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Prefab Nuclear Plants Prove Just as Expensive

Building nuclear reactors out of factory-produced modules was supposed to make their construction swifter and cheaper, leading to a new boom in nuclear energy. But two U.S. sites where nuclear reactors are under construction have been hit with costly delays that have shaken faith in the new construction method and created problems concerning who will bear the added expense. “Modular construction has not worked out to be the solution that the utilities promised,” said Robert B. Baker, an energy lawyer at Freeman Mathis & Gary LLP in Atlanta and former member of the Georgia Public Service Commission, the state utility authority. The new building technique calls for fabricating big sections of plants in factories and then hauling them by rail to power-plant sites for final assembly. The method was supposed to prevent a repeat of the notorious delays and cost overruns that marred the last nuclear construction cycle in […]

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China will soon surpass South Korea, Russia, and Japan in nuclear generating capacity

graph of nuclear generating capacity for top 6 countries, as explained in the article text Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, International Atomic Energy Agency, World Nuclear Association Nuclear power currently makes up slightly more than 2% of China’s total power generation. However, the Chinese government has a stated goal to provide at least 15% of overall energy consumption by 2020 (increasing to 20% by 2030) from non-fossil fuel sources, including nuclear, hydroelectricity and other renewable sources. To help achieve this target, China plans to increase nuclear capacity to 58 gigawatts (GW) and to have 30 GW of capacity under construction by 2020. China has rapidly expanded its nuclear capacity in the past several years, which likely will increase nuclear generation in the next few years. China’s net installed nuclear capacity is 23 GW, after the country added 10 reactors totaling more than 10 GW since the beginning of 2013. […]

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German nuclear phase-out starts final stage with Grafenrheinfeld closure

Germany’s nuclear phase-out plan is entering its final stage with the first of the country’s nine remaining modern reactors shutting down for good this Saturday. Plant operator E.ON decided to close the 1.3 GW Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power plant half a year ahead of its final decommissioning date, set by the government in the weeks after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011, because it is not profitable to run. Last year, E.ON decided to retire the 33-year-old reactor in the southern state of Bavaria earlier than required because operation of nuclear power stations in Germany only makes economic sense if they can run for a sufficient length of time without the burden of the nuclear-fuel tax, it said. The brevity of Grafenrheinfeld’s remaining operating lifetime after a required annual refueling stop this June made an early shutdown unavoidable in the interests of E.ON’s shareholders, it said last year. […]

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West Coast of North America to be Slammed by 2016 with 80% As Much Fukushima Radiation As Japan

A professor from Japan’s Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity (Michio Aoyama) told Kyodo in April that the West Coast of North America will be hit with around 800 terabecquerels of Cesium- 137 by 2016 . EneNews notes that this is 80% of the cesium-137 deposited in Japan by Fukushima, according to the company which runs Fukushima, Tepco: (a petabequeral or “PBq” equals 1,000 terabecquerels .) This is not news for those who have been paying attention. For example, we noted 2 days after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami that the West Coast of North America could be slammed with radiation from Fukushima. We pointed out the next year that a previously-secret 1955 U.S. government report concluded that the ocean may not adequately dilute radiation from nuclear accidents, and there could be “pockets” and “streams” of highly-concentrated radiation . The same year, we noted that 15 out of […]

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Major Flaw Found in “ITER” – nuclear fusion reactor

In their paper “Elephant in the room: overlooked plasma-destroying reaction with cross section 1012 times that for fusion necessitates redesign of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ITER,”* three physicists from California Science and Engineering Corp., Irvine, CA, claim that ITER designers were unaware that the ignored fusion-preventing atomic reaction known as “charge transfer” or “CT,” had a trillion times higher cross section (probability) than that for fusion, hence it will prevent the ignition of ITER, as it did in all 160-odd tokamaks within the past 50 years.  CT’s cross section measurement in UK1 of a billion barn became known only after ITER was designed; fusion cross section is a 1/1000 of a barn.  There no mention of CT in ITER design2. EXISTENCE OF ‘CRITICAL ENERGY’.  Existence of CT gives rise to the hitherto – unknown critical energy below which reactors are inoperable; and above which – free from CT destruction […]

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Saudi Arabia Promises to Match Iran in Nuclear Capability

Continue reading the main story Video Play Video|1:09 Obama Hosts Saudi Princes Obama Hosts Saudi Princes President Obama hosted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, a day before the Gulf Cooperation Council summit. By Associated Press on Publish Date May 13, 2015. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times. WASHINGTON — When President Obama began making the case for a deal with Iran that would delay its ability to assemble an atomic weapon, his first argument was that a nuclear-armed Iran would set off a “free-for-all” of proliferation in the Arab world. “It is almost certain that other players in the region would feel it necessary to get their own nuclear weapons ,” he said in 2012. Now, as he gathered Arab leaders over dinner at the White House on Wednesday  and prepared to meet with them at Camp […]

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Radioactive and Short on Cash to Pay for Closures

The Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant is seen in the early morning hours in Middletown, Pennsylvania on March 28, 2011. Photographer: Jeff Fusco/Getty Images At the edge of Humboldt Bay in northern California lies a relic from the heyday of U.S. nuclear power. The reactor was shut down in 1976. The remaining cost to decommission the plant once and for all -– cleaning up lingering radiological dangers, dismantling the remains — will be about $441 million, according to its owner, PG&E Corp. The question is who will pay — for Humboldt Bay, and for dozens of other reactors that are in the process of closing or might soon. Nuclear operators like PG&E are supposed to lay up enough money to cover the costs, similar to how corporations fund pensions. Turns out, most haven’t. PG&E’s Humboldt Bay trust fund, for instance, is currently $308 million short, according to a company […]

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Fukushima Report Delayed as Tepco Gets New Chance to Explain

A building covering the Unit 1 reactor, left, is removed by a crane at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan on Nov. 12, 2014. Photographer: Shizuo Kambayashi/AFP Photo/Pool/Getty Images The reactor building of Unit 3 at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s (Tepco) Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station in Fukushima, Japan. Source: Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Bloomberg The International Atomic Energy Agency delayed a report about meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to give Japanese officials another chance to explain radiation leaking into the Pacific Ocean. The IAEA’s report about mid- to long-term plans to decommission the stricken reactors will be published in “mid-May,” agency spokesman Serge Gas said in an e-mailed reply to questions. The report had initially been scheduled for release by the end of March on the plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. “The Japanese government invited IAEA […]

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Russia building nuclear reactors – and influence – around the globe

Tags: energy | european union | jordan | nuclear energy | nuclear reactor | rosatom | | vladimir putin Russian President Vladimir Putin (2nd L), his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (2nd R) and Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (L) meet onboard a guided missile cruiser at the port of Sochi, August 12, 2014. REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin Russia has been notoriously brazen in using state-owned companies as instruments of national power. President Vladimir Putin’s natural-gas wars with Belarus and Ukraine made headlines and sometimes left substantial parts of Europe in the cold . But Moscow’s exploits in other energy-related areas have been less noticed. Recent revelations about the concerted Russian effort to buy up uranium resources across the globe may change that. For Moscow’s state-owned nuclear-energy company, Rosatom, has made successful inroads into markets around the world. It is Rosatom — not France’s Areva or the United States’ Westinghouse […]

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Tepco Dispatches Second Robot Inside Fukushima Reactor

A remote-controlled crawler robot, the same type as the one sent inside a nuclear reactor in Fukushima, is shown in this photo taken in February 2015 at a facility in Ibaraki, Japan. Associated Press Tokyo Electric Power Co. has sent a second robot inside one of the nuclear containment vessels at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, five days after losing complete control of the first one . The crawler robot, which started its work Wednesday, is the same model as the one Tepco dispatched last Friday. The initial machine became immovable after recording some footage from inside the reactor and covering about two-thirds of the originally planned route. The utility cut the cables connected to the machine after giving up on retrieving it. It was the first time a robot ventured inside one of the containment vessels following the 2011 nuclear crisis. According to Tepco, the second machine will […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple