The prospect of drilling the deepest hole ever bored in South Dakota soil for a possible future nuclear waste storage site has raised the ire of Haakon County residents concerned about the future of their land, of their water and of their children. rapidcityjournal.com

Seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on Oregon shores, researchers say. cbsnews.com

North Korea now has the capability to launch a nuclear weapon, a senior U.S. military official said Thursday, adding that while the U.S. believes Pyongyang can mount a warhead on a missile, it’s not clear that it can hit a target. cbsnews.com

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. decided to close its Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant because its baseload power—often cited as nuclear’s best asset—doesn’t fit into the dynamic grid California is developing, a PG&E executive said today at the U.S. Energy Storage Summit in San Francisco. forbes.com

       One of the big problem for engineering a nuclear reactor is the negative impact of neutron bombardment on the steel used to construct the reactor core. Over time, the steel become brittle and less capable of fulfilling its primary function of safely containing the nuclear fuel and the nuclear reaction. When the neutrons hit the crystalline lattice of the steel, the result is dislocation of atoms in the lattice, voids and cracks in the metal and swelling which increases the volume of the metal but decreases the density.

       New reactor design are aimed at producing more energy more economically. One way that they will do this is to operate at higher temperatures and greater levels of radiation that current nuclear power reactors. In many power reactors, water is used as a coolant. Water is less corrosive to the materials used to make the reactor core that other possible coolant liquids. However, there are limits to the temperatures at which water is an effective coolant. New reactors will exceed those temperature limits for water cooling. Other coolants such as liquid metals like sodium and lead can function at higher temperatures but they are much more corrosive to the materials in the reactor core.

       One solution to the problem of the use of corrosive coolants is to coat the components of the reactor core with some material that is more resistant to corrosion. Of course, whatever substance is used to as a coating must be able to withstand embrittlement caused by the radiation. Researchers at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) in Milan, Italy have developed a promising coating material for nuclear reactor parts.

       The new material from the IIT is an aluminium oxide nanoceramic. (A nanoceramic is “a type of nanoparticle that is composed of ceramics, which are generally classified as inorganic, heat-resistant, nonmetallic solids made of both metallic and nonmetallic compounds. The material offers unique properties.” Wikipedia)

        This new nanoceramic material is able to withstand embrittlement from radiation and heat which makes it ideal for use in new reactor designs. Instead of becoming harder and cracking from radiation like other materials, the new nanoceramic actually becomes tougher. A technical article about the new material was just published in the September 22, 2016 issue of the Nature journal, Scientific Reports. 

       The IIT team has been working with nanoceramics for several years, exposing them to radiation and varying the composition to see how their mechanical properties change. Another team at the University of Wisconsin – Madison has been using an electron microscope to analyze the structure of samples from the IIT lab to reveal the effects of the radiation on the material at the atomic level.

        This new material is a major breakthrough in coating technology because no other materials tested actually benefits from radiation bombardment. If this nanoceramic material can be brought out of the lab and commercialized, it will make a significant contribution to the safety of new reactor designs.

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A delegation from the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), the country’s largest state energy company, visited Sofia and met with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, to possibly resuscitate a shelved nuclear power plant project. euractiv.com

Japan said Friday that it expects the total cost of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident to reach about $200 billion, nearly double earlier projections, spurring plans for further restructuring of the Fukushima plant’s operator. wsj.com

Outside the potash hub of Carlsbad, New Mexico lies the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a deep geological depository for nuclear wastes generated in weapons research and production. WIPP, alas, is troubled, and it has been closed since it suffered two accidents in February 2014. thebulletin.com

A group of prominent South Australian business people, academics and scientists have signed an open letter to the state’s politicians urging them to keep discussion alive on the merits of an international nuclear waste dump. abc.net.au

        The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station is located on Lake Michigan, 5 miles south of South Haven, Michigan. It was completed in 1971 at a cost of one hundred and forty nine million dollars. It contains one pressurized water reactor that can produce one hundred and seventy five thousand kilowatts of power when operating at full capacity. It is owned and operated by the Entergy company which purchased it in 2006 for three hundred and eighty million dollars.

         The plant’s original operating license was set to expire in 2011. In 2005, an application was filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an addition twenty years of operation which would expire in 2031. The extension request was granted in 2007.

        Old reactors develop more and more problems as time goes by and become more costly to keep in operation. The Palisades plant is no exception. The plant has had many technical and management problems that have resulted in numerous shutdowns over the years. After multiple unplanned shutdowns in 2011 and 2012, the plant was classified as one of the four worst performing power reactors in the U.S. Operations improved in 2013. One major concern at the plant is the embrittlement of the steel used in construction of the reactor by the steady bombardment of neutrons from the radioactive fuel.

        Several old U.S. reactors have been shut in the past couple of years because of operation problems and the stiff competitions from cheap oil and natural gas. Entergy has shut down some of its nuclear plants and is planning to shut down more. They have just announced that they will shut the Palisades plant permanently in 2018. About six hundred workers will be affected. Entergy says that shuttering the plant will save ratepayers as much as one hundred and seventy two million dollars. Total savings will be in the range of three hundred and forty four million dollars.

        Entergy has requested permission from state regulators to shut the plant and to end a fifteen year power supply contract with Consumer Energy that was signed in 2007. The CEO of Entergy said, “We determined that a shutdown in 2018 is prudent when comparing the transaction to the business risks of continued operation.”

         Members of the state government complain that shutting the plant will affect the regional economy and raise concerns about the supply of electricity in the region after the plant is closed. The Governor’s office issued the following statement, “I’m certain the Michigan Public Service Commission will look at this very closely and examine the implications for the reliability and affordability of electricity in Michigan, as well as protection of the environment,” Snyder’s statement read. “Palisades is a major employer and economic engine for the region, so the continued operation of the plant through 2018 and the proposed community contributions would be vital. We need to make sure we use the next two years to wisely plan the use of state and local resources to adapt to whatever decision is made.”

Palisades Nuclear Generating Station:

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The USA has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor and verify the disposition of surplus plutonium in South Carolina, US energy secretary Ernest Moniz said on 5 December. Moniz’s announcement was made at an IAEA conference which aims to strengthen global nuclear security. world-nuclear-news.org

Media coverage of Hinkley Point C has tended to focus on EDF Energy’s financial agreement with the UK government and is only now being recognised for the economic benefits it will bring to the local economy, Nigel Knee, head of the company’s nuclear policy, said yesterday. EDF Energy’s updated analysis shows that almost £4 billion ($5 billion) will go into the regional economy of the South West of England over the lifetime of the project, Knee told delegates at the Budapest Energy Summit. world-nuclear-news.org

A three-nation enterprise involving investment from Kazakhstan and China and support from France is underway, as AREVA of France announced the construction start of a uranium processing plant in Kazakhstan that is scheduled to begin production in 2020. nuclearstreet.com

Germany’s highest court will decide next year on complaints brought by utilities against a tax on nuclear fuel rods, a spokesman said on Thursday, in a further challenge to the government’s energy policy. reuters.com

       The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) reactor is an experimental nuclear fusion reactor called a stellarator. The W7-X is located in Greifswald, Germany at the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics(IPP). It was completed in October 2015.         

       The first stellerator was built at what is now the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in 1958 to explore nuclear fusion as a possible power source. Stellerators use powerful magnetic fields to compress hot plasma in a circular tube to create a fusion reaction. In order to deal with unequal magnetic force on the plasma caused by the circular shape, complex geometries were evolved as well as complex arrangements of magnetic coils. They were popular in the 1950s and 1960s but the tokamak fusion reactor design then became more popular. In a tokamak, just magnetic fields and a current running through the plasma is used for confinement. Eventually, problems with the tokamak design led researchers to return to the stellerator design.

       The W7-X is the biggest stellerator in the world. It was designed to run for thirty minutes to test continuous operation. It is donut shaped with ten feet high magnetic coils around the circular tube. The main components of the W7-X are magnetic coils, a cryostat (which cools the magnets), a plasma vessel, a divertor (which removes heavier ions created by the fusion reaction) and heating system (to heat the plasma.) It will reach a particle density of 3 X 10²⁰ particles per cubic meter and a temperature of 130 million Kelvins. ( the Kelvin scale uses the same units as the Celsius scale – one unit of the Celsius scale is equal to 9/5 of one unit on the Fahrenheit scale. 0 on the Celsius scale is 293 on the Kelvin scale.) The size of the donut or torus is about sixteen feet in diameter. The cryostat surrounds the torus and keeps the magnets cooled to a superconducting temperature of 4 degrees Kelvin.

       Last year, the W7-X was turned on for the first time and was able to contain a helium plasma. This year, it has demonstrated that it is able to contain a hydrogen plasma. Tests show that the accuracy of the geometry of the complex 3-D magnetic field configuration has an error of less than one part in one hundred thousand. The field configuration is critical to the operation of the W7-X and this level of accuracy is an excellent demonstration of the engineering on the W7-X.

        Work will continue on the W7-X until 2019 when it is expected to demonstrate the ability to contain a deuterium plasma and actually produce fusion reactions. It will still not be able to produce more power than it consumes but it will bring fusion research one step closer to the goal of a commercial fusion power reactor.

        The W7-X is in direct competition with the giant ITER fusion research project being conducted by an international consortium in France. The ITER is based on a tokamak design. Meantime, there are at least half a dozen fusion research projects in the U.S. where teams of engineers and scientists are exploring alternative designs and fuels for fusion reactors. If any of them are successful, they will be able to create commercial fusion at a size and cost that is a fraction of the resources being expended on the W7-X and ITER reactors.

Wendelstein 7-X under construction:

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Wind and solar power are transforming the electricity industry, but not fast enough to put the world on track for the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement target to hold the global temperature increase well below 2°C, according to László Varró, chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA). This “climate stabilization” target needs nuclear power to play a significant role in the low-carbon power mix, Varró told delegates at the Budapest Energy Summit yesterday. world-nuclear-news.org

The French nuclear safety authority has accepted analyses submitted by EDF on the serviceability of ten of its 900 MWe reactors in which some steam generator parts were found to contain high concentrations of carbon. The utility will soon submit analyses for two 1450 MWe units. world-nuclear-news.org

Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court, ruled Tuesday that utilities that were ordered to close their nuclear power plants in a political reaction to the Fukushima Daiichi power plant disaster in Japan were entitled to some compensation for the premature closures. nuclearstreet.com

Construction has been completed for a 5 MW research reactor in Jordan, the government said Wednesday. It is the first reactor in the country that also has ambitions to build a commercial power reactor for domestic electricity supply. nuclearstreet.com