Tag: Nuke Energy

Russia Warns The World

There are a few international situations that do not get the press it deserves and when it explodes into a full blown incident people ask how could that be….we knew nothing of the situation…..well I try to bring you a few situations that I see as a problem waiting to happen….

Russia on Friday joined China in calling for more diplomacy on Iran, warning against imposing fresh sanctions against the country’s nuclear energy section for delays over a fuel exchange deal.

He called on Tehran to work constructively to alleviate concerns over its nuclear activities but cautioned that any punitive actions against Iran will be counterproductive.

Under a UN-brokered proposal discussed in mid-October, the US, France and Russia asked Iran to send most of its domestically-produced low enriched uranium abroad to be converted into more refined fuel for the Tehran research reactor that produces medical isotopes.
The foreign minister of Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), said that his country wanted “to see constructive actions from Iran.”

Sanctions will be a breaking point for Russia…..they have told the world not to do it…..but what will be their response if their warning is not heeded?

And then there is China who does not want sanctions either……would China use the ownership of American debt against them?

Just a few things to think over while drinking coffee or just plain chillin’…….

GOP Plan For An Energy Policy

The conversation….well that is not quite accurate…the debate on an Energy policy has geared up….along with the debate on Health care.

Take a seat for their is a GOP plan for energy……surprise!

Let us begin…they, the GOP, do not like the Obama “cap and trade” deal…..why?  The main reason is they say it will cost the consumer more money for power.  I like it that their first concern is for the consumer….yeah right…and if you believe that then I have land in Florida I would like to sell by the gallon.

The NY Times has reported on the Repub plan.

The Republican proposal, drafted by a group led by Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, leans heavily on nuclear power, setting a goal of building 100 reactors over the next 20 years.

The bill also provides incentives for increased oil and gas production on public and private lands and offshore. It would also authorize oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The Republican measure does not include any mandatory cap on emissions of heat-trapping gases, relying instead on nuclear energy, natural gas and renewable fuels like wind, solar and biomass power to reduce production of the gases, which have been linked to global warming.

Republican officials said they were intending to offer the proposal, known as the American Energy Act, as a substitute for the bill sponsored by Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats. The Waxman-Markey bill has been through hundreds of hours of public hearings and committee deliberations and passed the Energy and Commerce Committee last month on a 33-to-25 vote.

What part of this plan is not the same as it has been for 10 years?  Once again, the GOP has nothing new to offer the people of this country….just a rehash of tired old proposals from the past.

There Is NO Nuke Waste

I try to give both sides of a story and here is the other side of the nuke story I did about the Obama decision on nuke waste.

This is from an article in the WSJ:

So is this material “waste”? Absolutely not. Ninety-five percent of a spent fuel rod is plain old U-238, the nonfissionable variety that exists in granite tabletops, stone buildings and the coal burned in coal plants to generate electricity. Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth’s crust. It could be put right back in the ground where it came from.

Of the remaining 5% of a rod, one-fifth is fissionable U-235 — which can be recycled as fuel. Another one-fifth is plutonium, also recyclable as fuel. Much of the remaining three-fifths has important uses as medical and industrial isotopes. Forty percent of all medical procedures in this country now involve some form of radioactive isotope, and nuclear medicine is a $4 billion business. Unfortunately, we must import all our tracer material from Canada, because all of our isotopes have been headed for Yucca Mountain.

The supposed problem of “nuclear waste” is entirely the result of a the decision in 1976 by President Gerald Ford to suspend reprocessing, which President Jimmy Carter made permanent in 1977. The fear was that agents of foreign powers or terrorists groups would steal plutonium from American plants to manufacture bombs.

That fear has proved to be misguided. If foreign powers want a bomb, they will build their own reactors or enrichment facilities, as North Korea and Iran have done. The task of extracting plutonium from highly radioactive material and fashioning it into a bomb is far beyond the capacities of any terrorist organization.

Mr. Tucker must have missed the report:

Some granite countertops contain levels of uranium high enough to be dangerous to humans, said Rice professor W.J. Llope.

Using a spectrometer, Llope tested 25 varieties of granite bought from Houston-area dealers. In some cases, he said, he found countertops that could expose homeowners to 100 millirems of radiation in just a few months — the annual exposure limit set by the Department of Energy for visitors to nuclear labs.

A pretty good article by William Tucker….but I ask….at what cost?  I think it would have been a better article if he would have given us the start up costs of recycling the spent rods and then the cost of storage of what is left.  Just my thought.

What To Do With Nuke Waste?

If you recall the waning days of the last election, energy was all the rage and McCain was hell bent on the building of more and more nuke plants.  It was billed as a “clean energy”.   And at that time I was involved in an exchange on why I was opposed to the expansion of nukes.  Yes, it is an almost emissions free industry, but my question was then as it is now…what to do with nuke waste?

President Obama’s proposed budget all but kills the Yucca Mountain project, the controversial Nevada site where the U.S. nuclear industry’s spent fuel rods were to spend eternity. There are no other plans in the works, so for now the waste will remain next to Zion and 103 other reactors scattered across the country.

Obama has said there are too many questions about whether storing waste at Yucca Mountain is safe. His decision fulfills a campaign promise, but it also renews nagging questions about what should be done with the radioactive waste steadily accumulating in 35 states.

During his confirmation hearings, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the waste could safely remain at nuclear plants while another plan is worked out. Reversing course from previous administrations satisfies critics in Nevada, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but triggers another round of political maneuvering and regional bickering in Congress.
More than 57,000 tons of spent fuel rods already are stored next to reactors, just a few yards from containment buildings where they once generated nuclear-heated steam to drive massive electrical turbines.

The lack of a permanent solution poses a serious challenge to the industry’s plans to build more than 30 new reactors. Existing nuclear plants produce 2,000 tons of the long-lived waste each year, most of which is moved into pools of chilled water that allow the spent — but still highly lethal — uranium-235 to slowly and safely decay. Uranium-235 has a half-life of nearly 704 million years — meaning that half its atoms will decay in that time.

But containment pools never were intended to store all of the spent fuel that a reactor creates. The idea was that the cool water would stabilize the enriched uranium until it could be sent to a reprocessing plant or stored in a centralized location.

Instead, it keeps piling up. Although industry officials insist the waste is safely stored in fenced-off buildings lined with concrete and lead, there are concerns that a leak or a terrorist attack could create an environmental catastrophe. Many of the nation’s nuclear plants are close to highly populated areas or next to bodies of water.

Obama has taken a high road here….but my question still stands….What To Do With Nuke Waste?

Iran And Nukes

Iran and nukes will be a major situation for the Obama admin to handle.  But there are things that he should be aware of before he starts any meetings or actions.

Aspirations by Iran for a nuclear energy industry are not new. US opposition to it is, however, according to new declassified document published this week by the National Security Archive.

According to the documents, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the notorious dictator of Iran known as the Shah, who owed his position to CIA intrigues and oppression by Iranian secret police, sought nuclear energy capability to the chagrin of US leaders in the 1970s.

The Shah claimed the right to develop a nuclear energy program under the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which his country was a signatory along with the US. According to his reasoning, the treaty blocked the proliferation of nuclear weapons in non-nuclear states (at that time everyone except China, Russia, Britain, France, and the US), but it obligated nuclear states to provide technology and nuclear raw materials to non-nuclear states in order to develop nuclear energy.

Both the Ford and Carter administrations expressed strong reservations about allowing the Shah access to nuclear energy technology because they feared his government would secretly work to build a nuclear weapon, the newly released documents showed. More to the point, the successive US administrations in the mid- and late-1970s agreed with the assessment of one intelligence official who felt that “an aggressive successor to the Shah might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran’s complete military dominance of the region.”

Nevertheless, the Carter administration came to an agreement with Iran and negotiated a plan to provide nuclear energy technology in exchange for “nonproliferation controls.” In other words, the US reserved the right to scrutinize what Iran did with the materials and withhold technology and raw materials if Iran appeared to be shifting toward weapons programs.

Interestingly, the current Iranian government has cited the same national sovereignty, security and its energy concerns expressed by the Shah in the process of developing a nuclear energy program.
No nation has a right to nuclear weapons, including the existing nuclear powers: the US, Russia, China, France, Britain, Pakistan, India, and Israel. And because the nuclear energy industry has so far failed to guarantee public health and safety and environmental protection, nuclear energy should itself be halted. Dismantling nuclear arsenals should be and is a major goal of the peace movement globally.

In the world of real politics as it is now, however, a diplomatic effort that seeks to guarantee Iran’s national security and an alternative energy source while insisting on international oversight in exchange could serve to ratchet down tensions in the Middle East, reduce or eliminate the so-called proxy wars against Israel, and reduce Iranian-influenced sectarianism in Iraq.

A New Nuke Deal

Russia and Venezuela have signed an agreement to promote the development of nuclear energy for civilian use.

The agreement was signed during a visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, on the latest leg of his Latin American tour.

Under the accord, Russia would help Venezuela build a nuclear energy plant. Joint gas projects were also approved

Boosting bilateral trade between Russia and Latin America, which could reach $15bn (£9.9bn) this year, is another priority for the Russian president during his talks.

The Russian leader travelled to Venezuela from Brazil, where he and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva held talks on boosting trade and technical co-operation.

Geez!  I can hear the screams now…..Venezuela is build a nuke bomb why else would they want nuke power.  Wait for it…it is coming.

Could The US Start An Arms Race?

When Congress finally approved the U.S.-India nuclear deal this month, it sailed through the body with scarcely a peep. Most analysts in Washington and New Delhi hailed the move. But some observers worry the United States has just helped spark a new arms race.

The agreement admits India into one of the world’s most exclusive clubs: states that openly hold nuclear weapons. Proponents say it will boost cooperation between two of the world’s largest democracies, allow U.S. business to cash in on the lucrative Indian nuclear-energy market and bring New Delhi into the fight against proliferation. But there’s a hitch. India has spurned the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which states promise never to build bombs in exchange for access to civilian technology. “By recognizing India’s nuclear status anyway, Washington has undermined the treaty at a moment when it is confronting nuclear crises in North Korea and Iran,” says Peter Scoblic, author of “U.S. vs. Them,” a history of American nuclear strategy. “And for what? To curry favor with a country that is already a friend of the United States.”

There are signs an arms race has already started. In 2007, Pakistan’s president declared his state would increase its deterrent capacity to match India’s offensive capacity. It also opened a new reactor to manufacture weapons-grade plutonium and threatened to penetrate any Indian missile-defense shield.

What part of this agreement is gonna make the world a safer place to live?