I blog a lot about conventional nuclear fission power reactors but there are other types of nuclear reactors that extract energy from radioactive substances in different ways from the usual water cooled reactors in use at most nuclear power plants. There is a lot of development work being directed at new types of nuclear reactors with the hope that they will be cheaper to build and operate as well as safer. Some of these designs produce much less power than the big power reactors and require infrequent refueling and little need for maintenance. They are intended to be used in remote locations and other facilities which prefer to generate the power they need on site rather than connecting to the grid.

       Urenco is “an international supplier of enrichment services with its head office based close to London, UK. With plants in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and in the USA, it operates in a pivotal area of the nuclear fuel supply chain which enables the sustainable generation of electricity for consumers around the world. Utilizing URENCO’s own world-leading centrifuge technology, URENCO provides safe, cost-effective and reliable uranium enrichment services for civil power generation within a framework of high environmental, social and corporate responsibility standards.” 

        Urenco started the U-Battery project in 2008. The design was a result of work at Universities of Manchester, Dalton Institute (UK) and Technology University of Delft (Netherlands). The U-Battery design produces four megawatts of electricity. It is categorized as a “micro nuclear reactor.” These micro reactors have a power output of less than ten megawatts.

        The U-Battery utilizes hexagonal prismatic fuel elements. The fuel rods contain uranium fuel particles which are about one millimeter in diameter. The “Triso” coating on each particle of uranium consists of a shell of carbon inside a shell of silicon carbide inside a shell of carbon. The Triso coating can confine fission products for indefinite periods of time with temperatures over three thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

        The primary coolant for the U-Battery is helium for cooling the high temperatures reached in the core. The helium circulates through a heat exchanger. Nitrogen is the secondary coolant that carries heat from the heat exchanger to a turbine that produces the electricity.

        The U-Battery is modular and will be constructed in a factory, then moved to the operational site. Most of the reactor will be underground with a small cooling tower and a thirty-foot high maintenance building at ground level. The whole facility fits in an area about eighteen yards by thirty-six yards.

        Urenco is hoping to produce commercial versions of the U-Battery by 2025. They are considering using the first U-Battery units to power their own enrichment facilities at Capenhurst in the U.K. Following the successful launch of the U-Battery in house, Urenco will sell the units to other companies. It is also possible that Urenco may want to enter the fuel fabrication market and manufacture fuel specifically for the U-Battery reactors.

        The U-Battery is small in size and independent in operation. The low cost and simplicity give it a flexibility that cannot be matched by conventional power reactors or small modular reactors. The nuclear industry has been having serious problems with cost overruns, scheduling delays, public rejection and lack of investor interest. Perhaps developments such as the U-Battery can help revitalize the nuclear industry.

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A nuclear safety cooperation project between Norway and Romania has been completed. The aim of the three-year collaboration was to enhance the capabilities of Romania’s nuclear regulator. world-nuclear-news.org

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission has concluded that the Russian-built nuclear power plant in Belarus – the country’s first, which is being constructed by Atomstroyexport – has “factored in all possible external hazards,” in its design and construction, Rosatom announced in a newsletter. nuclearstreet.com

The Atlanta Business Chronicle is reporting that Georgia Power Co. has suspended plans for construction of a nuclear power plant in the southwestern portion of the state, south of Columbus, Ga. nuclearstreet.com

The robots sent into Fukushima’s nuclear disater site keep dying. mashable.com

        During the Presidential campaign and in the first weeks of his Presidency, President Trump said that NATO is obsolete and that U.S. nuclear protection of European NATO members might be conditional on those NATO members spending more money on their own defense. This new weakening of U.S. commitment to NATO is of special concern to central and eastern European members of NATO because of the Russian seizure of the Crimea and its support of civil war in eastern Ukraine. Russian President Putin has repeatedly made public statements about his willingness to be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict with NATO in eastern Europe. He has held major military exercises including tactical nuclear weapons on the borders of the Baltic states. He has also moved intermediate-range nuclear-capable missiles into Kaliningrad, threatening countries in eastern Europe.

       After the U.S. election, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a conservative German newspaper, published an editorial which talked about “the altogether unthinkable for a German brain, the question of a nuclear deterrence capability, which could make up for doubts about American guarantees.” A member of the party of the current German Chancellor said that there should not be any “thought taboos.” For the most part, the major German political parties have been silent on the subject of a German nuclear weapons program but German think tanks have kept up a rigorous debate on the subject.

       Since the end of World War II in 1945, Germany has been one of the European nations under the U.S. nuclear “umbrella”. West Germany signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in the 1960s. In 1984, a journalist published an article that said that the U.S. nuclear protection of western European nations had made possible the European integration which resulted in the formation of the European Union by suppressing the centuries-old rivalry between the French and the Germans which figured in two World Wars in the Twentieth Century. West Germany reaffirmed their commitment to nuclear non-proliferation in the European unification treaty of the 1990s.

       One possible move by Germany in the face of Russian nuclear threats would be to go to France and Britain and suggest that they share their nuclear deterrence. However, France has a small nuclear arsenal and has shown reluctance to even discuss sharing their nuclear deterrent capability. Britain also has a small nuclear arsenal and there are British voices calling for abandoning that deterrence as the British exit from the European Union looms.

       Some Germany analysts are skeptical that France and/or Britain could be relied upon to use their nuclear arsenals against Russia in the event of a Russian nuclear attack on Germany or the Baltic States. They suggest that perhaps Germany should consider developing a nuclear arsenal, maybe in collaboration with neighboring nations. A leader in Poland’s governing political party has suggested just such a shared nuclear deterrence, presumably largely financed by Germany. On the other hand, there are German academics who believe that while developing a German nuclear arsenal might not be a good idea, perhaps a discussion of such a project might be useful in convincing the U.S. to renew its commitment to NATO.

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Russia has announced the start of commercial operation of its first VVER-1200 reactor, unit 1 of the Novovoronezh II nuclear power plant. world-nuclear-new.org

China will complete construction of five nuclear power reactors and start construction of eight more in 2017, according to plans released by the country’s National Energy Administration (NEA). Planning for a further eight reactors will also be progressed this year. world-nuclear-new.org

Proponents of nuclear power are hoping the seventh time is a charm at Kentucky’s capitol. The state Senate Wednesday voted to lift a moratorium preventing the storage of nuclear waste in the Commonwealth. wkms.org

Sulfuric acid found leaking from a tank outside a Michigan nuclear plant. woodtv.com

      I have written recent blog posts about Chinese nuclear weapons and policy. There are conflicting accounts of exactly how many nuclear warheads China currently possesses and what their policy really is. Some of these accounts are obviously false. Whether intentional or accidental, there are fake news stories circulating about China’s nuclear arsenal.

       The Dongfeng-41(DF-41) is a Chinese road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile. It has an operational range of seventy-five hundred to ninety-three hundred miles and is the longest range ICBM in the world. Each DF-41 can carry ten nuclear warheads with independent reentry vehicles. The project has been in development for decades and is a response to the development of U.S. anti-missile defense systems.

       The test of a DF-41 was first mentioned in western media in 2012 and the U.S. DoD first mentioned the development of a new Chinese missile without naming the DF-41 in 2013. A video of a new missile on the road in a Chinese city surfaced around then and prompted a flurry of speculatory stories about the new Chinese missile. A Chinese environmental monitoring website accidentally posted an item about DF-41 tests in 2014 which was the first official admission by the Chinese of the existence of the new missile. By 2016, the Chinese had conducted seven tests of the DF-41.        

        On January 24th of 2017, a story in Popular Mechanics claimed that the Chinese government “publicly announced the deployment” of the DF-41 and that announcement “is likely a warning to U.S. President Donald Trump, who is known for sharply worded anti-Chinese rhetoric and has announced plans for a new ballistic missile system.” Two days later The Independent ran the same story with the same claims. The Sun, the Daily Caller, the International Business Times, the Moscow Times, Quora.com, ZeroHedge.com, STRATFOR, TASS, RT, and Sputnik International all followed with similar stories.

            Breitbart ran the same story with the same claims on January 27. The Breitbart story included the additional claim that so-called deployment of the missile in Heilongjiang province, which shares a border with the Russia, is a prelude to an “approaching Clash of Civilizations world war” where “Russia and the United States will be allied against China.” It is interesting to note that Steve Bannon, who ran Breitbart until he became Trump’s senior advisor believes strongly in a “Clash of Civilizations” conflict.

       Several years ago, a professor at George Town University revisited old rumors about the Chinese nuclear arsenal that claimed that it was ten times as big as was being estimated by the U.S. DoD. These claims have been proven to be false. Dr. Peter Navarro who is an advisor to Trump has repeated these false assertions in a recent book. Trump has asked his Secretary of Defense to review the U.S. nuclear arsenal and policies. Trump is pushing for an expensive upgrade to U.S. nuclear forces that may have been prompted by unfounded fears of a huge hidden Chinese nuclear arsenal. Fake news about supposed Chinese missiles and secret stockpiles of nuclear warheads are a poor basis for the formulation of U.S. nuclear policy.

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Highlights for 2016 for French-state controlled nuclear power engineering, construction and consultancy AREVA SA include trimming losses that have plagued the company for five years running, the company said Wednesday. nuclearstreet.com

An increase in steam leakage in the cooling system of the Salem 1 nuclear reactor has prompted its operators to take the plant out of service, officials said. nj.com

Four companies will pursue the possibility of conducting a test to determine whether nuclear waste can be buried far underground , federal energy officials announced Monday, months after two prospective sites in the Dakotas were abandoned over local opposition.  brookingsregister.com

How does the U.S. Navy dismantle its first nuclear aircraft carrier? dailycaller.com

       One of the concerns over nuclear power that I keep returning to is the incompetence and malpractice of corporations that are members of the nuclear industry. Over and over again, major nuclear corporations have been caught cheating on safety practices, equipment maintenance, construction standards, regulatory requirements, etc. on nuclear projects. Recently, Areva, a French-owned company that is a big player in the global nuclear industry was caught falsifying quality control reports on nuclear plant components from a foundry that it owns.

        CB&I Areva MOX is a joint venture of Chicago Iron & Steel and Areva. For the past sixteen years, CB&I Areva MOX (CAM) has been working on a contract in the U.S. for the DoE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).  CAM was retained to design, build and operate a facility near the Savannah River in Aiken, S.C. The purpose of the new facility is to combine weapons-grade plutonium and uranium into mixed-oxide nuclear (MOX) fuel for U.S. nuclear power reactors. The project is way behind schedule and way over budget. The work of CAM has been found to be “unsatisfactory” by the United States Department of Energy.

        In December of 2016, NNSA completed a project evaluation for the Savannah MOX plant. The evaluation says that CAM made “misleading” and “inaccurate” claims about the state of the project. CAM claimed that the project was seventy percent complete. However, a separate September 2016 report from the U.S. DoE says that the project is only twenty-eight percent complete. In their evaluation, NNSA said, “The contractor was unable to balance project technical baseline requirements with other elements of project performance, such as cost and schedule. The contractor lacked the fiduciary will to plan and execute work to fully benefit the project and taxpayer.”

      Tom Clements is one of the project’s harshest critics. He is director of the Savannah River Watch organization. He said that the NNSA evaluation was “devastating.” And added that he has “never seen an assessment like that. It all but calls them liars”

       The Savannah MOX project was a result of an agreement between Russia and the U.S. to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons by using the plutonium from dismantled warheads to create fuel for nuclear power reactors. Critics of the project say that the technology of using weapons-grade plutonium to make fuel is expensive and it does not eliminate the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation which was part of the original justification.

        The Savannah MOX project was originally budgeted at six hundred and twenty million in 1999 with a completion date in 2006. It is still at least a decade away from completion and the estimated cost has risen to seventeen billion dollars. It would have to be budgeted at a billion dollars a year at the least in order to be finished.

      South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is one of the fiercest champions of the Savanna MOX project which brings millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs to his state. He accused Obama of failing to honor the agreement with Russia and even held up the confirmation of Ernest Moniz as Obama’s Secretary of Energy over the fate of the project. Last October, Russia withdrew from the agreement to convert weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel.

       In President Obama’s proposed 2017 budget, he suggested that the Savannah MOX project be canceled. He requested cutting spending on the project from three hundred and forty-five million dollars to two hundred and seventy-five million dollars as the project was being wound down. In its place, Obama proposed a dilute and dispose process for dealing with the weapons-grade plutonium from dismantled U.S. nuclear warheads. With the change in Presidential administration that took place on  January 20, 2017, the fate of the Savannah MOX project is uncertain.

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