The German government has reached an agreement with GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service mbH on transferring GNS’s interim storage activities. Under legislation that came into force last December, the government assumed responsibility for the intermediate storage and final disposal of the country’s radioactive waste. World-nuclear-news.org

The US International Trade Commission (USITC) yesterday announced it will conduct an expedited five-year review – also known as a ‘sunset’ review – on the US-Russia Antidumping Suspension Agreement. World-nuclear-news.org

The Maritime Affairs Minister of Indonesia, Minister Luhut Pandjaitan, confirmed Thursday that Russian nuclear power corporation Rosatom has advanced the possibility of building a turnkey nuclear plant in the country, but he indicated the matter needed to be studied in detail before any offer would be accepted. Nuclearstreet.com

Britain risks missing out on the chance to be a world power in an industry estimated to be worth £400bn, producing mini nuclear power stations, because of government indecision. Telegraph.co.uk

       Plutonium is produced in conventional nuclear reactors. The plutonium can be treated as waste and disposed of. It can be extracted from the spent nuclear fuel and be used to create new mixed uranium/plutonium fuel. It can also be extracted, refined and used to produce nuclear weapons. Combined civilian and military stockpiles worldwide probably exceed five hundred tons. A nuclear warhead can be made with less than ten pounds of plutonium.

       Research in the chemistry of plutonium is currently being conducted at Florida State University by Professor Thomas Albrecht-Schmitt. He and his team have been researching plutonium chemistry for decades. Last year, he received $10 million grant from the Department of Energy to form a new Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of Florida that will focus on accelerating scientific efforts to clean up nuclear waste.

        One focus of Albrecht-Schmitt’s research was to see how plutonium behaved differently than lighter metals such as iron and nickel in compounds with organic materials. They are finding that plutonium does nor interact with other elements and form compounds in exactly the fashion that was assumed. It turned out that plutonium behaved more like lighter metals in a compound with organic materials that was previously understood.

      They were expecting the chemistry of their new plutonium/organic compound to be very complicated but it turned out to be quite simple. They realized that they could probably make the same types of compounds with other heavy metals including uranium and berkelium. (Berkelium is a transuranic element with atomic number 97. Berkelium does not occur in nature. It was first produced in 1947 at the University of California at Berkeley by bombarding americium-241 with helium-4 nuclei for several hours in the 60-inch cyclotron.)

       When Albrecht-Schmitt first saw the new compound, he suspected that something interesting had happened because of the color of the compound. Plutonium compounds often have wild bright colors like purples and pinks. The fact that the new compound was brown suggested that they were seeing a new phenomenon.

       Light metals are used to form compounds with organic materials. These compounds often contain light metal positive ions which exchange electrons. This makes the light metals attractive for forming compounds with this exchange of electrons. It was an important breakthrough to find that plutonium could form similar compounds.

       Albrecht-Schmitt said, “In order to develop materials that say trap plutonium, you first have to understand at the most basic level, the electronic properties of plutonium. So that means making very simple compounds, characterizing them in exquisite detail and understanding both experimentally and theoretically all of the properties you’re observing.”

       
         Albrecht-Schmitt and his team have explored the chemistry of other heavy elements in the outer reaches of the periodic table such as californium. (Californium is a man-made transuranic element. Its symbol is Cf and it has an atomic number of 98. It was first produced 1950 at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, by bombarding curium with helium-4 ions.)

        It is hoped that better understanding of the chemistry of plutonium will improve methods of environmental remediation from radioactive contamination.

The UK should focus on developing small modular reactors (SMRs) to secure its nuclear industry after the country’s exit from the European Union, according to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). In its report Leaving the EU, the Euratom Treaty Part 2: A Framework for the Future, issued on 5 May, IMechE says SMRs could “present the UK with key export opportunities and return the country to the international nuclear reactor supply arena”. World-nuclear-news.org

The VC Summer nuclear construction project is now over 64% complete, South Carolina Electricity & Gas (SCG&E) said in its latest progress report to the state’s Public Service Commission. The substantial completion dates for the two AP1000 units are currently unchanged from previous timelines but are to be re-evaluated in light of Westinghouse’s recent bankruptcy filing.   World-nuclear-news.org

Argentina’s energy deputy secretary Julian Gadano confirmed this week that China and Argentina will sign contracts on May 17 for construction of two nuclear reactors, comprising Atucha III, which will be constructed in the province of Buenos Aires close to Atucha II. Nuclearstreet.com

When the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 2 nuclear power plant was finally approaching completion the big public utility hailed it as “the nation’s first new nuclear generation of the 21st century.” That was in October 2015, and the plant was thought to be only a few months away from going online. But it wasn’t until October 2016 that Watts Bar 2 began operating commercially. In March, just over five months later, the plant went offline — and it’s expected to remain offline at least into this summer, the TVA region’s peak period for electrical demand. Latimes.com

 

 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will increase scrutiny of a Columbia atomic fuel factory after nearly a year of concerns about atomic safety and the buildup of uranium at the 48-year-old plant. Thestate.com

Germans already footing the second-highest electricity bills in Europe may face even higher costs from the country’s decision to exit nuclear power early next decade. Bloomberg.com

Energy Secretary Rick Perry is right to say the U.S. needs a long-term solution to its massive nuclear waste problem. It also makes sense for Perry and some members of Congress to see Yucca Mountain as part of that solution — though many Nevadans promise to make sure it won’t be. Bloomberg.com

One of the precepts of leadership — in all walks of life — is that there’s nothing much worse than a person in charge who won’t take charge. That’s where America has been for the past quarter-century as regards the Department of Defense (DOD) and nuclear weapons investors.com

The Pentagon is finalizing a lease on a privately owned apartment in Trump Tower for the use of the White House Military Office, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Theguardian.com

The police force responsible for keeping Britain’s nuclear power stations safe, has recruited keep fit gurus in a bid to reduce the number of sick days its officers are taking. Telegraph.co.uk

North Korea claims it has detained another American citizen for suspicion of acts against the state, which if confirmed would make him the fourth US citizen to be held by the isolated country amid fierce diplomatic tensions with US over the North’s nuclear programme. Independent.co.uk

At the urging of Michigan state Sen. Phil Pavlov, the cities of Marysville and St. Clair have passed updated resolutions opposing the efforts of Ontario Power Generation to build a Deep Geological Repository for low- and medium-level nuclear waste on the shore of Lake Huron in Kincardine, Ontario, Canada. Independent.co.uk

 

        I recently wrote in detail about the devastating effects of the detonation of a nuclear device in a major city. I have also written about the nuclear threat from North Korea. The big question is whether N.K. has or will have soon the capability to fire a nuclear-armed missile accurately enough to hit a major West Coast city.  However, it is also possible that the detonation of a nuclear device many miles away can have a very damaging effect on the electronic devices and infrastructure of a city so perhaps accuracy is not so important. Such an attack is called an electromagnetic pulse or EMP.

       The Report of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the US from EMP Attack states: “When a nuclear explosion occurs at high altitude, the EMP signal it produces will cover the wide geographic region within the line of sight of the detonation. This broad band, high amplitude EMP, when coupled into sensitive electronics, has the capability to produce widespread and long lasting disruption and damage to the critical infrastructures that underpin the fabric of U.S. society.” The pulse can also travel over power lines and destroy substations and power generators.

       The EMP signal has three components in sequence. The first component is the most intense and damaging. It occurs withing ten billionths of a second. Intense gamma radiation from the blast rips the electrons off the atoms of the gases in the atmosphere and hurls them at nearly the speed of light over the area in line of sight from the blast. The pulse that is created can cause very high voltages in electronic devices that overwhelm regular surge protectors. Special surge protectors are able to withstand the effect and are being adopted more widely. The second part of the signal lasts from one-millionths of a second after the blast to about one second. It is generated by neutron collisions following the explosion and is similar to the signal generated by a lighting strike. Existing protection against lightning can protect against this part of the signal. The third part of the signal lasts from tens to hundreds of seconds after the blast. It is generated by the effect of the blast on the magnetic field of the Earth that is distorted and then snaps back to its regular configuration. This part of the signal is similar to geomagnetic storms and it can induce high voltages in very long conductors such as power lines.

        As with other effects of nuclear detonations, the size of the EMP is related to the size of the nuclear explosion in terms of equivalences in tons of TNT. There are some assumptions that are made which simplify the calculation of the effects of a particular EMP. The detonation is a symmetrical sphere. The strength of the magnetic field of the Earth is ignored. Three percent of the strength of the explosion is expressed in the gamma rays that are generated. The gamma rays are produced within ten billionths of a second of the explosion. About six-tenths of a percent of the gamma rays produce relativistic electrons. The threshold of the electric field damage is fifteen thousand volts per meter or more for the first part of the signal.

        When all these factors are taken into account, a simple equation emerges. The distance in kilometers of damaging effects from an EMP is equal to the strength of the explosion in kilotons. So a twenty kiloton blast would cause damage in a circle twenty kilometers in diameter around the point under the detonation. Biggest test detonation of a nuclear device in North Korea so far has been about twenty kilotons. So if N.K. could send a nuclear missile to the West Coast of the U.S., there would only be EMP damage out to about six miles directly under the blast. In conclusion, concerns about an EMP attack from N.K. are overblown.

EMP graph: