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bananas's JournalSafety and Security Concerns about Small Modular Reactors: NuScale's Design
Safety and Security Concerns about Small Modular Reactors: NuScale’s Design
Ed Lyman, senior scientist
December 17, 2013
Late last week the Department of Energy finally announced its decision to provide the small modular reactor (SMR) design NuScale with a matching grant of up to $226 million under its Licensing Technical Support program intended to speed the development of SMRs.
But the real news is not that DOE awarded a second grant under the program, but that it took so long to do so. NuScale, along with three other reactor vendors, originally applied for the funds in early 2012 with the expectation that two designs would receive grants. However, later that year DOE surprised many observers by only awarding a grant to one design, the Generation mPower.
Subsequently, DOE issued a second solicitation that sought “innovative” designs. But three of the four applicants applicants for the second round were the same designs—including NuScale—that had been denied funding under the first round. In the absence of additional good applicants, DOE’s move to spend the rest of the money on a design it had originally rejected smacks of desperation.
Safety and Security Concerns
As discussed in detail in my September 2013 report “Small Isn’t Always Beautiful,” UCS has safety and security concerns about small modular reactors in general and about the NuScale design in particular. SMR vendors are pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to weaken its regulations regarding operator staffing, security staffing, and emergency planning, based on highly optimistic assertions that their reactors will be significantly safer than larger reactors.
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Many of the safety concerns described in the UCS report have now been validated by a Powerpoint presentation that was recently included, perhaps inadvertently, in the many thousands of pages of documents that the NRC has released under a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the Fukushima accident. The Powerpoint presentation, entitled “Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses: Support to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of New Reactors” (p. 479-529) and dated March 24, 2011, describes safety issues for SMRs such as
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U.S. pessimism sets in over Iran nuclear talks
Source: Los Angeles Times
Gloom over U.S.-Iran talks stems from a growing realization of what each side much give up.
Three weeks after President Obama hailed a landmark deal to suspend most of Iran's nuclear program for the next six months, the mood among U.S. officials about the next round of negotiations has shifted from elated to somber, even gloomy.
"I wouldn't say (chances of success are) more than 50-50," Obama said last week. U.S. officials are "very skeptical" that Iran will accept Western demands, said his lead negotiator, Wendy R. Sherman.
The shift, officials say, is the result of a growing recognition of the compromises each side must make to resolve the decade-old impasse over Western suspicion that Iran will someday try to build nuclear weapons and the Iranian demand that the sanctions crippling its economy be lifted.
Problems already have emerged. Technical talks in Vienna aimed at implementing the initial deal stopped Thursday when Iranian negotiators unexpectedly flew back to Tehran, reportedly in response to the Obama administration's decision to expand its blacklist of foreign companies and individuals who have done business with Iran in violation of sanctions.
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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-iran-deal-20131218,0,7670834.story
Hinkley Point C nuclear subsidy plan queried by European commission
Source: Guardian
Officials promise to investigate, saying they doubt claims of market failure and fear UK will start a 'subsidy race'
The European commission has opened an in-depth investigation into UK plans to subsidise the construction and operation of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset.
It expressed doubts on Wednesday that British ministers could justify a system under which, it says, EDF could receive £17bn of public money.
The investigation was expected but the strong tone of the announcement clearly indicates the commission is highly sceptical and could yet derail a key part of the British government's energy policy.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/18/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-subsidy-european-commission
Areva wants to raid French decommissioning funds to pay for UK reactors
Crosspost from http://www.democraticunderground.com/112760224
Areva wants to raid Fr. nuke decommissioning funds to pay for UK reactors
They can't afford to borrow money on the market because they have credit rating that's in the toilet.
PARIS Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:48pm GMT
(Reuters) - Areva is in talks with the French government to release some funds set aside for dismantling its nuclear installations in France to help the company finance a new British nuclear reactor, a newspaper reported.
Britain signed a deal with France's state-owned utility EDF in October to build a 16-billion pound nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in southwest Britain, the first new plant in Europe since the Fukushima disaster.
State-owned Areva is taking a 10 percent stake in the consortium that will build the facility, which also includes EDF's Chinese partners China General Nuclear Corporation (CGN) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC).
Areva wants to ensure the British nuclear project will not impact its debt, which is rated BBB- by Standard and Poors, one notch above "junk" territory. Its debt-to-equity ratio stood at 1.15 at the end of June, according to Thomson Reuters data.
It will need 500 million pounds to finance its share ...
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/16/uk-areva-hinkleypoint-funds-idUKBRE9BF0KS20131216
Reddit's science section has banned climate change-denying trolls
Source: New Statesman
One of the site's largest subreddits, r/science, has had enough of angry, conspiracy-spouting posters who do nothing but ruin legitimate debate.
Reddit’s science section - r/science - is one of the site’s default sections (or “subreddits” in the site’s parlance), and is one of the main places on the internet where experts and lay people can come together and chat about science. Its moderators, like the rest of those in charge of subreddits, have to juggle the site community’s strong belief in free speech with the need to prevent arguments, trolling, or anything else that could derail genuine scientific debate.
That’s why they’ve taken the step to ban “climate change deniers” from the subreddit. One of the moderators, chemist Nathan Allen, has written a blog post to explain why the decision was made (I’ve picked out the key paragraphs):
While evolution and vaccines do have their detractors, no topic consistently evokes such rude, uninformed, and outspoken opinions as climate change. Instead of the reasoned and civil conversations that arise in most threads, when it came to climate change the comment sections became a battleground.
...
After some time interacting with the regular denier posters, it became clear that they could not or would not improve their demeanor. These problematic users were not the common “internet trolls” looking to have a little fun upsetting people. Such users are practically the norm on reddit. These people were true believers, blind to the fact that their arguments were hopelessly flawed, the result of cherry-picked data and conspiratorial thinking.
...
We discovered that the disruptive faction that bombarded climate change posts was actually substantially smaller than it had seemed. Just a small handful of people ran all of the most offensive accounts. What looked like a substantial group of objective skeptics to the outside observer was actually just a few bitter and biased posters with more opinions then [sic] evidence.
Negating the ability of this misguided group to post to the forum quickly resulted in a change in the culture within the comments. Where once there were personal insults and bitter accusations, there is now discussion of the relevant aspects of the research.
I used to work as a barman in a pub with a semi-famous regular who obsessively tried to argue that renewable energy was a scam and nuclear power was a better option, and who would pick drunken arguments with other regulars about it just for the sake of it. It was very weird, and it made uncomfortable, so we barred them. This is a bit like that.
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Read more: http://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/12/reddits-science-section-has-banned-climate-change-denying-trolls
We don't seem to have a problem with climate deniers on DU, but we do have a few rude trolls who are in denial about the problems of nuclear energy.
Ten years ago, MIT listed the four major problems with nuclear energy and what to do about them:
challenges described above—costs, safety, proliferation, and wastes. These
challenges will escalate if a significant number of new nuclear generating
plants are built in a growing number of countries. The effort to overcome
these challenges, however, is justified only if nuclear power can potentially
contribute significantly to reducing global warming, which entails major
expansion of nuclear power."
- MIT, The Future of Nuclear Power
http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/
Ten years later we know that these problems were severely underestimated and aren't close to being overcome.
And we know that nuclear energy is completely unnecessary. For example, a paper published last year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Restricting nuclear power has little effect on the cost of climate policies
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"A surprising result of our study is the rather little difference between a 'Renaissance' or a 'Full exit' of nuclear power in combination with a carbon budget when it comes to GDP losses," Bauer says. While the 'no policy case' with a nuclear phase-out and no carbon budget has only negligible effect on global GDP, the imposition of a carbon budget with no restrictions on nuclear policy implies a reduction of GDP that reaches 2.1 percent in 2050. The additional phase-out of nuclear power increases this loss by about 0.2 percent in 2050 and hence has only little additional impact on the economy, because the contribution of nuclear power to the electricity generation can be substituted relatively easy by alternative technology options, including the earlier deployment of renewables.
Article: Bauer, N., Brecha, R.J., Luderer, G. (2012): Economics of nuclear power and climate change mitigation policies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Early Edition) [DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1201264109]
Radical nun says answering her Christian calling landed her in prison
Source: Al Jazeera
Sister Megan Rice presses the palm of her hand against the glass in greeting, her blue eyes welcoming her visitor in a cell opposite hers. Lamps illuminate her oval face framed by cropped hair like a white halo. Her uniform — a green-striped jumpsuit, sneakers and a gray blanket that covers her slender shoulders — is not the norm for a Roman Catholic nun, but she sees her presence in Georgia's Irwin County Detention Center as answering her Christian calling.
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Breaking into a sensitive nuclear facility to stage a protest, the three activists were prepared for the worst. "We were very aware that we could have died," Rice said.
They were not killed but found themselves incarcerated. Now she spends her days answering letters from supporters and educating other detainees about the dangers of nuclear weapons — and the connections she draws between militarism and the poverty she believes has landed so many young women behind bars. Rice accuses the U.S. government of denying citizens such basic rights such as medical care and access to education because it invests so many billions of dollars in military equipment.
"Every day is a day to talk about it," she told Al Jazeera, raising her voice a bit to be heard through the glass wall that separates her from the outside world. "It's not time lost by any means."
Citing backgrounds of poverty from towns "where there are hardly any other options," she blames a capitalist economy for not investing more in social services available to the underclass and effortlessly connects nuclear weapons to the "prison-industrial complex." They're not bad people, she says of her fellow inmates, but were unfortunate enough to be born into a society that gave them few choices.
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Read more: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/15/no-room-for-radicalnuninpopefrancischurch.html
New "Frackademia" Report Co-Written by "Converted Climate Skeptic" Richard Muller
Mon, 2013-12-16 Steve Horn
New "Frackademia" Report Co-Written by "Converted Climate Skeptic" Richard Muller
The conservative UK-based Centre for Policy Studies recently published a study on the climate change impacts of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"
for shale gas. The skinny: it's yet another case study of "frackademia," and the co-authors have a financial stake in the upstart Chinese fracking industry.
Titled "Why Every Serious Environmentalist Should Favour Fracking" and co-authored by Richard Muller and his daughter Elizabeth "Liz" Muller, it concludes that fracking's climate change impacts are benign, dismissing many scientific studies coming to contrary conclusions.
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There is an important detail buried on the last page of the Centre for Policy Studies report: Liz Muller's position as founder and Managing Director of the China Shale Fund. One copy of the study is even published on the China Shale Fund's website.
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The biggest cheerleaders of the Muller study are the shale gas industry and its public relations echo chamber.
Nearly everyone who promoted the study on Twitter, for example, receives a paycheck from the industry or an industry front group.
Twitter promoters included Matt Pitzarella — Range Resources Director of Corporate Communications, who admitted his company utilizes psychological warfare tactics on U.S. citizens at a November 2011 conference — who sent out six tweets promoting the study; industry front group Energy in Depth, Energy in Depth-Marcellus and its social media guy, Energy in Depth-California, among others.
Energy in Depth also devoted a blog post to promoting the study, written by Katie Brown, former communications director for the climate change-denying U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).
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New "Frackademia" Report Co-Written by "Converted Climate Skeptic" Richard Muller
Mon, 2013-12-16 Steve Horn
New "Frackademia" Report Co-Written by "Converted Climate Skeptic" Richard Muller
The conservative UK-based Centre for Policy Studies recently published a study on the climate change impacts of hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"
for shale gas. The skinny: it's yet another case study of "frackademia," and the co-authors have a financial stake in the upstart Chinese fracking industry.
Titled "Why Every Serious Environmentalist Should Favour Fracking" and co-authored by Richard Muller and his daughter Elizabeth "Liz" Muller, it concludes that fracking's climate change impacts are benign, dismissing many scientific studies coming to contrary conclusions.
<snip>
There is an important detail buried on the last page of the Centre for Policy Studies report: Liz Muller's position as founder and Managing Director of the China Shale Fund. One copy of the study is even published on the China Shale Fund's website.
<snip>
The biggest cheerleaders of the Muller study are the shale gas industry and its public relations echo chamber.
Nearly everyone who promoted the study on Twitter, for example, receives a paycheck from the industry or an industry front group.
Twitter promoters included Matt Pitzarella — Range Resources Director of Corporate Communications, who admitted his company utilizes psychological warfare tactics on U.S. citizens at a November 2011 conference — who sent out six tweets promoting the study; industry front group Energy in Depth, Energy in Depth-Marcellus and its social media guy, Energy in Depth-California, among others.
Energy in Depth also devoted a blog post to promoting the study, written by Katie Brown, former communications director for the climate change-denying U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK).
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Iran launches second monkey into space
Source: Guardian
Iran has sent a monkey into space for the second time, according to media reports.
Iran's state TV reported that the launch of the rocket called Pajohesh, or Research in Farsi, marked Iran's first use of liquid fuel in such an operation. It said the rocket reached a height of 72 miles before the monkey, named Fargam or Auspicious, was returned to Earth safely.
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Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president congratulated scientists on Saturday for the successful mission.
His website said: "President Rouhani appreciated the Iranian scholars for dispatch of the second monkey named 'Fargam' into space and its successful return.
"The president also congratulated the supreme leader of the Islamic revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian nation on the significant achievement. He wished further success for the Iranian experts."
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/14/iran-launches-monkey-space-second-time
Congratulations to Iran!
And especially to everyone who worked on that project!
To send a living organism into space and return them successfully requires utmost care on every part of the project.
Hopefully this success will encourage Iran's leaders to make more resources available for their manned space program.
As far back as 1996, Dr. Bruce Cordell predicted that around 2015 a new era of human spaceflight would begin - what he called a "Maslow Window", where social and economic cycles converge, where humanity as a whole climbs the Maslow hierarchy of needs.
President Rouhani, you should stop wasting money on nuclear energy, and invest that money in your manned space program instead. Even US electric utilities abandoned their plans for new reactors after realizing the "nuclear rennaissance" pushed by assholes like Bush and Cheney was all hype and a waste of money. But SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Bigelow, Boeing, and other companies are moving humanity forward into space. The European Union is talking to China about sending astronauts on the Shenzou. A spaceport in Iran would be much closer, why would you delay this opportunity for international cooperation with your neighbors? Why would you waste even one more cent on an outdated over-priced dirty dangerous technology like nuclear energy, a technology which just creates distrust and disharmony with your neighbors, when you could accelerate mankind's next great adventure?
Astronauts Could Survive Mars Radiation for Long Stretches, Rover Study Suggests
Astronauts Could Survive Mars Radiation for Long Stretches, Rover Study Suggests
by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer | December 04, 2012 10:51am ET
SAN FRANCISCO — Astronauts could endure a long-term, roundtrip Mars mission without receiving a worryingly high radiation dose, new results from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity suggest.
A mission consisting of a 180-day outbound cruise, a 600-day stay on Mars and another 180-day flight back to Earth would expose an astronaut to a total radiation dose of about 1.1 sieverts (units of radiation) if it launched now, according to measurements by Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector instrument, or RAD.
That's a pretty manageable number, researchers said.
"The rough ballpark average for an astronaut career limit is on the order of a sievert," RAD principal investigator Don Hassler, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., said in a presentation here Monday (Dec. 3) at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. [Video: Curiosity Takes First Cosmic Ray Sample on Surface]
"NASA has a much more complicated determination for that, but ESA [the European Space Agency], for example, generally uses 1 sievert for that number," he added.
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