The nuclear industry in the U.S. has been stagnant as far as new power plants are concerned for decades. Only one license for a new nuclear power plant has been issued by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the last 35 years. On the other hand, there are almost fifty companies in the U.S. and Canada working on research and development of advanced nuclear power technologies. One and a third billion dollars have been sunk into these ventures by individual investors and major venture capital funds.

        Recently there was a workshop called “Building a Scalable, Safe New Nuclear Reactor Design” at the Solve Conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Some of the nuclear development companies were there including Transatomic Power, TerraPower, Moltex Energy, Tri-Alpha Energy, and Terrestrial Energy. One of the common complaints often heard from these companies is that the long, complex and expensive licensing process of the NRC is a significant barrier to innovation. Getting a license for a prototype reactor from the NRC can take longer than a decade and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

        Allison Macfarlane, the NRC chairman from 2012 to 2015, is now the director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University. She defended the current NRC licensing process as being necessary and proper. She said that when considering a license for a nuclear power plant, the long time lines, safety concerns and the enormous capital costs that are associated with such a project demand a regulator process that is thorough, precise and expensive.

        The nuclear entrepreneurs were strongly opposed to the current regulatory process. They have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing new nuclear technologies that they believe are crucial for energy production and lower carbon emissions. They are frustrated by the time and expense of the licensing process and believe that it could and should be much better than it currently is.

         Advocates of improving the movement of new nuclear technologies to market agree broadly on what needs to change. They say that the NRC licensing process must be streamlined. There should be a “test-then-license” approach instead of the “license-then-test” system that is now required. Proponents say that the U.S. Department of Energy should be more actively involved in accelerating research and development. And, finally, they say that a national testbed facility should be created where new reactor prototypes could be constructed and tested.

        The understaffed NRC is currently launching an effort to reform the agency but it is not the type of reform that the nuclear entrepreneurs are advocating. James Inhoff (R-OKL), head of the committee that oversees the NRC thinks that the NRC should be “downsized.” Despite the interest and money that has been invested in increasing the use of nuclear power in the U.S., a February 2015 NRC report foresees that the number of new reactor license requests will drop significantly by 2020. This is one of the justifications used for insisting that the NRC budget be cut.

        Nuclear entrepreneurs frustrated by the current NRC licensing process have been seeking more benign development climates abroad. China is being viewed as a good place to launch new reactor development and one of the nuclear startups at the MIT workshop is going to build a prototype of their “traveling-wave” reactor there. Even the U.S. DoE is working on a project with a Chinese partner to build a prototype molten salt reactor.

        Supporters of the current regulatory process say that it is not the NRC licensing process that is impeding the expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. They point out that it is the economics of power that favor cheap oil and natural gas over more expensive nuclear power. Critics of nuclear power say that sustainable energy like wind and solar are better solutions to lowering carbon emission than new nuclear power.

About 1,800 people from around Kyushu converged here on Oct. 12 to protest the planned restart of another reactor at the Sendai nuclear plant, saying the operator has made a decision that is “suicidal.” ajw.asahi.com

25 Sieverts At Fukushima Unit 1 ‘Probably OK’ Says TEPCO! fukuleak.org

Unpublished government map shows massive plume of Fukushima radioactive material just off West Coast of North America. enenews.com

Iran’s Guardian Council ratified a bill on Wednesday approving the nuclear deal reached by Tehran and six world powers, state news agency IRNA and other agencies said, allowing the government to implement the agreement. reuters.com

Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour

        One of the big problems with dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear disaster is the fact that it can be hard to know exactly what happened and is happening. After an accident at a nuclear power plant, the building may be heavily irradiated by a breached reactor core. This makes it impossible for human beings to enter the building to investigate. Robots have been constructed and sent into radioactive ruins but the robots tend to break down because of the radiation. There have been attempts to use the flux of particles known as muons to try to locate the melted cores of the Fukushima reactors but these methods are cumbersome. Recently,  researchers in the U.K. have come up with a new type of camera that may assist in the examination of locations where dangerous radiation is present.

         Conventional detectors for nuclear radiation such as high-intensity neutron and gamma rays are installed inside the reactor core when nuclear power plants are constructed. Unfortunately the conditions are so harsh that even without any sort of accident, the detectors often do not survive for the life of the power plant. Once the detectors are in place and the nuclear reactor is operational, it is difficult to replace them. The reactor must be completely shut down in order to reach the detectors. Serious accidents will usually destroy these conventional detectors.

        Malcolm Joyce, a professor of nuclear engineering, and Jonathan Beaumont, a research student, at Lancaster University recently developed a new type of camera based on the way that a cat’s eye functions. The Cumbria-based nuclear technology company Createc collaborated in the creation of the new camera.

        The camera contains a detector plate behind a collimator (a type of filter) which has a slit shaped hole that is similar to the shape of a cat’s pupil. This slit limits the amount of radiation that can hit the detector. The radiation can only reach the detector from one direction as opposed to the case with a standard collimator which allows radiation from all directions to hit a detector. This directionality is essential in pinpointing a source of radiation. With a standard collimator, a detector has to scan all horizontal and vertical positions. With the new camera, the investigators can scan a single line across the general location of the core and figure out where the radiation is hottest.

       This new camera weighs about forty four pounds and can fit in a suitcase. It can be easily transported to the location of the reactor and set up to be operated remotely. With one single horizontal scan and a single optional vertical scan, the strongest radiation leaks from the core can be imaged. The development of this camera is a major break-through and will be of great importance in the future when nuclear reactors leak radiation. It will be much easier and cheaper in the future to determine what is happening inside a damaged reactor because of this invention.

An image a functioning reactor core from the cat’s eye camera:

The insane plan to expand the world’s biggest nuclear plant. greenpeace.org

Finns offer to help Turkey with nuclear plans. todayszaman.com

With as much as $100-billion (U.S) in nuclear contracts up for grabs, Canada and South Africa have begun negotiating a nuclear cooperation agreement that could pave the way for Canadian suppliers to win a chunk of one of the world’s biggest nuclear energy expansions.  theglobeandmail.com

While the majority of work into South Africa’s proposed nuclear build program have been finalized, details which include cost to the Treasury will remain classified. citizen.co.za

        After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Germany decided to shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2020. Eight out of sixteen nuclear power reactors have been shut down and eight reactors are still operating. There is a growing concern that the four utility companies that own all the reactors, shuttered and operating, may not have enough money to pay for decommissioning their reactors and disposing of the nuclear waste.

       The German government has conducted an audit of nuclear plant decommissioning funds that is referred to as a stress test. The estimated cost of decommissioning all the reactors ranges from twenty eight billion dollars to about eighty eight billion dollars. The four companies that own the reactors have set aside about forty five billion dollars. In the worst case scenario, this would leave the decommissioning funds about forty billion dollars short. The auditors have pointed out that the combined assets of the four companies is about ninety four billion dollars so in the worst case, the companies could be liquidated to pay the additional cost.

        After the reactors are shut down, if the funds for decommissioning are not readily available, they may just be mothballed behinds fences. Even if the funds are available, it will take decades for the buildings and equipment to cool off, be cut up and carted away for disposal. The spent nuclear fuel could wind up being stored on the grounds of the shutter reactors for decades. There are plans for the creation of a permanent geological repository but it is unlikely that it will be operational before 2050 at the earliest. The decaying reactor and the stored waste represent environmental hazards and a tempting target for terrorists.

       One of the utility companies has said that it may have to lay off staff if there are uncertainties over nuclear liability. However, this might lead to a downgrade in credit ratings and financial difficulties for the firm. When it was announced that there might not be enough money in the decommissioning funds, the value of the stock for two of the utilities dropped thirteen percent in two hours. As time goes by, problems and negative announcements will impact the financial stability of all four of the utilities. If one or more of the companies go bankrupt, their value may drop to the point where even liquidation will not pay for their share of decommissioning. In that case, the German taxpayers would have to pick up the rest of the bill. One of the reasons for the stress tests was to determine how likely the need for a taxpayer bailout might be.

       The four companies are involved in individual lawsuits against the German government that total about twenty seven billion dollars. The claims represented by these lawsuits may be used to trade for decommissioning expenses when it comes time to decide who is going to pay for what in the decommissioning and waste disposal.

        Critics of nuclear power in Germany are afraid that even with the optimistic estimations of available decommissioning funds, German taxpayers will still wind up paying for some of the work and waste disposal.

 

Biology professor says that it is really a dead zone in areas of Fukushima with dramatically fewer species. enenews.com

The pricing methodology for waste transfer contracts between the UK government and operators of new nuclear power plants meets European state aid rules, the European Commission has concluded. world-nuclear-news.org

Westinghouse Electric Company on Thursday announced that it is seeking to collaborate with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on the a lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) that the company says will be designed to achieve new levels of energy affordability, safety and flexibility. nuclearstreet.com

The chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee James Inhofe says he is not satisfied with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s streamlining efforts. nuclearstreet.com