Bohunice V1 reactors fully dismantled world-nuclear-news.org

‘The clock is ticking’: PG&E exploring possibility of keeping Diablo Canyo open to boost reliability: CEO utilitydive.com

First new Vogtle unit closing in on October fuel load world-nuclear-news.org

Spanish Police Arrest 2 Nuclear Power Workers for Cyberattacking the Radiation Alert System thehackernews.com

 

 

 

Ambient office = 78 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 101 nanosieverts per hour

Heirloom tomato from Central Market = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     I have written before about the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP was constructed to store radioactive waste and irradiated materials from the development of nuclear warheads.
     There has been a serious departure from the original intention of the designers of WIPP that has led to a threat to human health and the environment. The underground storage rooms at the WIPP were supposed to be sealed with foot thick concrete and steel doors when they were full. As the years passed, the operators decided that just a half inch steel door would be sufficient. Ultimately, they stopped sealing filled rooms with anything. As well as internal problems, there have been serious mistakes made by the laboratories sending waste to the WIPP that have also threatened human health and the environment. Los Alamos National Laboratory starting using a new absorbent in barrels of liquid waste which had not been sufficiently tested. This resulted in the generation of flammable gas and an explosion at the WIPP.
     The management of the WIPP was going to be transferred to a new company recently after that company won the bid earlier this month. However, a company which bid on the contract but lost decided to challenge the choice of contractor. This will cause a delay of at three months in the actual transfer of the management of the site.
      Tularosa Basin Range Services (TBRS) is a subsidiary of Virginia-based Bechtel National. It was awarded the management contract valued at $3 billion by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). The initial contract is for a four-year term with six one-year extension options. If the contract with TBRS is finalized, the company will replace the Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP) which is a joint venture between Amentum and BWXT. NWP has been operating WIPP since 2012.
     These activities involve transporting transuranic (TRU) nuclear waste from DoE sites around the U.S. and disposing of the waste in an underground salt mine. The contractor may also be tasked with mining new storage rooms for the waste, completing infrastructure projects and maintaining the repository underground and aboveground infrastructures.
     Upon the award of the contract to TBRS, the DoE initiated a ten-day protest period to allow the losing bidders to contest the choice of TBRS. On July 26th, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) filed a notice that National Tru Solutions (NTS) had chosen to dispute the new contract award. This gave the GAO until November 3rd to issue a ruling before the finalization of any contract for WIPP management. The GAO has thirty days to file a report on the protest. The protestor has ten days after that to issue its comments on the GAO report. The GAO deadline for issuing its final decision on the dispute is sixty days after the protestor’s comments are due. As the contracts are being finalized and the dispute considered, NWP will continue to be the primary contractor at WIPP, overseeing day to day operation at the repository.
Please read Part 2 next

Brunswick Nuclear Plant Exercise Evaluates Emergency Response ncdps.gov

Japan PM to unveil fund for youth to learn about A-bomb horrors English.kyodonews.net

Last Energy Advances Plans to Develop 10 Small Modular Nuclear Reactors in Poland, Strengthen Poland’s Long-Term Energy Security finance.yahoo.com

DOE formalizes test reactor decision world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 82 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Ginger root from Central Market = 132 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 127 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 123 nanosieverts per hour

Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kherson ‘gathering momentum’; UK advisor warns of nuclear risk cnbc.com

Bahraini official: Iran proxies ‘nothing new,’ nuclear deal ‘critical’ to combat ‘common threat’ foxnews.com

Ex-SpaceX Engineer Builds Martian Nuclear Reactor To Tackle Earth’s Power Crisis autoevolution.com

UK’s Gemini waste packages re-enter service world-nuclear-news.org

Ambient office = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 124 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water =123 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water =60 nanosieverts per hour

Iran will keep IAEA cameras turned off until nuclear deal is restored reuters.com

Kim threatens to use nuclear weapons in any clash with the U.S. and South Korea npr.org

Nuclear threat higher now than in Cold War, British official warns washingtonpost.com

Preparations under way for refurb of Chinese Candus world-nuclear-news.org

 

 

 

 

 

Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Broccoli from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 107 nanosieverts per hour

Part 3 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 2 first)
     Mark Herrmann is the LLNL’s deputy director for fundamental weapons physics. He said that the LLNL gets a lot of feedback from more than one hundred scientists involved in the NIF program. However, he emphasized that the long-term goal is to achieve yields that are at least two orders of magnitude above those that were managed last August. He added, “As long as we’re doing good, careful, systematic scientific study, that’s what’s most important from my perspective.”
      Riccardo Betti is the head of the laser-fusion center at the University of Rochester in New York. He provides independent assessments of the experiments at the NIF. He said that the failure of the NIF to replicate last August’s breakthrough experiment was to be expected because the lasers are now operating at the “ignition cliff”. He added that “If you are on one side of the cliff, you can get a lot of fusion output, and if you are on the other side of the cliff, you get very little.” He also said that the LLNL does not yet have the experimental accuracy to predict on which side a given experiment will land.
     Questions about fundamental science and the ability to accurately make predictions were at the center of a classified review of the NIF’s contributions to the U.S. nuclear weapons program were provided to the NNSA last year by JASON. JASON is an independent scientific panel that advises the U.S. government. In an unclassified executive summary of the report that was obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the panel acknowledged the abilities of the NIF. However, they stated that the facility is unlikely to achieve “predictable, reproducible ignition” in the next several years.
     The report was completed and released to NNSA four months before the August shot. Hurricane and others have argued that the report was ill-timed and too pessimistic.
      The JASON panelists advocated a fundamental rethinking of the program in their report. That discussion has already begun in the broader laser-fusion community. Scientists at the NIF and elsewhere are examining ways to reconfigure the current lasers. Others are pushing for entirely new designs that could provide more practical avenues towards fusion energy.
     As far as Hurricane is concerned, he is in no hurry. He claims that the device is now operating in a crucial fusion regime that will be useful for understanding the reliability of nuclear weapons.
     Hurricane said, “Once we get more energy and more predictability, you have kind of skipped over the interesting physics. If understanding and being better scientists and stewards [of the nuclear stockpile] is your objective, this is the regime to work in.”
      There are many different approaches to nuclear fusion. Various private companies and governments are spending billions of dollars on experiments with a variety of designs for prototypes of commercial fusion reactors. Inertial confinement research at the NIF is a long shot. Magnetic confinement found in tokamaks and stellarators is more likely to be the basis of future commercial fusion reactors.