The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Philadelphia District, said Monday they had issued a final environmental impact statement (EIS) that finds no overriding environmental roadblock for a new nuclear power plant adjacent to the existing Salem and Hope Creek nuclear power plants in Salem County, N.J. nuclearstreet.com

The US launched a third flight test of the newly upgraded B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb, which it says shows the nation’s “continued commitment to security.” The launch was completed by the US Air Force and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). rt.com

Nuclear energy regulators in South Africa and China have signed a technical cooperation agreement as Africa’s most industrialized economy presses forward with controversial plans to build eight new nuclear reactors. alarabiya.net

Sirens will sound and nearly 1,000 police, fire and other emergency and TVA workers will respond Wednesday to a public evacuation around the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Plant near Spring City, Tenn. timesfreepress.com

        The San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station near San Diego in California was shut down a few years ago because of damage to the piping system caused by new steam turbines. The new turbines were ordered from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) by Southern California Edison (SCE), the owner of the power plant. SCE told the NRC that there were no significant changes being made in the design of the steam turbines but they requested that MHI make significant changes. MHI ran computer simulations and told SCE that there could be problems with vibration in the new design. SCE went ahead and ordered the new turbines anyway. Within two years, the vibration problem became so acute that piping cracked and the reactors were shut down in 2012. After analyzing the problems, SCE decided that it would be too expensive to fix the turbines and pipes. The plant was permanently closed in 2013. SCE and MHI sued each other and the NRC criticized SCE for not being open about the changes in design.

       This September, KNSD-TV Channel 7, an NBC TV affiliate in San Diego, investigated the San Onofre site. They reported that radioactive equipment from the plant had been stored on both sides of Interstate Highway 5. This included the beach between I-5 and the Pacific Ocean. The investigation also indicated that SCE had hidden evidence about some leaks at the plant. Documents provided by individuals negotiating with SCE about the future of the site revealed that there were often times when the radiation levels at the plant were so high that the inspectors from the NRC refused to carry out routine radiation surveys because they were afraid for their personal safety. One nuclear power expert said the documents provided to the investigators showed that the operators of the plant were “very, very sloppy, very, very careless in handling radioactive material.”

        Unfortunately, the documents did not pinpoint exact locations where the highest radiation levels could be found. Apparently the operators of the plant were so incompetent and/or indifferent that even though they knew there were dangerously radioactive “hot spots,” they couldn’t be bothered to note where they were.

       A whistleblower and activist who was once with the Utility Consumers’ Action Network said that ” …if (Southern California) Edison gets its way, we will never know (where the hot spots are) … The answer is probably worse than we think.” A former safety officer for the plant said that there should be a thorough and independent inspection of the plant before any plans are made for decommissioning. He said that the county should “Be very careful of the goods they accept from Edison with the blessings of the NRC.”

       The current plan being discussed by the county and SCE provides for part of the twenty five acres of the site to be turned into a temporary storage area for nuclear waste. The county has already agreed to a plan that would create underground storage bunkers for the radioactive waste that would be located within one hundred and twenty five feet of the ocean. The permit says that the waste can only be stored there for twenty years but does not say what must be done with the waste after the twenty five years have expired. A report created by county staff says that the site of the bunkers “…would eventually be exposed to coastal flooding and erosion hazards beyond its design capacity, or else would require protection by replacing or expanding the existing San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station shoreline armoring (sea wall) ” and that “Retention of the (fuel storage site) beyond 2051 would have the potential to adversely affect marine and visual resources and coastal access.”

       The situation at San Onofre is another demonstration of the fact that the owners of nuclear power plants cannot be depended upon to be honest and competent when it comes to public safety. It is likely that whatever the ultimate disposition of the plant and the nuclear waste turns out to be, the ratepayers of the San Diego area and the taxpayers of California will wind up paying part of the cost.

San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station:

 

Tensions between the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, and more conservative authorities over the country’s agreement and its future are turning increasingly bitter, punctuated by public exchanges and growing signs of an anti-American backlash, including arrests. nytimes.com

 Energy giant Entergy’s decision to close its nuclear plant near Oswego shocked the central New York community. northcountypublicradio.org

A Republican legislator is renewing a push to lift Wisconsin’s moratorium on new nuclear power plants, saying the state’s manufacturers must have a reliable source of energy as burning fossil fuels grows more expensive. startribune.com

Erapamo Osaisai, the Chairman, Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission, says Nigeria plans to make each of its nuclear power plants to generate power in excess of 1,200mw. premiumtimesng.com

U.S. vegetation measurements in 2014 are still affected by the Fukushima event due to the long-lived radionuclides deposited.  enenews.com

Argentina has signed deals with China for the construction of the Latin American country’s fourth and fifth nuclear power plants. world-nuclear-news.org

Juan Alberto González Garrido, a project manager with EDF, was among the 129 people killed in the attacks in the French capital on 13 November. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced the death of the 29-year-old engineer from Granada, who had been living in Paris for two years. world-nuclear-news.org

The prime ministers of India and Australia have announced the completion of procedures necessary for a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement between the two countries to enter into force. world-nuclear-news.org

Incentives And Financial Certainty Are Crucial For Deployment Of Low-Carbon Nuclear, Says IEA. nucnet.org

Tainted cities irate over TEPCO’s slow compensation payments: survey japantimes.co.jp

The Department of State in New York is attempting to block the relicensing application for the Indian Point generating station 24 miles north of New York City on grounds that it is harmful to the fish habitat of the Hudson River and a threat to the city’s population. nuclearstreet.com

There are only two options – nuclear power and renewable energy sources – to decarbonise an ever increasing electricity sector and of those only nuclear provides “firmly dispatchable” baseload electricity because the variability of renewables requires flexible backup that is frequently provided by carbon-intensive power plants, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency says in a report today. nucnet.org

Incentives And Financial Certainty Are Crucial For Deployment Of Low-Carbon Nuclear, Says IEA. nucnet.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        I have written in recent blogs about the recent aggressive nuclear stance of Russia. Major upgrades of Russian nuclear weapons have been announced and substantial funds allocated. Russia has been invading other countries airspace with nuclear-capable bombers lately.  The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has bragged about Russian tactical nuclear weapons and said that Russia might respond to a conventional attack by NATO with tactical nukes. There are sources that say that Putin and his advisors believe that in a battle with NATO, if they exploded one nuclear device in Easter Europe, NATO would stop fighting and retreat.

       Recently, there was a report on the government television Channel One about Putin meeting with military high-command in the city of Sochi. One of the generals was seen to be studying a diagram of a new “devastating torpedo” system. The torpedo would be launched by submarine and would cause “wide areas of radioactive contamination.” 

       The new torpedo was called the “oceanic multi-purpose Status-6 system” and the report said that it would “destroy important economic installations of the enemy in coastal areas and cause guaranteed devastating damage to the country’s territory by creating wide areas of radioactive contamination, rendering them unusable for military, economic or other activity for a long time.”

        The torpedo was said to be a “robotic mini-submarine” that could travel at speeds of over a hundred miles an hour and that it could avoid all acoustic tracking devices. There was mention of a one hundred megaton nuclear warhead which would be about twice as big as the largest nuclear warhead ever detonated. Detonation of such a bomb could cause a tsunami over sixteen hundred feet high which could travel as much as a thousand miles inland.

        A Russian government newspaper has reported details of the Status-6 torpedo without showing the diagram that was seen in the television report. The article contained speculation about some sort of cobalt device that was “super-radioactive.” A cobalt bomb would be a nuclear warhead design with a layer of cobalt-59. On detonation, the cobalt-59 would be transmuted to cobalt-60 which is highly radioactive and has a half-life of more than five years. The newspaper said that such a bomb would guarantee “that everything living will be killed” and that even people in underground bunkers would not survive.

         There have been recent reports in the U.S. media of some sort of robotic Russian nuclear-armed drone submarine that could travel undetected to U.S. coastal cities and cause wide-spread devastation. Apparently these reports were references to the new Status-6 torpedo.

         Lately, Putin has been complaining about the U.S. Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system being developed to counter short and medium range ballistic missiles. The U.S. has stated that the system is intended to defend Europe against the type of missiles that could be launched by Iran or other hostile Middle East countries. When fully developed, the Aegis BMD is slated to be installed in Poland and Romania.

        Putin has responded to the development of the Aegis BMD system by saying that the “real” purpose of the system is to neutralize the capability of Russia to employ tactical nuclear ballistic missiles in a conflict with NATO in Eastern Europe. He said that Russia would continue working on advanced ballistic missile systems that could penetrate any anti-missile defense system.

          The U.S. Department of Defense would not comment on the torpedo reports except to say that it would defer to the Russian navy with respect to the question of authenticity. There has been speculation that the revelation of the Status-6 torpedo diagram was deliberate. The Russians have engaged recently in what is being called “hybrid warfare.” This includes propaganda and disinformation. Perhaps the Status-6 torpedo does not really exist and is just being tossed out to confuse and intimidate our military.

         Putin may believe that “leaking” information about an imaginary undetectable Russian nuclear torpedo would cause the Pentagon to divert resources from the development of the Aegis missile shield. In any case, the Russians already have over four thousand nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at the U.S. I would think that these new “super” torpedoes, if they exist, would be redundant and unnecessary if a nuclear war broke out between the U.S. and the Russians.