Researchers say X-ray-like photos of a crippled reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have confirmed that no nuclear fuel remains in the reactor core.

Energoatom, Ukrenergo and Polenergia have signed a memorandum of understanding on a project to export electricity via European grids.  world-nuclear-news.org

Clean energy sources, including small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), must make up at least 25% of the energy consumed by US federal agencies by 2025 under an executive order on federal sustainability issued by President Barack Obama. world-nuclear-news.org

A top adviser to the government of Pakistan says it needs short-range “tactical” nuclear weapons to deter archrival India, although critics fear it could increase the risk of a nuclear war. hosted.ap.org

 

 

 

Muon scan gives detailed, but incomplete, look at meltdown of No. 1 reactor at Fukushima. japantimes.co.jp

Turkey’s plans to bring online its first nuclear power plant in 2019 are likely to be pushed at least three years back, according to a senior Turkish energy official, Reuters reported on Monday. novinite.com

Romanian officials insist a U.S.-led missile defense shield planned for Romania is for protecting NATO members from attacks — not a threat to Moscow.  newsinfo.inquirer.net

Denmark has slammed as “unacceptable” comments by Russia’s envoy to Denmark that joining NATO’s missile defense shield would make Danish warships “targets for Russian nuclear missiles.” wsbt.com

 

 

 

 

 

The Tokyo Electric Power Co. says almost all the nuclear fuel in one of its reactors at the Fukushima plant has melted.  rt.com

Oyster Creek, the nation’s oldest U.S. nuclear power plant, has shut down temporarily after an electrical issue occurred in a system that controls steam pressure. newsday.com

Scotland’s growing political importance has made the future of the nuclear arsenal an issue in Britain’s general election campaign, intensifying debate over whether the country can afford its nuclear deterrent, a quarter-century after the end of the Cold War. nuclear-news.net

The Centre for Public Integrity, a US-based non-profit investigative news organization, has published a report which says that South Africa has enough nuclear explosives to fuel half-a-dozen bombs. nuclear-news.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Washington State has a tortured history with nuclear power. The biggest bond default in the history of the United States was the collapse of the WPPSS project to construct five nuclear power reactors in Washington. It cost utilities over two billion dollars. Ultimately, only one of the intended reactors was built at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and is still operating today. Critics of nuclear power call for that plant to be shut down. Supporters of nuclear power have been calling for new power reactors in Washington. Recently three bills related to nuclear power made it through the state Senate under the sponsorship of Washington Senator Sharon Brown with a pending fourth bill awaiting a vote. Sharon Brown is the Senator from Washington’s District 8 which contains the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

        Currently under Washington State law, electric utilities must make a voluntary option to buy “green power” available to customers. Green power is defined as “electricity generated from wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, gas produced during the treatment of wastewater, and other specified sources.” Washington Senate Bill 5091 would change the definition of “qualified alternative energy resource” or green power to include nuclear energy. This is a bad idea. Low-carbon emissions should not be the only criterion for being green power. The horrible pollution from mining uranium, the dangers of accidents at nuclear plants, the radioactive waste produced by nuclear plants and many other negative aspects of nuclear energy should disqualify it from ever being considered “green.”

       There are thousands of people working in the fields related to nuclear power, nuclear research and nuclear cleanup in Washington state with most of them at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. That workforce is aging so Washington Senate Bill 5093 would create a nuclear education system with the goal of teaching Washington students about nuclear energy. The program would pay for science teachers to attend courses on nuclear energy and to bring “nuclear ambassadors” from the field into Washington classrooms. I hope that the classes would include serious information about the dangers and problems of nuclear energy but I fear that they could become one-sided cheerleading for only the benefits of nuclear power.

       Washington State Senate Bill 5113 requires that “the Washington State Commerce Department coordinate and advance the siting of both small modular reactors themselves and small modular reactor-manufacturing facilities within the state, advancing nuclear power as part of Washington’s future energy mix.” Prototypes of small modular reactors have been designed and constructed for testing but no commercial versions are available yet. They can be manufactured in a standard production line and moved to their operational site. They produce less than three hundred megawatts of power. It may take ten years or more to license and construct a small commercial modular reactor. This is an untested new technology and may encounter unanticipated problems on the way to production.

        A fourth bill is waiting for a vote in the Washington Senate. Senate Bill 5115  calls for the “state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council to study the siting of small modular reactors in the state, identify possible locations, and decide what permits and studies are needed for these kinds of siting decisions. They would also investigate how to streamline the process.” As I said above, small modular reactors are a new technology.

        While I appreciate the fact that Senator Sharon Brown is working on jobs for people in her district, I do not agree that an expansion of nuclear power in Washington will ultimately be beneficial to District 8 and Washington. I fear that if the State legislature passes these bills into law, Washington State may wind up spending considerable funds under these four bills. As momentum builds for constructing small modular reactors in Washington State, it may become more and more difficult to stop nuclear projects even if there are severe cost overruns and scheduling delays. Let us hope that we do not repeat the mistakes of WPPSS and wind up with no new power sources and a lot of new debt.

Nagoya University said Friday it has confirmed that a meltdown occurred in the No. 2 reactor at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, after finding a reduction in the amount of nuclear fuel in the reactor in the wake of the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami. english.kyodonews.jp

True realists know that nuclear weapons don’t deter the most likely threats to American security such as political extremism, terrorism, humanitarian disasters, environmental degradation or global financial instability. wsj.com

Diane Turco with the Cape Downwinders is expressing her concern with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) after what she says is a ‘fatally flawed assessment’ of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth. capecod.com

Kyushu Electric Power Company has received permission from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) for construction work to upgrade the basic design of its Sendai-1 and Sendai-2 reactors to meet higher standards set since the Fukushima-Daiichi accident, nucnet.org

 

 

          I have blogged about nuclear fusion before. Scientists have been researching the possibility of generating energy by nuclear fusion, the energy source of stars, for decades. The basic concept of nuclear fusion is the combination of lighter elements into heavier elements accompanied by a huge release of energy.

          Billions of dollars have been poured into this research but no fusion power generator has yet been constructed. There is a major international project called ITER which is using a well-known approach based on the Russian tokamak design. A tokamak is a donut shaped chamber surrounded by magnets to stabilize and energize the fusion reactions. This is a strictly proof of concept project where they are just trying to get to the point at which more energy is coming out of the generator that is being supplied to the generator. Billions more will be spent and years will pass before it is known if their approach will actual work. Recently there have been several companies working on very different approaches to nuclear fusion. The U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin is one of these companies.

        Lockheed Martin is the Pentagon’s biggest supplier. They have been research nuclear fusion for over sixty years and they have been working on a nuclear fusion project for the past four years at their Skunk Works laboratory. It is a “high beta fusion reactor” or “4th generation prototype T4″ design for a compact fusion reactor (CFR).

        In the Lockheed Martin CRF, two isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium are the fuel. Deuterium contains a single neutron in the nucleus along with the proton. In tritium, there are two neutrons in the nucleus. First the electrons are stripped off the deuterium and tritium atoms creating a plasma. Then the plasma is compressed and heated which overcomes the normal mutual repulsion of two nuclei. The hydrogen isotopes fuse into a helium atom and a energetic neutron. The energy is then transferred to a coolant that drives turbines to produce electricity. Deuterium is available in ocean water. Tritium, which is rare on Earth, can be produced in nuclear reactors. A CFR reactor will require very little fuel and will create very little nuclear waste compared to a fission reactor.

        The LM CFR uses magnetic mirrors for confinement. It is about the size of a jet engine which permits a faster development cycle than giant reactors like ITER. One set of mirrors are rings at either end of the CFR cylinder and the other set wraps two rings around the CFR cylinder The first set pushes the plasma toward the center of the cylinder and the second set pushes the plasma toward the ends of the cylinder. The lack of any current flowing in the plasma removes the main source of plasma instabilities that have proven a major challenge for tokamak style reactors. The LM superconducting magnets reduce the size of the reactor to about a tenth the size of the tokamak design so a finished compact fusion power system could be small enough to fit on the bed of a truck for transport. Currently microwaves are used to heat the plasma for ignition but LM says that they are designing a system that will inject neutral deuterium atoms into the cylinder where their energy will transfer to the plasma.

        LM recently released the news that they will build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year. They are aiming to have a working prototype of a commercial generator within five years and a commercial production model in ten years. After four years of secretive work on the CFR, LM is now looking for public and private partners to advance their fusion program.

        Nuclear fusion has been promised for decades but actual development of a working system has been very difficult. With all the problems of nuclear fission power, nuclear fusion would be much cheaper and smaller with less fuel required and less waste generated. There are other designs that use other fuels that are more available and they don’t generate any radioactive waste. With increasing demand for electricity, nuclear fusion would be a good way to supplement sustainable alternative sources with base-load power.

Lockheed Martin compact fusion reactor diagram: