Saturday, July 30, 2011

Presidential Commission Seeks Volunteers to Store U.S. Nuclear Waste Scientific American

In deciding what to do with nuclear waste and where to put it, a blue ribbon commission recommends a consent-based approach rather than congressional fiat

ENERGY WHITE PAPER: Keeping the lights on in the cheapest, cleanest way

MIT Creates Sun-free Photovoltaic Power, Hammers Another Nail Into Lithium ...

Gizmodo

Oh MIT, we can always count on you to come up with the most clever, little inventions. Just the other day you created goo-powered batteries to replace lithium-ion and now you've gone and found a way to make photovoltaic electricity without sunlight! ...

21st-Century, Stable, Thermal Energy Storage

Law of Renewable Energy Series: Tackling Energy Storage Issues

The Market for US Cleantech Is Out There

The World's Nuclear Energy Technology Renaissance : A Market Analysis

US, Saudi Arabia to discuss nuclear cooperation

AP1000 nuclear reactor arrives at plant in China

EDF gets green light for Hinkley new nuke and massive government supply contract

Plans advance for British nuclear plant

Japan Proposes Aggressive Recovery Plan By HIROKO TABUCHI

Japan Proposes Aggressive Recovery Plan

By HIROKO TABUCHI

Title_head CLP Holdings to invest CNY 11 billion into Yangjiang nuclear power station

CLP Holdings to invest CNY 11 billion into Yangjiang nuclear power station

China's nuclear power developers seek equity investors amid credit crunch

Accusations of public opinion manipulation by NISA have damaged trust

Accusations of public opinion manipulation by NISA have damaged trust
Mainichi Daily News
If NISA, whose role is to examine the structure and equipment of nuclear power plants and ensure their safety, has in fact attempted to lead public opinion, it is a serious problem. To restore the public's trust, the government must get to the bottom ...

Korean Candu restarts after refurbishment

Unit 1 at the Wolsong nuclear power plant in South Korea has been restarted following the completion of a refurbishment of the pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR). It marks the first time that a Candu-6 reactor has been successfully dismantled, retubed and restarted. The 679 MWe reactor to operate for a further 25 years. It took 839 days to refurbish (started in 2009).

Gov't to buy up all beef containing cesium exceeding allowable levels

Miyagi, Gunma, Iwate to test all beef cattle for radiation

Gov't bans all shipments of beef cattle from Miyagi Pref.

Contaminated rice straw found in 10 prefectures

EDF kicks off the battle for nuclear Britain with French bid

Germany’s Grand Energy Experiment

Distributed Power Is The Best Way To Relieve Energy Poverty

World's First Complete Electric Vehicle Charging Network Launched

Managing Nuclear Information in the Cloud

The Solution for Corporate Control of Environmental Impact Data
by Neno Duplan

Nuclear & Renewable Energy

Why We Still Need Nuclear By TOM KILGORE

Why We Still Need Nuclear

By TOM KILGORE

Battling for nuclear energy by exposing opposition motives

False media balance – radiation health risks contrasted against climate change

Update on fast reactor group challenge to MIT

Rod Adams - July 29, 2011

Steve Kirsch, an MIT graduate and enough of an entrepreneurial success to have an auditorium at the school that carries his name, has updated his challenge to the faculty at his alma mater in a post on The Huffington Post titled Is MIT Afraid to Debate Nuclear Report?. …Continue »

Build baby build - new nuclear power plants

http://atomicinsights.com/2011/07/build-baby-build-new-nuclear-power-plants.html

Build baby build - new nuclear power plants

CBS News aired a short piece that reminds people how vital reliable electricity is. That knowledge is reinforced when power grids are stressed and when people die due to complications associated with heat exposure. Nuclear plants have a far better chance of being available when needed than the wind turbines that were AWOL during a recent heat wave that blanketed about 1/4 of the US land mass.

When the heat domes hover, the air is still and muggy. If there was a reliable breeze we would not be so dependent on our air conditioners!

"N.R.C. Lowers Estimate of How Many Would Die in Meltdown."

Matt Wald has published an important article in the New York Times titled "N.R.C. Lowers Estimate of How Many Would Die in Meltdown."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/30/science/earth/30radiation.html

Smaller nuclear reactors allow decentralized power – some critics not pleased

Friday, July 29, 2011

Japan to Unveil Plan to Cut Reliance on Atomic Power, Asahi Says

Spherical robots eyeball nuclear pipework

Spherical robots eyeball nuclear pipework	Like » flag »
Started by Ziv Lang, Air Resources Engineer at California Air Resources Board
Abstract could be found on this link: https://ras.papercept.net/conferences/scripts/abstract.pl?ConfID=34&Number=1922 By Ziv Lang, Air Resources Engineer at California Air Resources Board

TEPCO to extract air from troubled reactors

CFD applications in the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor Project: A decade of progress

Naoto Kan, Japan Prime Minister, Calls For Nuclear Energy Cutback

Nevada Nuclear Dump Debate: Panel Finds Local Support Is Crucial

Lawmaker: US seeks Saudi nuclear energy deal

Don't Nuke the Budget!

Clinton's Nuclear Bargain With India

Clinton's Nuclear Bargain With India
J. Sri Raman, Truthout: "If a 'strategic partnership' is here, can business pacts be far behind? US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left no doubt about the close nexus between the two during her recent visit to New Delhi while answering fresh questions raised over the famous US-India nuclear deal. The main question arose from a decision of the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) that seemed to deny a special concession India had won from the Vienna-based forum on the eve of the deal, as an essential condition for its conclusion."
Read the Article
http://www.truth-out.org/hillarys-nuclear-bargain-india/1311863372

Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes Spent fuel draft report has few surprises

Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes

Spent fuel draft report has few surprises

Blue Ribbon Commission calls for interim storage and finding a new geologic repository, but nixes reprocessing as a near term strategy

Wenzhou Crash Shows the Dangers of China's Nuclear Power Ambitions By Jianjun Tu and David Livingston

Wenzhou Crash Shows the Dangers of China's Nuclear Power Ambitions
By Jianjun Tu and David Livingston

A high-speed train crash near Wenzhou in the coastal Chinese province of Zhejiang took the lives of at least 39 people on July 23 and has raised equal measures of fear, anger and astonishment across the country. Preliminary reports indicate that a bullet train running from Hangzhou to Fuzhou had been struck by lightning, causing it to break down on the tracks. Shortly afterwards another locomotive heading from Beijing to Fuzhou careened into the stalled train, derailing six cars and pushing four of them entirely off the viaduct (New York Times, July 24; 21st Century Herald, July 27). In addition to the fatalities, at least 210 were injured in what is now the highest-profile setback for China’s ambitious rail program. While Beijing has moved quickly to control the flow of information (albeit not successfully) surrounding the disaster and disclosed the foreign origin of its bullet train technologies, the Chinese public and the broader international community are unlikely to be satisfied by such dismissals (Caijing, July 24). The accident is a “canary in the coal mine”, as it were, for a much larger structural challenge facing China. The breadth of Chinese ambitions to indigenize foreign technologies and scale them for mass deployment has simply outpaced its ability to plan, operate and staff these complex undertakings in a safe and sustainable manner. This is true in the case of high-speed rail, and it threatens to become the overarching storyline for the country’s nuclear energy program. The tragedy on the tracks in Wenzhou delivers lessons that Beijing would be wise to heed, not only for the management of its rail networks but also for the more critical issue of its 2020 nuclear energy goals.

READ FULL STORY

ATOMIC POWER REVIEW Nuclear Energy in Japan: The Scandal Widens

ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Nuclear Energy in Japan: The Scandal Widens

PEST(EL) in the Nuclear Industry – The Political (part 2)

Entergy’s Vermont Yankee Fuel Bet

Global Weekly: DuPont Extends into Solar Sector

Posted: 28 Jul 2011 01:26 PM PDT

The biggest deal of the past week was made by chemical giant DuPont, which acquired InnovaLight, a California-based company that develops a silicon nanocrystalline ink for flexible solar panels. DuPont already had revenue of more than $1 billion in the solar market in 2010, and expects that to reach $2 billion by 2014. The week also featured several innovative companies in the transportation sector, as well as a few corporate-level transactions, including one made by DuPont’s competitor Dow Chemical. The complete highlights are as follows:

TVA exec says Bellefonte will be on Aug. 18 agenda

Fresno nuclear group responds to negative poll

Hitachi JV, Polish firm link up to supply nuclear reactors to Poland

Areva CEO Says China May Lift Halt of Nuclear Projects in Q4

Japan PM pledges 'revolutionary' energy shift

O.K., Smart Guys: Fix the Energy Problem

How should the U.S. solve its energy problems? The experts brainstorm

ANS Nuclear Cafe Is the NRC on target with its call to redefine nuclear safety?

ANS Nuclear Cafe

Is the NRC on target with its call to redefine nuclear safety?

Posted on July 28, 2011 by dyurman| 4 Comments

A report by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff task force calls for sweeping regulatory change, but also acknowledges that information about the Fukushima accident is unavailable, unreliable, or ambiguous. What should be the response in the United States to the events in Japan?

Editor: Dan Yurman

U.S. Regulator Says Fukushima Lessons Can Percolate

Nuclear power's real chain reaction: spiralling costs

The new delays and bumper cost overruns of EDF's new reactor in France make it very hard to believe that nuclear power can fulfil the promises its supporters make

ATI Fellows Expose 'The War on Natural Gas'

Inside the innards of a nuclear reactor

Inside the innards of a nuclear reactor
Boston MA (SPX) Jul 27, 2011 - As workers continue to grapple with the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan, the crisis has shone a spotlight on nuclear reactors around the world. In June, The Associated Press released results from a yearlong investigation, revealing evidence of "unrelenting wear" in many of the oldest-running facilities in the United States. That study found that three-quarters of the ... more

Japan denies censorship over nuclear crisis

Japan denies censorship over nuclear crisis
Tokyo (AFP) July 29, 2011 - Japan on Friday denied that a government project to monitor online news reports and Twitter posts about the Fukushima nuclear crisis was an attempt to censor negative information and views. Some Western online reports have charged that Japan had passed a law with the intent of "cleansing" the Internet of negative reports and commentary about the accident at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi ... more

End of nuclear in Germany pushes Vattenfall into red

End of nuclear in Germany pushes Vattenfall into red
Stockholm (AFP) July 28, 2011 - Swedish power group Vatenfall on Thursday announced a 154-percent net loss in the second quarter, blaming it on Germany's decision to abandon nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Vattenfall recorded a net loss of 2.7 billion kronor (301 million euros, 433 million dollars) against five billion kronor over the same period in 2010, the company's report said. The result, said ... more

Molycorp Comes to Sillamäe

The battle over natural gas drilling

Germany's grand energy experiment

Barry Brook | 29 July 2011 at 3:45 PM | Categories: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | URL: http://wp.me/piCIJ-1gj

Zpryme Report - A Closer Look at DSM, Energy Storage & Distributed Generation

Zpryme Report - A Closer Look at DSM, Energy Storage & Distributed Generation
PR Urgent
In the new report, A Closer Look at DSM, Energy Storage & Distributed Generation, Zpryme details how demand-side management, energy storage, distributed generation, and even customer-sited generation is effecting the deployment of the smart grid. ...

Recent decisions indicate TVA on wrong track

New Global Rules for Sensitive Nuclear Trade By Mark Hibbs

New Global Rules for Sensitive Nuclear Trade

By Mark Hibbs

Thursday, July 28, 2011

New study outlines prospects for electric vehicle market growth in the U.S.

New study outlines prospects for electric vehicle market growth in the U.S.
The Obama administration has set a goal of getting one million electric cars on the road by 2015 to reduce air pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. These vehicles are becoming available, but will Americans buy them? The answer, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard Kennedy School, is yes – but only if the electric vehicles are competitive with conventional cars on cost, range and fueling convenience.

Insight: Nuclear-Powered Future? / Elizabeth Custer / Big Band / Sound Advice ... Capital Public Radio News But, according to a statewide survey the Public Policy Institute of California released this week, public support for nuclear power is dropping following the meltdown in Fukushima, Japan. We'll speak with Burt Richter, an author of the CCST study and ...

Insight: Nuclear-Powered Future? / Elizabeth Custer / Big Band / Sound Advice ...
Capital Public Radio News
But, according to a statewide survey the Public Policy Institute of California released this week, public support for nuclear power is dropping following the meltdown in Fukushima, Japan. We'll speak with Burt Richter, an author of the CCST study and ...

NJ NJ nuclear power plants need independent safety review The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog)

NJ nuclear power plants need independent safety review
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog)
THIS NUCLEAR PLANT FACES AN UNRECOGNIZED RISK OF A MELTDOWN! NASA warns that a strong geomagnetic storm can collapse the power grid for months and NJ is smack in the area they predict will be seriously affected. A nuclear plant without grid power for a ...

US Nuclear Commission Rejects Chairman's Plan For Fukushima Response

US Nuclear Commission Rejects Chairman's Plan For Fukushima Response
NASDAQ
The vote signaled that the five-member commission has yet to agree on how to proceed with recommendations from a staff task force that was charged with evaluating safety at US nuclear reactors.

Poll: Californians say no nukes, but maybe oil drilling San Jose Mercury News But Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown disaster -- caused by March's cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami, and widely seen as the world's worst nuclear accident since 1986's Chernobyl blast -- apparently has sapped Californians' support for ...

Poll: Californians say no nukes, but maybe oil drilling

Thorium reactors promise a different nuclear future | Audio ...

Thorium reactors promise a different nuclear future | Audio ...
Thorium reactors promise a different nuclear future. 28.07.2011 | 05:03 mins. Thorium reactors promise a different nuclear future ...
mediacenter.dw-world.de/english/audio/#!/203627/...a...

atomic power review Nuclear Energy in Japan: July 27, 2011

Nuclear Energy in Japan: July 27, 2011

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 08:32 PM PDT

TEPCO has released a video of the QUINCE robot inside No. 3 reactor building on July 26th. See it at the APR YouTube Channel:

ATOMIC POWER REVIEW YOUTUBE CHANNEL

Some illustrations from TEPCO help clarify the locations seen in the video:

Wind Energy is Expensive

Nagasaki mayor: shift from nuclear power needed

NRC duels with UCS over Davis-Besse electrical systems

Sanders is sole vote against new small nuclear technology July 27, 2011 by Meredith Angwin

Sanders is sole vote against new small nuclear technology

July 27, 2011

by Meredith Angwin

Exelon 'not in any panic' over nuclear regulations

Neb. nuclear plant’s flood recovery being planned

Advanced Reactor Gets Closer to Reality

Terrapower is pushing ahead with a reactor design that uses a nearly inexhaustible fuel source.

Areva Says Nuclear Outlook Uncertain

NEI Executive Viewpoint Scott Carlberg, Carolinas Nuclear Cluster: Moving the industry forward

Executive Viewpoint

Scott Carlberg, Carolinas Nuclear Cluster: Moving the industry forward

NEI Weekly Intelligence Brief Weekly Intelligence Brief 28 July - 4 August 2011

Weekly Intelligence Brief

Weekly Intelligence Brief 28 July - 4 August 2011

NEI Industry Insight Decommissioning Fukushima 1: The Rods Nobody Wants

Industry Insight

Decommissioning Fukushima 1: The Rods Nobody Wants

TVA's action plan is designed to strengthen nuclear facilities

Safety of region's people is priority

Southern Co.: nuke plant approval may come in 2012 CNBC.com Fanning told financial analysts that safety regulators at the US Nuclear ... issue a new schedule in the next few weeks outlining the pace of their review. ...

Southern Co.: nuke plant approval may come in 2012
CNBC.com
Fanning told financial analysts that safety regulators at the US Nuclear ... issue a new schedule in the next few weeks outlining the pace of their review. ...

ANS Nuclear Cafe Is the NRC on target with its call to redefine nuclear safety?

ANS Nuclear Cafe

Is the NRC on target with its call to redefine nuclear safety?

By dyurman on Jul 28, 2011 01:00 am

A report by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff task force calls for sweeping regulatory change, but also acknowledges that information about the Fukushima accident is unavailable, unreliable, or ambiguous. What should be the response in the United States to the … Continue reading →

New Crane Supports Clean Up Project

Fast reactor advocates throw down gauntlet to MIT authors

Near the end of 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a summary of a report titled The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle as part of its MIT Energy Initiative. The complete report was released a few months ago. The conclusions published that report initiated a virtual firestorm of reaction among the members of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) Study group who strongly disagreed with the authors.

I have an all-star team of people I can assemble to debate your position on the urgency of fast reactors (top DOE brass, nuclear industry, environmental leaders, etc).You pick the place and time.

Though there are a number of specific recommendations provided in the report, the following quote from the “Study Context” provides a good summary of why the fast reactor advocates were so dismayed by the report.

For decades, the discussion about future nuclear fuel cycles has been dominated by the expectation that a closed fuel cycle based on plutonium startup of fast reactors would eventually be deployed. However, this expectation is rooted in an out-of-date understanding about uranium scarcity. Our reexamination of fuel cycles suggests that there are many more viable fuel cycle options and that the optimum choice among them faces great uncertainty—some economic, such as the cost of advanced reactors, some technical such as implications for waste management, and some societal, such as the scale of nuclear power deployment and the management of nuclear proliferation risks. Greater clarity should emerge over the next few decades, assuming that the needed research is carried out for technological alternatives and that the global response to climate change risk mitigation comes together. A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by continuing with the open fuel cycle, implementing a system for managed LWR spent fuel storage, developing a geological repository, and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.

More at link
http://atomicinsights.com/2011/07/fast-reactor-advocates-throw-down-gauntlet-to-mit-authors.html

SATAN's Code: The Early Years of Accident Models

SATAN’s Code: The Early Years of Accident Models

Moderator | July 28, 2011 at 9:29 am | Categories: General | URL: http://wp.me/p1fSSY-op

The IBM 650 circa 1950s

When the first mass-produced computers hit the stage in the 1950s, nuclear engineers saw the opportunity to use them to help run accident scenarios. It was a good idea that took decades to become reality and the computer limitations created early uncertainty about reactor safety.
In 1954, Westinghouse experts put together a homemade digital computer that read punch tape. With a practiced ear, you could tell from the computer sounds which program was being run.
In 1959, Battelle Memorial Institute developed an early Loss-of-Coolant-Accident model for a heavy-water plutonium reactor. The program was run on an IBM-650/653, the first mass production computer ever developed. The 650 weighed more than a 1955 Cadillac Deville, had vacuum tubes, and used a punch-card reader. Even if it had the memory and someone willing to load the 50 million cards, it would take six months to boot up Microsoft Windows 7.
Fortunately, Battelle’s code was a mere 166 cards. It calculated the behavior of just one fuel rod (modern reactors have thousands of rods) and took minutes to produce one data point.
For the sake of speedier results, gross simplifications were made. For example, an ideal accident code would have broken a reactor cooling system into many small volumes and done extensive calculations on each one to accurately simulate the complex conditions that existed throughout the reactor core and piping. But to run it on mid-1960s computers could take days. As a result, Westinghouse’s FLASH code used just three volumes to represent the whole reactor system.
At least they had computers. Neither the Idaho National Labs, a center for accident-code development, nor the Atomic Energy Commission had them. INL relied on weekend visits to the University of Utah. At the AEC, engineer Norm Lauben begged time from the National Bureau of Standards. Norm drove to the Bureau’s headquarters in Gaithersburg, Md., in the morning to submit his job on the 12,000-line RELAP-3 code, and returned after lunch to pick up the results.
Engineers were confident that the codes would prove reactor designs were overly conservative. Their optimism proved unfounded.
When Westinghouse proudly unveiled its 70-volume SATAN code in 1970, AEC staffers discovered errors in the code indicating that the company’s Emergency Core Cooling System might fail in an accident. The problems of the SATAN code helped lead to a major rulemaking hearing in 1972 on the adequacy of both emergency cooling system designs and accident codes. Those hearings revealed just how embarrassingly uncertain and rudimentary the early codes were about what happened during an accident.
The AEC and later the NRC had to make a huge investment in creating more robust – and accurate – codes. Additional research that produced the RELAP-5 Code is still used today as an industry standard worldwide.

Tom Wellock

NRC Historian

Tres Amigas

Tres Amigas will enable the connection of America's three primary interconnections (WECC, Eastern, ERCOT) while integrating substantial renewable energy sources.

Current Tres Amigas News

Tres Amigas Proposes Three-way Transmission Link

Tres Amigas LLC and the State Land Office signed a lease agreement Thursday that clears another hurdle to create a superstation connecting all three of the nation's power grids ...

US unveils plans for giant renewable energy hub

Phil Harris, chief executive of Tres Amigas, LLC, the company behind the project, said that the hub would "truly open up the market for electricity ...

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Kevin Wilson: Freedom New Mexico

Tres Amigas LLC CEO Phillip Harris and Public Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons sign a lease agreement for land to be used for the power superstation.

Tres Amigas seals land deal

Tres Amigas LLC and the State Land Office signed a lease agreement Thursday that clears another hurdle to create a superstation connecting all three of the nation’s power grids and making land between Clovis and the Texas border a future exchange point for billions of watts of power.
“A lot of agricultural people are going to benefit,” said outgoing Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons at ceremonies held in the Clovis Civic Center. “A lot of eastern New Mexico’s going to benefit.”
The 99-year lease for 14,400 acres of state trust land will eventually, according to a release from Lyons’ office, bring in $9.4 million for the state annually when the superstation is fully operational four to five years down the road.
There are three power grids in the country — the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. They are already connected by eight other entities, but their combined transmission ability is two gigawatts.
Tres Amigas CEO Phillip Harris said the superstation could start at five gigawatts and expand to 30 gigawatts.

http://www.pntonline.com/news/amigas-23750-land-tres.html

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Note from the Editor

Dear Readers
I will be away on business travel to Los Angeles for the next four days. I will periodically
post from there, but my coverage won't be as extensive. Please bear with me as I will
resume full posting upon my return. I will be posting from airports.
Best Regards
Michele Kearney

NEI Briefs Wall Street Analysts on Nuclear Energy Sector's Post-Fukushima Outlook

from NEI News Releases

NEW YORK—America’s nuclear energy industry continues to operate safely and reliably, and the industry has a positive outlook, Marvin Fertel, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, told financial analysts today.

FIELD REPORT from AREVA: Offshore Wind

from AREVA North America: Next Energy Blog by AREVA North America Blog

Today, offshore wind farm operators require strong partners offering large turbines with enhanced reliability, proven track record, high-performance and cost-effective design for higher water depths and greater distance to shore.
Find out how AREVA is helping utilities to make offshore wind projects successful.
Learn more about AREVA’s M5000 wind turbine. It is the first 5 megawatt turbine made specifically for offshore wind farms and is designed to withstand the severe conditions of the marine environment.
You can also watch a video of the installation of these powerful turbines off the German coast in the North Sea.

Homeland Security Cancels Troubled Radiation Detector Effort

from GSN Daily News by By Martin Matishak

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Homeland Security Department has terminated the program to develop the next generation of radiation detection monitors, a senior agency official announced on Tuesday (see GSN, July 15).

GAO Seeks Details on Nuclear Detection Plan

from GSN Daily News

The U.S. Homeland Security Department's "strategic plan" for thwarting illicit nuclear material transfers and a yearly interagency report on the effort each both fail to include anticipated implementation expenses as well as procedures for assessing the initiative's accomplishments and shortcomings, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in written testimony published on Tuesday (see GSN, July 26).

Lawmaker Opposes Further U.S. Nuke Reductions

from GSN Daily News

The chairman of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee on Tuesday warned against further reductions to the U.S. nuclear stockpile, the Dayton, Ohio, Daily News reported (see GSN, May 9).

Bill Gates Explains TerraPower And The Traveling Wave Reactor from Nuclear Power Industry News

Bill Gates Explains TerraPower And The Traveling Wave Reactor

from Nuclear Power Industry News by Nuclear Street News Team

Vogtle Units 3 & 4 Construction Update Video

from Nuclear Power Industry News by Nuclear Street News Team

Southern Company has release their quarterly video update of Vogtle Units 3 & 4 construction.
The video shows the following:

AP1000 Modular Assembly Building
Bigge 125D 1,500 Ton Crane used for modular components assembly
Installing a multi-layered concrete working surface called a "Mud Mat"
MOU with China on Haiyang Power Plant - Westinghouse AP1000
Nuclear Training Facility – Almost Completed

You can view the video here: Vogtle Timeline Units 3 & 4.

Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes Entergy to refuel Vermont Yankee

Idaho Samizdat: Nuke Notes

Entergy to refuel Vermont Yankee

The utility places a $100 million bet despite a hostile political environment

Piantelli Cold Fusion Work

Cold Fusion Now has an english translation of new cold fusion research by Piantelli. The name of Piantelli’s company is Nichenergy.

Inside the innards of a nuclear reactor

Inside the innards of a nuclear reactor by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office Boston MA (SPX) Jul 27, 2011

Round of upgrades for Swiss nuclear plant

from World Nuclear News by Warwick Pipe

The Leibstadt nuclear power plant is to have its circulation system upgraded by Areva to help it use nuclear fuel more effectively. A turbine retrofit has already been already carried out and some post-Fukushima improvements are to come.

Major AP1000 component arrives at Sanmen

from World Nuclear News by Jeremy Gordon

The reactor pressure vessel cylinder to be used in the world's first AP1000 has been delivered from South Korea to Sanmen in Zhejiang province, eastern China.

Peak Oil: When Saudi Spare Capacity Falls Short

Peak Oil: When Saudi Spare Capacity Falls Short
Energy and Capital
That's what we were left pondering after seeing firsthand how hungry China is for Canadian energy. Unfortunately, it's more likely a US diplomat will be making that future phone call, apologizing to the Saudis for past grievances and promising we won't ...

Modernizing the Grid, Modernizing Our Industry

Modernizing the Grid, Modernizing Our Industry
David K. Owens, executive vice president, Business Operations Group for the Edison Electric Institute, comments on the progress U.S. utilities are making toward a smarter electrical power grid. More »

EU TO MEMBER STATES: SUBMIT NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PLANS BY 2015

EU TO MEMBER STATES: SUBMIT NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL PLANS BY 2015
Fourteen of the European Union's (EU's) 27 member states that operate nuclear power plants must draw up national programs for the management of spent nuclear fuel—including concrete timetables and cost assessments—and submit them to the European Commission by 2015, at the latest, under a new EU directive adopted last week. Read More »

SANTEE COOPER TO EXPLORE POTENTIAL V.C. SUMMER NUCLEAR EXPANSION PARTNERSHIPS

SANTEE COOPER TO EXPLORE POTENTIAL V.C. SUMMER NUCLEAR EXPANSION PARTNERSHIPS
South Carolina state-owned utility Santee Cooper last week said it had separately signed letters of intent with Duke Energy Carolinas and Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA) to negotiate partnerships in the two new nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station that Santee Cooper is planning with South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G). Read More »

FERC ORDER AIMS TO REMOVE BARRIERS TO TRANSMISSION DEVELOPMENT

FERC ORDER AIMS TO REMOVE BARRIERS TO TRANSMISSION DEVELOPMENT
The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) finalized an order last Thursday that it says reforms its transmission planning and cost allocation requirements “to benefit consumers by enhancing the grid’s ability to support wholesale power markets and ensuring transmission services are provided at just and reasonable rates.” Read More »