Plutonium policy update and plutonium remobilisation in the Irish Sea via nuClearNews

Posted on 2021/05/12 by nfield

Plutonium Policy Update
Introduction
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) now expects the Magnox Reprocessing Plant at Sellafield to close this year (2021) – one year later than previously planned. The newer Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) was shut in November 2018. Reprocessing, which has
always been unnecessary, is the chemical separation of plutonium and unused uranium from spent nuclear waste fuel. When reprocessing ends there will be around 140 tonnes of separated civil plutonium stored at
Sellafield – the world’s largest stockpile of separated civil plutonium. […]

The story so far
When reprocessing ends in 2021 there will be around 140 tonnes of separated civil plutonium stored at Sellafield. About 23 tonnes of this is foreign-owned, largely but not exclusively by Japanese utilities, and is managed under long-term contracts.

[…]

The Options
Options considered for dealing with plutonium include using it as a fuel called Mixed Oxide Fuel (MoX) in nuclear reactors (followed by storage as spent fuel pending disposal in a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF)). There was a MoX fuel fabrication plant at Sellafield which closed in 2011.

[…]

Another option would be immobilisation of the plutonium as a waste. Given the diverse nature of the inventory, a number of different approaches are being investigated so that parts or all of the inventory can be immobilised in a form suitable for ultimate disposal in a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). Both the re-use and immobilisation options would require new expensive plants which would be very technically challenging. Any new plant would take one or two decades to plan and build before processing of material could begin, so there is no quick or inexpensive solution. (12)
Some of the plutonium wouldn’t be suitable for reuse as MOX in nuclear reactors in any case, due to its physical or chemical properties. It will need to be immobilised and treated as waste, followed by storage pending disposal in a GDF. (13)

[…]

Plutonium Remobilisation in the Irish Sea

Low-level aqueous radioactive waste has been discharged from the Sellafield site into the Irish Sea for more than 50 years. Originally it was thought that soluble radionuclides discharged from Sellafield (such as caesium and tritium) would be diluted and dispersed whereas long lived,
transuranic nuclides such as Plutonium, and Americium would leach out of the liquid phase and become preferentially adsorbed to the surface of sedimentary particles in the water column, sink to the seabed and remain permanently bound and immobilised in seabed deposits and therefore isolated from human populations and the environment.

Unfortunately, it has since emerged that a proportion of such sediment associated radioactivity has, and is being actively transported around the Irish Sea while the remainder is temporarily “sequestered” in the seabed but subject to any future disturbance mechanisms such as storm, wave and seismic activity. In addition, a proportion of dissolved nuclides did not necessarily remain dissolved in liquid form in the water column, but could become incorporated into organic particles and deposited into sedimentary environments where they could be temporarily sequestered, but subsequently recycled back into the environment by dredging, trawling storm and seismic activity.


Plans by West Cumbria Mining (WCM) for an under-seabed coal mine off the coast of Cumbria near Whitehaven and the possibility of a Geological Disposal Facility, also under the seabed off the coast of Cumbria have raised concerns that transuranic radionuclides currently sequestered
in Irish Sea sediments could be further remobilised as a result of these activities.

[…]

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Get me to the cask on time via Beyond Nuclear International

Posted on 2021/05/12 by nfield

Why won’t Holtec store its emergency cask on site at Oyster Creek?

By Linda Pentz Gunter

If a spent fuel storage cask at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey has a serious problem that requires additional containment, the company in charge of managing the waste and decommissioning of the now closed nuclear plant says it has a solution.

Holtec claims that if a cask on the nuclear power plant site goes bad, it will bring in its special, larger “transportation cask”, stored at the company’s headquarters in Camden, NJ. The reportedly “massive” emergency cask, made of concrete and steel, would be transported to the Oyster Creek site by barge.

But would this work?

[…]

If any kind of radiological cask hazard does arise at Oyster Creek, that “emergency cask”, a sort of Russian doll that will “overpack” the leaking or damaged one, needs to arrive on time. Past history suggests that transporting such a heavy piece of equipment on a circuitous journey by barge is an unreliable choice. 

A better alternative would be to have the emergency overpack cask already on site. But would this send the wrong public relations message, suggesting there is a possibility that a serious cask problem could arise after all?

The agreement to have an overpack cask at the ready in Camden, with the cask estimated to cost $10 million, is part of a settlement agreement with Lacey Township, the municipality within which the Oyster Creek plant sits. The Township had initially objected to Holtec’s plans to expand the ISFSI to accommodate more waste casks. An exchange of law suits followed. 

The township has now agreed that a super cask, on albeit distant standby, addresses their emergency planning concerns and will allow Holtec to add 20 casks to a new storage pad, and place 14 more on an existing site that currently holds 34 casks.

Even more disappointingly, Lacey Township also supports the eventual transport of those casks to a Consolidated Interim Storage site in New Mexico, not uncoincidentally owned by, yes, Holtec.

Furthermore, Holtec has moved successfully to do away with an emergency planning zone that extends beyond the boundaries of the Oyster Creek site.

“The emergency planning zone was reduced to the site boundary,” Holtec explains on its website. “With the reactor no longer in operation, and the multiple defense in depth options to maintain adequate level in the spent fuel pool, the scientific basis for the reduction is warranted,” the company says.

Guess what else won’t need an emergency planning zone beyond a nuclear site boundary fence, according to the nuclear industry and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission? Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). 

No surprise then that, in addition to decommissioning the Oyster Creek site, and owning the casks and the waste dump to which the fuel storage casks could later be transported, Holtec is also lining up to bring in its own design of SMR.

With typical braggadocio, Holtec describes its SMRs as “safe and secure”, “economic and efficient,” and “reliable and environmentally-friendly”, which, if we can resist pulling an Emma Gonzalez on them, could at the very least be described as breathtakingly over-stated. For starters, none of the various theoretical SMR designs has even remotely passed any kind of meaningful safety test.

[…]

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One more whack at the SMR mole via Beyond Nuclear International

Posted on 2021/05/12 by nfield

By Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. and M.V. Ramana, Ph.D.

Small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, are designed to generate less than 300 megawatts of electricity – several times less than typical reactors, which have a range of 1,000 to 1,600 MW. While the individual standardized modules would be small, plans typically call for several modules to be installed at a single power generation site. 

The nuclear industry and the U. S. Department of Energy are promoting the development of SMRs, supposedly to head off the most severe impacts of climate change. But are SMRs a practical and realistic technology for this purpose?

To answer, two factors are paramount to consider – time and cost. These factors can be used to divide SMRs into two broad categories:

[…]

Economics and scale

Nuclear reactors are large because of economies of scale. A reactor that produces three times as much power as an SMR does not need three times as much steel or three times as many workers. This economic penalty for small size was one reason for the early shutdown of many small reactors built in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s.

[…]

The SMR track record so far

The track record so far points to the same kind of dismal economic failure for SMRs as their larger cousins. Figure 2 shows the capital cost escalation for the proposed NuScale reactor and actual costs of two foreign SMRs. As a result, the total cost of a proposed project in Idaho using the NuScale design has already risen from around $3 billion, in 2015, to $6.1 billion, in 2020, long before any concrete has been poured.

[…]

Lazard, a Wall Street financial advisory firm, estimates the cost of utility-scale solar and wind to be about $40 per megawatt-hour. The corresponding figure for nuclear is four times as high, about $160 per MWh – a difference that is more than enough to use complementary technologies, such as demand response and storage, to compensate for the intermittency of solar and wind. 

[…]

SMRs and the climate crisis

The climate problem is urgent. The IPCC and other international bodies have warned that to stop irreversible damage from climate change, we need to reduce emissions drastically within the next decade. The SMR contribution in the next decade will be essentially zero. The prospects for SMRs beyond that are also bleak, given that entire supply chains would need to be established after the first ones have been built, tested and proven in the field. 

Other concerns

Water use is another concern that is expected to intensify in the future. Nuclear plants have very high water withdrawal requirements. A single 300 MW reactor operating at 90 percent capacity factor would withdraw 160 million to 390 million gallons of water every day, heating it up before discharge. Reducing the demand for water by using air cooling will require the addition of a tower and large electric fans ­– further raising the construction cost and reducing output of electricity by up to 7 percent of the capacity of the reactor.

Finally, SMRs will also produce many kinds of radioactive nuclear waste, because the reactors are smaller in physical size and because of refueling practices adopted for economic reasons. SMRs based on light water designs, such as NuScale, will also produce a larger mass of nuclear waste per MWh of electricity generated. The federal government is already paying billions of dollars in fines for not fulfilling its contractual obligations to take possession of spent fuel from existing reactors. The legislative plan in the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act was for a deep geologic disposal repository to open in 1998. After nearly four decades, that plan has come to naught.  

[…]

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‘It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl via Science

Posted on 2021/05/12 by nfield

By Richard StoneMay. 5, 2021 , 11:20 AM

Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own—or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.

Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. “There are many uncertainties,” says ISPNPP’s Maxim Saveliev. “But we can’t rule out the possibility of [an] accident.” The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat. Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. “It’s a similar magnitude of hazard.”

[…]

But they began to edge up in a few spots, nearly doubling over 4 years in room 305/2, which contains tons of FCMs buried under debris. ISPNPP modeling suggests the drying of the fuel is somehow making neutrons ricocheting through it more, rather than less, effective at splitting uranium nuclei. “It’s believable and plausible data,” Hyatt says. “It’s just not clear what the mechanism might be.”

The threat can’t be ignored. As water continues to recede, the fear is that “the fission reaction accelerates exponentially,” Hyatt says, leading to “an uncontrolled release of nuclear energy.” There’s no chance of a repeat of 1986, when the explosion and fire sent a radioactive cloud over Europe. A runaway fission reaction in an FCM could sputter out after heat from fission boils off the remaining water. Still, Saveliev notes, although any explosive reaction would be contained, it could threaten to bring down unstable parts of the rickety Shelter, filling the NSC with radioactive dust.

Addressing the newly unmasked threat is a daunting challenge. Radiation levels in 305/2 preclude getting close enough to install sensors. And spraying gadolinium nitrate on the nuclear debris there is not an option, as it’s entombed under concrete. One idea is to develop a robot that can withstand the intense radiation for long enough to drill holes in the FCMs and insert boron cylinders, which would function like control rods and sop up neutrons. In the meantime, ISPNPP intends to step up monitoring of two other areas where FCMs have the potential to go critical.

The resurgent fission reactions are not the only challenge facing Chernobyl’s keepers. Besieged by intense radiation and high humidity, the FCMs are disintegrating—spawning even more radioactive dust that complicates plans to dismantle the Shelter. Early on, an FCM formation called the Elephant’s Foot was so hard scientists had to use a Kalashnikov rifle to shear off a chunk for analysis. “Now it more or less has the consistency of sand,” Saveliev says.

Ukraine has long intended to remove the FCMs and store them in a geological repository. By September, with help from European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it aims to have a comprehensive plan for doing so. But with life still flickering within the Shelter, it may be harder than ever to bury the reactor’s restless remains.

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福島第一原発1号機 格納容器の水位下げる 原子力規制委が指摘via NHK　News Web

Posted on 2021/05/08 by nfield

2021年5月8日 6時21分

廃炉作業が進む福島第一原子力発電所1号機について、原子炉を収める格納容器内部の水位が高く、大地震の際に一部の設備に負荷がかかり損傷する可能性があるとの指摘を受けて東京電力は水位を下げる方針を決めました。

福島第一原発は1号機から3号機がメルトダウンを起こし、原子炉を収めた格納容器には溶け落ちた核燃料、いわゆる燃料デブリがあり、冷却のため注水が続けられています。このため格納容器内部には一定量の水がたまっていて1号機と3号機は水位が比較的高い状態となっています。

これについて原子力規制委員会は、大量の水が入った状態では大地震の際に負荷がかかり格納容器の下部にある圧力抑制室と呼ばれる部分が損傷する可能性があると指摘していました。

これを受けて東京電力はこのほど1号機の水位を下げる方針を決めました。

1号機の水位はことし2月の地震の影響で低下し、現在、東京電力では格納容器の底の部分から1メートル前後の水位を維持していますが、今後、燃料デブリの温度など状況を確認しながら徐々に下げていく考えです。

ただし、現場は放射線量が高いことなどもあり準備に時間がかかるとして本格的に下げ始めるのは2023年度以降になるだろうということです。

[…]

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福島第一原発1号機原子炉の注水増　格納容器内の水位低下で　via 東京新聞

Posted on 2021/05/08 by nfield

2021年5月7日 16時16分

東京電力は7日、事故収束作業中の福島第一原発（福島県大熊町、双葉町）で、1号機原子炉内への注水量を1時間当たり3トンから4トンに増やしたと発表した。格納容器内の水位が低下したことへの対応で、炉内に溶け落ちて残る核燃料（デブリ）の冷却や外部への影響はないという。　東電によると、1号機格納容器内の水位は7日午前11時11分、底部から高さ92センチにある水位計を下回った。水位がさらに下がると監視が難しくなるため、7日午後0時43分に注水量を増やした。　2月13日に福島、宮城両県で最大震度6強を記録した地震後、原子炉格納容器内の水位は約1メートル低下。事故時の損傷部分が地震で広がった可能性がある。3月22日にも水位が水位計を下回った際に注水量を増やし、4日後に通常の量に戻した。

[…]

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復興五輪「架空だった」…罪悪感抱く宮本亞門さん、IOCや政府を「利己的」と批判　インタビュー詳報 via 東京新聞

Posted on 2021/05/08 by nfield

　７日の本紙連載「五輪リスク」で東京五輪・パラリンピックの開催中止を訴えた演出家の宮本亞門さん（６３）。４月中旬に行ったインタビューでは平和を掲げる五輪精神との矛盾を指摘し、世界や国際オリンピック委員会（ＩＯＣ）にものを言えない日本政府の姿勢も疑問視した。主なやりとりは以下の通り。（聞き手・臼井康兆、原田遼）

[…]

◆「何ということに加担してしまったんだ」

―東京大会には期待をしていたか。　２０１３年の招致決定当初、「世界一お金がかからない五輪」や「復興五輪」といった発言を信じようとした。これだけ政府が断言するのだから、と。１７年には大会の公式イベントの演出を引き受けた。　しかし大会経費は倍以上に膨れ上がり、福島第一原発事故の後処理も進まない、全て誘致のための架空のものだった。悲惨な現実を見て「何ということに加担してしまったんだ」と罪悪感にさいなまれました。

◆日本へ「他者を思える国であってほしい」

―コロナ禍で舞台芸術も大きな打撃を受けた。　想像を絶するひどい状態です。しかしこれはホテル、飲食など、世界中のあらゆる職業にも言えること。私は諦めず他業者といろいろな方法を探っています。―コロナ禍で感じることは何か。　経済格差、人種差別、魔女狩りのような悪人探し…。人間の傲慢さ、愚かさを浮き彫りにした。でも反対に、人がお互いに分かりあおうとする連帯も生まれた。過去にペストなどの感染症や災害が起きるたびに人類は変化や進化を迫られた。コロナで人はどう変わるのか、期待して見守っていきます。―コロナ禍で日本はどう振る舞うべきか。　意見を、言葉を持ち、世界の現実を直視して他者を思える国であってほしい。香港や台湾、ミャンマー、チベット、ウイグルの問題で、各国の顔色ばかりうかがって明言しないのは歯がゆい。五輪でも「ノー」と言って、将来「あの時の判断で世界が救われた」と言われる国になってほしい。【関連記事】宮本亞門さん、東京五輪は「中止すべきだ」　参加を迷う学生ボランティアも　コロナ禍で遠のく平和と平等の祭典

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Massive fire breaks out near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant – Watch via The Jerusalem Post

Posted on 2021/05/08 by yukimiyamotodepaul

The cause of the fire is still unknown, according to Iranian media reports.

[…]

A massive fire broke out in Iran’s southwestern city of Bushehr near the Islamic Republic’s only functioning nuclear power plant late on Friday night, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported on Saturday.

[…]

Last July, the city of Bushehr saw another large fire break out at the Delvar Shipyard. Iran has been witnessing dozens of mysterious fires and explosions across the country since mid-2020, many of which have taken place near nuclear facilities.

Read more at Massive fire breaks out near Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant – Watch

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‘It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl via Science

Posted on 2021/05/06 by yukimiyamotodepaul

By Richard Stone

Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own—or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.

Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. “There are many uncertainties,” says ISPNPP’s Maxim Saveliev. “But we can’t rule out the possibility of [an] accident.” The neutron counts are rising slowly, Saveliev says, suggesting managers still have a few years to figure out how to stifle the threat. Any remedy he and his colleagues come up with will be of keen interest to Japan, which is coping with the aftermath of its own nuclear disaster 10 years ago at Fukushima, Hyatt notes. “It’s a similar magnitude of hazard.”

[…]

The concrete-and-steel sarcophagus called the Shelter, erected 1 year after the accident to house Unit Four’s remains, allowed rainwater to seep in. Because water slows, or moderates, neutrons and thus enhances their odds of striking and splitting uranium nuclei, heavy rains would sometimes send neutron counts soaring. After a downpour in June 1990, a “stalker”—a scientist at Chernobyl who risks radiation exposure to venture into the damaged reactor hall—dashed in and sprayed gadolinium nitrate solution, which absorbs neutrons, on an FCM that he and his colleagues feared might go critical. Several years later, the plant installed gadolinium nitrate sprinklers in the Shelter’s roof. But the spray can’t effectively penetrate some basement rooms.

[…]

The threat can’t be ignored. As water continues to recede, the fear is that “the fission reaction accelerates exponentially,” Hyatt says, leading to “an uncontrolled release of nuclear energy.” There’s no chance of a repeat of 1986, when the explosion and fire sent a radioactive cloud over Europe. A runaway fission reaction in an FCM could sputter out after heat from fission boils off the remaining water. Still, Saveliev notes, although any explosive reaction would be contained, it could threaten to bring down unstable parts of the rickety Shelter, filling the NSC with radioactive dust.

[..]

The resurgent fission reactions are not the only challenge facing Chernobyl’s keepers. Besieged by intense radiation and high humidity, the FCMs are disintegrating—spawning even more radioactive dust that complicates plans to dismantle the Shelter. Early on, an FCM formation called the Elephant’s Foot was so hard scientists had to use a Kalashnikov rifle to shear off a chunk for analysis. “Now it more or less has the consistency of sand,” Saveliev says.

Ukraine has long intended to remove the FCMs and store them in a geological repository. By September, with help from European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, it aims to have a comprehensive plan for doing so. But with life still flickering within the Shelter, it may be harder than ever to bury the reactor’s restless remains.

Read more at ‘It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl

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写真家の森下一徹氏死去 via Reuters

Posted on 2021/05/06 by yukimiyamotodepaul

　森下　一徹氏（もりした・いってつ＝写真家）４日午後１１時２８分、肺炎のため東京都の病院で死去、８１歳。

(略）

　広島、長崎の被爆者や、米国のビキニ水爆実験で乗組員が被ばくしたマグロ漁船「第五福竜丸」事件の写真を撮り続けた。ＮＰＯ法人「世界ヒバクシャ展」前代表。

全文は写真家の森下一徹氏死去

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