owned KBR subsidiary”.
     Paul Kahn is the president of KBR’s Government Solutions International business. He said, “This work underlines our commitment to an ever-growing and increasingly important area of national critical infrastructure, It will leverage KBR’s expanding capabilities in the UK, and it aligns with our mission to deliver innovative solutions that help our customers accomplish their most critical business objectives with safety and sustainability at the core.”
     A GDF comprises a network of highly engineered underground vaults and tunnels. It is constructed to permanently dispose of higher activity radioactive waste so that no harmful levels of radiation ever reaches the surface environment. Other countries, including Finland, Sweden, France, Canada and the U.S., are also pursuing such projects.
     According to a new report (GDF – Creating Jobs & Skills: A First Look) issued by NWS, more than four thousand jobs will be created during the time required for siting and constructing a deep underground facility for the disposal of higher-level radioactive waste. The report lays out how the multi-billion-pound program is expected to create thousands of skilled, well-paid jobs for over a century.
     The NWS report states that “This highly engineered facility will be one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the UK and will provide a major investment for the local host community and its economy. Work on a GDF will carry on for about 175 years, generating an expected average of 2000 jobs in any given year. During this time, it could provide significant additional investment and create thousands of extra jobs through increased business opportunities and the development of new or improved infrastructure and facilities across the region.”
     The report also said that employment will be generated at the facility itself and in the supply chain. It will attract further investment in the local area of the site. Most of the jobs that are created during construction and operation of the facility could and should be locally based.
     Tom Greatrex is the CEO of the Nuclear Industry Association. He said, “Countries like Sweden and Finland, where GDFs are progressing, are already seeing the benefits, with significant investment and jobs already created, so we know what the UK can expect. It will also develop and strengthen the UK’s proud legacy of world-class engineering and science.”
     The U.K. search for a suitable repository site is a nationwide process based on community consent. It includes detailed investigations over a number of years to ensure that a GDF can be constructed safely and securely.  Community Partnerships have formed in Mid Copeland, South Copeland, and Allerdale in Cumbria, and Theddlethorpe in Lincolnshire. They are engaging in a dialogue with local people to ensure that they have access to information about what hosting a GDF might mean.

Ambient office = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Central Market = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 107 nanosieverts per hour

Australian Army chief warns Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat must be taken ‘very seriously’ abc.net.au

Ukraine news – live: Russia preparing society for nuclear weapons use, Zelensky says

IAEA breaks ground on new laboratory block world-nucleawr-news.org

Australia Should Work Closely With U.S. to Master Nuclear Submarine Building, Congressmen Say news.usni.org

 

     Moltex Energy Limited subsidiary MoltexFLEX has announced the launch of its FLEX molten salt reactor. Through flexible operation and the use of thermal storage technology, the FLEX can support intermittent renewable energy through its rapid responsiveness to changes in demand.
     A MoltexFLEX representative said, “This advanced nuclear technology has the flexibility of gas-fired power stations, but it generates electricity at a lower cost, and without carbon emissions.”
     The FLEX reactor has no moving parts. It is simple in both design and operation. The FLEX can respond to changes in energy demand. It can automatically enter an idle state or return to full power. This makes it an ideal compliment to wind and solar power. Conventional nuclear power reactors are not able to easily and quickly change their output.
     According to MoltexFLEX, the cost of electricity generated by the FLEX reactor is comparable to the cost of wind generated electricity. This cost is roughly forty-four dollars per megawatt. This low cost is achieved by a unique, patented system which uses two molten salts. One of the salts acts as a fuel and the other circulates as a coolant. This permits the heat from the reactor to be extracted through natural convection, without the need for pumps.
     The FLEX reactor is small and modular. This allows the components to be factory-produced and readily transported. This, in turn, increases the speed of construction and minimizes overall cost. The FLEX reactor is passively safe, so it does not require engineered, redundant, active safety systems.
     Once it is online, the FLEX reactor can be operated with the same skill sets and equipment used in a fossil fuel plant. The FLEX reactor has no moving parts and can be fueled to operate for twenty years at a time. This means that there is very little operator input and very low ongoing costs.
      Each FLEX reactor delivers forty megawatts of thermal energy at thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. This heat is stored in MoltexFLEX’s GridReserve thermal storage tanks. The FLEX reactor can deliver three times the power when renewables alone cannot meet the market need for electricity.
     During longer periods of renewable generation, the FLEX reactor can just move passively into idle mode. This produces just enough heat to keep the reactor at operating temperature.
     MoltexFLEX estimates that it will take just twenty-four months to construct a five hundred megawatt power plant. The company hopes to have its first reactor operational by 2029.
     David Landon is the CEO for MoltexFLEX. He said, “We recognized the need for an energy supply that can support renewables when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow. In the FLEX reactor, we have a solution for consumers and countries alike. The FLEX reactor provides the safety net of affordable domestic energy but is versatile enough for applications ranging from decarbonizing heavy industry to powering cargo ships.”
     The FLEX reactor is the version of Moltex Energy’s stable salt reactor technology that is moderated by thermal neutrons. The same technology is shared with MoltexFLEX’s sister company, Moltex Energy Canada Inc. This company is developing a fast neutron version of the stable salt reactor.
     In May of 2021, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission completed the first phase of the pre-licensing vendor design review for Moltex Energy’s three-hundred-megawatt Stable Salt Reactor which is called Wasteburner (SSR-W 300) small modular reactor. The SSR-W is a molten salt reactor that uses nuclear waste as fuel. This company aims to deploy its first such reactor at the Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick by the early 2030s.

Jordan hosts regional workshop on nuclear safety, security arabnews.com

UK warns Russia of consequences for any nuclear weapon use reuters.com

Kremlin prefers ‘balance’ after Putin ally suggests using nuclear bomb in Ukraine reuters.com

Boss of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant released after “illegal detention” cbsnews.com

Ambient office = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 114 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 113 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 104 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

     Matthew Memmott is a Brigham Young University professor and nuclear engineering expert. He and his team have designed a new system for safer nuclear energy production. Their new system is a molten salt micro-reactor that may solve many problems with nuclear power.
     Unlike the current light water nuclear power reactors, Memmott’s new reactor stores radioactive materials in a liquid salt instead of fuel rods. He said, “Nuclear energy can be extremely safe and extremely affordable, if done the right way. It’s a very good solution to the energy situation we’re in because there are no emissions or pollution from it.”
      In Memmott’s new reactor, all the radioactive byproducts are dissolved in molten salt. Nuclear waste can emit heat and/or radioactivity for hundreds of thousands of years. This is why finding a safe way to dispose of nuclear waste has been so difficult. But, salt has an extremely high melting temperature of a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Molten salt cools rapidly and will drop below that temperature very quickly. Once the salt crystalized, the radiated heat will be absorbed into the salt and does not remelt it. This negates the danger of a nuclear meltdown.
      Another benefit from the molten salt reactor is that it has the potential to completely eliminate dangerous nuclear waste. The products of the nuclear reactions are safely contained in the salt. There is no need to store them elsewhere. Many of these products are valuable. They can be removed from the salt and sold.
     Molybdenum-99 is an extremely expensive element used in medical imaging procedures and scans. It can be extracted from molten salt. The U.S. currently purchases all of its Molybdenum-99 from the Netherlands. Extraction from the new reactor would make it more accessible and affordable. Cobalt-60, gold, platinum, neodymium and many other useful elements can also be removed from the salt. These extractions could potentially eliminate nuclear waste completely. Memmott said, “As we pulled out valuable elements, we found we could also remove oxygen and hydrogen. Through this process, we can make the salt fully clean again and reuse it. We can recycle the salt indefinitely.”
    A typical commercial nuclear power reactor requires about one square mile to operate to reduce radiation risk. The core alone is thirty feet by thirty feet. Memmott’s reactor is four feet by seven feet. The new reactor can generate about a megawatt which could power around a thousand homes. Everything needed to run this reactor is designed to fit onto a forty-foot truck bed. This means that this reactor can make power accessible to even remote places.
     Other members of Memmott’s team include re BYU professors Troy Munro, Stella Nickerson, John Harb, Yuri Hovanski, Ben Frandsen, and BYU graduate student Andrew Larsen.
      Memmott remarked that “For the last 60 years, people have had the gut reaction that nuclear is bad, it’s big, it’s dangerous. Those perceptions are based on potential issues for generation one but having the molten salt reactor is the equivalent of having a silicon chip. We can have smaller, safer, cheaper reactors and get rid of those problems.”

Vistra Moves to Extend Operation of 2,400-Megawatt Comanche Peak Nuclear Plant prnewswire.com

Westinghouse and Ansaldo Nucleare collaborate on next-gen LFR nuclear plant world-nuclear-news.org

Russia’s Nuclear Threat Must Be Taken Seriously usnews.com

‘Unproven’ small nuclear reactors would raise Australia’s energy costs and delay renewable uptake, report says theguardian.com