Construction has been completed of China’s first production line for the manufacture of fuel for AP1000 reactors. The new production line is to make two sets of dummy assemblies ahead of full production. world-nuclear-news.org

Nuclear Energy Institute President and Chief Executive Officer Marvin Fertel called for federal action “sooner rather than later,” to help incentivize continued operation of nuclear power plants that are under economic pressures, most notably from low natural gas prices. nuclearstreet.com

Those jockeying to fill the holes on Capitol Hill created by the looming departure of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are espousing opposition to a permanent Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, raising questions about the viability of pursuing the site as an option for storage as nuclear waste continues to pile up. bna.com

Lightbridge Corporation, a U.S. nuclear energy company, today announced that the Company and the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety (VARANS) have signed a nuclear safety training agreement for the first phase of a training program in 2016.  The signing event was hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce and the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and took place on Monday, May 23, at the Sheraton Hotel in Hanoi. nasdaq.com

 

 

 

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. sciencemag.org

Russian president Vladimir Putin did some lobbying for state owned Rosatom in Sochi on Friday, telling southeast Asian countries there that it was time to go nuclear. forbes.com

A group linked with the White House’s efforts to promote the Iranian nuclear deal granted J Street over half a million dollars to advocate for the deal, according to a report by the Associated Press. haaretz.com

Australia’s first registered Adnya­mathanha storyline runs 70km from Hawker to Cotebina Spring through pastoral and indigenous lands between Lake Frome and South Australia’s picturesque northern Flinders Ranges, where it is emerging as a battleline ­between anti-nuclear activists and the federal government. theaustralian.com

 

 

MINAMI-SOMA, Fukushima Prefecture–The mayor here has lamented to visiting Taiwanese students how the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe tore his city apart, with 27,000 residents still unable to return to their homes. asahi.com

Blaming the government for not settling on a nuclear-waste storage scheme, a nuclear energy company has filed a federal complaint to recover $40 million. courthousenews.com

As many as 20 nuclear plants in the United States could shut down over the next decade, and their closure could dramatically increase emissions of greenhouse gases. That was the alarming conclusion of a Department of Energy conference on the future of nuclear power yesterday in Washington, D.C. technologyreview.com

On Thursday, May 19, the Department of Energy (DOE) hosted a four-hour, invitation-only summit in a meeting room in the Senate Office building. Billed as an action-oriented forum for a variety of stakeholders to discuss what they can do about the economic challenges facing nuclear power plants, it came remarkably close to living up to its promise. forbes.com

        Some environmentalists who have been against nuclear power in the past have decided that climate change is such a dangerous challenge to humanity that the problems with nuclear power must be overlooked and nuclear power must be utilized for “low-carbon” energy generation. I happen to vehemently disagree for reasons that I have posted elsewhere in this blog. See here. I recently came across a blog post from 2013 on the Scientific American website that presents five reasons that “liberal environmentalists” mistakenly reject nuclear power. I decided that I would dedicate today’s blog post to dealing those “reasons”.

1. Ignorance. The blog writer assumes that liberal environmentalists are just not informed enough about the dangers and benefits of nuclear power. On the contrary, I happen to think that proponents are not sufficiently educated about the dangers of nuclear power. I have not seen many of the problems on the list that I posted mentioned in discussions of the pros and cons of nuclear power in the media. There are so many different problems in so many different areas that even if some can be solved, not all of them can. There is not another source of energy that has so many negative aspects and dangers as nuclear power.

2. Bad psychological connections. The blog writer talks about connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. His position is that nuclear opponents are improperly associating nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Sorry, but they are associated. The term dual use refers to nuclear technology that can be used both for peaceful nuclear power programs and for nuclear weapons development. Countries such as India have already diverted technology supposedly imported for nuclear power development to their nuclear weapons programs. All standard nuclear reactors produce plutonium during operation which can be extracted and used to build nuclear weapons. He dismisses the dangers of nuclear proliferation as a “political” problem and not an “inherent problem” with nuclear energy. However, nuclear power is inextricably connected to nuclear weapons regardless of what he says. No other energy source produces products and uses technologies that can be used to construct such devastating weapons.

3. Waste. The blog writer admits that nuclear waste disposal does present problems but says that it would be better to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to recover plutonium than to bury it. While he assumes that such plutonium would be used for fuel, it can also be used for nuclear weapons. Large caches of weapons grade plutonium would be a tempting target for terrorists. And it turns out that long standing assumptions about ground water migration are incorrect and this increase the dangers of burying the waste. A great deal of spent nuclear fuel is piling up at reactors sites all over the world and some nuclear waste has already be illegally disposed of contaminating the landscape and endangering public health. Currently after fifty years of nuclear power development and use there is no permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel.

4. Damn them Republicans. The blog writer admits that many prominent Republican oppose nuclear arms treaties  and support nuclear power. He assumes that liberals will reject nuclear power because Republicans support it. Referring back to his proposed confusion between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, he says that nuclear opponents need to separate scientific realities of nuclear science from the politics of proponents or opponents. My problem with that is that regardless of “scientific realities” a lot of Republicans seem to very ignorant of the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. And, with a Republican controlled Congress, the politics of members of Congress have a great impact on funding, regulation and support for expansion of nuclear power regardless of the realities of nuclear science. A Republican President would have the authority to use nuclear weapons in international conflicts.

5. Fear of the unknown. The blog writers says that a lot liberal environmentalists are just afraid of things they cannot see, as if they were superstitious primitives. However, in the case of nuclear power it is very logical to be afraid of what you cannot see, that being dangerous nuclear radiation. Invisible radiation from nuclear power plants and nuclear accidents can contaminate the landscape and cause illness and death after decades with no visible warning.

All in all, I find this blog writer to be arrogant, ignorant and condescending. There are many valid reasons to be concerned about nuclear power and his casual dismissal of those concerns is insulting.

 

Belgium should reconsider its nuclear energy phase-out policy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has suggested following a review of the country’s overall energy policy. Belgium should adopt a national long-term energy strategy “without delay” in order to decarbonize the economy while ensuring security of supply and affordability of energy, it said. world-nuclear-news.org

The UK’s Horizon Nuclear Power has today appointed a joint venture responsible for construction of its Wylfa Newydd plant. The newly created company, Menter Newydd, is a joint venture of Hitachi Nuclear Energy Europe, Bechtel Management Company and JGC Corporation (UK). world-nuclear-news.org

Egypt and Russia have taken a financial step forward in development of a four-reactor nuclear power plant in Dabaa, Egypt, announcing that Russia had granted Egypt a $25 billion loan that is to cover 85 percent of the construction cost of the advanced facility. nuclearstreet.com

Some 15 to 20 nuclear power units in the US are “at risk” of being shut over the next five to 10 years due to economic challenges such as low power prices, competition from natural gas-fired generation and subsidized renewables, a nuclear industry official said Thursday. platts.com

 

        I have blogged before about the international competition to sell nuclear reactors and nuclear technologies. The U.S., France, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea all hope to profit from the rising global market for nuclear power. One aspect of this market is a push to sell nuclear reactors to developing nations looking to expand  their economies and their people’s access to electricity.

       Russia has been moving aggressively in the Middle East to sell power reactors to countries there. Rosatom is a nuclear company owned  by the Russian Government. They recently opened an office in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. Rosatom has nuclear projects in Egypt, Iran, Jordan and Turkey. The new office is going to coordinate all these projects.

        There have been a lot of requests for nuclear project bids from M.E. countries in the past few years. A lot of nuclear cooperation agreements have been signed between M.E. countries and nations that are exporting nuclear technology. Russia has been very aggressive and innovative in its nuclear export market promotions to exploit this M.E. interest in nuclear power. The Russian approach is to offer to build, own, fuel, staff, operate nuclear power reactors in client nations. For countries without any nuclear expertise, such as many M.E. countries, this model is especially attractive. The customers get nuclear power without a lot of the pain and cost involved in developing an domestic nuclear industry. Russia gets steady business for Russian nuclear technology companies.

       There are six countries in the M.E. that are currently involved in developing nuclear power capabilities. Iran was the first M.E. country to build and operate a nuclear reactors. They intend to expand their nuclear capability with plans for eight more nuclear reactors built with Russian assistance. The recent international deal with Iran over nuclear weapons issues allows Iran to build and operate nuclear power reactors. Iran’s competitors in the area, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. began working on nuclear power projects a few years ago. They need to expand power generation and the new reactors would also be status symbols that would counter Iran’s current nuclear power dominance in the area.

        The U.A.E. will have its first nuclear power reactor in operation by 2017. Russia and Egypt have just signed a deal for new nuclear reactors. Russia will loan Egypt twenty five billion dollars to cover eighty five percent of the cost of building four new nuclear power reactors in Egypt. Russia is expected to have new reactors in Turkey by 2020 and Jordan by 2025.

        One big problem for Russian nuclear marketing in the M.E. is the fact that support of Russia for the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria has angered some M.E. countries and reduced their interest in doing business with Russia. The downing of a Russian fighter by Turkey’s air force threatened to shut down the Russian-Turkey nuclear project.

         One of my concerns about this Russian nuclear power push is the fact that if one country controls another country’s access to electricity generation, that gives the first country a lot of influence over the second country with respect to international affairs. We have already seen this when  Russia has shut off gas, oil and/or natural gas to European countries in an attempt to coerce their behavior. M.E. countries would be well advised to keep this in mind when attracted by the great deals that Russia is offering.

       Time will tell how successful the Russian marketing of nuclear power in the M.E. will turn out to be. There are a lot of economic, political, and military conflicts that will make the nuclear business in the M.E. very complicated and difficult.