Tag: nuclear power

DARPA’s planned nuclear rocket would use enough fuel to build a bomb

High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) has been touted as the go-to fuel for powering next-gen nuclear reactors, which include the sodium-cooled TerraPower or the space-borne system powering Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO). That’s because it was supposed to offer higher efficiency while keeping uranium enrichment “well below the threshold needed for weapons-grade material,” according to the US Department of Energy.

This justified huge government investments in HALEU production in the US and UK, as well as relaxed security requirements for facilities using it as fuel. But now, a team of scientists has published an article in Science that argues that you can make a nuclear bomb using HALEU.

“I looked it up and DRACO space reactor will use around 300 kg of HALEU. This is marginal, but I would say you could make one a weapon with that much,” says Edwin Lyman, the director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of the paper.

Forgotten threats

“When uranium is mined out of the ground, it’s mostly a mixture of two isotopes: uranium-238 and uranium-235. Uranium 235 concentrations are below one percent,” says Lyman. This is sent through an enrichment process, usually in gas centrifuges, where it is turned into gaseous form and centrifuged till the two isotopes are separated from each other due to their slight difference in their atomic weights. This can produce uranium with various levels of enrichment. Material that’s under 10 percent uranium-235 is called low-enriched uranium (LEU) and is used in power reactors working today. Moving the enrichment level up to between 10 and 20 percent, we get HALEU; above 20 percent, we start talking about highly enriched uranium, which can reach over 90 percent enrichment for uses like nuclear weapons.

“Historically, 20 percent has been considered a threshold between highly enriched uranium and low enriched uranium and, over time, that’s been associated with the limit of what is usable in nuclear weapons and what isn’t. But the truth is that threshold is not really a limit of weapons usability,” says Lyman. And we knew that since long time ago.

A study assessing the weaponization potential of uranium with different enrichment levels was done by the Los Alamos National Laboratory back in 1954. The findings were clear: Uranium enriched up to 10 percent was no good for weapons, regardless of how much of it you had. HALEU, though, was found to be of “weapons significance,” provided a sufficient amount was available. “My sense is that once they established 20 percent is somewhat acceptable, and given the material is weapons-usable only when you have enough of it, they just thought we’d need to limit the quantities and we’d be okay. That sort of got baked into the international security framework for uranium because there was not that much HALEU,” says Lyman. The Los Alamos study recommended releasing 100 kg of uranium enriched to up to 20 percent for research purposes in other countries, as they didn’t think 100 kg could lead to any nuclear threats.

The question that wasn’t answered at the time was how much was too much.

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ROCKETSTAR SUCCESSFULLY DEMONSTRATES FIRESTAR™ NUCLEAR FUSION-ENHANCED PULSED PLASMA PROPULSION DRIVE

RocketStar Inc. has announced the first successful demonstration of their nuclear fusion-enhanced pulsed plasma FireStar™ Drive. The potentially groundbreaking device upgrades the company’s base water-fueled pulsed plasma thruster by injecting particles into the drive’s exhaust plume, resulting in a fusion reaction that dramatically increases the base drive’s power output.

“This is the first productive use of nuclear fusion that doesn’t annihilate humanity,” quipped RocketStar’s CEO Chris Craddock and Chief Technology Officer Wes Fayler in a joint email to The Debrief.

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Israel ‘preparing to strike Iranian NUCLEAR facilities’ amid tense wait for revenge attack and soaring WW3 fears

ISRAEL is preparing to strike Iranian nuclear plants if faced with a revenge attack for the death of a top Tehran commander last week.

Netanyahu‘s war cabinet has been locked in crunch meetings over fears that Iran will launch an assault as Middle East tensions threaten to boil over into all-out war.

Now a Western security official has revealed that Israel will respond to any attacks by striking Iran‘s nuclear targets directly.

Israeli forces have been conducting secret air force drills in preparation for the dangerous escalation, Elaph News reports.

Iran is home to several nuclear sites – including power plants, uranium mines and research reactors.

A targeted attack against one of them could mark an unprecedented escalation in the melting pot of Middle East conflict.

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Zelensky Tries to Go Nuclear: Ukrainian Drone Strikes Russian-Controlled Nuke Site

Ukraine was Criticized by the International Atomic Energy Agency after carrying out a drone attack on the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant – striking a dome on top of a reactor that has been shut down.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the IAEA director general, said in a statement that such a “detonation is consistent with IAEA observations.”

“I urge to refrain from actions that … jeopardize nuclear safety,” he said.

The power plant is the largest nuclear facility in Europe.

Grossi has been an outspoken critic of the fighting that has been occurring near the facility and has warned that “something very, very catastrophic could take place” if there is not some kind of “security protection zone.”

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Mystery of America’s first fatal nuclear disaster – with rumors still rife over 60 years later that explosion in remote Idaho town was triggered by one man’s murderous rage amid LOVE TRIANGLE

The SL-1 accident is the only fatal nuclear reactor event to ever occur on US soil.

An earth-shattering explosion at the Stationary Low-Power Plant Number 1 (SL-1) in January 1961 saw all three technicians on staff killed during what was meant to be routine maintenance of the government lab’s nuclear reactor.

Following a painstaking operation, the men’s bodies were retrieved – at the cost of 790 others being exposed to radiation out in Idaho‘s Lost River desert.

The three men were then wrapped in hundred pounds of lead, interned in steel coffins and buried under a slab of concrete to prevent any further spread. The lab was also considered lost and was buried a few hundred yards away.

But rumors surrounding the incident still swirl today, with some speculating the disaster was in fact a murder-suicide triggered by a sordid squabble after one of the crew members engaged in an affair with another’s wife. 

Indeed, one report claims that the man responsible for the explosion had received a phone call from his wife asking for a divorce just minutes earlier – while the co-worker accused of sleeping with his wife was later found pinned to the ceiling directly above the blown reactor.

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Fukushima Area Overrun by Radioactive Wild Boars

Japanese farmers living near the Fukushima nuclear power plant are struggling to overcome an unexpected outcome from the disaster: a surge in radioactive wild boars!

In the last five years, the population of contaminated creatures has been inadvertently left to flourish in the area near the power plant that the Japanese government deemed to be an ‘exclusion zone.’

As such, experts say that their numbers have grown from a mere 3,000 to a whopping 13,000 wild boars.

And, as their numbers swell, the boars have begun expanding beyond the exclusion zone and into nearby farms, leading to devastation as the insatiable animals feast on the food found there.

The cruel irony of the problem is that the boars would normally be a fantastic food source, but the radioactivity of the area has rendered them completely inedible and, thus, an enormous nuisance.

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Korean Fusion Reactor Breaks Record, Staying 7 Times Hotter Than The Sun’s Core

Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research, or KSTAR, is one of the most advanced test fusion reactors on the planet. Nicknamed the Korean artificial sun, it has now demonstrated sustained fusion temperature for almost a minute and the ability to contain extremely hot plasma for over 100 seconds.

Fusion is what powers stars, but in stars, it happens at lower temperatures than we need to do it here on Earth. That’s because gravity is keeping everything packed together so fusion is more likely to happen. So the temperature required on Earth for a Tokamak system – which is a donut-shaped reactor – is about seven times the temperature at the core of the Sun: 100 million °C (180 million °F).

KSTAR first reached this threshold in 2018 but only for 1.5 seconds. A year later, they were able to keep the plasma that hot for 8 seconds, increasing it to 20 seconds in 2020. The last record was in 2021, when the plasma was kept that hot for half a minute. Since then, the team at the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) has upgraded the device by building a new tungsten divertor environment and they have pushed the temperature for longer.

Now, KSTAR can sustain 100 million °C for 48 seconds – and it can keep hot plasma in the high-confinement mode (also known as H-mode) for 102 seconds. The goal is to achieve 300 seconds of burning plasma by the end of 2026. 

“Despite being the first experiment run in the environment of the new tungsten divertors, thorough hardware testing and campaign preparation enabled us to achieve results surpassing those of previous KSTAR records in a short period,” Dr Si-Woo Yoon, Director of the KSTAR Research Center, said in a statement.

“To achieve the ultimate goal of KSTAR operation, we plan to sequentially enhance the performance of heating and current drive devices and also secure the core technologies required for long-pulse high performance plasma operations.”

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In Historic Reversal, US To Restart A Shut Down Nuclear Power Plant For The First Time Ever

Is the long awaited – and overdue – restart of the American nuclear age finally here?

In a move which may force the lunatic greens to storm the White House, on Wednesday the federal government announced that it would provide a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear power plant in southwestern Michigan. NJ-based Holtec International acquired the 800-megawatt Palisades plant in 2022 with plans to dismantle it, but with support from the state of Michigan and the Biden administration, the emphasis has shifted to restarting the nuclear power plant by late 2025 instead. 

What is remarkable is not that the US is throwing some money at a nuclear power plant – since the US sells $1 trillion in debt every 100 days, it may as well go full “Brewster’s Millions” (or rather “Trillions”) and spend it all asap; it is that this would be the first nuclear power plant to be reopened in the US, setting a precedent as atomic energy makes a triumphal comeback. Sure, it still faces hurdles, including inspections, testing and the blessing of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but those are just formalities: watch as new NPPs start springing up across the country next.

“Nuclear power is our single largest source of carbon-free electricity, directly supporting 100,000 jobs across the country and hundreds of thousands more indirectly,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor, who in turn is repeating what nuclear advocates have been saying for decades. Restarting this particular plant will protect 600 union jobs and 1,100 throughout the community.

The Palisades plant is along Lake Michigan, a two-hour drive from Chicago. A Michigan utility, CMS Energy, owned it from 1971 until the plant was sold to Louisiana-based utility Entergy in 2007. It was shut down in 2022.

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Bill Gates-founded energy company set to construct $3 billion nuclear power plant in Wyoming that could be operational by 2030

A power company co-founded by Microsoft‘s Bill Gates has announced plans to begin building a new type of nuclear power plant in the US this summer.

TerraPower revealed it plans to apply for the necessary permits this month to start construction on a next-generation nuclear reactor at the start of June in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

The Washington-based firm has received an estimated $1 billion in funding from private investors, which will be combined with a promised $2 billion from the US government.  

The reactor is unique in the world of nuclear power, as it is cooled with liquid sodium rather than water – an efficient strategy, but one that has proven dangerous in some cases because of sodium’s explosive reaction if it touches water.

TerraPower’s announcement puts it in a nuclear energy race against Russia and China. 

The two superpowers are working to develop and export cheaper reactors, and the Natrium one represents TerraPower’s attempt to enter that market, the Financial Times reported.

In December, the company inked an agreement with Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation.

That deal will see TerraPower exploring the use of its Natrium reactors to not only generate electricity in the United Arab Emirates, but also produce hydrogen – a notoriously energy-hungry process.

TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque told FT that they plan to apply this month for the necessary permits to begin construction in June, but whether or not the company has received approval yet, they will begin building then.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in charge of approving construction of new nuclear powerplants. 

The next-generation reactor, called ‘Natrium,’ can be built for half the cost of water-cooled ones, the standard nuclear power technology for decades, Levesque said. 

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Beijing’s military hacked U.S. nuclear firm before Hunter Biden aided Chinese bid to acquire it

U.S. officials were acutely aware that Beijing was trying to obtain America’s premiere nuclear reactor technology, including through illicit hacking, months before Hunter Biden and his business partners sought to arrange a quiet sale of an iconic U.S. reactor company to a Chinese firm, according to court records and national security experts.

Hunter Biden’s unsuccessful efforts to help CEFC China Energy acquire Westinghouse, one of America’s most famous electricity and appliance brands, and its state-the-art AP1000 nuclear reactor began in early 2016 while Joe Biden was still a sitting vice president, memos published Wednesday by Just the News show.

Just 20 months earlier, his father’s Justice Department charged five members of a Chinese military hacking unit for breaching the company’s computer systems in search of intellectual property and internal strategy communications, according to a copy of the indictment.

In May 2014, the five operatives of the People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398 were charged with hacking into the systems of six U.S.-based companies across different industrial sectors, including Westinghouse Electric Co., SolarWorld, United States Steel Corp., and a union. The attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, called the breach a classic case of “economic espionage.”

One operative gained access to Westinghouse’s computers in 2010 and “stole proprietary and confidential technical and design specifications related to pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing” pertaining to the company’s advanced AP1000 nuclear reactor design, according to an indictment filed by the Department of Justice.

“Among other things, such specifications would enable a competitor to build a plant similar to the AP1000 without incurring significant research and development costs associated with designing similar pipes, pipe supports, and pipe routing systems,” the indictment reads.

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Criminal No. 14-118 USA vs. Wang Dong et al.pdf

National security experts said Thursday they were floored that the son of a sitting vice president would be involved in trying to help a Chinese firm get a leg up on the United States in the race for nuclear energy and that Hunter Biden’s involvement with CEFC almost certainly would have been detected by U.S. intelligence and prompted concern. 

Documents previously released by Congress in the Biden impeachment inquiry show the Biden family appeared to be acutely aware that CEFC was tied directly to the communist government in China.

While there is no evidence at the moment that Hunter Biden was aware of or involved in the hacking efforts by the Chinese, Hunter Biden wrote in one text message in 2017 that he believed one of the CEFC officials he worked with, Patrick Ho, was the “f—ing spy chief” of China (Ho was lated indicted in the U.S. and charged with corruption) while Joe Biden’s brother James told the FBI he believed CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming had a relationship with China’s communist president.

“It’s beyond outrageous that Hunter Biden would be involved in any such deal with Communist China while his father is the sitting vice president,” former Trump-era Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates told the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “I mean just the glaring conflicts of interest are hard to wrap your brain around. But particularly with Westinghouse.”

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