Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Nuclear Advocacy Through Grassroots Education

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WARNING: Our semi-transparent world, can we separate science from politics?

Truth, Character, Integrity

Will we ever return to these principles?

WARNING:

Our semi-transparent world! The natural progression of our current media exposure is election politics, Washington gridlock, terrorism watch, etc. The headlines will permeate on, "U.S. Calls Off Syria Peace Talks with Russia".

The articles below are VERY IMPORTANT. USNEF receives nuclear specific news articles from multiple sources worldwide every day. Our message here is that when the "U.S. Calls Off Syria Peace Talks with Russia" such actions have RIPPLE effects on many other agreements and affiliations in the political process. We believe this is an important factor for grassroots education to see both sides of such actions. The importance of a factually informed public is growing more and more important in the form of "issues education".

I don't know, or if it can ever be accomplished, but, somehow we have to separate science from political manipulation and develop technology advances for humanity. "Science treaties" above and beyond the fold of political obstruction.

"Russia suspends nuclear agreement, ends uranium research pact with United States".

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"Putin Halts Plutonium Pact, Demands End to Sanctions by U.S."

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"Vladimir Putin Exits Nuclear Security Pact, Citing 'Hostile Actions' by U.S."

See these full PDF articles, Reuters, Bloomberg, NY Times

Plutonium-Science-&-Politics

Finally, we have assembled our PDF paper on
World-Energy-Related-Disasters

This is a great numbers paper on energy related accidents and loss of life statistics comparing fossil, hydro, coal, etc. to nuclear power. This paper demonstrates the overall nuclear safety over the years including the numbers on nuclear accidents.

WM2017 Building Global Trust in Decommissioning & Radioactive Waste Management

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WM2017
Building Global Trust in Decommissioning & Radioactive Waste Management

Register today to participate in the latest research, development and operational experiences covering the complete spectrum of nuclear waste activities.

WM2017 will present dynamic sessions, offering a world-wide perspective on the field of radioactive waste management, topics will include:

Crosscutting Policies and Programs
High and Low - Level Wastes
Nuclear Power Plant Waste & Onsite SNF Management
Packaging and Transportation
Decontamination & Decommissioning
Environmental Remediation
Communications of Technical Issues & Impacts, Education &Training
Latest Technology Topics
US DOE Procurement and Contracting Activities
International Management of Used Nuclear Fuel: Present and Future

View Live Demonstrations and More

The WM2017 show floor will showcase hundreds of exhibitors sharing information about their latest waste management industry developments, technologies and programs. Booths are still available, click here for more information on exhibitor rates and to book your booth.

Plenary and Keynote Speakers

Hirohide Hirai, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry

Greg Meyer, Fluor Corporation

Monica Regalbuto, United States Department of Energy
Joyce Connery, The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

Book Notes: Is Anti-nuclear Advocacy a Threat to the Planet? | Neutron Bytes

Smaller Nuclear Weapons And Power Plants Under Development Hold Promise And Peril

Leak at nuclear reactor in Norway is contained: operator | Reuters

India, Japan likely to ink civil nuke deal during Modi's November Tokyo visit - The Economic Times

Fort Calhoun Closing Shows Weak Market Conditions Ignore Nuclear’s Value - Nuclear Energy Institute

Feds Look Over Columbia Generating Station's Disaster Flood Plans | NW News Network

Moniz: Congress Should Authorize Interim Nuclear Fuel Storage - Morning Consult

Moniz: US must decide its nuclear future in the next 5 years | Washington Examiner

Mickey Mouse Mitigation Measures | The Energy Collective Daily

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The deteriorating US-Russia relationship

The deteriorating US-Russia relationship

On Monday, October 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew his country from the US-Russia Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA). The PDMA, first signed in 2000 and renewed in 2009, affirmed the intention of each country to dispose of stockpiles of plutonium that could be used to build nuclear warheads.

President Putin’s decision to pull out of the PDMA is just the latest worrying development affecting an increasingly troubled relationship between Russia and the United States. Below, we’ve gathered some of the best writing the Bulletin has to offer on the subject. Are we now in Cold War 2.0?

Can the US-Russia plutonium disposition agreement be saved?
Pavel Podvig

The way back to the US-Russia negotiating table
Lawrence J. Korb

Time for a different kind of US-Russian arms control
Adam Mount

From the digital journal:

Interview with former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul
John Mecklin
Free access

Putin: The one-man show the West doesn’t understand
Fiona Hill
Free access

Barrels and Bullets: The geostrategic significance of Russia’s oil and gas exports
Michael Bradshaw and Richard Connolly
Free access

US-Russia relations: The middle cannot hold
Jeremy Shapiro and Samuel Charap
Free access

Would Russia’s undersea “doomsday drone” carry a cobalt bomb?
Edward Moore Geist

Blurring the line between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons: Increasing the risk of accidental nuclear war?
Pavel Podvig

Saving nuclear arms control
Alexei Arbatov

Nuclear Notebook:

Russian nuclear forces, 2016
Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris
Free access

US nuclear forces, 2016
Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris
Free access

Other reading:

Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement
http://fissilematerials.org/library/PMDA2000.pdf
Free access

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists engages science leaders, policy makers, and the interested public on topics of nuclear weapons and disarmament, the changing energy landscape, climate change, and emerging technologies. We do this through our award-winning journal, iconic Doomsday Clock, public access website, and regular set of convenings. With smart, vigorous prose, multimedia presentations, and information graphics, the Bulletin puts issues and events into context and provides fact-based debates and assessments. For more than 70 years, the Bulletin has bridged the technology divide between scientific research, foreign policy, and public engagement.

Final shutdown for Fort Calhoun
Operators have taken the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska offline for the final time, Omaha Public Power District announced yesterday. The company said in June that the single-unit pressurized water reactor would be shut down by the end of this year. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-Final-shut-down-for-Fort-Calhoun-2510164.html

Third Fuqing unit enters commercial operation

Third Fuqing unit enters commercial operation
Unit 3 of the Fuqing nuclear power plant in China's Fujian province has completed commissioning tests and now meets the conditions for entering commercial operation, China National Nuclear Corporation announced today. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Third-Fuqing-unit-enters-commercial-operation-2510166.html

Asian nuclear driven by air quality and cooperation

Asian nuclear driven by air quality and cooperation
Two-thirds of nuclear construction is in Asia, with countries in that region now global leaders in reactor construction and operation, according to a report issued today by the World Nuclear Association. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Asian-nuclear-driven-by-air-quality-and-cooperation-25101602.html

UK's National Grid updates plans for new nuclear plants

UK's National Grid updates plans for new nuclear plants
The UK's National Grid has unveiled proposals for a £2.8 billion ($3.4 billion) project to connect NuGeneration's proposed nuclear power plant at Moorside in West Cumbria into the country's electricity network, ahead of ten weeks of consultation between 28 October 2016 and 6 January 2017. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-UK-National-Grid-updates-plans-for-new-nuclear-plants-25101601.html

ANS FY 2017 Energy and Water Appropriations Comparison Crib Sheet

https://images.magnetmail.net/images/clients/ANS_/attach/approps-crib-sheet.pdf

NRC Blog Update: An Era Ends at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant

An Era Ends at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant

Leave a comment Posted by Moderator on October 25, 2016

Victor Dricks
Senior Public Affairs Officer
Region IV
Shortly before 1 p.m. Monday, operators in the control room of the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant pushed a red button, initiating an automatic shutdown of the reactor. So ended commercial operations for the nation’s smallest nuclear power plant, located along the Missouri River, about 20 miles north of Omaha, Neb.
fcs

When it happened, just as it had done when the plant began operations 43 years earlier, the NRC had staff onsite to ensure events unfolded as planned, systems functioned as designed and public health and safety were protected.
“The shutdown was done in a very professional manner,” said Geoff Miller, a branch chief in the NRC’s Division of Reactor Projects, who oversees the plant from the NRC’s Region IV office in Arlington, Texas. By his side was Lindsay Brandt, a reactor inspector from the Region IV office, who also monitored the shutdown.
Max Schneider, the Senior Resident Inspector at Fort Calhoun, was in the plant monitoring the shutdown and checking to ensure that all plant systems responded as designed. “Everything went very well. There were no issues with plant equipment,” said Schneider, who reported to the site in June 2014 after serving as a Resident Inspector at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Massachusetts.
“I’ve watched lot of plant shutdowns prior to maintenance and refueling outages,” Miller said. “Usually there is a lot of tension and excitement in the air in anticipation of events to follow but there was not a lot of that Monday. Things were subdued.”
The Omaha Public Power District’s Board of Directors voted several months ago to shut down Fort Calhoun for commercial reasons.
Brandt will remain at the plant for another three or four weeks and then return to the NRC’s Region IV, where she will resume other duties. Schneider will remain onsite for six months to a year to monitor post shutdown activities and ensure a safe transition from commercial operations to decommissioning mode.
Inspectors from the NRC’s Region IV office will conduct periodic inspections to ensure that spent fuel is being stored safely and securely in the plant’s water-filled spent fuel pool and in dry cask canisters while it remains onsite. The NRC will also conduct periodic inspections of decommissioning activities.
Within 30 days, Omaha Public Power District officials are expected to submit a letter to the NRC certifying the permanent cessation of commercial operations and stating that all of the radioactive fuel has been permanently removed from the reactor vessel. When this happens, OPPD will have surrendered its authority to operate the reactor or reload fuel in it. They have two years in which to file a report with the NRC, describing their plans for decommissioning the plant.

Another U.S. Nuclear Plant Killed By Competition

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rodadams/2016/10/25/another-us-nuclear-plant-killed-by-competition/#557257267779

The Delusion of Cheap, Safe Shale Gas Extraction

What Would It Mean for Los Angeles to Go 100% Renewable?

Impact of the Fukushima accident on marine life, five years later

What Do The Four Presidential Nominees Think About Energy and Nuclear Power? | ANS Nuclear Cafe

Nuclear Fusion Reactor Reaches Record Pressure | News content from Machine Design

On the Same (Nuclear) Pages

http://allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/on-the-same-nuclear-pages

Globally Averaged CO2 Levels Reach 400 parts per million in 2015

http://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/globally-averaged-co2-levels-reach-400-parts-million-2015?utm_source=MIT+TR+Newsletters&utm_campaign=19fb483f75-The_Download_October_25_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-19fb483f75-153856085&goal=0_997ed6f472-19fb483f75-153856085&mc_cid=19fb483f75&mc_eid=e25735476a

Cost to scrap Fukushima nuclear plant massively underestimated, Japanese officials admit, News

Integration of a radiation biomarker into modelling of thyroid carcinogenesis and post-Chernobyl risk assessment

A serious setback to PM Abe’s nuclear energy programme | ORF

Iranian FM Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State Kerry named winners of Chatham Prize for nuclear deal | ARMENPRESS Armenian News Agency

Nuclear plant talks revived

Norway suffered small nuclear leak on Monday -regulator

http://in.reuters.com/article/norway-accident-nuclear-idINO9N19F003

Monday, October 24, 2016

Financing Supports Korea Eximbank to Provide 3.5 Trillion Won to Nuclear Power Plant Project in UAE

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/money/16267-financing-supports-korea-eximbank-provide-35-trillion-won-nuclear-power-plant

Nuclear Industry's Next Big Ask for Next Congress: Tax Credits

http://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/nuclear-industrys-next-big-ask-next-congress-tax-credits

NRC grants combined licenses to Duke's stalled Fla. nuke project

NRC grants combined licenses to Duke's stalled Fla. nuke project
https://www.snl.com/Interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-38088289-11301

10 of 39 The Energiewende is Running Up Against Its Limits | The Energy Collective Daily

Chernobyl Hints Radiation May Be Less Dangerous than Thought - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Dr. Sebastian Gorka: Hillary's Disclosure of Nuclear Response Times During Debate 'Unconscionable'

Daily Caller News Foundation Closing This Nuclear Reactor Will Devastate A Small American Town

Closing This Nuclear Reactor Will Devastate A Small American Town

http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/24/closing-this-nuclear-reactor-will-devastate-a-small-town/

Fort Calhoun nuke plant to close permanently Monday

http://journalstar.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska/fort-calhoun-nuke-plant-to-close-permanently-monday/article_592e8b9b-c5b5-5c1c-9936-dece303043f4.html

Power plant closing just the start of decades-long process

http://www.wowt.com/content/news/Power-plant-closing-just-the-start-of-decades-long-process-398100141.html

Today, Fort Calhoun nuclear plant will go offline for good, marking the end of an era at OPPD

http://www.omaha.com/money/today-fort-calhoun-nuclear-plant-will-go-offline-for-good/article_0ff3a902-5cd6-52d8-a720-b2b9bc6ec0de.html

NUCLEAR PLANT JOURNAL

The Digital version of Nuclear Plant Journal's September-October 2016 issue is now available online. To access this issue, click here or cut-and-paste the link given below in your browser:
http://digitaleditions.nuclearplantjournal.com/SO16/
This issue has articles describing fleet-wide digital upgrade in Exelon Corporation and Tennessee Valley Authority plants. Another article covers research for modernizing control rooms. Design & Business Development progress of one of the lead SMRs is also part of this issue. The "Nuclear Promise" concept has been explained.

Industry innovations include three articles: 1. Replenishing borated water in a PWR during normal plant operation and during a planned shutdown, 2. Overcoming the challenge of extreme heat exposure to workers during an online asbestos abatement from the feed water heaters and related piping, and 3. Preparations for the challenges of optimizing SMR staff with suitable skills.

The issue also includes utility, industry & corporation news; industry's new products, services & contracts; new document announcements; research and development efforts; and a meeting and training calendar.
The digital version is "user friendly". The Table of Content on page 5 is linked to the respective referenced pages. All the listed advertisements on page 6 in the List of Advertisers are linked to the respective advertisements. All e-mails and web site URLs in the Journal are live. Web site listings in the Advertiser Web Directory on page 38 are also live.
Contact michelle@goinfo.com for any questions.
With best regards.
Yours Sincerely
Newal Agnihotri
Fax: 630-852-8787
Website: http://www.NuclearPlantJournal.com

Britain’s Civilian Nuclear Program Is Not a Stealth Military Program Lack of Evidence of a Conspiracy is Not Evidence of a Deeper Conspiracy

Britain’s Civilian Nuclear Program Is Not a Stealth Military Program Lack of Evidence of a Conspiracy is Not Evidence of a Deeper Conspiracy
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/britains-civilian-nuclear-program-is-not-a-stealth-military-program?goal=0_49b872540e-788a270b98-44370641

Back from the Energy Future

What Decades of Failed Forecasts Say About Clean Energy and Climate Change

By Ted Nordhaus
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-10-18/back-energy-future?goal=0_49b872540e-788a270b98-44370641

Fukushima Update 10/24/16

Fukushima Update 10/24/16 –

The mass of Fukushima corium is estimated at 880 tons… Natural radioactive decay drops radiation levels 70% in rural contaminated wastes… Futaba offers to build a common cemetery for up to 400 graves… The Fukushima “ice wall” is once again alleged to be failing… and more.

http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-accident-updates.html

First two generation 3+ nuclear reactors will be operation in China by the end of this year

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/10/first-two-generation-3-nuclear-reactors.html

The four reactor coolant pumps at unit 1 of the Haiyang nuclear power plant in China's Shandong province have been operated simultaneously at full speed for the first time. The AP1000 is set to begin operating by the end of the year.

The plant is a pressurized water reactor with improved use of passive nuclear safety. It is a generation 3.5 reactor

Because of its simplified design compared to a Westinghouse generation II PWR, the AP1000 has:

50% fewer safety-related valves
35% fewer pumps
80% less safety-related piping
85% less control cable
45% less seismic building volume

http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/10/first-two-generation-3-nuclear-reactors.html