Nuclear Energy News and Development

[nomarandlee]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politic...013110.article

Obama pushes nuclear energy to boost climate bill

January 31, 2010

ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is endorsing nuclear energy like never before, trying to win over Republicans and moderate Democrats on climate and energy legislation.

Obama singled out nuclear power in his State of the Union address, and his spending plan for the next budget year is expected to include billions more dollars in federal guarantees for new nuclear reactors. This emphasis reflects both the political difficulties of passing a climate bill in an election year and a shift from his once cautious embrace of nuclear energy.
He's now calling for a new generation of nuclear power plants.

During the campaign, Obama said he would support nuclear power with caveats. He was concerned about how to deal with radioactive waste and how much federal money was needed to support construction costs. Those concerns remain.

His administration has pledged to close Yucca Mountain, the planned multibillion-dollar burial ground in the Nevada desert for high-level radioactive waste. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has been criticized for his slow rollout of $18.5 billion in loan guarantees to spur investment in new nuclear power plants, and the administration killed a Bush-era proposal to reprocess nuclear fuel.

What has changed is the outlook for climate and energy legislation, a White House priority. The House passed a bill in June that would limit emissions of heat-trapping gases for the first time. But the legislation led to a Republican revolt in the Senate.

Obama reaffirmed his commitment to a bill in his State of the Union speech as a way to create more clean-energy jobs, but added that "means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country."

The 104 nuclear reactors in operation in 31 states provide only 20 percent of the nation's electricity. But they are responsible for 70 percent of the power from non-greenhouse gas producing sources, including wind, solar and hydroelectric dams.
Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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[FritzMitWitz]

The new conservative- liberal coalition in Germany decided to phase out the the fast phase out process of the German nuclear plants, which was decided under the social-green coalition under Schröder some 10 years ago.

So for sure the phase out process of the remaining plants will be delayed for some years. But it's improbably that the phase out process will be stopped fully, cause in Germany the social consensus that nuclear energy is dangerous is still very strong, due to the strong anti nuclear movements in Germany in the last 30 years and a strong Green party in Germany.

But who knows, maybe Germans will think once again different about nuclear energy in some 10 years, cause the young people in Germany are not as fanatic opposed to this form of energy as the Green movements of the 80s.

[mopc]

fanatic is the key word. First they kill the best way to produce energy with no CO2, so they can now bitch about CO2!

[siamu maharaj]

That's the first thing that Obama's said I actually agree with. If he can make the US embrace nuclear energy, I'll worship an Obama doll for the rest of my life. I want to see the day when everything runs on nuclear energy produced by fission.

[2co2co]

At the end, I wonder what all that anti-nuclear movements were about.
Was it because of some vocal leftists making people feel like "I'm anti-nuclear because people around myself are anti-nuclear."?

[z0rg]

Now they have the global warming myth to play with.

[nomarandlee]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_nuclear_plant

Obama nuke plant loan reflects new energy strategy

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer Ben Feller, Associated Press Writer – Sat Feb 13, 7:42 am ET

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration's planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the United States in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

President Barack Obama called for "a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants" in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech and followed that by proposing to triple loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.

Obama next week will announce the loan guarantee to build the nuclear power plant, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan that administration officials hope will draw Republican support.

Loan guarantees for other sites are expected to be announced in the coming months, the official said, who would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of Obama's announcement. The federal guarantees are seen as essential for construction of any new reactor because of the expense involved. Critics call the guarantees a form of subsidy and say taxpayers will assume a huge risk, given the industry's record of cost overruns and loan defaults.

Even with next week's announcement, actual construction of the first reactor is still years away. The Southern Co. has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a construction and operating license for the plant, one of 13 such applications the agency is considering. NRC spokesman Eliott Brenner said the earliest any of those could be approved would be late 2011 or early 2012.

The Southern Co. has begun site preparation in Burke but cannot begin construction without NRC approval.

Obama's budget for the coming year would add $36 billion in new federal loan guarantees on top of $18.5 billion already budgeted — but not spent — for a total of $54.5 billion. That's enough to help build six or seven new nuclear plants, which can cost $8 billion to $10 billion each.
The proposed new reactors would generate power for some 1.4 million people and employ about 850 people, the official said, adding that the Georgia project would create about 3,000 construction jobs.

Spiraling costs, safety concerns and opposition from environmentalists have kept utilities from building any new nuclear power plants in the U.S. since the early 1980s. The 104 nuclear reactors now in operation in 31 states provide about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. But they are responsible for 70 percent of the power from pollution-free sources, including wind, solar and hydroelectric dams that Obama has championed as a way to save the environment and economy at the same time.

Environmentalists and fiscal hawks oppose new nuclear plants and note that they come at the same time Obama has proposed eliminating a long-planned nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Obama has appointed a commission to find a safe solution for dealing with nuclear waste, but in the meantime the government has no long-term plan to store commercial radioactive waste.

Republicans like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham welcome the shift, but some pro-nuclear Republicans remain nervous about the heart of the Obama-backed climate bill — a plan to limit heat-trapping pollution, which would raise energy costs.

..

[siamu maharaj]

I wish they'd given the power generation capacity of each reactor.

[2co2co]

Other than Westinghouse AP1000, I don't see much progress happening in commercial nuclear reactors...

FBR, Accelerator-Driven Subcritical reactor and Pebble Bed all seem like sufferring budget cuts and cancellations.

[WatcherZero]

Mmm, I think the UK will choose a EPR design, AP1000 has been put forward though requires several changes to bring it upto UK safety standards, mainly thickening of walls as well as adding a backup shutdown, meanwhile the EPR is more powerful requiring fewer reactors to be built. Its also likely EDF will be the largest financer and operator of the plants so it will have a bias to the EPR design.

[nomarandlee]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100308/...nuclear_energy

Nuclear energy gets new French-driven boost

By GREG KELLER and ANGELA CHARLTON, Associated Press Writers Greg Keller And Angela Charlton, Associated Press Writers – Mon Mar 8, 11:27 am ET
PARIS – Poor countries need nuclear power, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday, urging rich lenders to help pay for a global nuclear expansion in the interests of fighting climate change and feeding the growing world hunger for energy.

Sarkozy recognized the danger of meltdowns or proliferation — and international worries about Iran's nuclear program. He stood firmly against those who "cheat" and use nuclear technology to make weapons.

His tantalizing vision of nuclear reactors dotting the horizon won over international energy officials from India to Brussels and French executives eager to market their expertise abroad, all present at a Paris conference Monday.

Some experts, however, say Sarkozy's push is opening the door to risks that deadly nuclear technology gets into the wrong hands, and warn consumers to pay attention to the staggering price tag of potential nuclear energy growth — up to $3.9 trillion worldwide by 2050.
"We need nuclear energy" to meet international goals set for slowing global warming, Sarkozy said. Nuclear reactors do not produce the carbon emissions that scientists blame in part for climate change.

His recommendations come at a time when the Obama administration has called nuclear power a key part of comprehensive energy legislation in the United States, where nuclear reactor orders have been halted since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.

Sarkozy wants France, which is reliant on atomic reactors for a large majority of its electricity, to lead the way.

France has long marketed itself as a nuclear pioneer globally. But it hit a recent setback — the loss of a lucrative deal to build reactors in the United Arab Emirates to a South Korean consortium — that has raised questions about the French industry's prospects in a nuclear renaissance.

The international Nuclear Energy Agency estimates that global electricity demand will increase 2.5 times by 2050. It forecasts that between 2030 and 2050, the world will need between 23 and 54 new reactors per year both to replace plants to be decommissioned and to increase nuclear power production.

Overall, the NEA forecasts the number of reactors worldwide to grow to between 600 and 1,400 by 2050, from 430 today, NEA chief Luis Echavarri said. That represents necessary investment of between $680 billion to $3.9 trillion, at roughly $4 billion per reactor, Echavarri said.

Mycle Schneider, an independent researcher on France's nuclear industry, warned that costs of nuclear plants have been "systematically underestimated" by governments worldwide for decades.

He warned that the nuclear push was premature, since many small countries where France is marketing technology don't even have large enough electricity grids to support a nuclear reactor.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, also at the Paris conference, said, "Nuclear reactors should not only be reserved for developed countries but should be accessible to all."

Sarkozy dismissed the "egotistic" rich-country perception that poor countries don't have the right to nuclear technology because they can't be trusted to keep it safe.

"That is closing the door to progress and a better life to those who have nothing," he said. He said nuclear energy should be "the cement of a new international solidarity."

Sarkozy said international financial institutions should play a key role in financing nuclear projects.

"I do not understand and I do not accept the ostracism of nuclear energy by international financing," he said, urging the World Bank and other global lenders to help fund nuclear investments in developing countries.

Bulgaria's energy minister, Traitcho Traikov, welcomed that idea.

"Multilaterals' involvement in financing nuclear would have a wider effect, influencing the perception of such projects by other lenders — commercial banks that are abstaining precisely for reasons of perception," Traikov said.

World worries about Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs hung heavy over Monday's conference, though most speakers avoided addressing them directly.

Sarkozy said the international community should be "steadfast in its opposition to those countries that violate the standards for collective security."

The United States and allies including France suspect Iran's uranium enrichment activities are aimed at building weapons, while Tehran says they are only for peaceful nuclear energy. Iran has defied U.N. calls to halt enrichment and faced three rounds of international sanctions.

Schneider called Sarkozy's push for nuclear expansion Monday "a phenomenal boost toward technology proliferation."

"Even if you don't start building a nuclear plant tomorrow, or in 10 years or 20 years, as soon as you sign a nuclear cooperation agreement, the know-how can flow," he said.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso singled out Iran and North Korea, warning that their nuclear activities "present security risks for the global community." Barroso urged the rest of the world to join new EU nuclear security rules that make violations punishable by law.

Sarkozy called for an "enhanced" IAEA with broader powers and with a kind of scoreboard to rate international reactors on safety. Sarkozy also proposed creating an elite training school in France for the next generation of international nuclear scientists.

..

[siamu maharaj]

"the NEA forecasts the number of reactors worldwide to grow to between 600 and 1,400 by 2050"

What's the fucking point of such a forecast? Between 600 and 1,400. Wow, that really narrowed it down, now I know we won't have 20,000 reactors by 2050.

[Restless]

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-mar...-plants-report

China May OK More Companies To Build Nuclear Power Plants-Report


By Jonathan Shieber, Of DOW JONES CLEAN TECHNOLOGY INSIGHT

SHANGHAI -(Dow Jones)- China's Energy Administration is in the process of revising its guidelines and requirements for nuclear power plant operators, according to a state media report Friday.

The move by China's top energy agency could mean that more power companies are able to build and operate nuclear power plants as the country looks to move away from energy sources like coal and oil, according to the China Securities Journal, which cited an unnamed source.

China isn't alone in its quest to boost nuclear power- other major developing nations have major expansion programs, and a raft of industrialized nations are mulling enhancing the fleets of reactors.

For China to forge ahead with its plans, the country needs to overcome a bottleneck in the number of companies approved to build and operate power plants, according to Yuanta Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd. analyst Min Li.

The review of regulations by the government could mean that soon independent power producers like Huaneng Power International Inc. (HNP) and Datang International Power Generation Co. (0991.HK), could join the ranks of approved developers like China National Nuclear Corp., China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Corp., and China Power Investment Corp., the Yuanta analyst said.

In a research note, Min said that Sichuan and Guangxi provinces may follow other areas like Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei in building inland nuclear power plants.

To date, most Chinese nuclear facilities have been built around the coast.

On Feb. 9China Daily newspaper China's cited State Nuclear Power Technology Corp., which is responsible for the development of third-generation nuclear technology in China, as saying it had completed the initial design for the country's first three inland nuclear power stations.

The three projects are at Taohuajiang in Hunan province, Xianning in Hubei province, and Pengze in Jiangxi province, and will use AP1000 third-generation technology developed by U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric, it said, citing SNPTC.

China now has 11 civil nuclear reactors in service, and the government has plan to boost this to as many as 100 over the next two decades.

China already has 21 new reactors under construction, representing approximately 40% of the world's construction of nuclear facilities, according to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency and an analyst report. A February 2009 report by Xinhua news agency quoted Energy Administration head Zhang Guobao saying that China would be able to rely on its own technologies for nuclear power development in the next twenty years.

The government has already issued approvals for subsidiaries of Harbin Electric Group to begin manufacturing boilers and turbines for nuclear plants, according to an announcement on the SASAC web site.

China's State Council has also released a plan to support machinery manufacturing industries in the development of national technologies to supplant foreign vendors, Xinhua said.

The Chinese government now has a target for 40 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2020, which will cost approximately $66.2 billion to develop, state media has reported.

By Jonathan Shieber, Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight; 8621-6120-1200; jonathan.shieber@dowjones.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-05-100650ET
Copyright (c) 2010 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

[nomarandlee]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thetic...uclear-efforts
Sun Mar 13, 10:29 am ET
Japan disaster could undermine U.S.’s nuclear effortsBy Holly Bailey

As Japan rushes to contain what could be a major nuclear meltdown in the wake of Friday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, the crisis could be a major setback for the U.S. nuclear power industry.

As the Washington Post's Jia Linn Yang reports, politicians on both sides of the aisle, including President Obama and GOP leaders in Congress, have advocated the construction of new nuclear plants stateside in recent years.

Already supporters of nuclear energy are on the defense. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday the crisis in Japan shouldn't deter the country from investing in nuclear power. But he also insisted now is not the time to be having such a debate.

"I don't think right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy," the GOP leader told Fox News Sunday. "We ought not to make American domestic policy based on an event that happened in Japan."

(Photo of an explosion Saturday at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant: NTV Japan via AP)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/369325
Japan's radiation leak: Shades of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl?
By Mark Clayton Mark Clayton – Sat Mar 12, 6:12 pm ET
Japan’s unfolding nuclear power crisis remains at an unstable, volatile stage, warn US nuclear experts who, while hopeful, say past nuclear accidents – at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl – grew far worse over several days before being controlled.

Their comments, which came during a Saturday conference call convened by anti-nuclear power groups, were in sharp contrast with reports by the Japanese government which appeared to indicate the main crisis in one of its nuclear reactors was past, although a state of emergency remained in effect for five reactors.

Japanese soldiers were reported pumping seawater into the #1 reactor at the Fukushima I power plant 150 miles north of Tokyo to keep it cool. But one US expert characterized the move as an apparent last-ditch “Hail Mary” effort that could easily fail and be followed by a major radioactive release.

IN PICTURES: Japan's 8.9 earthquake

An enormous explosion Saturday morning – possibly due to a buildup of hydrogen gas – destroyed most of a secondary containment building housing the #1 reactor, but was reported by a government spokesman not to have breached a critical inner steel liner – the reactor’s primary containment vessel.

On Saturday, the Japanese government reported five reactors at two different nuclear power plants – Fukushima I and Fukushima II – to be in a state of emergency following the massive earthquake that hit Japan Friday. A total of 11 of the nation’s 54 reactors shut down following the quake – knocking out about 30 percent of the nation’s power. Still, Japanese officials were matter of fact.

Chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Saturday that radiation around the plant had started to decrease. A “tiny” amount of radiation had leaked earlier in the day when officials attempted to relieve pressure inside the reactor.................

Questioned raised about US nuclear powerThe Japanese accidents appear certain to fuel debate in the US over the safety of domestic power plants from earthquakes and other natural disasters, some experts said. Regulators’ focus in the US would likely fall on Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, two plants in active seismic areas, but might extend to other aging plants now being assessed for permits to extend their operating lives.

Nuclear power advocates at the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington said the Japanese government appeared to have the situation under control, and they took issue with the idea that history showed nuclear crises growing worse before getting better.

“I was at Three-Mile Island, and the crisis inside the reactor peaked and started to decline later that same day even though the public perception was just the opposite because of poor communication,” says Thomas Kauffman, an NEI spokesman. “We have heard that they are injecting seawater into the reactor, but I don’t know how successful that effort has been and to comment on it would be sheer speculation.”

Nuclear power plants in the US, he added, are each individually designed to withstand the maximum earthquake for that particular region.

“You’ve got to keep in mind, this plant experienced a seismic event it wasn’t built to withstand – and it’s in one of the most seismically active areas in the world,” he says. “The nuclear plants in California that are in active seismic areas have extra design features to help them deal with that activity.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he noted, would certainly bring any lessons learned from the Japanese experience back to the US.

“They’re going to look at the root causes in Japan and figure out what happened,” Mr. Kauffman says. “If an adjustment needs to be made they’ll be made.”

..

[nomarandlee]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...h-thorium.html

Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium

A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima’s uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 9:30PM GMT 20 Mar 2011

This passed unnoticed –except by a small of band of thorium enthusiasts – but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould.

If China’s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia’s industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West’s entrenched consumption.

China’s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama’s “Sputnik moment”, you could say.

Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.

“The reactor has an amazing safety feature,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.

“If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself,” he said.

“They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.”

Thorium is a silvery metal named after the Norse god of thunder. The metal has its own “issues” but no thorium reactor could easily spin out of control in the manner of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or now Fukushima.

Professor Robert Cywinksi from Huddersfield University said thorium must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the fission process. “There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam. There are not enough neutrons for it continue of its own accord,” he said.

Dr Cywinski, who anchors a UK-wide thorium team, said the residual heat left behind in a crisis would be “orders of magnitude less” than in a uranium reactor.

The earth’s crust holds 80 years of uranium at expected usage rates, he said. Thorium is as common as lead. America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining. Norway has so much that Oslo is planning a post-oil era where thorium might drive the country’s next great phase of wealth. Even Britain has seams in Wales and in the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Almost all the mineral is usable as fuel, compared to 0.7pc of uranium. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years.

I write before knowing the outcome of the Fukushima drama, but as yet none of 15,000 deaths are linked to nuclear failure. Indeed, there has never been a verified death from nuclear power in the West in half a century. Perspective is in order.

We cannot avoid the fact that two to three billion extra people now expect – and will obtain – a western lifestyle. China alone plans to produce 100m cars and buses every year by 2020.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the world currently has 442 nuclear reactors. They generate 372 gigawatts of power, providing 14pc of global electricity. Nuclear output must double over twenty years just to keep pace with the rise of the China and India.

If a string of countries cancel or cut back future reactors, let alone follow Germany’s Angela Merkel in shutting some down, they shift the strain onto gas, oil, and coal. Since the West is also cutting solar subsidies, they can hardly expect the solar industry to plug the gap.

BP’s disaster at Macondo should teach us not to expect too much from oil reserves deep below the oceans, beneath layers of blinding salt. Meanwhile, we rely uneasily on Wahabi repression to crush dissent in the Gulf and keep Arabian crude flowing our way. So where can we turn, unless we revert to coal and give up on the ice caps altogether? That would be courting fate.

US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.

The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs. As a happy bonus, it can burn up plutonium and toxic waste from old reactors, reducing radio-toxicity and acting as an eco-cleaner.

Dr Cywinski is developing an accelerator driven sub-critical reactor for thorium, a cutting-edge project worldwide. It needs to £300m of public money for the next phase, and £1.5bn of commercial investment to produce the first working plant. Thereafter, economies of scale kick in fast. The idea is to make pint-size 600MW reactors.

Yet any hope of state support seems to have died with the Coalition budget cuts, and with it hopes that Britain could take a lead in the energy revolution. It is understandable, of course. Funds are scarce. The UK has already put its efforts into the next generation of uranium reactors. Yet critics say vested interests with sunk costs in uranium technology succeeded in chilling enthusiasm.

The same happened a decade ago to a parallel project by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). France’s nuclear industry killed proposals for funding from Brussels, though a French group is now working on thorium in Grenoble.

Norway’s Aker Solution has bought Professor Rubbia’s patent. It had hoped to build the first sub-critical reactor in the UK, but seems to be giving up on Britain and locking up a deal to build it in China instead, where minds and wallets are more open.

So the Chinese will soon lead on this thorium technology as well as molten-salts. Good luck to them. They are doing Mankind a favour. We may get through the century without tearing each other apart over scarce energy and wrecking the planet.

This is my last column for a while. I am withdrawing to the Mayan uplands.

....

[nomarandlee]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...?section=world

Nuclear community snubbed reactor safety message: expertBy Daniel Miller

Posted Fri Mar 18, 2011 6:03pm AEDT

A US nuclear expert says the creator of the Light Water Reactor (LWR), a design which is being used in the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, foresaw the problems with its design and advocated for a safer, more efficient alternative.

Chief nuclear technologist Kirk Sorensen, from Teledyne Brown Engineering in the US, says Alvin Weinberg - the creator of the most common reactor design in the world - actually warned the nuclear community in the 1960s that the reactor could have trouble shutting down if there was a loss of power.

Last week a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan knocked out the backup power of the 40-year-old Fukushima plant, causing the pumps that deliver cooling water to the plant to stop working.

Mr Sorensen says Dr Weinberg was a big advocator of an alternative to his design which could be fed thorium as a fuel source instead of uranium, could passively shut down if power was cut, and was 250 times more efficient.

He says Dr Weinberg believed the thorium reactor could solve the world's energy problems.

Before he died in 2006, Dr Weinberg wrote in his memoirs that he told people in the 1960s of his concerns with the reactor he patented.

"Basically everything we're seeing in Japan right now, he was warning people about in the 60s," Mr Sorensen said.

The Fukushima nuclear plant began operating commercially in 1971.

Mr Sorensen says Dr Weinberg's concerns were vindicated after the partial core meltdown of a reactor based on his design at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in 1979.

"In his memoirs he mentioned Three Mile Island and how that kind of thing didn't have to happen," he said.

"He was trying to talk to the nuclear community about safety and it was a message that was rejected, but it was a very timely message.

"It is amazing how clearly he saw things 50 years ago."


A safer alternative

Mr Sorensen says the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) which was developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1950s was a superior technology to the well-established and popular LWR.

Dr Weinberg headed the laboratory and took a keen interest in promoting the new reactor.

Mr Sorensen says the reactor produces less waste, can be more safely shut down, and can even use waste from other conventional nuclear reactors as fuel.

He says the thorium project ended up being disbanded because of political influence and because there was a sense that switching from the already developed uranium-focused industry would be "like starting at the start again".


Thorium project's short life

Mr Sorensen says the first experimental LFTR was developed at Oak Ridge National Labs in 1954 and was run for 11 days.

"It was a proof-of-concept type of reactor to see if it could even work," he said.

"And then in the 60s they built another LFTR that ran for four years from 1965 to 1969 which was very successful; it showed that the physics were sound and it demonstrated things like passively safe shut down."

Mr Sorensen says the team of scientists had then wanted to take the next step and develop a fully-functioning reactor but they were dealt a blow when the Nixon administration forced Dr Weinberg to quit his position.

He says there was political pressure on Dr Weinberg after he spoke out about safety concerns with his popular LWR.

"He was advocating for the LFTR, which had a very passive approach to safety - It was very safe, had a number of advantages, it did not require high pressure - and this was getting him into trouble," he said.

"Finally there was a powerful congressman who told him 'if you don't feel that nuclear power is safe, it's time for you to get out of nuclear power' and essentially got him fired.

"He was kind of the leader and protector of this thorium reactor effort.

"Once he was gone, within a year or two the Atomic Energy Committee moved in and shut down the whole research program."

Mr Sorensen says he travelled to Oak Ridge in Tennessee in 2001 to speak with a few of the original developers of the thorium reactor about the shutdown of their project.

"They felt like they had done something really incredible, they had done something that could save the world," he said.

"But they had been essentially treated as insignificant, ignored and then finally thrown away."

Mr Sorensen says he believes the dangerous radiation leak at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan will spark a renewed focus on nuclear safety around the world.

He says the thorium project with its safer and more efficient design has a lot to offer and should be restarted.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has already announced a review of plans to extend the life of the country's 17 nuclear power plants.

...

[...aditya...]

Indrani Bagchi, TNN | Mar 19, 2011

NEW DELHI: The radiation crisis in Fukushima has prompted India to review all new nuclear reactor designs in the country, said Srikumar Banerjee, chairman, Atomic Energy Commission. But India will continue to push ahead with its nuclear power plans and will break ground on eight new reactors this year, he added.

The two reactors in Tarapur are boiling water reactors of the Fukushima design, Banerjee said. These are old GE reactors. But in the Indian context, he added, there have been extra safety features added.

These are a passive heat removal system which does not require power, so it will continue to cool the reactor even when there is a total power blackout. The "thermosyphoning" feature, he said, gives the reactor a grace period of eight hours.

India's nuclear energy establishment has also ordered a review of the design of Areva's EPR reactor which will be installed in Jaitapur, Maharashtra. The EPR, Banerjee said, has already added new safety features after 9/11 that would help it withstand a commercial aircraft crashing into it. The Indian reactors, he said, can withstand military aircraft.

He said there has been no effect in India of radiation exposure from the quake-hit reactors in Japan. "I can categorically say that because of the Japan incident, there has been no recognizable difference in radiation in any part of India," Banerjee said. Radiation is being measured in 87 points across the country.

The Fukushima reactor, he said, was just 140 km from the faultline, which meant that the period between the quake and the tsunami was just an hour. "(In India) the nearest nuclear power plant from a fault is Tarapur, which is 900 km away from the Makran fault... therefore, we do not expect the arrival of quake and tsunami before six hours."

[Rachmaninov]

Fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power
23 March 2011 by Phil McKenna
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...ear-power.html
Magazine issue 2805

IN THE wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan, Germany has temporarily shut down seven of its reactors and China, which is building more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined, has suspended approval for all new facilities. But this reaction may be more motivated by politics than by fear of a catastrophic death toll. It may be little consolation to those living around Fukushima, but nuclear power kills far fewer people than other energy sources, according to a review by the International Energy Agency (IAE).

"There is no question," says Joseph Romm, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. "Nothing is worse than fossil fuels for killing people."

A 2002 review by the IAE put together existing studies to compare fatalities per unit of power produced for several leading energy sources. The agency examined the life cycle of each fuel from extraction to post-use and included deaths from accidents as well as long-term exposure to emissions or radiation. Nuclear came out best, and coal was the deadliest energy source.

The explanation lies in the large number of deaths caused by pollution. "It's the whole life cycle that leads to a trail of injuries, illness and death," says Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Fine particles from coal power plants kill an estimated 13,200 people each year in the US alone, according to the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force (The Toll from Coal, 2010). Additional fatalities come from mining and transporting coal, and other forms of pollution associated with coal. In contrast, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN estimate that the death toll from cancer following the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl will reach around 9000.

In fact, the numbers show that catastrophic events are not the leading cause of deaths associated with nuclear power. More than half of all deaths stem from uranium mining, says the IEA. But even when this is included, the overall toll remains significantly lower than for all other fuel sources.

So why do people fixate on nuclear power? "From coal we have a steady progression of deaths year after year that are invisible to us, things like heart attacks, whereas a large-scale nuclear release is a catastrophic event that we are rightly scared about," says James Hammitt of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis in Boston.

Yet again, popular perceptions are wrong. When, in 1975, about 30 dams in central China failed in short succession due to severe flooding, an estimated 230,000 people died. Include the toll from this single event, and fatalities from hydropower far exceed the number of deaths from all other energy sources.

[nomarandlee]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/bu...ewanted=1&_r=1

A Radical Kind of Reactor
By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: March 24, 2011

SHIDAO, China — While engineers at Japan’s stricken nuclear power plant struggle to keep its uranium fuel rods from melting down, engineers in China are building a radically different type of reactor that some experts say offers a safer nuclear alternative.........

Rather than using conventional fuel rod assemblies of the sort leaking radiation in Japan, each packed with nearly 400 pounds of uranium, the Chinese reactors will use hundreds of thousands of billiard-ball-size fuel elements, each cloaked in its own protective layer of graphite.

The coating moderates the pace of nuclear reactions and is meant to ensure that if the plant had to be shut down in an emergency, the reaction would slowly stop on its own and not lead to a meltdown.

The reactors will also be cooled by nonexplosive helium gas instead of depending on a steady source of water — a critical problem with the damaged reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant. And unlike those reactors, the Chinese reactors are designed to gradually dissipate heat on their own, even if coolant is lost.

If the new plants here prove viable, China plans to build dozens more of them in coming years.

The technology under construction here, known as a pebble-bed reactor, is not new. Germany, South Africa and the United States have all experimented with it, before abandoning it over technical problems or a lack of financing.........

....

[Basincreek]

I really hope the anti-nuclear hysteria doesn't stay around long.