What’s at stake with Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and how does it compare to Chernobyl? cbsnews.com

Iran and Russia furious with Europe over nuclear talks jpost.com

IAEA’s call for safety and security protection zone at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant theelders.org

North Korea forces citizens to attend lectures about new nuclear force law rfa.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ambient office = 140 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 142 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 140 nanosieverts per hour

Watermelon from Central Market = 141 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 58 nanosieverts per hour

Seoul lawmakers call for resolution condemning North Korea’s new nuclear law nknews.org

Restart of damaged Swedish nuclear reactor delayed until 2023 energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com

Agencies to hold mock train crash with simulated nuclear fuel abc17news.com

South Carolina nuclear fuel plant can keep running for 40 years southcarolinapublicradio.org

Ambient office = 138 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Myers lemon from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Howard Stern shares theory that Trump retained nuclear intel in order to sell to Russia foxnews.com

John Bolton says threat of Russia using nuclear weapon ‘closer’ than before thehill.com

China’s reaction to North Korea’s nuclear weapons first-use law tipped to be muted scmp.com

AFNWC leader retires, shares thoughts on successful career afnwc.af.mil

 

Ambient office = 146 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Corn from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 81 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     One major question with respect to nuclear waste storage is how long it would be necessary to make the nuclear waste retrievable. Muller says, “So for how long it’s required is a bit of a grey zone for mined repositories, most people think it is 50 years that it needs to be retrievable, but it is usually just the amount of time that the repository is open, so it is very possible that for borehole disposal it will only need to be retrievable for a couple of years as opposed to 50 years, and we think retrievability will be pretty straightforward for 20 years.”
     Muller added that there are ways to have retrievability for up to one hundred years “if you really want it, but I think the question is how long do you really want it for, and I think five to twenty years is probably going to be sufficient”.
     Muller was an environmentalist and climate change expert and academic before starting Deep Isolation. She said that the main motivation for creating the company was her concern “that the things we are talking about doing when it comes to climate change aren’t enough … if we really want to stop climate change, we have to do bigger things and that led to my interest in nuclear power. I think the industry has done a very good job of explaining why that shouldn’t be a barrier to the future of nuclear and yet the public has not really been receptive to talking about how safe it is now and how little waste there is compared to other industries. And so it seemed to me, let’s just solve the nuclear waste problem. It can’t be that hard … it’s the responsible thing to do anyway.”
     The drilling of the borehole would take a few months and the emplacement would also take a few months. Muller said that this means “we are not talking about 20 to 30 years to build a repository. Because we’re using smaller holes, we don’t need people underground. We don’t need air underground. This means that we can go deeper than is possible in mined repositories.”
     Muller estimates that once there is a customer and a location it might take three years to get through the licensing process. She hopes that will “get easier and faster for second locations and third locations … so we’re really looking three to five years to waste disposal from the time that we have a government and location that are interested in disposal.”
     Muller estimates that a new nuclear power plant would have a lifetime of about fifty years. In order to dispose of nuclear waste produced by such a plant, at least fifteen boreholes would be required. A key part of establishing a nuclear repository is meeting with communities in areas which have nuclear power plants. One of the challenges faced by past efforts to choose sites for permanent disposal of nuclear waste has been locating a disposal site which would be acceptable to nearby communities.
      Muller said that their research and public engagement has found that people object to nuclear waste being brought to their community if a national waste repository had been established near their community. However, if the community already has some nuclear waste, they tend to be more open to the idea of disposing of the waste at the place where it is already located.
     Muller said that their system is modular so it can be put at the reactor site itself “which I think solves one of the biggest problems governments have faced with disposal –  the reluctance to bring nuclear waste into someone’s backyard”.
     Last month, Deep Isolation signed a Memorandum of Agreement with technical and engineering services provider Amentum. The two companies agreed to cooperate on the commercialization of its radioactive waste disposal technology around the globe. The companies said that initial targets for joint work include countries in Europe and the Pacific that “represent a combined addressable market for geologic disposal of spent fuel and high-level waste worth more than USD30 billion”.

Beloyarsk BN-800 fast reactor running on MOX world-nuclear-news.org

Sweden’s Ringhals 4 nuclear outage extends into winter months reuters.com

Roadmap report reflects US-Poland nuclear cooperation progress world-nuclear-news.org

Iran-Russia relationship looms large over nuclear talks, Ukraine war foxnews.com

Ambient office = 117 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 78 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     Elizabeth Muller is the CEO and co-founder of Deep Isolation. She says that her company expects to have a first deep borehole nuclear waste disposal site operating within “five to ten years.” Muller recently gave an interview in which she said that a combination of the need to tackle climate change and the geopolitics of energy means “more and more countries are eager to move forward with new nuclear power” with an “increasing urgency for solving the waste problem”.
     Muller said that the traditional fifty to one hundred year estimated time frame for the permanent disposal of nuclear waste is changing. She went on to say that a number of locations around the world are “now interested in seeing nuclear waste disposal happen in that five-to-ten-year time frame. So that’s who we’re working with … I’m very confident that within the next decade we will have a disposal site that is up and running. I’m targeting five years for first disposal somewhere in the world”.
      Deep Isolation’s system is to use directional borehole disposal of nuclear waste. They will build on some of the “incredible innovations that have taken place in the past 20 to 30 years in the drilling industry where it’s now inexpensive and routine to go down three quarters of a kilometer in depth and to have horizontal sections two, three or four kilometers in length”.
       Deep Isolation is based in Berkeley, California. Their solution for the management of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste involves emplacing it in corrosion-resistant canisters in deep horizontal drillholes. The technology utilizes existing directional drilling techniques. The waste can be retrieved during a determined time frame, or it can be permanently secured. In 2019, Deep Isolation demonstrated its concept when it successfully placed and then retrieved a prototype nuclear waste canister hundreds of meters underground via a borehole.
      The horizontal storage means that the nuclear waste can be disposed of in suitable geological conditions in many different places. This includes being close to or at proposed sites where the waste is produced. Muller says, “If you’re looking at only 500 meters of depth, it’s harder to find a good location. If you’re looking at 1000 meers, it’s significantly easier to find a good location, and if you’re looking at 1.5 kilometers or even deeper then I think most locations would probably qualify. We will, of course have to do a detailed analysis and study and testing to make sure … it meets the requirements for safety and environmental protection.”
     Muller goes on to say that there is a further advantage to a horizontal storage system. “You can get more storage space for a given depth. You can follow a particular rock formation. There’s no direct potential pathway through the vertical shaft to the surface and it’s also easier to retrieve waste. You can retrieve waste potentially in vertical holes as well, but you need a structure because waste is so dense that it can compact and crush any structure that it’s in whereas when you’re horizontal, you don’t have that problem, it’s just laid out end-to-end.”
Please read Part 2 next