I have devoted several blog posts recently to the idea of floating nuclear reactors. The Russians have been working on construction of their first floating reactor on a barge and recently scientists at MIT have proposed putting nuclear reactors on floating oil drilling rigs. The Russians want to tow their reactor barges to the Arctic, remote areas near the coast or coastal cities to supply power. The MIT floating rigs are primarily intended to be anchored miles offshore to supply power to cities. As with many nuclear projects, the construction of the first Russian floating reactors has gone way over the original estimates.

      The Akademik Lomonosov (AL) is Russia’s first floating power plant. It is referred to as a floating nuclear co-generation plant (FNCP) because it will supply both heat and electricity to remote locations.  It consists of two thirty five megawatt reactors that will also generate one hundred and fifty megawatts of heat on top of a barge that is four hundred and seventy feet long and about a hundred feet wide. These FNCPs are being designed to have a forty year operational life-span. They will only need to be fueled every ten years.

        Originally, the 2006 estimated cost of the AL was about one hundred seventy million dollars which was going to be provided by the construction and utility companies involved in the project. Construction began in 2007 with an expected completion date in 2010. Now the final cost is estimated to be seven hundred million dollars, an increase of more that 300% in just 8 years. The Russian government has had to step in to provide additional funds.

         As is also the case with many nuclear construction projects, the AL is behind schedule. It is supposed to be delivered to Vilyuchinsk in the Kamchatka region in the Russian Far East in late 2016. They are working to “guarantee energy and social stability” of Kamchatka by 2019. Five of these are intended for use by Gazprom for offshore oil and gas field development in the Russian Arctic. Dudinka on the Tyamyr Peninsula and Preveik on the Chukchi Peninsula are also going to receive FNSPs. Russia has announced that fifteen countries are interested in floating reactors like the AL including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Namibia, Cape Verde and Argentina.

       Despite the claim that construction of the FNSPs in shipyards will reduce costs and insure higher quality and reliability a 2004 book by a variety of Russian nuclear scientists and engineers has concluded that there is no way to protect these FNSPs from terrorist attacks and that safe operation cannot be guaranteed. “The only question is how serious the emergency and its consequences.” The book also concludes that this type of power station is uneconomical. Given the 300% increase in cost for the AL and the lagging schedule for completion and delivery, it would seem that the authors of the book have a solid basis for their claims with respect to FNSPs. Despite the attempts by the global nuclear industry to revive the fading dream of nuclear power, the new floating reactors do not appear to be helping as much as they had hoped.

Academician Lomonosov:

As part of the ongoing effort to clean up Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, Toshiba Inc. has co-developed a scorpion-like robot that officials hope can help determine the condition of melted fuel in the plant’s Unit 2 reactor. sputniknews.com

Japanese government  experts say that Fukushima radiation has affected telescopes used to detect space weather. enenews.com

Russia expects to increase its share of the global market in products for the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle by 10% in the next 15 years, thanks to the integrated nature of Rosatom’s subsidiaries, according to the head of Techsnabexport (Tenex). world-nuclear-news.org

Croatian company Migrit Energija has confirmed that it plans to take a stake in the Hanhikivi nuclear power plant project in Finland. world-nuclear-news.org

         While nuclear subjects appear regularly in the news, they are usually dealing with “big” things like nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, nuclear treaties, nuclear waste, nuclear accidents, etc. The average person could very well be affected by these things but in day to day life, most people have little contact with nuclear materials. Other than radioisotopes used in medicine or industry, radioactive materials are not part of most people’s lives. However, a new technology was announced in the fall of 2014 that may change all that.

        Generating electricity from a radioactive material has been researched since the 1950s. Some approaches create electricity by converting the heat produced by radioactive decay to electricity. Other processes use the flow of charged particles created by radioactive decay. Beta particles (electrons), positrons (anti-electrons), alpha particles (helium nuclei) and other fission produces have been used to construct batteries. Generally, atomic batteries have an efficiency of about two percent and a life span of up twenty years. High efficiency betavoltaic batteries can reach efficiencies of up to eight percent.

       Nuclear batteries have been developed and used in a number of applications because they are long lasting and have a high energy density. Because they have been very expensive, they have been used primarily for applications that require a long term unattended power source such as powering equipment in remote locations on land, in the sea and in space. Their cost has kept them out of consumer products.

       The College of Engineering at the University of Missouri has developed a new type of betavoltaic battery. According to the CoE, the new battery utilizes strontium-90 to increase the electrochemical potential in a water-based solution. The electrodes consist of titanium oxide that has been arranged in a specific pattern at the nanometer level and then coated with platinum. The electrodes serve as catalysts for the breakdown of water into oxygen compounds. When high-energy electrons from the decaying strontium-90 pass through the electrodes, electron-hole pairs are created in the titanium dioxide which creates an electron flow and, thus, an electric current.

        Surface plasmons are “coherent delocalized electron oscillations that exist at the interface between any two materials where the real part of the dielectric function changes sign across the interface,” in this case, between the aqueous solution and the electrode. The surface plasmons in the new battery increase its efficiency.

       Other methods of using the breakdown of water to produce electricity do not produce the abundance of free radicals produced  by the CoE battery. The kinetic energy of the free radicals is trapped inside the water molecules which enhances the production of electricity from the radiation.

        This new betavoltaic battery is efficient and considerably cheaper than other atomic batteries. The ionic solution can stay liquid over a wide range of temperatures and might be useful in spacecraft. The new battery was made possible by breakthroughs in nanotechnological fabrication. It may be used in automobiles and other vehicles. Setting aside cost and efficiency, it will be necessary to convince people that nuclear batteries are safe enough to be used in vehicles. Issues such as safety in accidents and disposal will have to be dealt with.

Back in 2011 PM Kan told Fukushima evacuees they could go home very soon. This was probably not what he meant. fukuleaks.org

The Japanese government will raise the maximum permissible radiation dose for people including local government officials and bus drivers who will give evacuation guidance to local residents or transport materials in the event of a nuclear accident from the current 1 millisievert per year. mainichi.jp

The main clean-up contractor at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho Site, has entombed an historic nuclear reactor in place and treated the reactor’s remaining sodium coolant six months ahead of schedule and under budget. world-nuclear-news.org

A number of agreements were signed yesterday between Chinese and French nuclear energy companies aimed at strengthening their cooperation in the nuclear fuel cycle and power reactors. world-nuclear-news.org

 

 

Ambient office = 99 nanosieverts per hour

        Just like other sources of energy for electricity, nuclear power stations need fuel. The supply chain for uranium fuel assemblies is long and complex. There are not a lot of companies/countries that can supply nuclear fuel. There are a lot of old reactors in Eastern Europe that were build by the Soviet Union. After the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, the support of these reactors and their fuel continued to be supplied by Russia. Russia is aggressively marketing Russian power reactors around the world and intends to supply fuel for those that are purchased by other countries. In addition to mining uranium and creating fuel assemblies, Russia is also embarking on a program of building breeder reactors to create more nuclear fuel. Many countries are wary of allowing Russia to monopolize the supply of nuclear fuel for their power reactors. Concerned with the possible interruption of nuclear fuel for their reactors, other countries are seeking alternative suppliers for nuclear fuel for their Russian reactors. The operators of Soviet or Russian reactors in the Eastern European countries that joined the E.U. after the fall of the U.S.S.R. do not want to have to rely solely on Russia’s Rosatom company for their nuclear fuel in the future.     

       Westinghouse and eight European consortium partners have just announced that the European Union has supplied over two million dollars to “to establish the security of supply of nuclear fuel for Russian-designed reactors in the EU.” The funding for the new project comes from the Euratom Research and Training Program, part of the E.U.’s research and innovation program. The new project is called the European Supply of Safe Nuclear Fuel project.

      There are five E.U. members including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary and Slovakia which currently operate Russian reactors. There are four VVER-1000 reactors and 14 VVER-440 type Russian reactors in these five countries which supply over fifty percent of their electricity. These countries are currently one hundred percent dependent on Russia for nuclear fuel.

       Westinghouse will coordinated the project from its facilities in Sweden and the U.K. Eight nuclear institutions in members of the E.U. will be partnered with Westinghouse. Areas of expertise represented by the institutions include the manufacture of VVER-440 fuel assemblies, fault analysis, safety analysis and licensing. Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba of Japan is the largest supplier of nuclear fuel in Europe and the only company outside of Russia that supplies fuel for VVER design power reactors. Westinghouse recently contracted with Ukraine to supply fuel for Ukrainian VVER-1000 reactors.

       The European Commission says that the primary scientific purpose of the new project is to increase knowledge about “the behavior of the VVER-440 fuel during operation.” The Community Research and Development Information Service (Cordis) of the E.C. says that “State-of-the-art methods will be verified against an extensive database, including operating experience from several VVER-440 reactors as well as a number of other reactor designs and a wide range of operating conditions. The ability to accurately predict the fuel behavior will be improved and thereby also the safety margins. New knowledge as well as identification of needs of technology development and improvements will be created in the fields of technologies for mechanical design, thermo-mechanical fuel rod design, and safety analysis for VVER fuel. In addition to the technological advances, the project will identify the variation in licensing requirements between the authorities in the different countries. Through such identification, it will become clear that standardization would be beneficial and will foster a dialogue between the authorities/regulatory bodies.” The results of the project will be disseminated to institutions involved with the study and operation of VVER type reactors.

Much of Pacific Ocean threatened by Fukushima releases, an area covering 1/3 of globe. enenews.com

Russia has signed the ten-year extension to the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s (NEA’s) Framework Agreement for International Collaboration on Research and Development of Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems.  world-nuclear-news.org

Monday came and went without a formal complaint filed by Austria over the subsidy planned for the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant proposed for southwest Britain. nuclearstreet.com

The Natural Resources Canada, known as NRCan, and the British Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have signed a memorandum of understanding that allows for greater cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. nuclearstreet.com

       I have made it clear in many posts that I do not think that nuclear power is appropriate for massive generation of commercial electricity. There are many reasons for my opinion that I have detailed over the past two years. That is not to say that there are not appropriate uses for nuclear materials. A large number of medical diagnostic and therapy procedures depend on radioactive isotopes. There are many industrial applications as well. However, even these uses have problems from production to disposal that can be problematic.

          One use for radioactive materials that does not have disposal problems are energy sources for space probes although there is a danger of pollution if a launch vehicle with radioactive materials on board explodes on launch or crashes back to Earth. While current use of nuclear materials on spacecraft is in the form of nuclear batteries that supply electricity for equipment and ionic engines, there is a history of projects aimed at the explosion of nuclear bombs in space for propulsion and research.

       The early history of nuclear devices and space began at the dawn of the Atomic Age in the 1950s. In 1957, there was a series of nuclear tests called Operation Plumbbob at the U.S. Nevada nuclear test site. There were twenty nine explosions that were used for a series of experiments on the effects of nuclear explosions on materials, humans, structures and equipment. During an underground test known as Pascal-B, in August of 1957, a four inch thick steel cap weighing hundreds of pounds was blown off and may have been launched into solar orbit. Although unintended, nonetheless, this may have been a successful launch of a payload from the surface of the Earth via nuclear explosion.

           Project A119 was a plan developed in 1958 to send a nuclear bomb to the Moon and detonated it on the surface. Apart from the scientific knowledge that might have been gained, there was also the idea that a nuclear detonation on the Moon that would be visible from the Earth would be a warning to the enemies of the United States. The project as never carried out and its existence was only revealed in 2000.

       The idea of using nuclear bombs for propulsion of interplanetary spacecraft was first proposed by Stanislaw Ulam, a mathematician working on nuclear weapons development in Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1947. A formal project development was undertaken in 1958 under the name of Project Orion. First proposals for launching a spacecraft with nuclear bombs were scrapped because of the fallout that would result. Later proposals were to launch with conventional rockets or to assemble in space. Nuclear propulsion would only be used in space. The project was cancelled following the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963. However, the development of designs for using nuclear explosions to propel spacecraft have continued to be developed with more recent systems using explosive pellets instead of large nuclear bombs. Both fission and fusion systems have been considered.

Project Orion Concept Art: