Japan just can’t seem to catch a break as extreme forces in nature repeatedly buffet the island. fairwinds.org

Earlier this week, an odd-looking gargantuan fish from Japan became a minor celebrity on Twitter. But the tide soon turned as curious reactions gave way to harmful rumors that its strange appearance is the result of the effects of radiation from the Fukushima disaster. motherboard.vice.com

THREE reports by top international consultancies which explore the cost of building 9,600MW of nuclear power in South Africa have been classified as secret and will not be made available to the public, the Department of Energy has said. bdlive.co.za

A regional environmental group set the stage Friday for a new round in the decades long battle over Salem nuclear plant cooling-water demands, submitting the most-detailed critique yet of the site’s 3-billion-gallon-per-day draw from the Delaware River. enviropoliticsblogs.blogspot.com.au

Part 1 of 2 parts

        There has been a great deal of coverage in the media about the Iran nuclear program and the Iran deal that has just been approved by Congress. Today, I will delve into the history of the Iranian nuclear program.

       The Iran nuclear program began in 1957. The U.S. provided Iran with a five megawatt research reactor. The reactor was built on the grounds of Tehran University and the U.S. provided weapons-grade enriched uranium to fuel it. The reactor is still operating.  It was constructed as part of U.S President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program. The idea was that if the U.S. helped other countries develop domestic nuclear power programs, those countries might be less inclined to work on the development of nuclear weapons. (It is interesting to note that the legally elected democratic government of Iran was overthrown in 1953 by Iranians backed by the U.K. and the U.S. The new government was led by Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi as absolute monarch with U.K. and U.S. support until the revolution in 1979.)

       With the energy crisis of the early 1970s and the rise in oil prices, money flooded into oil rich nations such as Iran. As one result of the influx of capital, Iran expanded its nuclear program. Iran gave MIT twenty million dollars to train Iranian nuclear scientists. Most of these Iranian students returned to Iran and became important members of the Iranian nuclear program.

      Following these developments, some members of the U.S. government became concerned that Iran might be developing nuclear weapons and tried to find ways to curtail Iranian nuclear research. The Shah’s government responded that Iran had every right as a sovereign nation to pursue nuclear research. The Shah threatened to look for other vendors and not use U.S. technology in his research program. Iran wound up buying nuclear power plants from West Germany and France.

      Then the Iranian Revolution of 1979 happened and the Shah’s government was toppled. The religiously oriented government that replace the previous regime was very hostile towards the U.S. Their initial reaction to the Iranian nuclear program was negative. It was seen as part of the U.S. meddling in the affairs of Iran. The reactor building program was abandoned. The Ayatollah Khomeni who was the new ruler of Iran said that the unfinished nuclear power plants in Bashehr, Iran should be used to store wheat.

      Soon after the Revolution, a war broke out between Iraq and Iran in 1980. Iraq struck first in fear of Iranian support for the Shia minority in southern Iraq. One of the tactics employed by Iraq was the repeated bombing of the Bashehr nuclear facility although it was not operational. The war dragged on for 8 years and was costly and destructive to both sides. The damage in Iran included the loss of power generating capacity. Whether related to the possibility of deterring future attacks or in order to provide the much needed electricity, the Iranian leadership decided to resurrect the Iranian nuclear program following the end of the war in 1988.

       During the 1990s, Israel repeatedly warned that Iran was making progress towards a nuclear bomb. Israel and Iran were enemies and Israel feared that they would be the target of an Iranian nuclear weapon. The U.S. had imposed trade sanction on Iran following the Revolution in 1979 and the U.S. expanded sanctions in 1995 over concerns with the Iranian nuclear program. The Iranian nuclear program which had been symbol of Western “toxic” influence in pre-Revolutionary Iran, now became a symbol of defiance of Western Influence and an icon of Iran national pride.

(Please see Part 2)

Tehran University Research Reactor:

Belgium’s Constitutional Court has rejected Electrabel’s appeal against the legality of the nuclear tax contribution imposed by the government for 2013. world-nuclear-news.org

Officials at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station are considering whether they can afford the multimillion-dollar safety improvements and other reforms required by federal officials. If not, they say, they might close the plant. bostonglobe.com

 If North Korea launches a rocket into space or conducts a nuclear test in the coming weeks, as observers suspect it may, China is certain to respond angrily, and perhaps with an unprecedented level of economic punishment. armytimes.com

On Oct. 15, Sweden will add nuclear plants to a list of sites including airports and hospitals with no-fly zones in an effort to preserve national security. If caught, drone pilots face as long as 6 months behind bars, according to the Swedish police. bloomberg.com

 

 

       I have mentioned in previous blogs that Austria is adamantly opposed to nuclear power and nuclear weapons. They are bringing law suits against other members of the European with respect to nuclear projects. Austria is promoting a “humanitarian pledge” to “stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.” This pledge is now endorsed by one hundred and sixteen countries. It is seen as a precursor to a new global treaty that would outlaw all nuclear weapons.

       Australia recently declined to be a signatory of the Austrian-led pledge. A spokeswoman for the Australian government commented that Australia “sees no value” in the pledge because it ignores the reality of the global nuclear situation. There are five “declared” nuclear nations who are currently signatories of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NNP Treaty). They are the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia. None of these countries has signed the Austrian pledge. There are also four countries who have nuclear weapons who are not signatories for the NNP Treaty and who have also not signed the Austrian pledge. These countries are Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.

       An Australian government spokeswoman said that the pledge focuses on humanitarian aspects of nuclear weapons and does not cover the security aspects of nuclear weapons. In order for the pledge to have any significance, the Australian government feels that it must involve all of the nations which currently possess nuclear weapons. One reason for Australian reluctance is the fact that Australia has treaties with the U.S. which include an obligation by the U.S. to protect Australia with U.S. nuclear weapons. The spokeswoman said that as long as the threat of an attack by nuclear weapons exists, Australia will not pledge to reject the use of nuclear weapons for retaliation against its attackers.

        Currently, global nuclear disarmament efforts are dependent on the 1968 NNP which is widely considered to have failed in its goals and timetable. While it is true that the major nuclear powers are slowing reducing their stockpiles of old nuclear warheads, all of them are working on the upgrade of some old weapons and the development of new weapons which clearly violates the spirit and, sometimes, the letter of the NNP Treaty. Non-signatories of the NPP Treaty such as Pakistan and India are actively increasing their nuclear weapon uststockpiles.

        Australia supports the disarmament goals of the NNP Treaty as well as other nuclear related international programs such as the comprehensive test ban treaty and negotiations for capping stockpiles of fissile materials. The Australian  spokeswoman acknowledges that “the strongest assurance against nuclear attack is the total elimination of nuclear weapons and for this reason the Australian government works hard to further international efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament.” However, Australian officials also concede that  “prospects are bleak for meaningful progress in multilateral arms control.”

      Critics of the Australian government’s position say that the idea that Australia needs the protection of U.S. nuclear weapons is “a long-held belief that has gone unchallenged” and that “Nuclear weapons undermine safety, they do not enhance it.” Australian supporters of the Austrian pledge say that the Australian government is underestimating the strength of support of the pledge. They say that the government is finding itself at odds with the rising tide of domestic and international support for a total ban on the use of nuclear weapons.

 From TEPCO’s report released on 9/4/2015, the density of Strontium-90 increased to 155% of the previous highest reading in the seaside of Reactor 2. fukushima-diary.com

Although the first reactor in Japan to be fired up in two years went online last month, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Wednesday that Japan needs to seek a nuclear-free path. japantimes.co.jp

Several international cooperation agreements related to nuclear safety and regulation have been signed this week on the sidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s General Conference in Vienna. world-nuclear-news.org

As EDF Energy approaches a final investment decision for the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in the UK, the company’s CEO, Vincent de Rivaz, has said it is “the right technology, at the right price, at the right time”. world-nuclear-news.org

        I have talked a lot in my blog posts about various nuclear particles related to artificial and natural processes of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. There are many other atomic and subatomic particles being explored by modern physics. One of the strangest particles is called the neutrino. These particles are produced in the fusion of our sun and hydrogen bombs, the natural decay of radioactive elements and by the fission and fusion processes in nuclear reactors. The reason that I have not discussed them is because they have zero electrical charge, virtually no mass and they have almost no interaction with ordinary matter.

        There are trillions of neutrinos passing through the Earth or being generated from radioactive elements in the crust every second. Last week, researchers released a map of what they project the surface of the Earth would look like if we could see those neutrinos. There would be spots marking natural deposits of uranium and thorium as well as the locations of operating nuclear reactors and concentrations of nuclear waste.

       The first official scientific detection of neutrinos was recorded at the Savannah River nuclear power plant in Georgia in 1959. Since then, there has been steady improvement in our ability to detect neutrinos. Most of the detectors are used in basic research into the nature of neutrinos but there has been some work on possible practical applications for monitoring nuclear activities.

         The researchers who developed the map mentioned above used one detector in Japan and one detector in Italy. They also used geological information about the composition and density of the crust of the Earth as well as the location of the world’s nuclear reactors. (The reactors emit the antimatter counterpart of neutrinos which are known as antineutrinos.) The detectors use huge tanks of mineral oil. Almost all of the trillions of neutrinos and antineutrinos pass through the tanks with absolutely no effect but every now and then one of them will hit a hydrogen nuclear just right and annihilate it, leaving behind a positron, a neutron and a spray of short lived particles. This triggers a signal in the detector.

      When it comes to monitoring nuclear reactors, it is not so much a matter of knowing where they are. We have other ways such as infrared emissions that will tell us that. What neutrino and antineutrino detectors can do is tell us more about exactly what the reactors are being used for. Detectors can be made small as a refrigerator if the source is small. Such a detector could be placed next to a reactor that is being monitored. Different elements give off characteristic neutrino signatures. It would be possible to know if someone was diverting plutonium from a reactor.

       It is also possible that a gigantic detector could be used to monitor global nuclear activities. China is developing a really big detector known as JUNO to study fundamental questions about the origin of the universe and the imbalance between matter and antimatter. Perhaps global nuclear monitoring could be tested with the Chinese detector which should be operating by 2020.

Diagram of Chinese JUNO neutrino detector: