News 2022

Nuclear and Climate

25th January 2022

Michel Lee, an attorney and senior analyst for Promoting Health and Sustainable Energy (PHASE), shatters the current pitch of the nuclear industry that nuclear power is carbon-free. “It’s flat-out false,” says Lee. The nuclear fuel cycle—which includes mining, milling and enrichment of uranium—is carbon intensive, she notes. And nuclear plants emit Carbon-14, a radioactive form of carbon with a half-life of 5,700 years. Nuclear power “is an extremely ineffective way to deal with climate change,” says Lee. She says media accepting it as carbon-free and an answer to climate change are doing “reporting of press releases.” Further, she tells of how the nuclear industry “would shrivel up and die without subsidies” from government.” She speaks of environmental justice and how nuclear power “has left an astonishingly horrific legacy on uranium-mining communities, in the United States mostly Native American communities,” and minority communities are being “targeted” for nuclear waste. She states: “Nuclear is particularly poorly suited to democracy.”

Enviro Close Up 23rd Jan 2022 read more »

Sellafield

25th January 2022

Seventy years after the United Kingdom first began extracting plutonium from spent uranium fuel to make nuclear weapons, the industry is finally calling a halt to reprocessing, leaving the country with 120 tons of the metal, the biggest stockpile in the world. However, the government has no idea what to do with it. Having spent hundreds of billions of pounds producing plutonium in a series of plants at Sellafield in the Lake District, the UK policy is to store it indefinitely—or until it can come up with a better idea. There is also 90,000 tons of less dangerous depleted uranium in warehouses in the UK, also without an end use. Plans to use plutonium in fast breeder reactors and then mixed with uranium as a fuel for existing fission reactors have long ago been abandoned as too expensive, unworkable, or sometimes both. Even burning plutonium as a fuel, while technically possible, is very costly. The closing of the last reprocessing plant, as with all nuclear endeavours, does not mean the end of the industry, in fact it will take at least another century to dismantle the many buildings and clean up the waste. In the meantime, it is costing £3 billion a year to keep the site safe. Perhaps one of the strangest aspects of this story to outside observers is that, apart from a minority of anti-nuclear campaigners, this plutonium factory in one of prettiest parts of England hardly ever gets discussed or mentioned by the UK’s two main political parties. Neither has ever objected to what seems on paper to be a colossal waste of money.

The Energy Mix 18th Jan 2022 read more »

SMRs

25th January 2022

UK aerospace and engineering giant Rolls-Royce is on the hunt for sites for its much-touted small nuclear reactors, which received a £210m grant from the UK government last year. A consortium of BNF Resources UK Ltd, Exelon Generation Ltd, and Roll-Royce Group is set to invest £195m roughly over three years, qualifying it for a £210m grant from government, specifically UK Research and Innovation Funding. The group has now written to sites across the country to find a prospective home for a factory to build the new reactors. Writing to Local Enterprise Partnerships – non-profit bodies which aim to bring councils and commerce together – the group is seeking bids for the location of its “factory” set to make the new approach to nuclear-powered electricity generation, according to the Financial Times.

The Register 24th Jan 2022 read more »

Fusion

25th January 2022

Letter: THE knee-jerk reaction to the word “nuclear” in the Scottish Government seems to be an instantaneous, unthinking “NO”, judging by the reports on rejection of the possible nuclear fusion plant at the Hunterston site. Have they no scientific advisors?

The National 23rd Jan 2022 read more »

North Ayrshire Council is vying to win a billion-pound nuclear fusion contract on the Ardeer peninsula. Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) aims to design and construct a prototype fusion energy plant capable of providing an environmentally-friendly source of electricity. And if selected over the four other English, the Ardeer site will create thousands of skilled, and internship jobs for the area. If the only Scottish site in contention is chosen, the plan and building process could span over 18 years. How much will it cost? “It’s likely to be in the billions rather than the hundreds of millions,” said The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) representative Leon Flexman. “The £222 million from the UK is for the first phase which will run until 2024 and includes selecting a site concept design and all of that initial activity. There is a considerably higher amount of money needed.”

Daily Record 24th Jan 2022 read more »

Advanced Reactors

25th January 2022

Engineering and architecture firm Bryden Wood has revealed the digital platform for its ambitious Repowering coal project, which aims to retro-fit coal-fired power plants to accommodate modular nuclear reactors. The strategy, developed in collaboration with non-profit Terra Praxis, will see coal-fired boilers at existing power plants replaced with Generation IV Advanced Modular Reactors (AMRS), which will be ready for deployment by 2027. This initiative is seen as a way to make gains on worldwide decarbonisation of the energy sector. Bryden Wood is developing a construction solution to make this possible at scale and speed. The first step towards this is the unveiling of the project’s digital platform. The digital infrastructure enables design knowledge to be embedded in the building systems and design tools, so that all involved parties can share progress and results in real time across projects.

New Civil Engineer 25th Jan 2022 read more »

Nuclear Regulation

25th January 2022

High-level safety and regulatory requirements have been well implemented and agreed through consensus at international level through the Convention of Nuclear Safety and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) safety standards. Why then is it, we continue to build different versions of the same reactor design in different countries. In most cases national regulatory requirements were developed using national experiences, and implemented to support national programmes, during which time little thought was put into aligning approaches between different countries. The existing international requirements have been developed from these national requirements at such a high level that they can be applied to all existing national regulatory frameworks.

NS Energy 24th Jan 2022 read more »

Radwaste

25th January 2022

Smart sensor probes safer path to recycling nuclear fuel. A contactless smart sensor has been developed to better measure, in real-time, the acidity of highly radioactive solutions.

IM3 24th Jan 2022 read more »

Energy Costs

25th January 2022

As the energy crisis worsened, Kwasi Kwarteng was criticised for “crossing his fingers” for mild weather, after reportedly using relatively balmy forecasts to try and ease fears over soaring gas prices. Thankfully for the UK’s business secretary and political counterparts, Kwarteng’s forecasts last October have proven correct. Though gas prices have stayed high, causing huge pain for households, businesses, heavy industry and consumers across Europe, it would have been far worse if a severe cold snap had hit. Threats to the market loom before the winter is out, however. With fears growing that Putin will invade Ukraine, markets and political leaders are braced for a further shock to gas prices if Russian supplies to Europe are disrupted. Europe gets about 40pc of its gas from Russia, with a large chunk travelling via Ukraine. Moscow sent 41.6 Bcm of gas via Ukraine to the bloc in 2021, amounting to about 10pc of Europe and Turkey’s combined gas demand. Russia, meanwhile, has also built a new pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream 2, which is waiting for regulators to approve.

Telegraph 25th Jan 2022 read more »

The UK is on track to import an unprecedented amount of liquified natural gas this month amid a scramble for supplies as fears grow over a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Monthly imports of gas shipped in from around the world are likely to eclipse former records by Wednesday and could finish the month 19pc higher than any previous one, experts believe. Most of the gas is coming from the US, but there have also been shipments from Qatar and Nigeria. The UK has increasingly turned to the highly competitive global LNG market in recent months amid a global shortage in gas supplies which have helped drive a six-fold rally in price.

Telegraph 24th Jan 2022 read more »

Alok Sharma says more offshore and nuclear schemes needed if bills are to come down. Building more offshore wind and nuclear schemes is the best way to keep down soaring energy prices, the government’s COP26 president has said. Alok Sharma said that further investment in renewable energy was the solution to a worsening global supply crisis that has seen gas prices increase by up to 400% over the last year. Cabinet Office minister Sharma, whose previous roles include business secretary and housing minister, made the comments in a speech at an event yesterday at Chatham House in London to outline the UK’s priorities for the remaining 10 months of its COP presidency. He said: “The answer to cutting emissions, keeping bills under control and ensuring domestic security of supply is to continue to build out our world leading offshore wind sector and to continue to invest in nuclear and hydrogen as our government is doing.”

Building 25th Jan 2022 read more »

Climate change: More drilling for North Sea gas is an unrealistic strategy for bringing down energy prices, Alok Sharma says. COP26 president Mr Sharma also rejects the idea that more North Sea gas would better protect the UK from any deliberate squeezing of supply by Russia. It comes after MPs who have established a ‘Net Zero Scrutiny Group’ call for the government to allow more drilling.

Sky News 24th Jan 2022 read more »

Nuclear Weapons

25th January 2022

Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of the official representatives of the world’s nations at a UN conference in July 2017, the treaty was subsequently signed by 86 nations. It received the required 50 national ratifications by late October 2020, and, on January 22, 2021, became international law.

Beyond Nuclear 24th Jan 2022 read more »

Submarines

25th January 2022

Exclusive: UK attempts to dismantle nuclear submarine in a world first. The dismantling process has already started on three defuelled submarines – with about 90% of the overall metal free from radioactivity. The Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA) is responsible for dismantling 27 nuclear submarines – 21 of which are already decommissioned. Seven are stored at Rosyth in Fife, with a further 14 at Devonport, Plymouth. The dismantling process has already started on three defuelled submarines at Rosyth – HMS Swiftsure, HMS Resolution and HMS Revenge – with about 90% of the overall metal free from radioactivity. But most of the radioactive parts are pipes, pumps and other metalwork in the area closest to the nuclear reactor. Christine Bruce, SDA’s assistant head of Nuclear Liabilities, told Forces News turning a nuclear submarine “into razor blades and tin cans… is quite a complex process and it takes quite a long time”. “Stage two is the next bit and that’s the most challenging part, and in some ways, it’s the most exciting part,” she said. “It’s when you take out what’s left of the centre of the reactor. “It’s called the reactive pressure vessel and really, it’s just like a giant kettle, but it’s the most radioactive part that’s left, so taking that out is key to the rest of the submarine being able to be disposed of like any conventional ship. “That process has been quite a long time in planning because it’s a large piece of equipment and it’s quite radioactive and our absolute number one goal is safety.” She went on: “We spent quite a long time about 10 years ago looking at alternative methods and the method we’re adopting is this dismantlement. “No-one else has done that [and] when we manage to cut it up by 2026, that will be a global first. “No-one else will have cut up a submarine,” she added.

Forces.net 21st Jan 2022 read more »

Nuclear and Climate

Sellafield

SMRs

Fusion

Advanced Reactors

Nuclear Regulation

Radwaste

Energy Costs

Nuclear Weapons

Submarines

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