The TU-160 is a Soviet Era heavy strategic nuclear bomber that debuted in the 1980s during the period that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. There was limited production of this plane due to the collapse. Sixteen of these aircraft are still in operation today. They were modified to carry long-range cruise missiles in 2005. The TU-160 and the TU-95MS strategic bomber and missile carrier are the aerial third of Russia’s nuclear triad. The TU-160s most recent deployment was in Syria to help the Syrian president defeat rebels and jihadis.

       A new version of the TU-160 designated as the TU-160M2 is now in production and will make its first flight in February of 2018. The introduction of a new version of this bomber marks another leap in Russia’s military power. The new bomber will be equipped with new mission system, Kuznetsov NK-32 afterburning turbofans and new NK-32 02 engines which are more efficient.

      Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin reported Thursday to President Vladimir Putin himself, telling the Russian leader that “We plan that the aircraft will be built already in 2019. Serial deliveries should begin in 2023 while we plan to carry out the first flight of the Tu-160M2, which has been rolled out of the workshop today, in February next year.” Putin responded that “Everything is fine, just perfect. I congratulate the aircraft builders and I think we will deliver good news to the defense.”

       The state-run Tass Russian News Agency reported that a defense ministry source has stated that the new TU-160 with the factory number 804 would be the first TU-160 to be outfitted with the factory upgrades mentioned above.

       Russia have been spending a great deal of money to upgrade its military in the past few years. The military was in a state of disintegration after the collapse of the Soviet Union but Putin has rebuilt it into a powerful warfighting power. This modernization and expansion of the Russian military is of great concern to other countries including the United States, especially since the use of the Russian military in Georgia in 2008 and the seizure of the Crimea from the Ukraine in 2014.

      Following the annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014, NATO has taken a more aggressive stance towards Russia. NATO and Russia are locked in a new arms race that rivals the Cold War. NATO and Russia have been holding almost constant military exercises near the border between Russia and Easter Europe. Both accuse the other of causing the rise in tensions in the area. One analyst believes that if NATO continues to deploy weapons to the Balkan states, the situation could escalate into an all-out war. Russia has publicly announced that it would consider using tactical nuclear weapons in Easter Europe if it were losing a conventional war to NATO.

       The United States is also very concerned about the modernization and expansion of the Russian military and is undertaking a similar modernization and expansion of its own military.

TU-160:

Swedish utility Vattenfall will invest 900 million kronor ($107 million) to update two reactors at Sweden’s largest nuclear plant, saying the Ringhals facility will continue to supply electricity into the 2040s. nwitimes.com

Potential problems connected to the radioactive spent-fuel pool at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station are once again the focus of federal regulators, who are questioning how the condition of two of the panels, installed to prevent nuclear fission from occurring, can be accurately tracked. Patriotledger.com

North Korea on Friday ruled out negotiations with Washington as long as joint U.S-South Korea military exercises continue, and said that Pyongyang’s atomic weapons program would remain as a deterrent against a U.S. nuclear threat. Reuters.com

Designs for a new nuclear power station close to the site of a former plant in Essex have been revealed. The reactor and buildings – designed by EDF and China General Nuclear (CGN) – could be built at Bradwell-on-Sea. Bbc.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

       Last August, the Pentagon awarded contracts to begin designing new components for proposed weapons systems. A new ICBM and a new cruise missile will play the same role in our nuclear arsenal as the missiles they are replacing. They are expected to be operational in the late 2020s.

       Contracts were awarded to Boeing and Northup Grumman for work on a new intercontinental ballistic missile called the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. This new missile is intended to replace the Minuteman III missiles that are currently in place in missile silos in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota.

       During the next three years, the two contractors will construct about twenty different prototypes for components for the new missiles. The ICBMs will have to operate in what the military refers to an anti-access, area denial environment. This means that the enemy has air defenses that can shoot down aircraft that do not have a stealth design or electronically jam systems on board U.S. aircraft including missiles.  Such environments are worse that what the old Minuteman missiles would have faced when they were deployed. They will also be flying in much more congested air space than the Minutemen would have flown through. The Air Force will evaluate and compare the work and, with the approval of Congress and the Pentagon, select one of the two companies to build more than four hundred of the new ICBM missiles.

       Lockheed Martin and Raytheon received contracts to develop prototype components for the new nuclear cruise missile called the Long-Range Standoff weapon. The new cruise missiles will be launched from the B-52 bomber. They will also have to operate in an anti-access, area denial environment with advanced air defense systems to contend with. As with the new ICBM, the Air Force will evaluate the work and then pick one of the two companies to build about a thousand of the new cruise missiles pending approval by Congress and the Pentagon.

       There is a concern in Congress that there may not be enough funds available to build all the weapons projects that are part of the one trillion two hundred million upgrade plan for the U.S. nuclear forces over the next thirty years. The new ICBMs could cost up to eighty five billion dollars. The new cruise missiles estimated cost is around ten billion dollars. The Trump administration is evaluating the size and type of nuclear weapons that should be added to the U.S. nuclear arsenal in a Nuclear Posture Review which is expected to be finished by early next year at the soonest.

       Even though both the ICBM and cruise missile programs have begun, some military planners are not satisfied with the current time table. General David Goldfein, chief of the U.S. Air Force, said that he was not comfortable with the schedule. He said, “The new cruise missiles will be launched from the B-52 bomber. It will have to operate in what the military refers to an anti-access, area denial environment.  The question I’ll continue to have is: How to I move it left. How do we get this capability earlier. Because if you can actually get it faster, you can get it cheaper sometimes.” Goldfein asked if there was a way that the two projects could be speeded up. Major General Shaun Morris, the commander of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, said, “We’re looking at that.”

The first Chinese-designed atomic reactor for use in Britain moved a step closer to fruition on Thursday as the UK nuclear regulator said it had completed the first stage of its assessment of the technology. Uk.reuters.com

The nuclear watchdog has accused “business interests” of a series of attacks on its chairman‚ including a robbery at his home. The Nuclear Energy Corporation of SA (Necsa) said Kelvin Kemm had been the victim of opponents to the country’s nuclear program. Timeslive.co.za

Greens want the next coalition government to push for the removal of all nuclear warheads stationed in Germany, a document seen by Reuters showed on Wednesday. Reuters.com

A NATO member country has reportedly raised concerns about Donald Trump’s control of his country’s nuclear weapons. CNN reports that the country – a member of the nearly 70-year-old international military alliance – was concerned with the US President’s command of the nuclear launch system. The country’s fears were somewhat alleviated after a briefing on the subject, a diplomatic source said. Independent.co.uk

 

 

 

 

       I often return to the problem of radioactive waste disposal in this blog. In the U.S. alone, the cooling pools at nuclear reactor sites are rapidly filling up with spent nuclear fuel rods. The soonest that the U.S. will have a permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel is estimated to be 2050. In the meantime, it looks like the only realistic interim solution for spent nuclear fuel is storage in dry casks made of steel and concrete.

      Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tohoku University, TokyoCity University and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency are collaborating on a novel approach to dealing with radioactive waste. An article describing the research was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports. This new approach could severely shorten the effective half-life of what are called long-lived fission products (LLFP) from hundreds of thousands of years to less than a hundred years. The specific type of radioactive waste being discussed is what is left over after uranium and plutonium have been recovered from spent nuclear fuel by application of reprocessing methods such as Plutonium Uranium Redox Extraction.

       Ultimately, radioactive waste should be permanently stored deep underground in dedicated repositories. In the meantime, various methods are being considered to reduce the volume and toxicity of radioactive waste that has to be buried. One promising method is called the partitioning and transmutation method or P&T. In this approach, minor actinides (MAs) and LLFPs are separated from the spent nuclear fuel and then they are transmuted into nuclides which have a much shorter half-life. One of the limitations of the P&T method is the fact that the equipment necessary to separate the LLFPs from the rest of the waste is expensive. Another concern about P&T is that some LLFPs have a small neutron cross section which means that they have difficulty absorbing enough neutrons for transmutation to take place.

       The Japanese researchers are working on a different route to transmutation for the LLFPs that does not require the LLFPs to be separated from the rest of the waste before transmutation. The waste to be transmuted is placed in the radial blanket and shield sections of a small fast breeder or fast spectrum reactor. The researchers found that placing yttrium deuteride (YD2), a moderator which slows down neutrons, in the radial blanket vastly improved the transmutation of the LLFPs. They say that the YD2 is able “to soften the neutron spectrum leaking from the core”.

       The Japanese team chose to focus on six LLFPs: selenium-79, zirconium-93, technetium-99, palladium-107, iodine-129 and caesium-135. Computer modeling showed that the half-lives of these radioisotopes could be radically reduced by transmutation into other element so that the radioactive waste would “cool” off in a much shorter span of time that with other waste treatment methods.

       If their method is utilized, the researchers say that the seventeen thousand tons of LLFPs current being stored in Japan could be disposed of in ten fast spectrum reactors. In addition, the new method can generate electricity and will aid in reducing the chance for the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Russia is to assist the Philippines in developing national policies for the development of nuclear energy through a memorandum of cooperation (MoC) signed on 13 November. The cooperation will include feasibility studies on the construction of small modular reactors. World-nuclear-news.org

Alaska urged to prepare for North Korean nuclear attack as residents told to have emergency stash of food and water. Mirror.co.uk

South Korea experienced the second most powerful earthquake in its history on Wednesday afternoon. Newsweek.com

North Korea could hit London with nuclear missile in a year, retired general warns. News.sky.com

 

 

 

       Nuclear fusion could provide the electricity that is needed to power our civilization but there are many technical problems that still need to be solved. Nuclear fusion generates about four times the power of nuclear fission but does not produce the nuclear waste that is piling up at the fission power reactors around the U.S. and around the world.

       Nuclear fusion required extremely high temperatures and pressures which damage fusion reactor components. One big problem with using nuclear fusion to generate electricity is the fact that a fusion process which utilizes hydrogen as the plasma in the reactor can generate helium which creates bubbles that weaken the metal of the current fusion reactors designs. At first, tiny bubbles form but as fusion continues, bubbles enlarge and merge to the point where they serious threaten the integrity of the reactor vessel. Now researchers from Texas A&M University are collaborating with researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory are working on a possible solution to the problem.

       As Michael Demkowicz, of Texas A&M materials and sciences department says, “Literally, you get these helium bubbles inside of the metal that stay there forever because the metal is solid. As you accumulate more and more helium, the bubbles start to link up and destroy the entire material.”

       In an article published in the journal Science Advances, the collaborating teams of researchers described how they carried out studies on the behavior of helium gas in nanocomposite materials made out of stacks thick metal layers. They were surprised to find in some of the nanocomposite materials that were tested the helium did not form bubbles as it does in solid metals of current fusion reaction test systems. Long tiny tunnels were formed in the nanocomposite. Demkowicz said, “As you put more and more helium inside these nanocomposites, rather than destroying the material, the veins actually start to interconnect, resulting in kind of a vascular system.” 

        Experts are hoping to be able to develop a prototype of a commercial nuclear fusion power reactor by 2030. Much of the current research is dedicated to stabilizing the fusion reaction with various configurations of permanent and electromagnets. While one approach makes use of hydrogen gas isotopes such as deuterium and tritium for the plasma in the reactor, other mixtures of gases are explored to produce non-hydrogen plasmas to generate fusion. Isotopes of helium and lithium are being tested in some reactor designs.

        The most immediate use of the new nanocomposite reactors materials is the creation of reactor materials that allow the hydrogen that is generated to flow through the tiny channels in the reactor shell and exit out of the reactor without forming the helium bubbles that weaken current reactors.

        Demkowicz believes that the vascular system of channels that form in nanocomposites with the introduction of helium gas may have other important uses. He believes that other things such as heat, electricity and even chemical could flow through the system of channels in the nanocomposite. This could lead to whole new industrial processes.