I have blogged before about the U.S. interest in selling nuclear power reactors to Saudi Arabia. One of the problems with such sales is the fact that some technologies that can be used to support nuclear power reactors can also be used to help construct nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia has been reluctant to commit to assurances that it will not use U.S. nuclear technology on any weapons projects. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia has said that Saudi Arabia will construction nuclear weapons if Iran restarts its nuclear weapons program. This has impeded progress in U.S. nuclear technology transfer to Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration has pushed strongly for sales to Saudi Arabia while some members of Congress have pushed back against such sales.
        It has just been announced that Rick Perry, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, has approved six secret authorization that will permit companies to sell nuclear power technology to Saudi Arabia. These approvals are known as Part 810 Authorizations. They will allow nuclear companies to conduct preliminary work on the construction of nuclear power reactors in Saudi Arabia before contracts are signed but they will not be able to actually ship nuclear power components to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) reported that it was the nuclear companies that requested that the Trump administration keep the approvals secret. Previously such Part 810 Authorizations had been made available to the public on the Energy Department’s website.
        The NNSA said “In this case, each of the companies which received a specific authorization for (Saudi Arabia) have provided us written request that their authorization be withheld from public release.” A spokesperson for the U.S. DoE said that the requests all went through a multi-agency approval process and that one of the reasons for the secrecy was because the authorizations contained proprietary information.
        There has been a great deal of opposition to the sale of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia because there are fears that it may lead to a nuclear weapons race in the Middle East. Following the slaying of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi Arabia, there has been an international backlash against Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince. This has had a strong influence on the discussion of nuclear technology sales to Saudi Arabia.
       Representative Brad Sherman asked Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, to release the names of the companies which had received the Part 810 Authorizations. Pompeo said that he would “look into it.” Sherman accused the Trump administration of trying to exclude Congress from involvement in the discussions for sale of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
        A few weeks ago, Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives claimed in a report that they had warned the White House that it might be breaking the law as it worked with a nuclear industry group called IP3 in support of a multibillion dollar plan to build nuclear power reactors in some Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia. The report said that the warnings were ignored.
        On Wednesday of this week, the U.S. General Accountability Office received a request from a Republican Senator and a Democratic Senator for a probe of the Trump administration’s negotiations over a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.

Ambient office  =  96 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Bartlett pear from Central Market = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1)
       Following the NRC notification, all transfers of waste canisters were stopped until the situation at San Onofre could be investigated and step taken to prevent any repeat. SCE decided that the problem occurred because of inadequate training, oversight and supervision. Since August 3rd, SCE has put many new checks and balances in place to prevent repeats of the event under investigation.
      Cameras will be aimed at the canisters and transfers will be monitored in real time. Alarms have been installed to trigger if there is a sudden major change in the weight begin held by the canister-lowering machinery. Two people were monitoring the transfers before the incident but that will be increased to eight. Two of those observers will be above the operation in lift baskets to get a different perspective.
       SCE workers at all levels have received much more rigorous training in the process of loading canisters into the Holtec Hi-Storm UMAX system and supervising the process. The design of the canisters has been changed since the workers were trained. The new canisters are bigger than the canisters that the workers originally trained on, so they are a tighter fit in the vault and harder to get into place.
       There have been personnel changes throughout the whole chain of command from the top to the low levels workers. There are sixteen more managers for oversight and six are dedicated exclusively to monitoring Holtec activities. SCE says that their management will be much more “intrusively engaged” in keeping the contractors under observation.
        During the investigation, it was found that the steel canisters being loaded into the Holtec system were likely scratched as they were lowered into the vault because of the change of design and the tighter fit. SCE and Holtec say that the scratches pose no problem in the “short term.” This is troubling because it implies that there may be problems in the long term and these canisters are supposed to safely store spent nuclear fuel for decades.
     The NRC is concerned about the possible long term impact that those scratches may have. They were also critical of SCE management in their apparent failure to plan adequately given the complexity and risks of such canister loading. Some activists monitoring the canister loading are worried that scratches could lead to cracks which could compromise the integrity of the canisters in the long term and post a safety threat.
     Donna Gilmore is a retired systems analyst who is the director of SanOnofreSafety.org. She said, “The question is, ‘How bad are the gouges?’ And since there is no method to find or repair the gouges, this is an unacceptable situation. This system must be recalled. It’s clearly a lemon.”
      An inspection-and-maintenance program for loading the canisters is being developed and it is scheduled for completion in 2020. Mini-robots with cameras that can crawl down into the vaults and examine the canister closely may be used. The loading of the canisters should never have been done without such a plan already available.
      So here we have a company decommissioning a nuclear power plant displaying incompetence, failing to follow nuclear regulations, failure to inform the NRC of regulation violations, inadequate training, and other bad behavior. This is a perfect illustration of why I say that current corporate culture is simply not up to the task of safely and competently constructing and operating nuclear power plants.

Ambient office  =  90 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 96 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Roma tomato from Central Market = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 59 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
       One of the common themes of this blog is that although the design of nuclear power plants and equipment to handle nuclear materials may be superb, in the end, the people operating the equipment must be capable and conscientious. The problem with commercial nuclear power operations is that the prime directive of a corporation is to make money.
       A pair of professors in a prestigious business school wrote an article for a journal in which they said that it was the duty of the officers of a corporation to increase the wealth of the shareholders and if they had an opportunity to do that by breaking the law, they were obligated to break the law. If they were caught later, then the fines resulting from illegal activity should just be included in operating expenses for the corporation. This is very bad aspect for U.S. corporations and may be disastrous for operators of a nuclear power plant.
       I have written before about the problems that ultimately shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant in southern California. When a problem with a steam generator prompted Southern California Edison (SCE), the operators of San Onofre, to purchase new generators from Hitachi Heavy Industries, SCE made some design changes that were criticized by the contractor as problematic. Nonetheless, SCE insisted on the changes and failed to tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as was required by regulation.
       When difficulties arose in the installation and operation of the new steam generators, the ultimate result was that the plant was permanently closed. Now it is being decommissioned which includes the disposal of the spent nuclear fuel from the reactor cooling pool. The plan is to transfer it to dry casks provided by Holtec, one of the leaders in the dry cask industry.
       The transfer of the spent nuclear fuel began early last year but has been halted by the NRC because of violation of regulations. In February of 2018, workers discovered a loose four-inch stainless steel bolt inside on of the canisters they were preparing. An investigation found that Holtec had altered the design of the canister without informing the NRC as they were obligated to do. On July 22 of 2018, workers had problems aligning and centering a canister that was being lowered into the storage vault. Ultimately, the canister was successfully lowered into the vault, but the event was not entered into the “corrective action program” which is intended to let the plant operators learn from their mistakes. On August 3rd of 2018, there was another very serious problem with aligning a canister for insertion into the vault. A fifty-ton waste filled canister held by slings was being lowered into the eighteen-foot deep vault. The canister got stuck on a “shield ring” near the top of the vault and the supporting slings went slack but that fact was not noticed by the workers. The canister sat there without being supported by anything but the shield ring for an hour. SCE should have reported the incident to the NRC immediately on the Friday when the event occurred but did not actual notify the NRC until the following Monday.
Please read Part 2

Ambient office  =  60 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Pineapple from Central Market = 71 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 94 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

        The possible smuggling of nuclear materials across national borders for a dirty bomb is a great concern to agencies fighting terrorism. Less than four percent of the containers being shipped into the United States are inspected. Any improvement in techniques for checking shipping containers for nuclear materials will improve the chances of stopping such materials from coming into the U.S.
        Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have announced the development of a new method for detecting radioactive materials. An infrared laser beam is used to induce a phenomenon called “electron avalanche breakdown” near the suspected material. This technique can detect shielded radioactive materials at a greater distance that current methods.
        It is hoped that with advancements in this technology, the new method could be scaled up to scan trucks and shipping containers at U.S. ports of entry. The proof-of-concept work done on this new process was published n Science Advances in March of this year.
        Robert Schwartz is a physics graduate student at the UMD and is the lead author of the paper. He said, “Traditional detection methods rely on a radioactive decay particle interacting directly with a detector. All of these methods decline in sensitivity with distance. The benefit of our method is that it is inherently a remote process. With further development, it could detect radioactive material inside a box from the length of a football field.”
       When radioactive materials decay, they emit particles which remove the electrons from atmospheric gas atoms. This process is referred to as ionization. These free electrons are quickly captured by oxygen atoms. The researchers found that when an infrared laser beam is sent into the area of ionization, the captured electrons are torn from the oxygen atoms. This triggers an avalanche or rapid increase of free electrons. This increased volume of free electrons is fairly easy to detect.
       Howard Milchberg is a professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at UMD and senior author of the paper that was just published. He said, “An electron avalanche can start with a single seed electron. Because the air near a radioactive source has some charged oxygen molecules—even outside a shielded container—it provides an opportunity to seed an avalanche by applying an intense laser field. Electron avalanches were among the first demonstrations after the laser was invented. This is not a new phenomenon, but we are the first to use an infrared laser to seed an avalanche breakdown for radiation detection. The laser’s infrared wavelength is important, because it can easily and specifically detach electrons from oxygen ions.”
       The application of an intense infrared laser beam results in the free electrons oscillating and colliding with nearby atoms. As these collisions become more frequent and energetic, more electrons are torn from atoms increasing the avalanche. Milchberg explains that, “A simple view of avalanche is that after one collision, you have two electrons. Then, this happens again and you have four. Then the whole thing cascades until you have full ionization, where all atoms in the system have at least one electron removed.”
        As the atmospheric gases in the laser’s beam begin to ionize, it has an effect on the reflected infrared laser light known as backscattering. This reflected light is captured by a nearby detector. The reflected light can be analyzed to determine when the air began to ionize and how long the air took to fully ionize. The timing of the ionization process or electron avalanche indicated how many seed electrons started the whole process. This can show the amount of radioactive material that triggered the avalanche.
        David Woodbury is a physics graduate student at UMD and a co-author on the research paper. He said, “We’re using a relatively weak probe laser pulse, but it’s ‘chirped,’ meaning that shorter wavelengths pass though the avalanching air first, then longer ones. By measuring the spectral components of the infrared light that passes through versus what is reflected, we can determine when ionization starts and reaches its endpoint.”
       The researchers say that their new method is very specific and sensitive to the detection of radioactive material. Radioactive material alone will not trigger an avalanche without the infrared laser beam. A laser pulse by itself without the presence of radioactive materials will not trigger an avalanche.
       Swartz said, “Right now we’re working with a lab-sized laser, but in 10 years or so, engineers may be able to fit a system like this inside a van. Anywhere you can park a truck, you can deploy such a system. This would provide a very powerful tool to monitor activity at ports.”