One of two nuclear power plants at Indian Point in Westchester County has been shut down due to a faulty water pump. Postart.com

Japan issues warning over North Korea nuclear missile strike with residents told to seek shelter or lie on ground in terrifying TV broadcast. Thesun.co.uk

Hitachi’s Horizon has submitted its application for a licence to build a new nuclear plant at Wylfa in Wales – the first since Hinkley Point C’s in 2011. But will Horizon face the same challenges as its counterpart in Somerset? Power-technology.com

U.S. must better manage nuclear waste storage. Houstonchronicle.com

Western nations are giving Russia nearly £100m to clear up nuclear waste at one of its biggest Cold War naval bases, Andreyeva Bay in northern Russia, which is one of the most toxic sites in the whole of the country. Bbc.com

The House Armed Services Committee’s $696.5 billion defense policy bill includes several provisions aimed at curtailing rising Russian aggression, including the possible suspension of the long-held nuclear treaty between the two countries. Thehill.com

Russia will respond if the U.S. pulls out of a key nuclear disarmament pact, warned a leading defense official in Vladimir Putin’s ruling party, despite allegations that Russia has repeatedly violated the treaty. Newsweek.com

A Czech nuclear power plant decided a bikini contest would be a good way to choose its next round of interns. Facebook users were asked to rate school graduates who posed inside a cooling tower. Dw.com

The NAO has produced a scathing report on a prestige U.K. project that could cost more than any tinpot tyrant’s folly independent.co.uk

Thousands of protesters formed a human chain on Sunday to demand the closure of two Belgian nuclear reactors at Tihange and Doel. Reuters.com

Energy Secretary Rick Perry was in the hot seat Wednesday as senators grilled him over his push to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Thehill.com

Beneath a forested patch of land on the Gulf of Bothnia, at the bottom of a steep tunnel that winds for three miles through granite bedrock, Finland is getting ready to entomb its nuclear waste. independent.co.uk

       Canada turned on its first nuclear reactor in 1971. Canadian reactors are pressurized heavy-water reactors based on a Canadian design referred to as CANDU. The Canadians have sold CANDU reactors to India, Pakistan, Argentina, South Korea, Romania and China. There are currently nineteen commercial power reactors operating in Canada. All but two of them are in Ontario. They generated about thirteen and a half Gigawatts which accounts for about sixteen and half percent of Canadian electricity.

       Canada has a policy similar to the U.S. that requires Canadian operators of nuclear power stations to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and not reprocess it to extract radioactive materials that could be made into new fuel or nuclear weapons. The Canadian government created a nuclear fuel waste management program in 1978. They built an underground facility at the Whiteshell Laboratories in Manitoba in 1983 in order to study geological structures and conditions that would be associated with the underground disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The facility was deliberately flooded in 2010 and then decommissioned. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) was created in 2002 by the Canadian nuclear industry to research and develop a program for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

       By 2015, the Canadian reactors had produced about fifty-two thousand tons of high level nuclear waste in the form of spent nuclear fuel rods. By the end of the licensed life spans of the existing Canadian nuclear reactor fleet, it is expected that the total spent nuclear fuel produced will exceed one hundred thousand tons. Fifty-two percent of the existing spent nuclear fuel is stored in cooling pools at the reactor sites and forty-two percent is stored in dry casks.

        The NWMO decided in 2005 to build a deep geological depository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The facility will be up to three thousand feet deep with an estimated cost of twenty four billion dollars. This cost will be borne by a trust fund created with the operators of nuclear power plants. The spent nuclear fuel assemblies will be bundled together in steel baskets wrapped in copper. These bundles are designed to last a hundred thousand years. The tunnels will be filled with bentonite clay but the bundles will be retrievable for about two hundred and forty years if needed.

        The process of finding a site for the repository was started in 2010. To be considered as a site, a community had to have both the necessary geology and strong sustained public interest. Twenty one communities in Ontario or Saskatchewan requested assessment as possible sites. Only eleven of the original group were selected for Phase Two studies. Currently, there are only six communities being considered.  Blind River and Elliot Lake, Ignace, Hornepayne, Huron-Kinloss, Manitouwadge; and South Bruce.  The NWMO said it will “continue the process of narrowing down potential sites to host the project until it arrives at one preferred safe and socially acceptable site as the focus of more detailed site characterization”.

EnergySolutions in November 2015 signed a definitive agreement to acquire WCS, operator of a low-level radioactive and hazardous waste processing, treatment, storage and disposal facility in Andrews County, Texas, for $270 million in cash and $20 million in stock. EnergySolutions also agreed to assume some $77 million of debt as well as all financial assurance obligations related to the WCS business in a deal WCS president Rod Baltzer described at the time as a “win-win” for both companies. World-nuclear-news.org

Perry addressed the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development on 20 June and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development the following day, to present the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) proposed 2018 budget. In his testimony to both committees, he said the need to address nuclear waste management was a “moral” obligation. “For too many years, the prior administration has literally kicked the can down the road on nuclear waste,” he said. World-nuclear-news.org

Critics of SCE&G’s over-budget and behind-schedule nuclear expansion project are asking state regulators to stop the utility from spending more money to build two atomic reactors – and they want the power company to pay customers back for cost overruns. Thestate.com

Has Iran laid the groundwork to develop nuclear weapons on a moment’s notice? Thehill.com

 

 

 

       The U.S. nuclear industry is facing stiff competition from cheap natural gas generated by the fracking boom. Several nuclear power plants have already been shut down prematurely because they could not compete. Half a dozen more plants may have to be shut down prematurely in the next five years for the same reason.

       The U.S. nuclear industry has been lobbying for assistance from the U.S. government to allow them to keep operating nuclear power plants which are not competitive with other forms of energy generation. The House of Representatives has just passed a bill to assist the nuclear industry by extending tax credits for nuclear power plants. The bill had thirty two co-sponsors and passed quickly with a voice vote.

        Currently, new nuclear plants receive a 1.8-cent-per-kilowatt-hour tax credit if they are placed into service by the end of 2020. In order to incentivize the construction of new nuclear power plants, the new legislation removes the 2020 deadline for the tax credit. The bill also gives the tax credit to government owned utilities and non-profit electric co-ops. These entities can transfer these tax credits to other partners on nuclear projects. This bill is views as particularly important for Georgia and South Carolina. The only new nuclear plant construction in the U.S. is taking place in those two states.

       Representative Tom Rice (R-S.C.) is one of the co-sponsors of the bill. He said “Without this legislation, the nuclear power industry may cease to exist as we know it in this country, which is exactly why passing this bill now is more important than ever. We need to give these plants the certainty of these tax credits, just as Congress intended.”

     Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) spoke against the bill. He said that the nuclear industry has “record of miserable failures” for constructing and operating nuclear power reactors. He also said “Instead of today’s measure, our focus should be on safe, healthy forms of energy instead of an industry that costs too much and poses too much danger to humans.”

       The nuclear industry strongly supported the bill. Five nuclear industry trade groups sent a letter to Congress last week that nuclear power projects were a “strategic national imperative” for the U.S. and the new bill supported that view.

       Clear Path is a conservative clean energy group. They said that the new bill would assist in the development and construction of a new generation of smaller and cheaper nuclear power reactors referred to as small modular reactors (SMR) which generate less than three hundred megawatts. NuScale is one of the companies working on SMRs. Clear Path said “NuScale’s technology is one of the biggest opportunities for nuclear over the next decade and these reforms to 45(j) would significantly bolster their ability to demonstrate the first American small modular reactor.”

        Now the bill will have to go to the U.S. Senate for consideration. The Republican Party has generally been favorable towards nuclear energy so the odds of passage are good. President Trump also supports nuclear power so he will likely sign the bill if it reaches his desk.