Yesterday, I blogged about the nuclear bomb test just carried out by North Korea. While scientists doubt that it was a hydrogen bomb as claimed by N.K., there was a strong international reaction to the Test. Many countries have condemned the test including China which has been the main international supporter of N.K. 

        The U.N. Security Council met Wednesday, the day after the test, in an emergency session to discuss the test. The Secretary-General of the U.N. said that the test was “deeply troubling” and “profoundly destabilizing for regional security.” The SG also said he “unequivocally” condemned the underground test and demanded that North Korea “cease any further nuclear activities.”

       The U.S. and Japan are pushing for more sanctions on N.K. to try to force them to negotiate over their nuclear program in the hopes of forging something like the recent Iran nuclear deal. Unfortunately, N.K. is a much tougher nut to crack. One result of the “test” will probably be a greater degree of cooperation between the U.S., Japan and South Korea with respect to North Korea. This will not benefit North Korea.

       China is the major trading partner of N.K. and has been reluctant to impose trade sanctions. China has been using N.K. as a pawn for decades in a game to threaten and antagonize S.K. and the U.S. China fears that N.K. could collapse into anarchy and chaos without the support of China and Chinese trade. If China cut off their support for N.K., the N.K. government might start a war with S.K. in a desperate move to hold on to power. If N.K. detonated nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, China would not only suffer from the radioactive fallout but would also be flooded with desperate refugees fleeing the fighting.

        Here in the U.S., the Republicans are blaming the Obama administration for not doing anything about N.K. nuclear ambitions. There are a lot of international crises that Obama has been forced to deal with. There have been attempts to meet with N.K but progress has been slow at best. It is not clear what else Obama could be doing. The Republicans are happy to seize on the N.K. test to criticize Obama and his State Department, especially Hillary Clinton who is a former Secretary of State under Obama. She is currently a candidate for the U.S. presidency. Republicans are obviously hoping that they can damage her reputation by linking her to the N.K. problem whether there is any valid connection or not.

        There does not seem to be any easy answer to N.K. nuclear belligerence. They are a poor desperate country that hopes to wring concessions and assistance from the rest of the world by threatening nuclear war. China is the key to any movement in negotiations with N.K. and China is trapped in a “damned if they do” and “damned if they don’t” situation. A tense and gridlocked standoff on the Korean Peninsula just got a little more tense with no relief in sight.

North Korean Emblem:

Kyushu Electric set to decommission Genkai Unit 1 reactor in Japan. enformable.com

Westinghouse announced today that its Springfields nuclear fuel fabrication facility in the UK has “reached the requirements necessary” for manufacturing fuel assemblies for its Small Modular Reactor (SMR). Last year the company proposed a partnership with the UK government to deploy SMR technology. world-nuclear-news.org

Peninsula Energy Ltd has announced first delivery of uranium under its wholly owned subsidiary Strata Energy Inc’s 2011 sale and purchase agreement with an unnamed US utility. In-situ uranium recovery operations began from the Ross Permit Area of the Lance Projects in Wyoming, USA on 2 December. world-nuclear-news.org

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that it had granted pre-emption authority to nuclear facilities in New York and California to allow their security forces to carry certain firearms and related devises. nuclearstreet.com

 

        Often I have the luxury of looking around for interesting stories about nuclear issues and choosing what I want to write about on a given day. Other times, there are events that happen that require me to write about them. Today is one of those days. As I was watching the news over dinner last night, there was a breaking story about seismographs registering a 5.1 earthquake in North Korea. The first story I heard pointed out that the epicenter of the quake was near one of their nuclear test facilities at Punggye-ri. This led to speculation that the North Koreans had detonated some sort of nuclear device.

        North Korea is known to have at least a few atomic bombs.  It is a belligerent secretive dictatorship that has been threatening South Korea and other countries with nuclear destruction for years. They have conducted three tests of atomic bombs. The last such test was in February of 2013. N.K. has tested intermediate range missiles which could carry nuclear bombs to Japan and South Korea if they are able to miniaturize them. Such miniaturization is not simple and it is not known if N.K. has that capability. They have also recently fired cruise missiles from submarines. They claim that these cruise missiles could carry nuclear warheads but, once again, this depends on miniaturization.

        Hours after the first reporting of the “earthquake” in N.K., the N.K. government announced that they had just tested a hydrogen bomb. Hydrogen bombs are much more powerful that atomic bombs made with uranium or plutonium. While it is known that N.K. has atomic bombs, their ability to construct and successfully test a hydrogen bomb is unknown. While the seismic readings are consistent with the detonation of an atomic bomb, there are skeptics who don’t think that the detonation was indicative of a successful test of a hydrogen bomb. The blast was estimated at about equivalent to six tons of TNT which is less than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A hydrogen bomb explosion should have been much more powerful than an atomic bomb blast so it is doubted that the N.K. test was actually a hydrogen bomb. If they do develop a hydrogen bomb, such bombs can be miniaturized more easily that atomic bombs. This means that they would be able to develop missiles with nuclear warheads.

        The current dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un took over when his father died in late 2011. It is believed that Kim’s belligerence is partly a concession to military hard liners in N.K. which have pushed for confrontation with South Korea. He has repeatedly threatened nuclear war with South Korea and constantly complained about U.S. troops and U.S. participation in military exercises in South Korea. It is interesting to note that this bomb test occured just two days before Kim’s birthday. N.K. may be a military threat but the country is very poor and the people are suffering terribly under Kim’s dictatorship. His constant railing about foreign enemies is obviously part of his attempt to hold onto power.

Punggye-ri test site in North Korea:

A stockpile of plutonium currently in Japanese possession, will be shipped to the United States by the end of March, according to media reports that are touting the shipment as a gesture of non-proliferation goodwill. nuclearstreet.com

To Republican U.S. presidential contenders, North Korea’s claim that it tested a hydrogen bomb may further make the 2016 race what they dearly want it to be: a referendum on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and, by extension, Hillary Clinton’s. news.yahoo.com

Asia Pacific stock markets extend losses after North Korea nuclear test. Fears about Pyongyang’s threat to security added to tensions in a region plagued by uncertainty about the state of the Chinese economy. theguardian.com

A US submarine commander has lost his job after he grounded an Ohio-class guided missile submarine as it returned to port. news.sky.com

 

 

One of the biggest problems with nuclear waste is polluted water. Dumping nuclear trash into the oceans of the world, leaking nuclear waste dumps and leaks from nuclear reactors have contaminated billions of gallons of water around the world. The nuclear disaster at Fukushima was and is a huge example of this. They have billions of gallons of radioactive polluted water in a tank farm and more leaking from underground that they are trying to keep out of the Pacific ocean into which they have already poured billions of gallons of contaminated water. The world desperately needs an efficient and cheap way to clean radioactivity out of huge quantities of water.

        Graphene is a form of carbon that has shown great possibilities for a huge number of applications. It is a hexagonal grid of carbon atoms one atom thick. One of the applications that has been extensively researched is the use of graphene for filtering water and gases. Graphene can have variable sized pores, it has a large surface area and special adhesion properties that make it an excellent choice for filtration. Recent research has shown that graphene may have application to removing radioactive contamination from water.

        Hydrogen has three isotopes. The first consists of a single proton orbited by a single electron. This is sometimes referred to as protium and constituted the hydrogen atoms of most of the water on Earth. The second isotope is called deuterium. It consists of a proton and a neutron orbited by an electron. Deuterium is naturally present as a tiny percent of the hydrogen atoms in all the water on Earth. It can have adverse health effects. Heavy water is water which has deuterium hydrogen instead of the usual protium hydrogen. Heavy water is used in certain types of nuclear reactors and can leak into the environment. Protium and deuterium are stable isotopes. The third isotope of hydrogen is tritium. It has a proton and two neutrons and is orbited by a single electron. Tritium is radioactive and dangerous to human health. Water with tritium in place of protium is created by radioactive processes. It is often released from nuclear power plants when the cooling systems leak. These three isotopes are currently difficult to separate.

       In an article recently published in Science magazine, researchers at the University of Manchester report that they have been able to use graphene to separate protium from deuterium. Theory said that nuclei of deuterium, called deutrons, should be able to pass through graphene easily. However, actual experiment showed that the deuterons could not pass through the graphene and that the process was very efficient. There are estimates that the new graphene based filtration system could cost one tenth of the current filtrations systems used to remove deuterium from contaminated water. Graphene should also be able to separate out the tritium nuclei from water. This is the first membrane that has ever been shown to be able to separate subatomic particles at room temperature. If the researchers can scale up their simple system to industrial levels, it would mean a great leap in the ability to clean up radioactively contaminated water.

       The Fusion Engine fusion reactor currently under development by Helion Energy uses deuterium. With a graphene filter, the deuterium could be easily separated out from any body of water to be used as fuel.

Artist’s concept of a sheet of graphene:

Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot Tuesday, with state television showing weapons in store that the United States says are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. nbcnews.com

Unit 3 of South Korea’s Shin Kori nuclear power plant achieved a sustained chain reaction for the first time on 29 December. It becomes the country’s 25th operable power reactor. world-nuclear-news.org

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it would commence a special inspection of the Oconee nuclear power station on Tuesday to review concerns over startup transformer cables for the plant’s Unit 1 and Unit 3 reactors due to problems that were discovered by a plant operator on Dec. 7. nuclearstreet.com

Energy company Fortum Oyj said Tuesday that it planned extensive upgrades at the Loviisa nuclear power plant in 2016, including turbine generator refurbishment. The plans extend upgrades already begun for safety and production efficiency, the Finnish company said. nuclearstree

Part Two of Two Parts (Please read Part One first)

       Setting all these questions and concerns aside, there is the big question of whether or not the electricity produced by Diablo Canyon will even be needed in the middle or the long term. California has about forty percent more electricity available than it currently needs. Some energy analysts say that the continued operation of Diablo Canyon will slow down the expansion of renewable energy sources in California. The output of Diablo Canyon is inflexible because it is very difficult to raise and lower. This base load supply reduces demand for alternative and more flexible low carbon energy sources. If PG&E delays a decision on relicensing, alternative sustainable energy sources may not be strongly supported. If PG&E then decides not to relicense, there could be a future shortfall of low carbon electricity available.

       PG&E says that continued operation of Diablo Canyon for twenty years beyond current licensing would save the residents of the area as much as sixteen billion dollars. Such estimates are questionable at best in light of the rapidly changing energy market and the falling cost of renewable sustainable energy sources. In addition, critics of Diablo Canyon say that the cost of upgrading Diablo Canyon to meet environmental and seismic mandates may not be worth it.     PG&E has been very quiet about its plans for Diablo Canyon. Some critics of the company think that it may be looking for an excuse to shut the plant down even before the current licenses expire.

       In 2007, the California Public Utilities Commission demanded that PG&E make a decision about renewing the licenses at least ten years before the licenses expired. They said that this was necessary in order for energy planners to have time to figure out how to replace the two gigawatts that the plant generates in case PG&E decided to close it before the original licenses expired. Critics of PG&E have voiced suspicions that PG&E has deliberately held off making any decision as the ten year deadline passed because they hope to make opposition difficult when they do apply for license renewal. The shorter the time that planners have to find alternative energy sources, the easier it will be for PG&E to get their licenses renewed.

        PG&E has countered with a statement that it was working on license renewal in 2010 but suspended those activities after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and has not yet set a timeline for continuing with the licensing process.

        In 2010, there was an explosion in a pipeline owned by PG&E that resulted in eight deaths and two billion in state fines. Dozens of criminal charges were filed by the federal government. This explosion and its aftermath called the competence of PG&E into question. Critics of the company fear that it has been less than rigorous in the management of Diablo Canyon and worry that extending the licenses may be an invitation to future serious accidents at the plant.

         Perhaps it is time for the NRC and the people of California to make a decision independent to PG&E. There are a lot of good reasons shut down Diablo Canyon permanently even before their currently licenses expire. It would be best for California to end their use of nuclear power as soon as possible.