Lake and Ottawa county officials go to Washington, D.C. on Nov. 28 to talk about the future of Ohio’s two nuclear power plants, this time with temporary Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee. News-herald.com

RUSSIA is looking at the possibility of military intervention in North Korea to stop a nuclear fallout, according to a member of the Russian security council. Express.co.uk

Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) is expected to say it will join the beleaguered consortium behind Europe’s largest new nuclear plant at Moorside in Cumbria to help prop up the £15bn project. The early agreement will kick-start the process of securing final approvals from nuclear regulators and company bosses before a final decision is made early next year. Telegraph.co.uk

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has extended the deadline for public comments on Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ (CNL) draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for decommissioning the country’s first ever nuclear power reactor by two weeks to 13 February. The Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD) reactor was the prototype for the Candu reactor design. World-nuclear-news.org

Part 1 of 4 parts

       Saudi Arabia has been in the news a lot lately because of changes in the government. The Crown Prince who will soon be king has arrested a bunch of powerful Saudi government officials and businessmen and is talking about sweeping changes to the desert kingdom such as moving to a more moderate form of Islam and signing a cooperative agreement with Israel to oppose their common enemy, Iran. Now the U.S. Trump administration is considering providing sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

       Although Saudi Arabia is very rich in oil, they want to build their own nuclear power reactors, so they can save their oil for export. They have their own reserves of uranium ore and want to extract and enrich it to fuel the reactors they want to build. It is believed that they want to have the ability to enrich uranium because Iran has that capability. If Iran does ever develop nuclear weapons, it is likely that Saudi Arabia would use their nuclear technology for the development of their own nuclear weapons as a counter

       In response to questions about their interest in developing nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia issued a statement that said, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, hence is diversifying its energy mix to serve its domestic needs in accordance with international laws and standards. The Kingdom has been actively exploring diverse energy sources for nearly the last decade to meet growing domestic demand.”

       While much of the technology used for nuclear weapons is different from that used in nuclear power plants, there is some overlap. In order to make nuclear fuel, it is necessary to enrich uranium to over four percent U-235. Nuclear weapons require enrichment to over ninety percent U-235. The same technology that can enrich uranium for fuel can also be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. In addition, the spent fuel produced by nuclear power reactors can be reprocessed to obtain uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons. Nuclear non-proliferation organizations and treaties prefer that new members of the nuclear power club buy their fuel and dispose of their spent fuel on the international nuclear market to preclude enrichment and reprocessing.

      Saudi Arabia needs permission from the U.S. government in order to receive sensitive U.S. nuclear technology. Previously, attempts to come to an agreement over access to U.S. technology had failed because Saudi Arabia refused to agree to safeguards to prevent the use of the technology for the creation of nuclear weapons. This is called the dual use problem because certain nuclear technologies can be used for either peaceful nuclear power development or for nuclear weapons development.

      In 2008, the Saudi government made a nonbinding commitment to the U.S. that they would not pursue enrichment and reprocessing. Once that had been done, they began negotiations for an agreement on peaceful nuclear cooperation called a 123 agreement after a section of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Such an agreement is a prerequisite for obtaining sensitive U.S. nuclear technology.

       The U.S. government was afraid that there might be a domino effect if Saudi Arabia obtained sensitive U.S. nuclear technology. The U.S. has agreements with both the United Arab Emirates and Egypt that prevent their receipt of sensitive U.S. nuclear technology unless the U.S. provided such technology to another Middle Eastern country such as Saudi Arabia.

Please read Part 2

Over Christmas vacation in 1938, physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch received puzzling scientific news in a private letter from nuclear chemist Otto Hahn. When bombarding uranium with neutrons, Hahn had made some surprising observations that went against everything known at the time about the dense cores of atoms – their nuclei. Theconversawtion.com

Two Air Force generals — one the current U.S. Strategic Forces commander, the other his predecessor — declared publicly this month that they would defy a presidential nuclear launch order if they found it violated the Law of War. So what are the Law of War’s constraints are on a nuclear strike and could it be a plausible check on President Trump’s unilateral power to launch a nuclear strike? Npr.org

There are signs that North Korea’s submarine missile program is expanding as it prepares its second test, adding to the risk that the nuclear-armed country could one day threaten the U.S. or its Asian allies with yet another powerful weapon in its arsenal. Cnbc.com

The Talen Energy Corp. on Friday disputed allegations that it retaliated against two of its nuclear power plant employees for reporting a workplace injury. Standardspeaker.com

 

 

 

 

       The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a set of rules for where people should be evacuated in case of a nuclear accident in which radioactive materials are released. While the exact plan for emergency procedures is tailored to each site depending on geography, wind, and other conditions, there are general rules for considering evacuation. Everyone in a two-mile radius of the accident site should be evacuated. In addition, there should be an evacuation of everyone downwind of the accident out to five miles from the site. Some critics of the rules for evacuation are raising questions about its necessity.

       Delving into the dangers of nuclear accidents that may affect the life expectancy of someone who may be exposed to radioactive materials, there is a measure called “Change of life expectancy from averting a radiation exposure” or CLEARE. This can tell you how much a specific amount of radiation will reduce your estimated lifespan on average. On the other hand, the costs of evacuations should be taken into account as well. In order to measure these costs, a method called the judgement or J-value has been developed. This basically tells you how much quality of life people are willing to sacrifice in order to increase their remaining life expectancy. Eventually everyone reaches a point where they are no longer willing to pay the cost of a longer life with reduced quality.

       The J-value can be calculated for a particular country. First you find out what the average of the gross domestic product is per person. Then risk aversion can be computed based on information about work and life balance. When this information is entered in the J-value model, you wind up with the maximum amount that a person will be willing to pay for a longer life expectancy.

       Following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, more than one hundred and ten thousand people were immediately evacuated. Another fifty thousand left voluntarily. Four and a half years later, eighty-five thousand had not returned. When the new J-value was applied to that evacuatioin, it was estimated that exposure to the radioactive emissions from the disaster would have reduced the life expectancies of the evacuees by about three months. This suggests that the cost of evacuation was much higher than any expected benefit for the evacuees.  It turns out that the average loss of life expectancy in London, England due to the air pollution is about four and a half months but no one is suggesting that people evacuate the city because of it.

      The J-value system was also used to assess the decision to evacuate people after the world worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 1986. Over one hundred thousand people were permanently evacuated in 1986 and another two hundred and twenty thousand people were evacuated in 1990. The J-value model suggested that people should only have been evacuated if their radiation exposure reduced their average life expectancy by nine months. It turns out that only thirty-one thousand people out of the three hundred and thirty six thousand evacuees would have suffered such a reduction of life expectancy. That amounts to less than ten percent.

       Researchers at the University of Manchester in England investigated the J-value model in application to hundreds of possible big nuclear reactor accidents all over the world. Their findings indicated that none of the cases they studied would benefit from evacuation.

       In addition to questions of life expectancy, there are also psychological impacts. When the media is saturated with dire warnings in the aftermath of a nuclear accident, many people believe that they are in much greater danger than is really the case. All in all, the requirement for evacuation after a major nuclear accident needs to be reexamined and perhaps radically altered.

A British bomb shelter boss ‘wants North Korea to launch a nuclear attack’ to help sell ‘high street bunkers’. Mirror.co.uk

FPL has applied to the NRC for permission to build and operate Units 6 and 7 at its Turkey Point plant on Biscayne Bay about 40 miles south of Miami. Palmbeachpost.com

In what is likely to be the opening salvo of a nasty legislative battle, New Jersey lawmakers will convene early next week to discuss how to prevent the state’s nuclear plants from shutting down prematurely. Njsportlight.com

Breaking with tradition, nearly all ambassadors of the world’s nuclear powers will not attend this year’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony which honors efforts to ban atomic weapons, the Nobel Institute said Thursday. Phys.org

 

       Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a new generation of nuclear power reactors which generate three hundred megawatts or less. They are being sold as a cheaper and safer alternative to the current big power reactors. They will be build in factories and transported to the site where they will generate energy. The advantage of factory production is supposed to be quality control. However, currently there are several major international scandals involving producers of nuclear technology altering or out-right forging of quality control documents. It is also an open question of whether or not three SMRs will be cheaper than one big gigawatt power reactor.

        The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) has just signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with X-energy, a U.S. company, to assess the X-energy’s Xe-100 SMR. The Xe-100 is a high temperature gas-cooled pebble bed modular reactor. The Xe-100 is designed to generate two hundred megawatts of electricity. The X-energy plant design calls for four Xe-100s to be bundled together to generate eight hundred megawatts.

      The fuel for the Xe-100 consists of “pebbles” containing Triso fuel particles. Each Triso particle consists of a nucleus of uranium oxycarbide (UCO) which has been enriched to ten percent U-235. The nucleus is surrounded by carbon and ceramic layers to contain the radioactivity. The multiple layers enclosing the nucleus function as a sort of independent containment system for each Triso particle. Graphite will surround the particles of Triso to act as a moderator for the nuclear reactions that produce the heat that is converted to electricity. One benefit of a pebble bed reactor is that the fuel cannot melt down.

      The chairman of the JAEC said, “The HTR’s potential, once implemented, provides Jordan with opportunities that include both electric generation and non-electric utilisation such as water desalination and industrial applications and is the nexus between 3rd and 4th generation technologies.”

       The CEO of X-energy said, “Delivery of our Xe-100 for electricity, water desalination and other thermal applications in Jordan represents a breakthrough for the advanced nuclear reactor industry. As we work to bring our Xe-100 to markets worldwide, we will continue to create alliances with other potential customers that share the Kingdom of Jordan’s goal for clean air, fresh water and energy security. This MoU is a demonstration of our commitment to provide distributed and clean energy solutions to countries like Jordan.”

        The United States began researching high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) in the 1940s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. X-energy made use of studies by the U.S. Department of Energy in the design of the Xe-100. HTGR demonstration reactors have been build with a variety of designs in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S, Japan, and China.

       In January of this year, the U.S. DoE awarded X-energy cost sharing funding of fifty-three million dollars over a five year period to support the work on the Xe-100. X-energy will work in conjunction with BWX Technology, Oregon State University, Teledyne-Brown Engineering, SGL Group, Idaho National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.      

        In September of this year, X-energy signed an MoU with Centrus, a company that enriches uranium for fuel. The two companies will cooperate to create a Triso fuel fabrication plant to supply fuel for the Xe-100.

       In November of 2013, JAEC stated its intention to build several small SMRs which would generate about one hundred and eighty megawatts each. In March of this year, JAEC and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy signed an agreement to work on a feasibility study for the construction of two SMRs in Jordan. In early November of this year, JAEC signed an MoU with the British Rolls-Royce company to carry out a feasibility study for construction of an SMR in Jordan.

After 19 years of work to safeguard nuclear waste dating from the Cold War, workers at a sprawling Washington state site have managed to remove virtually all of the radioactive waste from 16 aging underground steel tanks at risk of leaking.  Seattletimes.com

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt—three of Washington’s key Middle East allies—were pressuring former President Barack Obama to “bomb Iran” before the landmark nuclear deal signed in July 2015. Nerwsweek.com

NORTH Korea’s missile launch has sparked an emergency meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council after it launched a ballistic missile “capable of hitting the continental US”, it has been revealed. Express.co.uk

A federal nuclear review panel still has some safety concerns about Los Alamos National Laboratory’s new multimillion-dollar storage facility for radioactive waste. Insurancejournal.com