North Korea’s recent nuclear test appears to have triggered several landslides, according to what are believed to be the first satellite images of the aftermath. Bbc.com

Irradiation tests on a mixture of lithium and thorium fluoride salts are under way at the High Flux Reactor at Petten in the Netherlands. The results will yield new data on the safe operation of molten salt reactors (MSRs). World-nuclear-news.org

The world’s oldest nuclear waste store – the Pile Fuel Cladding Silo at Sellafield, England – has been cut open for the first time, Sellafield Ltd and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced yesterday. Built in the 1950s when the site’s purpose was to make material for nuclear weapons, the silo is a locked vault that was “never designed to be opened”, they said. World-nuclear-news.org

Lightbridge Corporation and AREVA NP in North America said Wednesday they had signed a binding Heads of Terms Agreement for a joint venture  that sets out conditions for manufacturing and commercializing Lightbridge’s advanced metallic fuel technology.  Nuclearstreet.com

 

 

 

 

       One hundred and twenty two nations came together at the UN last fall to forge a treaty that would ban all nuclear weapons worldwide. The treaty was officially announced on July 6^th of 2017. Now it has to be ratified by at least fifty nations before it enters into legal force. None of the nine countries which currently have nuclear weapons attended the conference that drew up the treaty. The Netherlands was the only member of NATO that attended the conference and they voted against the treaty.

      Sweden is considering signing the treaty. Sweden is what is called a “Gold Card” member of NATO. They do not have full membership but they are granted some of the privileges of being a member of NATO.

      The U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, has notified Sweden that there will be “severe consequences” for Sweden if they do sign the nuclear ban treaty. Sweden recently signed an agreement to increase military cooperation with the U.S. The letter from Mattis said that if Sweden signed the treaty, it could affect Swedish/U.S. military cooperation as well as U.S. military support in the event of a war.

      The Mattis letter also suggested that if Sweden signed the treaty, it could affect their participation in NATO. Their status as a Gold Card member faces a renewal in October. Mattis said that they would lose the opportunity to become a full member of NATO if they sign the treaty. A Swedish newspaper also reported that Swedish participation in the treaty could have a negative impact on cooperation between the Swedish and U.S. defense industries.

       A Pentagon spokesperson said that while the U.S. “values its defense relationship with Sweden”, it is U.S. policy to discourage other countries from signing the treaty. The spokesperson went on to say that the nuclear weapons ban treaty contains measures that “could potentially affect our ability to cooperate with parties to the treaty on issues of mutual interest.”

      Jim Townsend was a U.S. deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy for eight years. He is now at the Center for New American Security. He told a reporter that using threats about defense cooperation to dissuade Sweden from signing the treaty was a “flawed approach.” He added that “They are a close friend in a dangerous neighborhood, and so threatening that important relationship lacks some credibility. Do the Swedes really think we would downgrade our relationship to punish them for signing a nuclear ban treaty?”

       Sweden, Finland and Norway currently maintain a stance of military neutrality with respect to confrontations between NATO countries and Russia. They do cooperate with the U.S. and NATO members in Europe on military issues. The U.S. relationship with these three countries is increased in importance as tensions have risen between Russia and European countries. Norway is working on improving its border defenses. It has played host to caches of U.S. military equipment and has just extended the deployment of U.S. marines in Norway. Finland is currently considering the purchase of advanced fighter aircraft and might order them from Boeing. 

A mountain in North Korea believed to have served as the site of five of the rogue regime’s nuclear tests — including Sunday’s supposed hydrogen bomb explosion — is at risk of collapsing and leaking radiation into the region, a Chinese scientist said Monday. Foxnews.com

Egypt’s president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Egypt to witness the start of construction of a nuclear power plant in Dabaa, northwest of Cairo. The Kremlin’s press service said yesterday that the two heads of state had met during the BRICS summit in China’s Xiamen province, where they said their countries had completed two years of talks on the project. World-nuclear-news.org

Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador says the president “has grounds” to declare that Iran is not complying with the 2015 nuclear deal, stoking doubts about whether Trump intends to scrap an international agreement and core legacy achievement for former President Barack Obama. Politico.com

The Toronto Stock Exchange and its American peers have fallen dramatically this morning, the first day of trading since North Korea announced Sunday that it had successfully conducted its most powerful nuclear test so far. Thestar.com

 

 

 

       Yesterday, sensors detected a major seismic event in North Korea. N.K. said that it had just carried out an underground test of a hydrogen bomb. It was known that N.K. had prepared another nuclear test and was ready to fire it by last March. They were waiting for their leader, Kim Jong-Un, to order the test. Commentators say that he waited until yesterday in order to conduct the test when the U.S. would be involved in a three day weekend for Labor Day celebrations and would be less able to respond. It has also been suggested that Kim was timing the test to be of maximum embarrassment to China, its biggest supporter, which is currently hosting the annual meeting of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

       The previous nuclear test by N.K. was conducted in September of 2016. The regime claimed that they had tested a hydrogen bomb but the international scientific community rated the blast at about twenty kilotons of TNT. This would be consistent with a regular atomic fission bomb test or the failure of a hydrogen bomb test. Once again, the regime is claiming that it tested a hydrogen bomb. What does the scientific community say about this bomb test?

      I recently posted an essay about how underground nuclear tests are detected. An underground nuclear test sends out powerful seismic waves that are different than the waves from an earthquake. They are also much shallower.

       There is a term called the body-wave magnitude (mB) that is used to measure the intensity of an underground blast. The scale is logarithmic. There is a network of thirty four detectors scattered around the world in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization’s network that are used to detect underground nuclear tests.

        The new N.K. underground test blast was so powerful that it “saturated” the detectors. This means that it exceeded the maximum reading that the detectors were capable of registering. The initial mB esitimations varied widely from different sources between fifty kilotons of TNT and one hundred and fifty kilotons of TNT. There are a number of variables in the equation used for mB and choices of different numbers for type of rock, density, depth, etc. yielded the wide range of the estimate. A subsequent analysis of the possible strength of the mB for a deeper depth than the initial estimations suggested that if the blast went off at a depth of over twenty five hundred feet, it could have been as powerful as three hundred seventy kilotons of TNT. It appears that the North Koreans did actually successfully test a hydrogen fusion bomb.

       The successful test of a hydrogen bomb by N.K. is a very troubling milestone in their march to a modern nuclear arsenal. They have been testing missiles that may be able to reach the continental U.S. If they can miniaturize their new bomb so that it can be placed on one of their new missiles, then they would have the capacity to reach and destroy major U.S. cities. The international community has repeatedly said that N.K. could not be allowed to have a nuclear arsenal that could threaten other nations around the world but the North Koreans are close now and getting closer. It is not clear that there is any way to stop them.

Photo from the North Korean Korean Central News Agency of Kim Jong-Un inspecting what is supposed to be a model of the hydrogen bomb that was tested yesterday:

South Korea’s defense minister on Monday said it was worth reviewing the redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula to guard against the North, a step that analysts warn would sharply increase the risk of an accidental conflict. Washingtonpost.com

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has signed contracts with several domestic companies to develop technologies for decommissioning Kori unit 1, which was permanently shut down in June. It is the first South Korean reactor to enter decommissioning. World-nuclear-news.org

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has completed its technical assessment of a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for a proposed Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) for radioactive waste from Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ Chalk River site. CNL must now address all federal and public comments received on the proposal before submitting its final EIS. World-nuclear-news.org

The nuclear power plant near Richland began supplying the regional power grid Saturday afternoon after being shut down for nearly 13 days. Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station was shut down by operators Aug. 20 when an air removal valve in the plant’s turbine building closed, causing a loss of vacuum pressure in the system that turns steam back into water for reuse at the plant. Tri-cityherald.com

One of South Carolina’s nuclear power reactors remained shut down Thursday for what utility executives call a minor, non-nuclear issue. The 33-year-old reactor at V.C. Summer Nuclear Station, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Columbia, is safe and stable while teams assess repairs. There was a minor issue with the main transformer, and the plant’s safety systems responded exactly as designed said Rhonda O’Banion, spokeswoman for SCANA, parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas. Usnews.com

As medical doctors and scientists, we write concerning the escalating crisis between North Korea and the US. The power to kill millions is in the hands of unstable countries and unpredictable people. Tensions between these two nuclear powers clearly illustrate the dangers of nuclear weapons, which make the world less stable. Theguardian.com

Current nuclear threats on par with Cuban missile crisis, former US Energy secretary says. Cnbc.com

Finland is set to embrace a decarbonised future by increasing carbon taxes and introducing laws in 2018 that will begin to phase out the use of coal, with more nuclear capacity waiting to offer an alternative fuel source. Euractiv.com