Tag: nuclear power

US Plans to Start Recycling Nuclear Waste

Despite growing recognition that nuclear energy may be the most viable solution in America’s quest for reliable low-carbon electricity, the nuclear power industry is struggling to overcome major hurdles; among them, what to do with radioactive, spent fuel.

But new efforts to recycle nuclear waste in the United States, held up for decades by legal and regulatory hurdles, could resolve that issue and more if it is allowed to flourish.

Nuclear energy has been stifled for the past 50 years by bureaucratic hurdles that have virtually stalled the construction of new nuclear plants in America. These stem from public fears following the reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima, as well as from concerns about the toxicity of used nuclear fuel and its potential reuse in nuclear weapons.

Recently, however, a rare bipartisan consensus has emerged in support of nuclear power. Speaking at the 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 29), the summit’s host Jeyhun Bayramov called for “the safe, secure, equitable, and affordable expansion of nuclear energy,” confirming that environmentalists now see nuclear energy as acceptably “clean,” alongside wind and solar.

But reviving America’s dormant nuclear power industry is another matter.

In terms of priorities, “there exists the threat of climate [change] on the Democratic side, and certainly energy security, geo-strategic [concerns], Russia, and China from the Republican side, that now we see commitments to triple nuclear by the United States and COP 29, along with 20 other countries,” Ed McGinnis, CEO of Curio, a company that plans to recycle fuel in America, told The Epoch Times.

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Ukraine Wants to Start Talks Using Kursk Nuclear Plant Seizure as Ultimatum – Akhmat Head

The Ukrainian Armed Forces went on the offensive on August 6 to seize territory in Russia’s Kursk region, but their advance was stopped, said Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s General Staff. He stressed that the operation in Kursk will be completed by defeating the enemy and reaching the state border.

Units of the Russian Armed Forces are in the Kursk city of Sudzha, which the enemy does not control but there are daily clashes, commander of the Akhmat special forces Apti Alaudinov told Russian media.

“Today there are units of the Russian Defense Ministry in Sudzha. There is an enemy around and in some parts of the city. There are active clashes there every day. The enemy cannot say that he completely controls Sudzha, because he does not really control it,” Alaudinov said.

The major general also said that Kiev is planning on seizing the Kursk nuclear power plant on August 11 and use this to start negotiations with Moscow with an ultimatum.

“We received very interesting materials — the whole layout of the operation, which was being prepared, by what forces and what was planned. What can I say: on the 11th [of August] it was necessary to take the nuclear power plant in Kurchatov… [Ukrainian President] Zelensky’s blitzkrieg, which was planned with the seizure of the Kursk nuclear power plant and already entering negotiations with an ultimatum… failed,” Alaudinov explained.

The operation had not been completed, despite all the reserves directed by Kiev in this direction, Alaudinov said.

“Most of the equipment has already been destroyed from what was deployed in the Kursk direction,” Alaudinov concluded.

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Ukrainian Shelling Causes Fire at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

Ukrainian shelling started a fire at one of the cooling towers at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, according to Zaporizhzhia’s Russian-installed governor, Yevgeny Balitsky.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its experts stationed at the ZNPP, which has been under Russian control since February 2022, saw dark smoke rising at the plant after hearing multiple explosions. They were told by plant officials that one of the cooling towers was targeted by an alleged Ukrainian drone attack.

The IAEA said there was no reported impact on nuclear safety as a result of the fire, and Balitsky said radiation levels around the plant were normal.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is claiming that the fire was started by Russians who control the plant. The ZNPP is located in the town of Enerhodar on the south bank of the Dnieper River. Russia controls the territory on the southern bank, while Ukraine controls the territory on the northern side.

Zelensky wrote on X that a video of the fire at the plant was recorded from the city of Nikopol, which is across the river. “Enerhodar. We have recorded from Nikopol that the Russian occupiers have started a fire on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” he wrote.

Zelensky also said the radiation levels at the plant were normal. “However, as long as the Russian terrorists maintain control over the nuclear plant, the situation is not and cannot be normal,” he added.

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NATO’s Nuclear Bases Have Poisoned Water and Fish

Nuclear armed air bases at Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi in Italy, and Volkel in the Netherlands have poisoned the environment with PFAS.

Massive fires were intentionally lit in large fire pits at these bases and extinguished with cancer-causing fire-fighting foams during routine training exercises dating back 40 years or longer.  Afterward, the foam residue was typically allowed to run off or drain into the soil. The “forever chemicals” pollute the soil, sewers, sediment, surface water, groundwater, and the air. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) bases regularly tested sprinkler systems in hangars to create a carcinogenic foam layer to coat the expensive aircraft. The sprinkler systems often malfunctioned. The foams were sent to sewers or deposited in groundwater or surface water.

The PFAS-laden foams work miraculously well in putting out super-hot petroleum-based fires, but remarkable technologies may escape our control and imperil humanity.

Two astonishing inventions in 1938 are like Daedalus’ fastening of wings to wax: the splitting of the uranium atom by German scientists and the discovery of per – and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS) by Dupont chemists in New Jersey.  It’s not a stretch. Both nuclear weaponry and PFAS chemicals are existential threats to humanity. Their development and use are inextricably linked.

Wherever nuclear weapons are found, huge quantities of PFAS foams are ready to be used to snuff out a fire that may cause unimaginable destruction.

Like Pandora’s nightmare, once PFAS is let loose we can’t get it back in the box. We can’t get rid of it. We can’t bury it. We can’t incinerate it. We don’t know what to do with it. Notions of ”cleaning up” PFAS from these practices are largely misguided, propagandistic ploys promulgated by the U.S. military.

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Third Of Nuclear-Plant Owners In Talks With Tech Firms To Power Up AI Data Centers

Big tech firms like Amazon are actively speaking with utility companies to build artificial intelligence data centers powered by clean, reliable nuclear energy. This move aligns with the ‘Next AI Trade’ investing theme, which was introduced to pro-subs in early April. 

“The owners of roughly a third of US nuclear power plants are in talks with tech companies to provide electricity to new data centers needed to meet the demands of an artificial-intelligence boom,” the Wall Street Journal says. 

In particular, WSJ sources say Amazon Web Services is securing a deal with Constellation Energy, the largest owner of US nuclear power plants, to supply clean, reliable atomic power to a data center on the East Coast. 

This is not the first time Amazon has negotiated with utilities about nuclear power.

In March, AWS purchased power provider Talen Energy’s 1,200-acre data center campus, which is directly adjacent to its 2.5 gigawatt (GW) nuclear power at the Salem Township site in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. 

WSJ pointed out that tech companies demanding nuclear power for AI data centers “would be effectively diverting existing electricity resources” and “could raise prices for other customers and hold back emission-cutting goals.” 

The nuclear-tech marriage has forced many Wall Street analysts in recent months to jump on the powering up America theme. Greater load demands are projected in the coming years due to AI data centers, electrification of the economy, and reshoring efforts. 

Recent estimates from North American Electric Reliability Corporation forecast that electricity growth over the next five years will increase from 2.6% to 4.7%, driven by major utilities revising up their estimates.

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Bill Gates Is Investing “Billions” In The New Wave Of Nuclear Power

It isn’t often Bill “Mr. I Know What’s Best For The Entire World” Gates comes up with an idea that we aren’t immediately skeptical of, but his recent pledge to promote next generation nuclear power sounds to us to be a common sense solution to multiple problems we’ll be facing in coming years. 

Gates is pledging billions of dollars to promote nuclear through startup TerraPower LLC, OilPrice.com wrote this week. And it looks like that number could grow. 

Gates recently told Bloomberg: “I put in over a billion, and I’ll put in billions more.”

OilPrice.com notes that nuclear power is gaining global traction as a key player in decarbonization strategies. In addition to TerraPower, companies like Sam Altman-led Oklo are also focused on modernizing nuclear with small modular reactors. 

Advocates emphasize its immense clean energy potential, proven technology, and existing infrastructure. Although not renewable, nuclear energy emits zero carbon and could help meet global emissions targets.

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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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