The European Power Reactor (EPR) is a third-generation pressurized water reactor design. It was mainly developed by Framatome, a French company that was part of Areva, EDF, a French utility and Siemens in Germany.
         Construction was begun by Areva in 2005 on the first EPR called Olkiluoto 3 in Finland. It was supposed to go into operation in 2010. The Olkiluoto 3 has taken about three times as long to construct as originally estimated. The original estimate of about three and a half billion dollars has also tripled. The Olkiluoto 3 project has suffered from legal battles over compensation claims.
        Areva’s second EPR project is being built at the Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant in France and is referred to as Flamanville 3. Construction of that EPR began in 2007 and it was supposed to be completed in 2012 at an estimated cost of three billion eight hundred million dollars. It is still being built and the estimated cost has swelled to twelve billion six hundred million dollars.
       It is still not clear exactly when these two EPR projects will be completed and put into operation. A recent report on these two projects said that it was possible the both could begin delivering power to the grid by the end of 2019.
         Officially, Olkiluoto 3 is scheduled to begin delivering full power in January of 2020. Fuel will be loaded into the reactor in June of 2019 and it will be connected to the grid in October at which point it will be considered to be in operation.
        The Flamanville 3 reactor is almost completed but will probably not come online in 2019. Fuel will be loaded in the fall of 2019 but power will not start flowing before 2020. In July of this year, many of the welds of the Flamanville 3 reactor were found to be substandard and had to be redone. It will be connected to the grid in first quarter of 2020 with commercial power production scheduled for the second quarter.
        After signing contracts for Olkiluoto 3 and Flamanville 3, Areva sold two EPRs to China for installation at a nuclear power plant in Taishan, Guangdong. There were problems during the construction with both of the Chinese reactors but Taishan 1 began sending electricity to the grid in June of 2018. It started commercial operation in December of 2018. Taishan 2 is scheduled to be operational this year.
       All of the problems with schedule delays and cost overruns have caused analysts to question the integrity and viability of the EPR design. Attempts have been made to sell EPRs to the U.K., India and Saudi Arabia. More EPRs will probably have to be constructed in France to improve the reputation of the EPR.
       Edward Kee is with the Nuclear Economics Consulting Group in Washington, D.C. He said that prospects for more EPR sales are “uncertain, at best”. He went on to say, “The EPR appears to be difficult to build and may not be an attractive technology compared with other offerings. The French government seems to have little interest in or capacity to enter into the broader government-to-government and project funding arrangements that Russian and Chinese nuclear vendors are offering.”

Ambient office  = 66 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Beefsteak tomato from Central Market = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 129 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 122 nanosieverts per hour

        One of the major problems with achieving commercial nuclear fusion is the fact that when magnetic confinement is used to squeeze a plasma, instabilities can develop which interfere with the production of fusion. This is a problem is universal in all tokamaks which are donut-shaped experimental fusion reactors. The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) is working on a way to control the worst of these plasma instabilities.
       The PPPL is working on what are called “tearing modes.” These are instabilities in plasma that create magnetic islands. These islands are like bubbles in a fluid. They can grow and cause disruptions that halt the fusion reaction and can actually damage the tokamaks where they occur.
       Fusion researchers in the 1980s discovered that they could inject radio-frequency (RF) waves to cause a current that would stabilize tearing modes and reduce the chance of fusion disrupting events. This is referred to as “RF current drive.” They did not know then was that small changes in the temperature of the plasma could enhance the stabilization of the plasma beyond a specific threshold of power. The PPPL is exploiting this process to improve the stability of plasmas.
       Tiny fluctuations in temperature influences the intensity of the current and how much of that current enters the magnetic islands. The interaction of the fluctuations and the amount of energy that winds up in the magnetic bubbles interact in a complex non-linear fashion.  The interaction between the fluctuations and the energy deposited in the islands can stabilize the plasma. This stabilization is less sensitive to misalignments of the injection current. The result of this process is called “RF current condensation” which refers to the increase in RF energy inside the magnetic islands that keeps the islands from growing and disrupting the plasma reaction.
       Allan Reiman is a theoretical physicist at PPPL and lead author of the paper reporting their work. He said, “The power deposition is greatly increased. When the power deposition in the island exceeds a threshold level, there is a jump in the temperature that greatly strengthens the stabilizing effect. This allows the stabilization of larger islands than previously thought possible.”
       Nat Fisch is associate director for academic affairs at PPPL and coauthor of the report. He published a paper in the 1970s which revealed how RF waves could be used to drive currents into tokamak plasmas. Reiman published a paper in 1983 that predicted that RF current drive could be utilized to stabilize tearing modes. He said, “The use of RF current drive for stabilization of tearing modes was perhaps even more crucial to the tokamak program than using these currents to confine the plasma. Hence Reiman’s 1983 paper essentially launched experimental campaigns on tokamaks worldwide to stabilize tearing modes. Significantly, in addition to predicting the stabilization of tearing modes by RF, the 1983 paper also pointed out the importance of the temperature perturbation in magnetic islands.”
        He went on to say, “We basically went back 35 years to carry that thought just a bit further by exploring the fascinating physics and larger implications of positive feedback. It turned out that these implications might now be very important to the tokamak program today.”

Ambient office  = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 59 nanosieverts per hour

Yellow bell pepper  from Central Market = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 116 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 111 nanosieverts per hour

       I have been blogging lately about Soviet and Russian nuclear weapons. Today, I am going to continue that theme with a post about Russian nuclear submarines.
       In the 1980s, the Soviet Union began development of a fourth-generation submarine referred to as the Borei-class which would replace the aging and obsolete Delta and Typhoon classes of submarines. The Soviet Union fell but the Russian government which followed remained committed to the Borei-class of nuclear submarines which they believed would be strong leg of their nuclear triad for decades to come.
       The Russians considered modernizing their Typhoon-class submarine fleet but abandoned the idea because of the expense. The Borei-class was based on a completely new design concept. The Russians intended the Borei-class to be smaller and lighter than the Typhoon-class while carrying more powerful weapons. At twenty-four thousand tons, the Borei-class submarines are about half of the weight of a Typhoon submarine. They are thinner than the Typhoons and can travel a little faster.
       The weapons carried by the Borei submarines are definitely more powerful than the Typhoon submarines payload. The RSM-56 “Bulava” is ballistic missile with a five hundred and fifty kiloton nuclear warhead. It has a special inertial navigation system. They were specifically designed for the Borei-class. The Typhoon-class carried R-39 Rif ballistic missiles with one hundred kiloton nuclear warheads.
       By 2006, the Russian navy had three Borei submarines in active service. In 2008, the Russian Navy announced that rest of the seven Borei submarines planned for construction by 2024 would be based on a revised design. This new Borei II design would have less noise, advanced communications technology and improved crew living quarters. There had been speculation that the Borei II’s would have twenty Bulava tube-launchers but now it appears that all of the Borei II submarines will have the same sixteen tube-launchers as the current Borei submarines in service.
       The new Borei class submarines are definitely an improvement on the old Delta and Typhoon classes. However, they do have a serious problem that may ultimately interfere with their planned construction and deployment. They are very expensive. They are about half the two-billion dollar cost of the old U.S. Ohio-class submarines but Russia has a much smaller defense budget than the U.S. And, in addition, the Russians  are involved in several major projects that are competing for their defense dollars.
        The estimates being used concerning the cost of a Borei submarine do not include the Borei II improvements. And, they do not include the costs of research and development for the Borei-class submarines. The development of the Bulava missiles was fraught with serious problems and delays.
        Military sources inside of Russia say that the next set of improvements planned for the Borei III version has been cancelled because of cost. There are also reports that the Russian Navy has halted work on the last two Borei submarine orders that were scheduled for delivery in the mid-2020s.
       Making the situation even more complex is the fact that the Russian Navy is also working on the Yasen-class submarines. The cost of the first Yasen submarine was one and a half billion dollars, more than fifty percent above the cost of each Borei submarine. The second Yasen submarine is projected to cost three billion dollars.
       Time will tell how the Russians will balance involvement in two separate and expensive submarine projects.

Ambient office  = 92 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hour

Crimini mushroom  from Central Market = 138 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 73 nanosieverts per hour

       The U.S. Department of Energy has just announced that it will award a contract to American Centrifuge Operating LLC (ACO), a subsidiary of Centrus Energy Corporation. The contract is for a demonstration of a method for production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). The DoE said that ACO is the only company able to carry out the requirements of the contract.
       Current nuclear power plants burn low-enriched uranium which contains less than five percent fissile uranium-235. Many of the designs being explored for advanced nuclear reactors require the use of more highly enriched uranium with five to twenty percent uranium-235 enrichment.
      The HALEU Demonstration Program has two primary objectives. The first objective is the creation of a cascade of sixteen AC-100M centrifuges to produce nineteen and three quarters percent HALEU by October 2020. The second objective is to demonstrate that US-origin enrichment technology can produce HALEU. The DoE will be provided with a small amount of HALEU for research and development. The contract is expected to extend from January of 2019 to December of 2020. It includes an option for extension for an additional year.
       The DoE notices says that only U.S.-origin technology can be used to produce HALEU for use in any advanced civilian or defense-related reactor application. The DoE requires that the contractor be both U.S.-owned and U.S.-controlled because of “the sensitive nature regarding access to and operation of US-origin enrichment technology.”
       The AC-100M centrifuge was designed and constructed by ACO. The AC-100M is the only existing uranium enrichment technology that meets the criterion for the DoE contract. ACO and Centrus Energy both satisfy the DoE contract ownership and control criteria. ACO also has a license with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission which will allow it to meet the schedule laid out in the contract. ACO subleases a facility from the DoE at Piketon, Ohio. The facility is specifically designed for uranium enrichment.
       The NRC issued the ACO license for the construction and operation of a uranium enrichment commercial plant at Piketon in 2007. The plant was constructed, and a cascade of centrifuges was operated for three years to demonstrate the long-term reliability of the enrichment technology before commercial operation. Operation of the facility halted in 2016 because ACO was unable to secure funding to move on to commercial operation. 
      Ohio Senator Rob Portman said that the DoE will invest one hundred and fifteen million dollars in the HALEU Program over the next three years. He said that the DoE contract announcement was a “milestone” for the Piketon site. He added that “Getting Piketon back to its full potential benefits the skilled workforce here, the surrounding local economy, and strengthens national energy and defense security.”
      AOC told an interviewer that “If America wants to be competitive in supplying the next generation of nuclear reactors around the world, we need an assured, American source of high-assay, low-enriched uranium to power those reactors. We stand ready to work with the Department [of Energy] to get the proposed project under way as quickly as possible.”    
      At present, there are no facilities in the U.S. that can produce commercial quantities of HALEU. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) has called for the development of national nuclear fuel cycle infrastructure in the U.S. to support the development of advanced reactors. The NEI president said, “DOE’s investment is a significant starting point in the HALEU fuel infrastructure. We appreciate [Energy] Secretary Perry’s attention to this urgent matter and look forward to working with DOE and Congress to ensure the US can compete globally to design and deploy advanced reactor technology.”