The trial run of India’s first 700 MW pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) coming up at Kakrapar is expected to take place sometime in mid-2017, said a senior official of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). indiatimes.com

China has officially begun construction of its first offshore nuclear power plant, a demonstration project that will employ the domestically developed ACPR50S small modular reactor (SMR). powermag.com

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday supported President-elect Donald Trump’s remarks about a buildup of nuclear weapons, saying the strategy “is exactly right.” politico.com

 December 23, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that the United States must “expand its nuclear capability.” Had he written modernize, upgrade, update or renew, no one would have paid much attention. But he seemed to call for a quantitative increase, something Matthew Kroenig endorsed in a December 23 Politico Magazine article. politico.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      One big worry about space exploration is that hostile nations will deploy devastating weapons in space. The major international space treaty currently prohibits placing any weapons in orbit or on bodies is space such as asteroids, moons, etc. Recently the U.S. made a small change in the wording of legislation for the military that has big implications for the future deployment of weapons in space.

      The U.S. depends on its arsenal of nuclear weapons as a deterrent to attacks from other nations with advanced nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Missile defense systems have usually been considered a potentially destabilizing influence because if a nuclear-armed nation believed that it could block a counter attack from a nuclear-armed enemy, it might to tempted to consider a first strike nuclear action.

       The U.S. policy for years has been for a limited homeland missile defense system that would be able to stop an attack from a nation with limited nuclear capability such as North Korea or Iran. The term “limited” is used in legislation governing the U.S. military to explicitly calm concerns by major nuclear powers such as Russia and China that it would ever launch a first strike in the belief that it could thwart their counter attack.

      Now, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress have quietly passed legislation regarding the national missile defense system that removes that word, “limited.” There has been virtually no national press coverage of this change and there was no public discussion. There is also a provision in the law that orders the Pentagon to start researching, developing and testing space-based systems for missile defense.

       It is estimated that the cost of even a “bare-bones” space-based missile defense system would be at least two hundred billion to install with hundreds of billions of dollars in operating costs after deployment.

      Now members of both national parties are beginning to react to this major change in U.S. policy. On the one hand, proponents of a space-based missile defense system say that it is absolutely necessary in today’s dangerous world. Opponents of such systems say that the idea that a space-based missile defense system could protect the U.S. from a major nuclear attack is sheer fantasy.

       Proponents of a new space-based missile defense system draw inspiration from the Star Wars initiative of the Reagan administration during the 1980s. It was supposed to use space-based lasers and other weapons to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” Thirty billion dollars were spent and no weapons were ever developed and deployed.

      The primary Congressman behind the legislation, Trent Franks (R-Ariz), said that taking the word “limited” out of the legislation and beginning work on new space-based weapons put “put the U.S. on a path to better safeguard its security.” He went on to say, “I hope that the day will come when we could have solid-state lasers in space that can defeat any missile attack. That day is a long ways off. But fortunately, it’s a little closer, and a little more certain, with the passage of these amendments.”

         A retired president of the missile defense system division of Lockheed Corporation said that such systems “defy the laws of physics and is not based on science of any kind. Even if we darken the sky with hundreds or thousands of satellites and interceptors, there’s no way to ensure against a dedicated attack. So it’s an opportunity to waste a prodigious amount of money.” He also referred to the new legislation as “insanity, pure and simple.”

       A former assistant secretary of Defense who was in charge of the Pentagon office that carried out testing and evaluation of weapons systems said that the idea of a space-based nuclear shield was a “sham”.

        Opponents are afraid that in addition to being a useless waste of money, our creation and deployment of such a system would give Russia and China an excuse to deploy nuclear weapons in orbit. This legislation is a very serious mistake and should be repealed. The last thing the world needs is a new arms race to put nuclear weapons in space.

Trent Franks:

A hurricane-strength storm that swept through Sweden this week generated record wind power that topped at 5.7 million kWh during single hour, which is 0.5 million more than the previous record, says energy company Bixia. Over the past three days wind power accounted for 26 percent of total electricity consumption, almost as much as six nuclear power plants, says Anders Enqvist, Director of Risk Management at Bixia. mining.com

How much will is cost to safely decommission the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, and does its owner really have enough money set aside to do it? That question arose in early December when Entergy Corp. announced its plan to close the plant in October 2018. mlive.com

Japan needs to work towards bringing its reactors back online if the country is to meet its climate goals, Akio Takahashi, president of the Japan Atomic Industry Forum (JAIF), said this week. Nuclear energy currently accounts for just 1.1% of Japan’s electricity production and commercial operation has been resumed at only three of the country’s nuclear power plants – Sendai 1, Sendai 2 and Ikata 3. world-nuclear-news.org

The Office of Nuclear Regulation in Britain has granted approval for EDF Energy to begin using a $250 million dry storage facility for spent fuel at the Sizewell B nuclear power station on the Suffolk Coast in eastern Britain. nuclearstreet.com

       One of the biggest problems with nuclear reactors is finding materials that can withstand the hostile environment of high temperatures, high pressures, and neutron bombardment. As neutrons penetrate the metal alloys that house the reactor core, they create dislocations in the crystalline lattice of the metal. These dislocations can migrate and collect, forming cavities that can combine into cracks. This makes the metal increasingly brittle and ultimately, the reactor must be retired because it is unsafe to continue to operate it. It has been difficult to measure the degradation in a particular reactor because of the radiation. Now, researchers have developed a new technique for measuring radiation damage to metal.

       The current “gold standard” for measuring radiation damage is called transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It produces a  great deal of information from a sample of the metal being tested but it does not reveal all of the changes that have an impact on the structural integrity of the metal.

       Researchers at the MIT Department of Chemistry created a new technique which was applied by the MIT Mesoscale Nuclear Materials Laboratory. This new method of measuring damage may be able to provide a way of monitoring the integrity of metals in real time with no need to remove the components from their radioactive environment.

        This new technique is called transient grating spectroscopy (TGS). In TGS, acoustic waves are induced in the surface of a sample to reveal thermal and elastic properties. Although the acoustic waves are traveling on the surface of the sample, defects below the surface of the sample can affect the waves.

        The acoustic waves are created by aiming two lasers at the polished surface of the sample to create an interference pattern. The lasers shining on the metal surface heat it and cause a standing acoustic wave. This standing wave causes minute movements of the metal surface that can be read by another set of lasers. Rippling acoustic waves form and decay. Measuring their movement and decay rates can reveal the properties of the sample. Experiments at the lab have matched the theoretical models and simulations.

        One of the tests conducted at the lab involved aluminum samples that were perfect single crystals that had different surface orientations. Although the samples looked identical to the human eye (even through a microscope), the new TGS system was able to easily distinguish between the different orientations.

        The laboratory works mainly with aluminum samples because they can be very difficult to analyze and if the researchers can prove their method with aluminum, the new system should work with many other materials. The new technique has a sensitivity of one tenth of one percent. The new system can yield accurate results about radiation damage in a matter of seconds as opposed to the months or years that other techniques require.

       The researchers have created simulations of molecules and their responses to the TGS that are highly accurate. Using this methodology, they are able to create models of different types of defects in metals and then predict what kind of signals will be generated by TGS. Experiments are then carried out to verify the modeling.

       This new technique should speed up the development and testing of materials to be used in the construction of reactors and nuclear fuels. The researchers hope to be able to reduce their equipment from the current bulky machines in their laboratory to portable handheld devices.

Russia has put into operation its first near-surface final nuclear waste repository for solid low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste, National Operator for Radioactive Waste Management (NO RAO) has announced. nuclearstreet.com

George Takei: I Lost Family in Hiroshima. Mr. Trump, Nuclear Weapons Are No Game. thedailybeast.com

 Outgoing U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) is not leaving without the last word. Grayson filed a Nuclear Sanity Act bill on Tuesday in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s comments about nuclear weapons. clickorlando.com

Earlier this month, the Navy announced plans to build a $1.6 billion facility in Idaho to handle fuel waste from the nation’s nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers over the next forty years. The new structure will be built on the Idaho National Laboratory site about 50 miles from Idaho Falls. boisestatepublicradio.org

       There has been a lot of speculation about what effect the Trump election will have on the energy industry in the U.S. Some analysts have pointed out the Trump rejection of climate change would reduce concern about the low-carbon emissions of nuclear power. Other analysts say that Trump’s promise to expand domestic energy production will probably include nuclear power. Here are some reasons that have been put forward against Trump helping nuclear power expansion in the U.S.

       Electricity demand is down so we only need new plants to replace old plants. There are fossil fuel plants that can provide temporary extra supply if needed.

       Trump strongly supports the fossil fuel industry which can build new power plants faster and cheaper than nuclear plants. Alternative renewable supplies can provide new power without the long construction time and need to build very large power plants. So there is no economic incentive to build new nuclear plants.

       Nuclear plants are great for providing baseload power but they are not as good as fossil plants and renewable plants at responding quickly and easily changes in demand. Flexibility is now becoming more important the constant baseload.

       The wholesale electricity market in the U.S. has a mixture of regulated and unregulated sectors. This combination has resulted in a such a low price for electricity that it is difficult to find financing for a new fossil fuel plant let alone for a nuclear plant.

       The major contracting firms that can build nuclear power plants can also build other major infrastructure projects. It would be easier for these firms to lobby to build other types of infrastructure than nuclear projects.

       Nuclear power plants are very complex and capital intensive to construct. They have many points of failure and are expensive to maintain, a cost that rises with age.

        The major utilities that build and operate nuclear power plants in the U.S. are performing poorly in the stock market. It is unlikely that investors are eager to sink money into a market sector with poor returns. Some recent major nuclear projects have had serious trouble finding sufficient investment to proceed.

        Nuclear power plants need enormous amounts of cooling water. This requires that they be located on coastlines, major rivers or big lakes. Climate change is bringing severe weather which threatens infrastructure on coastlines, rivers and lakes with flooding. There is also the problem of rising sea levels increasing the risk of operating a reactor close to the sea.

        Some states are voting to provide funding for non-competitive nuclear power plants to stay in operation. The arguments are low-carbon emissions and jobs in rural areas. With the Republican tendency to cutting government expenditures and the short falls lately in state budgets, this program of welfare for old nuclear plants may not expand under Trump.

       Trump has already committed to expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In addition, the U.S. needs to develop a permanent underground repository for spent nuclear fuel. The government also needs to complete the vitrification plant at Hanford to dispose of left over waste from nuclear weapons production. It is likely that the Trump administration will give first priority for military nuclear programs and nuclear waste disposal over the construction of new nuclear power plants.