Part One of Two parts

       In the year 2000, the U.S. Federal Government computer networks were attacked by foreign entities. In reaction to these intrusions, Congress created the Federal Computer Incident Response Center (FedCIRC) at the General Services Administration. The FedCIRC was designed to be central hub to coordinate and share information between federal organizations.

       When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created in 2002, the duties of the FedCIRC were transferred to the DHS. In 2003, FedCIRC changed its name to U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team or US-Cert. Its mission was enlarged to provide boundary protection for the federal civilian executive computers and leadership in the field of cybersecurity. With the passage of time, US-CERT has become a trusted agency and reliable source of information about cyberspace for the Federal government, state and local governments, private businesses and international organizations.

       One of the main things that US-CERT does is to receive reports of computer security incidents within the U.S. Federal Government. An incident is considered to be a violation or imminent threat of violation of computer security policies, acceptable use policies or standard security practices. After collecting incident reports, studies are conducted, and conclusions reported. The US-CERT publishes Weekly Vulnerability Bulletins, Technical Alerts, Current Activities entries and Tips.

       Yesterday, US-CERT published an alert that said that Russia had hacked into the computers of many government agencies and U.S. companies in the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors – in summary, they have infiltrated a lot of our critical national infrastructure. The Russians have been doing this for years including the massive attack on our 2016 elections, but we have done little to respond or stop these intrusions to date.

      Our national electrical grid is system of systems. It is managed by thousands of people, computers and manual control systems. Data is supplied by thousands of sensors connected by a variety of communication networks. Over the next twenty years, especially with the much-publicized Internet of Things, there will be a great deal more data traveling over the national grid than electricity.

       MIT recently published report in which they said that it will be impossible to completely protect the national grid from cyberattacks or accidents. In view of this reality, MIT said that we need to have mechanisms in place to quickly respond to intrusions and quickly restore the security and operation of the grid. These mechanisms should be spread to every entity connected to critical grid infrastructure.

       The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Working Group has identified one hundred and thirty-seven types of interconnections between different systems in the national grid. It is assumed that eventually every smart meter and most sensors and critical pieces of equipment will be equipped with their own communication modules. Components and software will be supplied from hundreds of different companies. The North American Electric Reliability AInfrastructure Protection standards covering the national power system, but no organization presently has responsibility for overseeing grid cybersecurity across all aspects of our energy systems.

Please read Part 2

 

       Every year, an estimated two thousand six hundred tons of spent nuclear fuel is generated by nuclear power reactors in the U.S. Roughly fifty thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel are currently stored in cooling pools at reactor sites around the U.S. Many cooling pools are reaching their limit. Another fifteen thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel is currently stored in dry casks onsite and at interim storage facilities. Without a permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel in the U.S., a great deal more of the spent nuclear fuel in the cooling pools will have to be moved to dry cask storage. While some of these casks will be stored onsite, many more will be moved to interim facilities. This will require the transport of thousands of metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from reactor sites to interim storage facilities.

       Sandia National Laboratories recently completed with they are calling a nuclear “triathlon” to improve the safety of spent nuclear fuel transport. This exercise consisted of moving a simulated cargo of spent nuclear fuel rods over fourteen thousand miles. The purpose of the “triathlon” was to monitor the stresses and jolts that such a fuel experiences while being transported. Transportation of spent nuclear fuel involves packaging the fuel rods with strict adherence to regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In addition to regulatory satisfaction, the public must be confident that every precaution has been taken in transporting spent nuclear fuel.

       For over thirty years, spent nuclear fuel has been stored in what are referred to as Type B casks. Each of these casks weights about one hundred and twenty-five tons. Each can carry twenty-four tons of spent nuclear fuel. The spent nuclear fuel is in the form of rectangular bundles (called assemblies) of long, thin zirconium rods. The rods contain pellets of either enriched uranium or plutonium. The casks are forged from solid steel and have steel hatches with gaskets. The special reinforced pins that attach the hatches can survive one hundred tons of force. When the casks are loaded and sealed, they are so strong that they could survive the impact of a one-thousand-ton diesel locomotive going one hundred miles an hour.

       The fuel rods themselves are very fragile. After being in a hot, high radiation environment for a few years, the zirconium shells, called cladding, are very brittle. If extreme care is not use when handling the fuel rod assemblies, they may shatter.

        SNL partnered with Spanish and South Korean partners. They also worked with Pacific Northwest and Argonne national laboratories. A new dry cask was loaded with three dummy fuel rod assemblies. The rods were made of lead and contained lead pellets. The casks are designed to carry up to thirty-two complete fuel rod assemblies but the test cast only had three fuel rod assemblies. Additional space was take up by accelerometers and strain gauges to measure everything that each of the fuel rod assemblies experienced during their trip. A custom monitoring system tracked shocks and vibrations that the cask and the fuel rod assemblies were subjected to during the trip.

       SNL has conducted other tests in the past including simulating the transport of fuel rod assemblies over city streets and rough roads. They also simulated a journey by rail of fuel rod assemblies.

        The new test or triathlon used a Spanish dry cask which traveled by heavy truck over highways in Spain two hundred and fifty miles to a seaport. The cask was then transferred to a barge where it traveled a thousand miles along the coast to Belgium. Next it was placed on a cargo ship and spent two weeks traveling four thousand miles to Baltimore in the U.S. After arriving in the U.S., the cask was put on flatbed railway car. It then traveled over two thousand miles through twelve states before it arrived in at the Transportation Technology Center Inc facility near Pueblo, Colorado. At the Center, the cask engaged in some experiments on a fifty-mile test track. Finally, the cask reversed its route back to Spain. Over eight terabytes of data were acquired which will require at least a year to analyze.

The leaders of France and India reiterated their intention to start work by the end of this year on what could become the world’s largest nuclear power plant, advancing talks that have continued for nearly a decade. Bloomberg.com

The company charged with decommissioning a shuttered nuclear power plant in Genoa has reported elevated levels of radioactive material in groundwater. Lacrossetribune.com

SUNA said Water Resources, Irrigation, and Electricity Minister Moataz Mousa, who left Khartoum on Monday, would meet the head of Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom. Africanews.com

The negotiations to pass a fiscal 2018 spending bill this month include a quiet effort by a Republican lawmaker from Illinois to restart plans to store the nation’s nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Washingtonexaminer.com

 

 

 

 

       Many of the operating nuclear power reactors in the world were build in 1970s. Considering that nuclear reactors are licensed for forty years, many reactors have reached the end of their initial license and have applied for and been granted extension of up to twenty additional years of licensed operation. However, some reactors have reached the end of their practical lifespan and, despite being licensed to keep operating, are being shut down because they are too expensive to maintain and operate. When a nuclear reactor is permanently shut down, it must be decommissioned. This means that all spent nuclear fuel must be eventually disposed of and the entire nuclear reactor facility must taken apart and disposed of. Nuclear decommissioning will be a boom business for decades.

      Before decommissioning a nuclear power plant, the cooling system must be decontaminated. While a nuclear power plant is operating, oxidic coatings form in the pipes and other components of the cooling system. As the oxide coating forms, radionuclides are incorporated.

        The Siempelkamp group is an international technology company based in Germany that has three divisions. The first division is the machine and plant engineering division which supplies whole factories to the wood panel industry, the metal forming industry and the composite and rubber industry. The second division is the foundry division which can cast objects up to three hundred and fifty U.S. tons. The third division is the NIS Ingenieurgesellschaft mbH division which supplies components and services to the nuclear industry.

      Siempelkamp NIS Ingenieurgesellschaft has developed what they refer to as “advanced system decontamination by oxidizing chemistry” (ASDOC) to dissolve the oxide layer and remove the radionuclides. Siempelkamp created their ASDOC solution from common and readily available industrial chemical. After initial tests of the solution revealed problems, Siempelkamp added an acid to the solution to stabilize the pH and prevent a precipitate from forming in the solution. Without a stable pH, corrosion can occur in some metals. The final result is the Siempelkamp’s ASDOC_D-MOD procedure.

      The Siempelkamp decontaminating solution is injected directly into the existing cooling system and the radionuclides are removed from the cleaning solution with ion exchangers. The use of existing access to the cooling system components means that external equipment does not have to be brought in and erected in a radioactive environment. The dangers of leakage of fluids is reduced by the use of the existing cooling system components to add the cleaning solution.

        The Siempelkamp’s ASDOC_D-MOD procedure reduces the radioactive contamination in a reactor cooling system by eighty five percent. This makes it safer to dismantle the cooling system. The metal in the cooling system pipes and components are decontaminated sufficiently for the metals to be melted and recycled.

          A spokesperson for Siempelkamp said: “The development of the procedure was very complex and a highly technical and scientific challenge. We suffered some setbacks until we arrived at the point where we could successfully demonstrate the practical use of it, which to date we have done twice.”

       Siempelkamp successfully applied their ASDOC_D-MOD procedure in the decontamination of Unit A at the Biblis nuclear power plant in Hesse, Germany in 2016 and in the decontamination of Unit B at the same plant in 2018.

The Taiwanese nuclear power regulator, the Atomic Energy Council, has approved the restart of the 951 MWe Kuosheng 2 reactor that has been idled since a fire in May 2016, putting the final decision in the bureaucratic process with the parliament. Nuclearstreet.com

A government panel in Japan has weighed in on the underground ice wall that forms a 1-mile perimeter surrounding the destroyed Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors and buildings, calling the wall’s ability to stop water from seeping into the area only partly successful. Nuclearstreet.com

Westinghouse Electric Company and its eight European consortium partners today announced the successful completion of an EU funded project targeted at diversifying the nuclear fuel supply to VVER-440 reactors in Europe. Nuclearstreet.com

Hundreds gathered at an anti-nuclear rally in Taiwan on Sunday (Mar 11) to demand the government keep its pledge to abolish the use of atomic energy by 2025. Channelnewsasia.com

 

 

 

 

       The U.S. nuclear weapons program is handled by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE). The NNSA is responsible for the design and production of nuclear weapons for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Pentagon could be considered as the ultimate “customer” for the NNSA’s nuclear product. Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry is responsible for the oversight of a large group of national laboratories that are in charge of research and development for nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

      The President of the U.S. is pushing for a massive update program for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In order to accomplish this, the NNSA at the DoE and the Pentagon must work closely together. Unfortunately, according to a report just published by the DoE, there are five major areas of concern they have with the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

       The number one area of concern consists of the fact that there is a total lack of “lack of sustained national leadership focus and priority.” The number two concern is the “blurred accountability” between the DoE and NNSA over the mission of the nuclear program. The number three concern is the “lack of proven management practices, including a dysfunctional relationship between line managers and mission-support staffs.” The number four concern is “dysfunctional relationships” between the government and its management and site operators. And, finally, the number five concern is “Insufficient collaboration between DOE/NNSA and Department of Defense weapons customers, resulting in misunderstanding, distrust, and frustration.”

       Perry is scheduled to testify this coming Wednesday before the House Appropriations Committee about the fiscal 2019 DoE budget. He will be faced with intense questioning about the U.S. nuclear program and specifically whether he is aware of the report on the five big concerns with the program. The nuclear weapons portion of the proposed DoE budget consumes about half of the 2019 DoE budget.

       The new report is the second in a series of reports generated over the past four years aimed at fixing what is considered by many to be a broken and dysfunction nuclear weapons program. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) began its review of the nuclear weapons program inn 2014 when it first mentioned the five big concerns. Now the (NASEM) is tasked with the problem of dealing with the five concerns.

       The U.S. just published its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). This is a once every eight years review of the U.S. policy with respect to the development and use of nuclear weapons. Because the NPR discusses strategic issues, the authors of the new DoE report believe that this is the right time to deal with their concerns because they find that many of the problems that they are focused on are caused by what they consider to be “lack of strategic thought.”

       The study says, “With the release of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review and the appointment of a new NNSA administrator, NNSA is faced with an excellent opportunity — and challenge — to move from a tactical to a strategic approach for executing the critical mission of the enterprise. The emphasis in both cases must be on creating a strategic vision that is clearly connected to mission. This is not a call to develop new processes and reports per se, which should follow only once clear and well-rationalized direction has been set.”