Thought it was time for an update on the big Hinkley Point C project in Britain. This is a real circus. The project is huge with a budget over twenty billion dollars for the construction of two nuclear power reactors. The contract for construction is held by the French government owned company, EDF.

         EDF is in serious financial trouble because of a couple of major nuclear projects in France that are behind schedule and over budget. Also, the steel reactor vessels that were going to be used turned out to have too much carbon in the alloy which reduced their strength below acceptable standards.

         Looking for investors, EDF set up an arrangement last October with a Chinese nuclear company named China General Nuclear Power Corporation, a state owned entity. The CGNPC is going to take a one third stake in the project. In order to get the Chinese involved, the British had to promise to let them build a Chinese designed reactor in Britain with Chinese labor. This upset the British labor unions as well as the British security forces. Then Britain got hit with a legal challenge because of European Union rules about outside investors in major projects.

        The British government has promised to pay about twice as much for the electricity generated by the new reactors than the current price for electricity in Britain. Consumers fear that the price of electricity from other sources will stay low and those being supplied by the new Hinkley Point C reactors will wind up pay too high a price. This also caused another lawsuit claiming that Britain was violating EU rules about government support for private projects.

        Now for the update.

         The problem with too much carbon in the reactor vessels has been solved. EDF claims that they are going to use a different manufacturing process with different size chunks of steel that will produce reactor vessels that are sufficiently strong to meet regulatory standards.

         The project was supposed to start construction within weeks of the deal set last October but EDF has been holding off making a final decision on the financing for the project because of their internal problems. Now they say that they will deliver final approval by the first of April even though there is strong resistance on the EDF board from the labor representatives. The Finance Director of EDF just resigned because he said that he cannot personally support the project proceeding for at least three years while EDF sorts out its financial problems.

         Another reason for the delay is that in spite of the announcement of a deal with the Chinese last October, EDF says that they still do not have a signed contract for the Chinese participation because the due diligence of the CGNPC company was taking longer than expected due to the extraordinary complexity of the project. When the lack of a signed contract with CGNPC was made public recently, EDF faced a storm of criticism.

        The Hinkley Point C project is a fascinating spectacle as promoter of nuclear power try desperately to move the project forward as problem after problem blocks their progress. Hopefully, this giant mess will collapse soon and save the ratepayers of Britain a huge hike in their electric bills.

Artist’s concept of new Hinkley Point C power station:

Nearly 500 terminated federal employees could gain “unauthorized physical access” to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) facilities because the agency didn’t take back their security cards, according to a government watchdog. dailycaller.com

A small fire ignited early Wednesday in one of the pump motors for TVA’s newest reactors, forcing the federal utility to declare the lowest of emergency classifications at the plant even before it has produced any power. timesfreepress.com

While global energy demand is expected to grow by 34% between 2014 and 2035, nuclear power generation will grow 50% in total over the same period, according to the latest Energy Outlook from oil and gas giant BP. world-nuclear-news.org

The Canadian government this week, backing up campaign pledge, announced $206 million in support of clean technology initiatives, including a $18.5 million in grants for next-generation nuclear power companies Terrestrial Energy and General Fusion. nuclearstreet.com

        Uranium is the main fuel for nuclear power plants. It is found in many types of geological formations in combination with many minerals all over the world. In spite of its ubiquity, some forms and deposits are easier to mine than others. There are about four hundred nuclear power reactors in use in the world today. Japan shut down about fifty following the Fukushima disaster in March of 2011. On the other hand, China, India and Russia are investing heavily in building new reactors. There was a softening of demand after the Fukushima disaster for uranium fuel but now demand is picking up again. The current contract price of uranium is around forty seven dollars a pound.

       The nuclear power industry has enjoyed years of low uranium prices. The U.S. has about a quarter of the power reactors in the world. U.S. power plants have enjoyed fifteen years of reactor fuel prices below the cost of uranium on the open market because they had a deal with the Russian to purchase reactor fuel made from decommissioned Russian nuclear warheads left over from the Cold War. This cozy arrangement has just ended. Prices for uranium have started to rise in the past year.

        Australia has the largest reserves of uranium in the world at around thirty percent. This may increase as more mines come online and exploration continues. Recently, changes in state and government laws opened up much of the nation to uranium exploration. Canada has the next largest reserves at about twelve percent. Kazakhstan comes next at around ten percent. Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia produce about two thirds of the world’s uranium. Kazakhstan’s production has quadrupled in the past ten years and it now produces forty one percent of the world supply. Canada’s production has been flat for ten years and now accounts for about sixteen percent of world production. Australia’s production has dropped by about forty percent in the last ten years and is now about nine percent of world production.

        Although Australia has the largest reserves by far, Australian production has declined because the cost of extraction makes the current price of forty seven dollars a pound too low for some of the producers. If the contract price of uranium rises to fifty dollars a pound, more Australian producers will be able to turn a profit. They would really like to see the price rise to sixty five dollars a pound which would bring more mines and producers online. With the sharp increase in construction of nuclear power reactors around the world and the planning for many more, the price of uranium should rise significantly in the next few years. If the desired price increase occur, then Australia with its massive reserves could become the major supplier of uranium to the world within a decade.

      With many new reactors coming online and competition for uranium fuel supply rising, it is inevitable that the price of uranium will rise in the next few years. With competition from ever cheaper sustainable energy sources and cheap abundant oil and natural gas, higher uranium prices will make nuclear power less attractive. Time will tell if all the planned reactors get built and Australia becomes the dominating nuclear fuel source that it aspires to be.

Australian Ranger 3 open pit uranium mine:

 

A movement calling on people to retain their children’s baby teeth to help study radiation exposure in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster is gaining momentum in Japan. mainichi.jp

A court in Japan has ordered Kansai Electric Power to shut down two of its reactors in Takahama, western Japan. bbc.com

 Bowing to international pressure, French utility EDF said it would close down the two oldest nuclear power reactors in France, which are situated on the border with Germany and are close to Switzerland, as well. nuclearstreet.com

The energy company behind the Hinkley Point nuclear project has still not signed off a contract with its Chinese partner that is needed for the £18bn plant to go ahead. theguardian.com

 

 

 

 

 

          This week, I am going to talk about using nuclear fission for space propulsion. I have mentioned nuclear fission propulsion engines in the past. The Soviet Union was very interested in nuclear engines for space travel and created a functional nuclear engine after a twenty year program that started in 1960 and ended in 1980. It was never used to propel any spacecraft. In the U.S., Project Orion was a design for a spacecraft that used nuclear propulsion that was never built. The Russians are currently working on a new nuclear fission propulsion system.

      The most recent Russian nuclear propulsion project was launched in 2010 with a budget of about two hundred and seventy five million dollars. It was part of the Russian space program planning for the period up to 2020. The goal was to develop a nuclear fission-based propulsion system that would provide much greater economic efficiency by increasing the amount of electricity available on a spacecraft by ten times. It is hoped that this will allow deep space mission of greater duration and distance. The funding was split among a number of different organizations and facilities.

       The new system is to include  “high-conversion circuits , a high temperature compact fast reactor with a gas cooling system, nuclear and radiation safety features for in all phases of operation, high temperature turbine and compact heat exchangers with a decade of design life, high-speed electric generators with high power converters, high efficiency fuel cells, and a propulsion system based on high-performance powerful ionic electric propulsion.”

      In the this new Russian system, a nuclear reactor generates up to four megawatts of electricity which heats a gas that then drives a turbine. The turbine generates electricity with high efficiency which is used to charge fuel cells. An ion propulsion system then uses the electricity available to send charged ions of xenon gas out the back of the space craft. There will be six main engines and eight smaller engines for roll control and course correction.

      Ion propulsion is not as immediately powerful as chemical rockets but it operates continuously for long periods of time. This is much more efficient than chemical rockets and it requires much less fuel. Unlike current rocket engines which fire intensely for short periods and then shut off leaving the spacecraft to coast for long periods, the new propulsion system would be able to maneuver, accelerate and decelerate during the flight.

      The head of the Russian Rosatom nuclear corporation just announced that Russia may test a prototype of their new nuclear propulsion engine for space exploration as soon as 2018. Conventional rockets would take more than six months to reach Mars and would not be able to carry enough fuel to make the return trip. The new Russian nuclear propulsion system should be able to reach Mars in about six weeks and return to Earth without refueling.        

      Traditional rocket engines and traditional fuels are reaching the end of their utility for deep space missions and the Russians are betting that nuclear propulsions systems will be the next “big thing” in space propulsion. The U.S. recently tested the first use of ion engines in orbit and they are being considered for U.S. deep space missions.

Artist’s concept of a Russian spacecraft with nuclear driven ion propulsion:

 

A total of 166 children in Fukushima Prefecture had been either diagnosed with thyroid cancer or with suspected cases of cancer by the end of 2015 through screening conducted by the Fukushima Prefectural Government, following the 2011 nuclear plant crisis. mainichi.jp

A total of 21 companies involved with the decommissioning of reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant — half of the firms that responded to a survey conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun — revealed that they are facing concerns due to an insufficient number of employees for the work. mainichi.jp

The $25.6 billion Hinkley Point nuclear plant project for Britain, which has a very tentative construction start date of 2019, has been hit with another headline-provoking controversy as the chief finance director for French utility EDF has quit his post over rising project costs, French and British media are reporting. nuclearstreet.com

Russia has warned North Korea that threats to deliver “preventive nuclear strikes” could create a legal basis for the use of military force against the country, suggesting that even Pyongyang’s few remaining friends are growing concerned about its increasingly confrontational stance. theguardian.com

 

 

        One of the major considerations of creating nuclear reactors is the question of what materials to use for what purposes. A variety of elements in a variety of combinations have been found to be useful. The materials near the core of nuclear reactors are subjected to intense heat and bombardment with neutrons which causes some of them to become porous and brittle with age. This is a major reason that nuclear power plants are licensed for limited life spans. Forty years has been a common license period with twenty year renewals if the reactor is found to be sound enough to keep operating. 

       A team of researchers at MIT has found that adding small quantities of carbon nanotubes (CNT) to aluminum can slow down the process of embrittlement in a nuclear reactor. At this time, the new additive can only be used in lower temperature environments like research reactors. It is hoped that, in time, the same additive might be used in other metals and in the higher temperatures of nuclear power reactors. In addition to dealing with radiation damage, it has been found that addition of the carbon nanotubes can increase the strength of the composite material by up to fifty percent. It also increases the tensile ductility of the composite which means that it can withstand more deformation before it breaks.

       Metals such as aluminum have microscopic grains or zones. When subjected to conditions in reactor cores, radiation transmutation can generate helium which forms tiny bubbles along the boundaries of the grains. This porosity makes the metal brittle. When about two percent of the volume of the metal is occupied by carbon nanotubes, the nanotubes form a one dimensional transport network along which the helium can percolate. The helium is able to leak out of the metal and does not remain to cause further damage. Although the carbon nanotubes are converted to carbides after being exposed to radiation, the carbides retain the long narrow shape which provides an avenue of escape for the helium. The tubular carbides have a huge combined surface area while allows point defects in the metal to recombine which also prevents embrittlement. The carbide nanotubes can withstand a lot of radiation. The reduction in embrittlement is between five and ten times that of untreated metal.

       The current research is focused on aluminum but the researchers are going to move on to test the process on zirconium. Zirconium is used extensively in the nuclear industry for the coating layer or cladding on the outside of long thin cylinders or rods of nuclear fuel. They hope to find that the beneficial results of adding carbon nanotubes to aluminum will be replicated when they are added to other metals. If this proves to be true, the new process could be extremely useful in a number of applications in nuclear power reactors.

       The amount of carbon nanotubes added to the metal constitute only about one percent by weight. Carbon nanotubes are inexpensive to produce. The composite resulting from the addition of carbon nanotubes to metal can be created inexpensively in standard industrial processes. Korea is already manufacturing tons of the new material for use in automobile manufacture.