World’s Largest Nuclear Power Producer Confronts Serial Glitcheshttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-31/the-world-s-largest-nuclear-power-producer-is-melting-downOn the shores of the English channel in Normandy, engineers are struggling to fix eight faulty welds at a plant that’s supposed to showcase France’s savoir faire in nuclear power.
As they consider sending in robots to access hard-to-get-to areas between two containment walls, for
Electricite de France it’s just the latest setback in a project that’s running a decade late and almost four times over budget.
The Flamanville plant is now slated to be completed in 2022 at a price tag of 12.4 billion euros ($13.8 billion), with the latest glitch costing a whopping 1.5 billion euros.
For the world’s largest nuclear power producer, Flamanville is just one of many challenges. Across the channel, delays at two U.K. reactors have upped the cost to as much as 22.5 billion pounds ($28.9 billion), 2.9 billion pounds more than previously estimated. EDF also faces mounting costs of maintaining 58 domestic nuclear plants that provide more than 70% of France’s power.
Under a system introduced almost a decade ago to boost competition, rival power suppliers can buy about a quarter of EDF’s nuclear output at 42 euros per megawatt-hour, about 10 euros below current wholesale prices.
...
“Investors are staying away because of current uncertainties following the strongly negative news flow on the reputation of the nuclear industry,” said Auguste Deryckx, an analyst at AlphaValue. “The CEO’s stubbornness in pursuing nuclear, which is limiting potential growth in renewables that are better valued by the market, remains a black spot.”------------------------------
Belgium’s Police Call for Witnesses to Identify Man Suspected of Sabotaging Nuclear Reactorhttps://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/77396/police-call-for-witnesses-to-identify-man-suspected-of-sabotaging-nuclear-reactor/Belgium’s Police are calling on the public to assist in the identification of the man suspected of sabotaging a reactor in the Doel nuclear power plant which caused a months-long shutdown, more than five years after the facts.
On 5 August 2014, a valve in the reactor was deliberately opened, causing thousands of litres of oil to leak and the reactor to overheat.The incident kept the reactor offline until the end of 2014, severely straining Belgium’s overall energy-production capacity and costing more than €100 million in repairs.
“The person who pulled the lever must be an employee or a subcontractor of Engie,” prosecutors said in an online statement, referring to Belgium’s leading energy producer. “It is, in any case, someone who had access to the technical zone.”“It’s a white man who was wearing dark clothes and glasses, which could have been security googles,” the prosecutors’ statement read. (
... that narrows it down to half the population)
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BWX Technologies Developing Microreactors With Military Customers In Mindhttps://news.usni.org/2019/11/05/bwx-technologies-developing-microreactors-with-military-customers-in-mindBWX Technologies is developing tractor trailer-sized micro nuclear reactors that could illuminate a small U.S. city, run a forward operating military base, power directed energy weapons or fuel deep-space missions.... Illuminate your city today... The types of microreactors the military is interested in would generate between five and 10 megawatts of electricity and another 10 megawatts of thermal power, Lucian Niemeyer, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment, said during a recent House Armed Services intelligence, emerging threats and capabilities subcommittee hearing.
“We do believe that there are vendors out there, there are technologies out there, that ultimately could be used on a military installation to island that installation off of commercial power, particularly where we have critical assets,” Niemeyer said
The
U.S. Army released a report a year ago detailing the possible uses of mobile nuclear power. The ideal is a power plant system that can fit inside a standard 40-foot shipping container, can be loaded onto a military transport plane or Navy ship, and can generate up to 20 megawatts of power for 10 years or longer without resupply, according to the report. (
... and what will happen when that shipping container is targeted and explodes)
Navy officials are concerned with their ability to deploy directed energy weapons (lasers) on new destroyers because of the power required to run these weapons. Portable nuclear power would fill the bill - it would also form a lethal cloud if the ship was hit.
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New Army Laser Could Kill Cruise Missileshttps://breakingdefense.com/2019/08/newest-army-laser-could-kill-cruise-missiles/Instead of building a 100-kilowatt weapon, the Army now plans to leap straight to 250 or even 300 kW -- which could shoot down much tougher targets.-------------------------------------
As Dominion, Others Target 80-Year Nuclear Plants, Cybersecurity Concerns Complicate Digital Upgradeshttps://www.utilitydive.com/news/as-nuclear-plants-look-to-digitize-controls-and-enhance-performance-cyber/566478/ Earlier this year, federal regulators granted Purdue University Reactor Number One, a research reactor that has been running since 1962, a license to go entirely digital, eschewing the analog wires and tubes that were state-of-the-art at the start of the atomic age and continue to dominate many of the nuclear power reactor fleet's most important safety systems.
While U.S. nuclear plants have been incorporating digital technology over time, many important systems designed to prevent the release of dangerous radiation are still typically analog. For cybersecurity reasons, the digital controls that do exist have to be "air gapped," meaning they are physically isolated from outside networks.
Now, at Purdue, researchers are using the safety of the laboratory to take the exact opposite approach. The digital controls will have wireless connections that the researchers assume can be hacked so they can test how a digital control room can maintain the safety of the reactor even in the face of a cyber threat. "Can we detect that there was an intrusion and how does that affect the rest of the facility?" Clive Townsend, the reactor's supervisor, explained to Utility Dive.
... "By narrowing [the cybersecurity guidance for nuclear plants], you are assuming you know exactly what the adversary is going to do, and that's a mistake."
Edwin Lyman
Acting Director of the Nuclear Safety Project, The Union of Concerned Scientists
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Think Fossil Fuels are Bad? Nuclear Energy is Even Worsehttps://www.marketwatch.com/story/think-fossil-fuels-are-bad-nuclear-energy-is-even-worse-2019-10-17Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have come up with an unsettling discovery. Using the most complete and up-to-date list of nuclear accidents to predict the likelihood of another nuclear cataclysm, they concluded that there is a 50% chance of a Chernobyl-like event (or larger) occurring in the next 27 years, and that we have only 10 years until an event similar to Three Mile Island, also with the same probability. (The Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor, near Middletown, Pa., partially melted down on March 28, 1979. This was the most serious commercial nuclear-plant accident in the U.S.)
And then there is 80,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel ...