Part 1 of 2 Parts

         In 1983, the Washington State Legislature passed a bipartisan bill that banned preparations for nuclear war attacks. The bill specifically banned planning for the evacuation and relocations of citizens in major cities. The Reagan administration had been cranking up the tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The reason given for an evacuation planning ban for Seattle and other big cities in Washington was that the Washington legislature feared that planning for evacuation could anger the Soviet leadership.

       In the early 1980s, a Reagan administration official said publicly that you could protect your family from nuclear attack by digging a hole in your yard, putting a door over it and shoveling dirt over the door. This is, of course, ridiculous. Reagan was a warmonger in the early Eighties and worked hard to reignite the Cold War which had been fading. He and his administration were all too ready to think the unthinkable and decide that the U.S. could “win” a nuclear war. Easy enough for him to say when he knows that if a war started, he would be whisked away to a deep bunker with its own water, air and power to ride out a nuclear attack.

       I happen to know something about evacuation planning for the City of Seattle, Washington. I was asked by the Physicians for Social Responsibility to analyze a rough sketch of an evacuation plan for Seattle in the year before the legislature passed the ban. I found a study on evacuation possibilities for the city of Denver which shares some similarities to Seattle. Like Denver, Seattle only has a handful of major routes out of the city. Evacuees would have limited choices to go north, east and south. Bodies of water block prevent evacuation to the west.

       The Washington State Department of Transportation has detailed analyses of traffic flows. There are always problems on highways from accidents to stalled vehicles that have run out of gas. These problems increase as the number of vehicles on a highway increases. They can estimate the number of vehicles that would be trying to flee Seattle in case of an evacuation order. Running the numbers, it is likely that within twelve hours of an evacuation order, every major route out of Seattle would be blocked by accidents and stalled vehicles. Emergency vehicles would have great difficulty getting to and clearing such blocks.

        The preliminary Seattle evacuation plan said that Seattle should be evacuated in three days. Considering traffic problems that would be inevitable, it would probably take more like three weeks to evacuate Seattle. There would be enormous logistical problems to take care of millions of people out on the highways unable to move their cars. They would be even more exposed to the effects of a nuclear attack than if they had stayed home.

        While the explanation given for the evacuation planning ban is that it might upset the Soviets and make an attack more likely, the truth of the matter is the simple fact that it would be impossible to empty Seattle in a few days if there was concern over a possible nuclear attack. It was just not a practical idea. And thinking that it was practical could have contribute to the aggressive attitude of President Reagan and his administration.

       The Washington Governor and Legislature basically told the Reagan administration that they would not cooperate in his effort to make the survival of nuclear war more “thinkable.” The Reagan administration retaliated against the Washington Governor and Legislature by saying that if an evacuation plan was not drawn up for Seattle, they would cut some of the federal funds that were supposed to go to the State of Washington. The Washington Governor and Legislature were unimpressed and basically told the Reagan administration to keep their money. The bills authorizing the ban on evacuation planning were passed and it became the law in Washington.

Please read Part 2

Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry has introduced a joint resolution in support of a congressional bill that would limit the president’s authority to use nuclear weapons against enemies. Dailyrepublic.com

Cooperation on nuclear safety with Germany and Belgium existed on paper, but was doubtful in practice, a recent report has found. The probe did not focus on the nuclear plants’ safety but on their crisis management. Dw.com

 The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new plans Thursday to partially remove toxic waste from a decades-old nuclear site in Missouri, a decision that highlights Administrator Scott Pruitt’s vow to make Superfunds a 2018 priority. Thehill.com

Twenty years after the passing of the deadline for the US federal government to start accepting nuclear waste for disposal, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has called on lawmakers to support funding for the review process for the Yucca Mountain repository license application. World-nuclear-news.org

 

 

        I have blogged before about the use of thorium as a nuclear fuel for power reactors. Usually it is in reference to the creation of special reactors designed specifically for thorium. Today I am going to talk about work being done to create a mixture of thorium and plutonium that would be suitable to power existing light water reactors. Plutonium has to be added because thorium is not a fissile element and pure thorium cannot create and sustain a chain reaction.

       The thorium/plutonium fuel is also known as a mixed oxide fuel or MOX. MOX fuels comprised of uranium and plutonium are used in a particular type of commercial power reactor. Thorium fuels and reactors have been researched for decades but there is a great deal of current interest in MOX fuels made with thorium that can be used in current power reactors.

        Thorium-MOX fuels have some advantages over uranium-MOX fuels. Their thermal conductivity and melting point are higher which makes them safer to use. They also do not produce any new plutonium as they operate so that makes them attractive to groups working on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. The plutonium they consume can reduce stockpiles of military plutonium.

        According to a study in Norway, “the coolant void reactivity of the thorium-plutonium fuel is negative for plutonium contents up to 21%, whereas the transition lies at 16% for MOX fuel.” “Thorium-plutonium fuel seems to offer some advantages over MOX fuel with regards to control rod and boron worths, CVR and plutonium consumption.”

       The Thorium Irradiation Consortium was started in 2011. It is led by Thor Energy and has IFE, Westinghouse, Finland’s Fortum, the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory, the EU Joint Research Centre at Karlsruhe and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute as consortium partners.

         The TIC is testing thorium fuel in the form of pellets. The pellets are made from a dense thorium oxide ceramic matrix which contains about ten percent finely blended plutonium oxide to act as a “fissile driver.”  The thorium pellets were produced at the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) nuclear fuel laboratory in Kjeller located near Oslo, Norway. Solvay supplied the thorium oxide. The Halden reactor, operated by IFE, collects data as the thorium fuel is burned. The data collected is used to verify that the thorium fuel can be safely burned in a commercial power reactor.

       The first thorium fuel samples were loaded into the Halden reactor in April of 2013. The second test batch of thorium fuel was loaded into the Halden reactor in December of 2015. The third load of thorium fuel was just inserted into the Halder reactor to start the third testing phase. “This is the first time industrial-type thorium-MOX pellets have been fabricated and irradiated with a focus on commercial deployment,” said a representative of Thor Energy.

       The CEO of Thor Energy said: “We have spent the last five years developing the fuel recipe and the skills to successfully produce these pellets. Through this loading of fuel in Halden, we have reached a major milestone and an important stepping stone towards commercial approval for thorium-based fuels in existing light water reactors. We believe this represents a further step in the thorium evolution which will contribute to the long-term sustainability of nuclear power in general.”

Taiwan follows South Korea into WTO complaint over new US solar duties – Now two countries, major trade partners with the United States, have joined a legal case against the Suniva+Solar World solar tariff. I wonder how quickly these groups could push a case like this through the World Trade Organization. When I inquired on this topic with a smart professional in this field a long while ago, they said court cases like this took two plus years before any results were yielded, if that (note that the US and India have been in a similar trade case since 2011-2013). Electrek.co

French Polynesia’s pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has accused France of nuclear racism for testing its nuclear weapons in the Pacific. Radionz.co.nz

China is putting two of its largest nuclear-power firms back together as it seeks to bolster its state-owned enterprises and create a corporate powerhouse that can better compete for contracts in other countries. Wsj.com

Uranium production from the Inkai joint venture in Kazakhstan is forecast to increase by more than 25% this year, according to a new NI 43-101 technical report filed by 40%-owner Cameco. The operation is forecast to reach maximum production of 10.4 million pounds U3O8 per year in 2020. World-nuclear-news.org

                I have blogged in the past about research projects that are using molybdenum to produce a better nuclear fuel for reactors. Now researchers at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Russia) Russia are working on improving the covering of nuclear fuel rods with a special form of molybdenum.

        Currently, zirconium alloys are used to create the material called cladding that is used to cover the uranium fuel pellets in most nuclear fuel rods. Zirconium alloys are resistant to corrosion and erosion in water. They also have a low thermal neutron capture cross-section. This is a measure of the probability of a chemical interaction between neutrons and the atomic nuclei of the alloy. The smaller the cross-section, the lower the probability.

        Zirconium alloys have several problems with their use for nuclear fuel rod cladding. They can generate heat in water and produce hydrogen gas which is highly explosive. This will happen if the temperature in the core of the reactor gets above thirteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. This means that if there is a major problem with the cooling system at a nuclear power plant that is cooled by water, the zirconium cladding could caused explosions and fires. Hydrogen gas generated from zirconium cladding on the fuel rods at Fukushima totally demolished one of the reactor buildings and seriously damaged another.

      Molybdenum alloys have been considered as a replacement for zirconium alloys in the cladding of nuclear fuel rods. Molybdenum alloys have high corrosion and erosion resistance like zirconium alloys, but they have a greater thermal conductivity which reduces their tendency to build up heat. The main problem with the use of molybdenum alloys for nuclear fuel cladding is the expense of their use. The uranium being used in the fuel rods would have to be more highly enriched than the fuel currently in use which would also add to the expense of their use.

       The Russian researchers believe that they can overcome some of the problems of molybdenum alloy use by changing the proportions of the different isotopes in the molybdenum from the composition of naturally occurring molybdenum. The same centrifuges that are used to enrich uranium can also be used for this purpose. This allows the creations of alloys with a thermal cross-section that is as small or smaller than the thermal cross-section of zirconium alloys. The use of these alloys for nuclear fuel rod cladding would definitely increase nuclear power plant safety.

      A professor at MEPHI’s Department of molecular physics said that the study carried out by the researchers has provided “all the information necessary for the design of a separation system for the large-scale production of isotopically modified molybdenum on the basis of existing Russian technology for the separation of non-uranium isotopes in gas centrifuges.”

       The study at MPEhI was funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. It was carried out in cooperation with the department of engineering physics at the Tsiunghua University in Beijing, China.

Few nuclear powers have ever volunteered to dismantle their arsenals, but Kazakhstan’s U.N. ambassador makes the case that a country stands only to gain by such a dramatic gesture. Asia.nikkei.com

New renewables will be cheaper than existing coal plants by the early 2020s.  electrek.com

The Japanese Government Is Lying to the International Community: the Radiological Situation in and around Fukushima is NOT Safe. Blog.torikaesu.net

The South Australian Premier’s apparent change of heart on a national nuclear waste dump in South Australia is a late but welcome development, according to Greens SA Parliamentary Leader, Mark Parnell MLC. Publicnow.com

 

 

         Uranium is a very common element on Earth. It combines with many other elements to form a wide variety of minerals. There are deposits of uranium ore in many locations that can be mined. Uranium is a main contributor to background radiation that is found in varying amounts all over the Earth.

        There is a tiny amount of radium mixed in with naturally occurring uranium. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive. The most stable isotope of radium is radium-226 which has a half-life of sixteen hundred years. R-226 decays into radon which is a gas.

        The Environmental Working Group (EWG) website says that the EWG is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting human health and the environment. They have just released the results of an important study on radioactive elements in U.S. drinking water. The study was conducted between 2010 and 2015.

        The EWG investigation found that over half of the drinking water available in the U.S. contains radioactive elements. During the investigation, the EWG tested almost fifty thousand public water systems. They estimated that the water consumed by over one hundred and seventy million citizens of the U.S. contain radioactive elements. The EPA sets safe limits for such elements in drinking water and twenty-seven states have water supplies in which the radioactive elements exceed what is considered safe by the EPA.

       The most common element that was found in drinking water by the EWG was radium. Radium is dissolved out of soil and rock by the passage of water. Radon gas is also released into underground water as the radium decays. In areas where the Earth is shocked and strained by the process of fracking, the amount of radium in the water is greater. Radium releases ionizing radiation which is potentially carcinogenic which means it can cause cancers.

       The EWG found that in one hundred and fifty-eight public water supply systems used by two hundred and seventy-six thousand U.S. citizens, the level or radium is greater than that allowed by the EPA. The EPA requirements say that there should not be more than seventy cases of cancer caused by drinking water out of one million consumers. Texas was found to be the state with radium in the most water supplies. It is estimated that about eighty percent of Texans have some radium in their water supply.

       The EPA guidelines for safe drinking water have been criticized as being too lenient. In 2006, California released much more stringent requirements for safe levels of radium than the EPA. The California standards say that there should not be more than one case of cancer caused by drinking water in a million consumers. By these standards, over one hundred and twenty-two million people nationwide are drinking water with too much radium in it.

       A senior science advisor with EWG issued a statement that said, ““Most radioactive elements in tap water come from natural sources, but that doesn’t take away the need to protect people through stronger standards and better water treatment.” “Millions of Americans are drinking water with potentially harmful levels of radioactive elements, but the outdated federal standards mean many people don’t know about the risk they face when they turn on the tap.”

       The EWG has created this interactive map of U.S. water supplies that contain radium.