Unit 3 of the Ikata nuclear power plant in Japan’s Ehime prefecture has reached 100% operating capacity, owner Shikoku Electric Power Company announced today. The unit is the fifth Japanese reactor to resume operation. world-nuclear-news.org

X-Energy LLC, developers of the Xe-100 “pebble bed” high temperature, gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), said Monday that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Southern Nuclear Operating Company subsidiary Southern Nuclear as a step toward advancement of the small reactor that could help revitalize the nuclear power industry due to the reactor’s size and relative affordability. nuclearstreet.com

North Korea threatened Monday to turn Seoul and Washington into “a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike” if they showed any signs of aggression toward the North’s territory during their annual military drills. foxnews.com

A strong national commitment to nuclear energy goes hand in hand with weak performance on climate change targets, researchers at the University of Sussex and the Vienna School of International Studies have found. phys.org

 

 

The ballistic-missile submarine USS Louisiana (SSBN 743) and a U.S. Navy Offshore Support Vessel collided while conducting routine operations in the Strait of Juan de Fuca off the coast of Washington state on August 18, 2016. csp.navy.mil

‘99% effective’ Fukushima ice wall fails to seal off crippled nuclear plant. rt.com

A majority of countries on a U.N.-mandated panel on Friday called on the U.N. General Assembly to consider launching multilateral negotiations on nuclear disarmament, voting in a process that has been boycotted by the world’s nuclear-armed powers. startribune.com

The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) recently decided to maintain the nuclear energy option for the state while also increasing renewables-based power generation. times-hearld.com

       Chalk River Laboratory is a Canadian nuclear research facility in Deep River, Ontario about a hundred miles northwest of Ottawa. CRL is dedicated to research and development of advanced nuclear technology, including support of the Candu nuclear reactor technology. CRL produces a big share of the nuclear isotopes needed for nuclear medicine across the world. It is owned and operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.

        Weapons grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the U.S. is used as a source fuel by CRL in the production of medical isotopes. In 2010, the Canadian Prime Minister and the U.S. President agreed to the return of spent HEU fuel used to produce medical isotopes from CRL in Canada to the U.S. for reprocessing and disposal. The national leaders made this commitment to reduce the number of areas where weapons grade nuclear materials were stored around the globe in order to reduce the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons.

        Spent nuclear fuel and other HEU has been repatriated in the past from Canadian reactors but the 2010 agreement included the repatriation of liquid wastes known as Highly Enriched Uranyl Nitrate Liquid or HEUNL from the production of medical isotopes. HEUNL contains many different radioactive isotopes including as cesium, niobium, zirconium, rhodium, rubidium, iodine, xenon, tellurium, barium, lanthanum, cerium, strontium, praseodymium, neodymium, europium, neptunium and plutonium. Special transportation canisters have been developed for the transport of HEUNL which is more complex and dangerous that the transportation of solid HEU waste.

        The plan is to transport over six thousand gallons of liquid waste over twelve hundred miles from CRL to the Savannah River Site in Georgia in the U.S. The shipments are to take place weekly and will continue for over a year. The U.S. DoE say that all necessary precautions will be taken and that the danger to the environment and the public is “marginal.”

        The Savannah River site is a nuclear reservation located in South Carolina southeast of August, Georgia. It was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1950s to process nuclear materials for the construction of nuclear weapons. There is a Liquid Waste Operation at the site which is managed by Savannah River Remediation, a team of companies working on cleaning up the waste left over from decades of nuclear weapons development. The CRL HEUNL waste will be reprocessed at the LWO at Savannah River.

      Environmental groups are highly critical of the plan to transport the HEUNL via truck from the CRL in Canada to the SRS in the U.S. They demand that a full environmental impact review be undertaken before the transport begins. They point out that if there is an accident and liquid waste is spilled, it will be almost impossible to contain and recover. Any such spill could pose a grave threat to the environment and public of the area surrounding the spill. While the DoE maintains that the wreck of one of the trucks would pose not substantial danger, the environmental groups say that a single wreck could contaminate the water supply of an entire city.

        Unable to make progress with the DoE, the activists opposing the HEUNL transport have turned to the courts. The Savanna River Site Watch group and other groups have just requested a temporary restraining over and an injunction against the shipments. One of the allegations in the complaint is that the DoE is seeking to profit sixty million dollars off the liquid waste repatriation at a serious risk to the public.

Chalk River Laboratory:

Beijing decries ‘China-phobia’ after Britain cools on Hinkley Point nuclear deal. theguardian.com

Neglecting nuclear security in the 2016 election. thebulletin.org

Before Trump, Americans hadn’t worried this much about nuclear weapons since the Cold War. latimes.com

A U.S. Navy sailor has been sentenced to a year in prison for taking photos of classified areas inside a nuclear attack submarine while it was in port in Connecticut. abcnews.go.com

 

       During the recent aborted coup in Turkey, the Incirlik air base near the Syrian border was surrounded and all flights in and out were cancelled. The U.S. is currently using Incirlik as a base for bombing operations against ISIS. The U.S. has fifty B61 nuclear gravity bombs stored at the base. The Turkish base commander was arrested as part of the aftermath of the coup attempt. The events at the Incerlik air base raise the question of whether the U.S. would be able to maintain control of U.S. nuclear weapons at the base in the event of widespread civil disorder in Turkey. The fact President Erdogan of Turkey visited Russian President Putin in St. Petersburg shortly after the coup to rebuild relations also has U.S. military planners worried.

       EurActiv, a European online news site based in Brussels, has just reported that the U.S. is moving twenty of the B61 nuclear bombs from Incirlik in Turkey to the Desevelu air base in Romania. Russia is already upset about the U.S. anti-missile system that was turned on in May in Romania. The U.S. says that the system is meant to guard against missiles fired from Middle Eastern countries like Iran but Russia is concerned that it might be used against Russian missiles.

       The movement of nuclear weapons from Turkey to Romania would be sure to anger the Russians even more. Romania recently denied the stories about the move and stated that there were no U.S. nuclear weapons in Romania and there would not be any U.S. nuclear weapons moved to Romania from Turkey. The Founding Act signed in 1997 between NATO and Russia specifically states that NATO members “have no intention, no plan and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members [such as Romania], nor any need to change any aspect of NATO’s nuclear posture or nuclear policy – and do not foresee any future need to do so”.

      The non-profit Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is saying that under the terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it would be illegal for the U.S. to move nuclear bombs to Romania. Article One of the treaty says that the movement of nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear state is prohibited. In addition, Article Two states that non-nuclear signatories of the treaty agree to never acquire nuclear weapons from a nuclear state. There are currently U.S. nuclear weapons in other non-nuclear NATO members so it is unclear why moving such weapons to Romania would be any different.

      Since the annexation of the Crimea by Russia in 2014, the situation on the western Russian border has been deteriorating. In the Ukraine, the lull in the fighting with Russian back rebels has been disappearing and the fighting is intensifying. Russia is in the process of moving forty thousand troops to the border with Ukraine. Moving nuclear weapons to Romania which is a neighbor of Ukraine would probably not be a good idea given the current geopolitical climate in Eastern Europe.

Young professionals from 14 countries attended the first Arabic-language international school on nuclear security held in Cairo, Egypt as part of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) efforts to promote awareness of nuclear security amongst young professionals. world-nuclear-news.org

Urenco is to supply uranium enrichment to Ukraine under a contract signed today by the country’s national nuclear company Energoatom and the enrichment firm owned by Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. world-nuclear-news.org

NuScale Power announced today that it will begin its selection of fabrication partners for the NuScale Power ModuleTM with NuFAB.  nuclearstreet.com

BWX Technologies said Thursday that its subsidiary BWXT Canada Ltd. had entered into a share purchase agreement to acquire all of the shares of the GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada Inc. joint adventure.  nuclearstreet.com