December 8, 1953United Nations
| New York | nuclear: power
At the UN General Assembly, U.S. President Eisenhower gives his Atoms for Peace speech, proposing an international atomic energy agency on nuclear power and suggesting a conversion of uranium weapons stockpiles to fissionable reactor fuel to "hasten the day when fear of the atom will begin to dissapear from the minds of the people." [24:51]
Documentary about the construction of the Onkalo waste repository at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant, built off the west coast of Finland in the Baltic Sea. (dir. Michael Madsen). The island site is meant to last forever (Nuclear Eternity). (English with Spanish subtitles, 1:18:49)
July 20, 2016The Guardian
| Russia | nuclear: accident
Little is known about a 1957 nuclear accident, the worst before Chernobyl, at the Mayak nuclear complex in Ozersk, Russia, home to the Soviet nuclear weapons programme. 200 million curies of radioactive waste has also been dumped nearby, while radioactivity in the “Lake of Death” exceeds 120 million curies or 2.5 times that released in Chernobyl.
Ontario Power Generation waits for a ruling on its proposed low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste site near Kincardine, Ontario, at the Bruce Power Generating Station, the world's largest nuclear power complex. The 2,230-foot deep limestone chamber is deeper than Lake Huron, located less than a mile away.
March 28, 2019The Daily Mail
| Global | nuclear: Fukushima
Radioactivity from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant was detected in seawater off a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Strait. A 2011 tsunami cut off power to the 6 Daiichi reactors, triggering the worst nuclear accident in history after Chernobyl in 1987. The levels are not considered dangerous but indicate "the northern edge of the plume."
April 10, 2019The Guardian
| Japan | nuclear: Fukushima
Only 367 of 10,341 former residents have returned to Okuma, a town due west of the destroyed Fukushima power plant. Evacuation orders have been lifted on many areas where 160,000 people were initially evacuated in 2011 after the triple meltdown but restrictions still exist for regions nearest to the Daiichi plant and its 6 GE LWRs.
April 15, 2019The Guardian
| Japan | nuclear: Fukushima
Japanese nuclear operator TEPCO announces the removal of the first of 566 fuel rods from the reactor storage bay in Fukushima’s destroyed reactor building #3. The planned two-year project will transfer the undamaged rods to a safer location to avoid further damage in the event of another accident.
April 22, 2019CounterPunch
| Ukraine | nuclear: radiation
Chernobyl's reactor Number 4 exploded 33 years ago, the worst ever environmental catastrophe. The radiation emitted is still debated (1 to 9 billion curies) as is the death count (56 on the day to half a million from fallout). WHO counts 9,000 cancer deaths, Ukraine officials 125,000 to 500,000 in the Ukraine alone, while 50 million people may have been affected.
June 28, 2019
The Daily Mail
| United Kingdom | nuclear: construction
The largest ever concrete pour in the UK was completed at the £20-billion Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Bridgwater, Somerset. The 1.6-GW project is run by EDF Energy – 17% owned by state-owned China General Nuclear – and will be tied to the grid by 2027 to supply 7% of U.K. power (6 million homes).
June 30, 2019Beyond Nuclear
| Chernobyl | nuclear: accident
The 5-part HBO TV series Chernobyl is the highest rated on IMDb, sparking interest in the events leading to the worst-ever nuclear accident in 1986. So much so that anti-nuclear feeling is on the rise in the US, where questions are being asked about the safety of GE's 28 Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors, the same design as at Fukushima in Japan.
June 30, 2019CNN Business
| Russia | nuclear: power
The $450-million Akademik Lomonosov is the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, a 144-meter platform with 2 35-MW reactors. After towing the plant from Murmansk to Pevin in Russia's northern Chukotka region, the plant will supply electricity for mining and oil extraction to exploit untapped Arctic oil reserves as Siberian reserves diminish.
July 16, 2019Columbia News
| Marshall Islands | nuclear: radiation
Marshall Islands citizens are still not able to return to their homes on Bikini and Rongelap Atolls because of lingering radiation from the almost 70 U.S. nuclear bombs detonated there between 1946 and 1958. The largest test – “Castle Bravo” in 1954 at Bikini Atoll – was 1,000 times more powerful than either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki blasts.
Exelon's TMI Unit 1, twin of the infamous TMI2, will begin decommissioning, taking nearly 60 years and $1.2 billion. The fuel rods will be removed, cooled in spent fuel pools for 3 years, and then moved to above-ground canisters. The cooling towers will remain until 2074, all radioactive material removed by 2078, and the site turned into a green field.
July 29, 2019 RenewEconomy
| Global | nuclear: power
A DIW Berlin study of 674 nuclear power plants built since 1951 found that a 1-GW plant loses almost €5 billion on average. Heavily subsidized and tied to military objectives, not one plant was built with ‘private capital under competitive conditions,’ and will continue to be unprofitable. The German government is phasing out all nuclear power by 2022.
October 21, 2019Oil Price
| France | nuclear: fusion
At 10 times the sun’s core temperature, nuclear fusion is challenging, but worth it as 80% of our energy still comes from fossil fuels. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France is another step to making fusion commercially viable. Costing over $24 billion, the donut-shaped (tokamak) cage will produce 500 MW by 2035.
February 4, 2020CounterPunch
| Ontario | nuclear: waste
The Saugeen Ojibway Nation voted down a proposed deep geological repository (DGR) for low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste, rejecting $150 million. 85% voted no to the DGR at the Bruce Peninsula nuclear power station in Kincardine, Ontario. A “rolling stewardship” policy will continue to store retrievable waste above ground on site.
April 19, 2020Asia Times
| Australia | nuclear: fusion
Nuclear fusion is ignited using chirped pulse amplification to create “extreme light.” Laser implosion via deuterium hydrogen (DT) spherical fuel pellets loses energy to heat, but a cylindrical hydrogen-boron mixture fuses via directed motion and a high-temperature axial burn wave. A prototype plant could be built in a decade at under $100 million.
The small modular reactor (SMR) is being touted as a nuclear saviour: cheaper and safer. But costs may not be that cheap, in part because of the first-of-a-kind technology. The only operational SMR is Russia’s 70-MW floating plant at $740 million, quadruple estimates ($200/MWh). The high costs are staffing, fuel, barge resources, and coastal infrastructure.
November 23, 2020Science
| United States | nuclear: fusion
A redesigned target and improved shot diagnostics closes in on a self-heating burning plasma, essential to ICF ignition and “runaway energy gain.” The enlarged target chamber increased temperatures and x-ray absorption to compress the target more efficiently. If the hot spot can be heated more, an outward shock wave could burn the fuel and spark ignition.
August 18, 2021Live Science
| California | nuclear: fusion
The U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) broke the record for most power generated, 10 quadrillion watts, yet only for a trillionth of a second. 192 laser beams were focussed onto a DT pellet, fusion releasing 1.3 MJ (10% of sunlight incident on earth) and 70% of the input laser energy. The goal is to one day more than break even in a working power plant.
November 4, 2021AP News
| United States | nuclear: waste
The US will “cocoon” 8 weapons-grade, plutonium production reactors at Hanford, Washington, site of the largest quantity of radioactive waste. The long-term storage allows radiation levels to subside. But left-over liquid wastes will require 660 BILLION dollars to clean up. Hanford B provided the material for the Trinity test and Nagasaki bomb.
Starting after 2040, 30,000 shipments of radioactive power plant waste will be trucked and/or trained to a proposed national storage site, some through densely populated areas. The bedrock below 2 possible sites is being studied for the $23-billion, national deep geologic repository, either South Bruce (near Kincardine) or Ignace (near Thunder Bay).
Having replaced carbon in the tokamak walls with less absorbant beryllium and tungsten, UK-based JET has broken its previous 1997 record, producing 11 MW of power over 5 seconds (59 MJ). The hydrogen isotopes D and T fuse at about 100 million degrees. Although not yet breakeven, the result bodes well for the under-construction ITER setup in France.
According to TEPCO, robotically taken pictures of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 appear to show melted fuel submerged in water at the bottom of the reactor. Roughly 900 tons of melted nuclear fuel are inside the 3 reactors, damaged in the 3-11 tsunami. The original removal estimate was 2024, but will now take at least until 2050.
A first-of-its-kind SMART (SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak) reactor is being built at the University of Seville in collaboration with Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Based on a donut-shaped tokamak geometry, the reactor employs negative triangularity to limit plasma instability, the main deal breaker to produce net gain (Q > 1).
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