A ceremony was held on 4 October in Pevek, Russia, to mark the start of construction of the coastal infrastructure for the first-of-a-kind floating nuclear power plant. The floating power and heat plant is set to be commissioned there in 2019. world-nuclear-news.org

AREVA NP said Thursday that it had recently completed the nuclear industry’s first non-destructive examination (NDE) of reactor vessel nozzles using a new phased array ultrasonic (UT) technique with 3-D modeling capabilities at Unit 3 of Dominion’s Millstone Power Station in Waterford, Conn. nuclearstreet.com

Hurricane Matthew is about to slam into an area of the East Coast with 11 nuclear reactors, but industry experts say it is ready for the Category 4 storm. googleleads.g.doubleclick.net

Australia should revisit the possibility of more nuclear power after South Australia’s blackout, senior Liberal Eric Abetz says. abc.net.au

 

 

A complex remote cutting job is underway at Sellafield to enable the removal of cladding waste from an outdated silo. Engineers are using an innovative jet to remove plates of steel while maintaining an inert atmosphere important for safety. world-nuclear-news.org

Two New York State departments said this week they had been directed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to investigate last Friday’s oil spill at the Indian Point Energy Center. nuclearstreet.com

The Kyushu Electric Power Company in Japan shut down one of the country’s three operating nuclear reactors Thursday for a scheduled maintenance outage that was agreed to in the heightened safety awareness prompted by the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power station 150 miles northeast of Tokyo. nuclearstreet.com

Donald Trump isn’t taking a position for the time being on the highly contentious, decades-old proposal to build a federal nuclear waste repository in Nevada. thehill.com

A UN court has thrown out cases brought by the Marshall Islands against the UK and others for allegedly failing to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. bbc.com

Japan has established a new organization tasked with managing its reprocessing of used fuel, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has announced. In a statement on 3 October, the ministry said the Nuclear Reprocessing Organization of Japan will be funded by the country’s power utilities to cover the cost of the reprocessing work. This is a mandatory requirement that replaces the previous expectation that utilities would voluntarily contribute to the reprocessing program. world-nuclear-news.org

British steelworkers have been betrayed, a union boss claims, as it was reported that a foreign firm will supply metal for the new fleet of nuclear submarines. telegraph.co.uk

Russia increased its deployed nuclear warheads over the past six months under a strategic arms reduction treaty as U.S. nuclear warhead stocks declined sharply, according to the State Department. During the same period, the United States cut its deployed nuclear warheads by 114, increasing the disparity between the two nuclear powers. freebeacon.com

       Presidential Candidate Donald Trump thinks that it might be OK for Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons despite the fact the U.S. has given the two countries the protection of the U.S. nuclear arsenal specifically to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in Asia. Now a report from the Department of Defense Office of Net Assessment (ONA) has been issued that discusses the possibilities for Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons if the U.S. withdraws its protection and what might happen in a nuclear exchange between China and Japan.

       The ONA was created in 1973 by the Nixon administration to serve as the Pentagon’s internal think tank. It is charged with the task of look a few decades into the future and, with the help of outside contractors, producing reports of their studies to aid Pentagon decision makers.

       The new report predicts that Japan could develop its own nuclear weapons within a ten years period because it has already advanced nuclear infrastructure. In addition, they will have the land based missiles and submarine launched missiles to deliver their nuclear warheads. Their most likely enemy in a nuclear confrontation would be China.

        Despite having a nuclear arsenal of their own, Japan would not be able to survive a nuclear war with China. One major problem is the fact that Japan is tiny compared to China. Japan might kill thirty million Chinese with nuclear strikes. This is between two and three percent of the population of China. China is a huge country so although a Japanese nuclear attack would be very destructive to the targets, it could only affect a very small area of China.

        A direct Chinese nuclear attack on Tokyo would probably kill at least thirty four million people which represents about a quarter of the Japanese population. It would devastate a significant part of the Japanese archipelago.  Exact projects of casualties are difficultbecause there is disagreement on whether the nuclear warheads would cause firestorms that would increase deaths.

        The study detailed in the report was prompted by the increasing tensions between China and Japan. Their navies and air forces have carried on low level hostilities for years around an island chain claimed by both countries, which is known as the Senkaku chain by the Japanese.

       Japan’s constitution which was drafted after World War II with the help of the United States contains Article 9 which prohibits Japan from using war to settle international disputes. The article says that Japan will not maintain armed forces with the ability to wage war on another country.

       The report also said that lately Japan has been building up its military and has reinterpreted the language of Article 9 to allow for a wider range of weaponry and military activity. A few months ago, a representative of the current Japanese government said the Japanese constitution does not specifically prohibit Japan from building and possessing nuclear weapons. Recently Japan has begun to fear that the U.S. nuclear umbrella may be unable to provide security against the expansion and modernization of the conventional and nuclear forces of China and Russia.

         The ONA has been criticized for producing questionable reports that have been attacked as just “make work” for contractors and think tanks. One report analyzed the cultural antecedents of the current U.S. society with respect to international belligerence. Another recent report analyzed the facial expression and body language of Chinese and Russian leaders in order to predict their decision making. A third report tried to analyze Chinese culture through studies of Chinese propaganda films. A forth report studied the differences in attitudes between the urban “elites” and the less educated but more “patriotic” citizens of the U.S. as a possible cause of future civil disturbances.

         Back in the middle of 2015, the U.S. Secretary of Defense sent a memo to the ONA which said “The Office of Net Assessment has long been my predecessors’ source of independent, long term, deep thinking about our future. That is the legacy I expect you to maintain and upon which I expect you to build,” the memo reads. The Secretary went on to say that analyzing the future of warfare should not come at the expense of up-to-date informed advice on current pressing policy issues for the secretary of defense.

A UN court has thrown out cases brought by the Marshall Islands against the UK and others for allegedly failing to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. bbc.com

Japan has established a new organization tasked with managing its reprocessing of used fuel, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has announced. In a statement on 3 October, the ministry said the Nuclear Reprocessing Organization of Japan will be funded by the country’s power utilities to cover the cost of the reprocessing work. This is a mandatory requirement that replaces the previous expectation that utilities would voluntarily contribute to the reprocessing program. world-nuclear-news.org

British steelworkers have been betrayed, a union boss claims, as it was reported that a foreign firm will supply metal for the new fleet of nuclear submarines. telegraph.co.uk

Russia increased its deployed nuclear warheads over the past six months under a strategic arms reduction treaty as U.S. nuclear warhead stocks declined sharply, according to the State Department. During the same period, the United States cut its deployed nuclear warheads by 114, increasing the disparity between the two nuclear powers. freebeacon.com

       Vitrification is a process of combining radioactive materials with other substances including silicon to yield a glass log that can be permanently disposed of in a geological repository, insuring that the radioactive materials will not be leached out of the log by ground water. If vitrification is being used to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, one of the first steps is to dissolve the cladding materials of the fuel rods. This step often utilizes sulfuric acid or H2SO₄. The bisulfate ion or HSO₄ can remain in the solution and cause problems with further stages of processing.

       Researchers at Indiana University at Bloomington created a cyanostar macrocycle. A macrocycle is a ring of atoms that contains eight or more. The cyanostar is a five sided or star shaped molecule that has an affinity for anions or negatively charged molecular fragments or ions. These cyanostar macrocycles are easy to synthesize and were developed because they had potential use in trapping various types of pollutants inside the ring including borates, chlorates and phosphates.

       The Indiana researchers have discovered a “supermolecule” that may be able to aid in the removal of bisulfate from the vitrification solution. The supermolecule is a combination of two anions or monomers of bisulfate that form what is called a dimer.  Monomers are molecules that can be bound with identical monomers to form a chain that is referred to as a polymer or “many monomers”. When only two monomers are joined, it is called a dimer or “two monomers.”

       Dimers composed of two anions were thought to be impossible because the two negative ions should repel each other according to standard theories of electrochemistry. However, there are short range attractions that make the combination possible because they overcome the expected long range repulsion between the two negatively charged ions.

         Normally, monomers bond with what is called a covalent bond. This is created when an electron from each of the bonding monomers interact to create the bond. However the new supermolecular found by the researchers is based on many weak non-covalent bonds connecting two monomers. The bisulfate monomers mentioned above connect via a self-complementary, anti-electrostatic hydrogen bond.

        The Indiana researchers were trying to trap a single bisulfate monomer inside the cyanostar as proof of concept for using the cyanostar to capture bisulfate left over from sulfuric acid in processing spend nuclear fuel for disposal. They were surprised to find two bisulfate monomers inside each ring during their test. Trapping a dimer made of two bisulfate monomers inside each ring would be twice as effective as they were expecting for bisulfate removal from a vitrification solution. Vitrification is a promising method of encapsulating spent nuclear fuel waste for disposal and any improvement in the process is welcome.

        These cyanostar macrocycles will also be able to remove harmful phosphates, borates and chlorates from the environment. Phosphates from fertilizers run off land into bodies of water and cause environmental havoc by spawning massive algae blooms and killing huge numbers of fish.

Artist’s concept of cyanostar: