ANS Nuclear Cafe

"It is time to make the case for science," says host Neil deGrasse Tyson of the upcoming relaunch of the classic 1980 series Cosmos. The new Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey premieres this Sunday, March 9, on FOX, and Monday, March 10, on the National Geographic Network-all in all, in 170 countries and 45 languages, the largest global opening ever for any television series, according to executive producer, writer, and director Ann Druyan.

In August, Entergy announced that it would close Vermont Yankee at the end of this fuel cycle. The plant certainly faced challenging economics.

Are you witty? Good with words? Up for a challenge? Then we have a contest right up your alley!

The 198th Nuclear Energy Blogger Carnival has been posted at Next Big Future.  You can click here to access this latest installment of a long running tradition among the top English language pro-nuclear bloggers and authors.

Fans of the popular games Portal and Portal II will get a kick out of this one-or just fans of evil and corrupt artificial intelligences-or just fans of nuclear fission, fusion, and astronomy.

The most informative paragraph in a lengthy article titled Cooling tubes at FPL St. Lucie nuke plant show significant wear published in the Saturday, February 22, 2014, edition of the Tampa Bay Times is buried after the 33rd paragraph:

Dr. J'Tia Taylor is a nuclear engineer at Argonne National Laboratory-and on the cast for the newest season of Survivor, which premiered on February 26 at 8/7c on CBS. J'Tia received her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and was the first black female to successfully defend and receive a Ph.D. from the department. She now works at Argonne in the area of nuclear nonproliferation policy-learn more about J'Tia's work at Argonne here.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is the world's largest and most energetic laser system. The facility completed construction in 2009 and is designed to achieve fusion "ignition"-the achievement of a self-sustaining, burning plasma that releases a net amount of energy. If achieved, it would mark the culmination of more than 50 years of research into fusion. In 2012, the NIF laser met and exceeded its design criteria for energy and power, but it has not yet attained the goal of ignition of the fusion fuel.

The 197th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Bloggers and Authors has been posted at The Hiroshima Syndrome.  You can click here to access this latest installment of a long running tradition among the top English language pro-nuclear bloggers and authors.

Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory have demonstrated realistic full-core predictive modeling of a commercial nuclear reactor over multiple years of use. The simulation platform is named MOOSE (Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment).

The American Nuclear Society, through its Professional Development Committee, will offer a full-day workshop "Preparing for the Nuclear Engineering Professional Engineering Exam" on Sunday, June 15, at the ANS Annual Meeting in Reno, Nevada. See Meeting Registration Form for registration information.

In last month's post, I made the case that there is substantial prejudice against nuclear power among much of the public in most of the world. As a result, nuclear is held to requirements thousands of times as strict as other energy sources and industries, resulting in nuclear being rendered less competitive economically. This in turn results in the use of fossil generation instead of nuclear, despite the fact that the operational record, the data, and all scientific analyses show fossil-fueled generation to be orders of magnitude more dangerous and harmful.

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility in California announced this week that they had achieved a major milestone on the path toward nuclear fusion as an energy source, as described in a paper published in the science journal Nature. For the first time, the energy produced in a nuclear fusion reaction in a confined hydrogen fuel exceeded the energy put in to start the reaction.  Science reporter Gautam Naik explains at the Wall Street Journal:

CAREM 25 Prototype Plant; illustration courtesy CNEA

News came out this week that the first concrete had been poured at the construction site for the world's first small modular reactor (SMR) project-and it wasn't for a Generation mPower SMR at the former Clinch River site, or for a SMART SMR (which was the first type in the world to receive governmental design certification) at a site in South Korea.

The American Nuclear Society will welcome delegates from around the world to Chicago this August for the 8th International Conference on Isotopes (8ICI). It will be the first time that this prestigious conference is hosted in the United States.

During an earnings call on February 6, 2014, Exelon Corporation indicated that it may decide to shut down two or more of its nuclear reactors because of poor economic return. Exelon spokespeople have been warning about the effects of negative electricity prices for several years.

The 195th Carnival of Nuclear Energy is posted today at Atomic Power Review.  You can click here to access this latest entry in a long-running tradition among the top pro-nuclear bloggers and authors.

In honor of the Seattle Seahawks' convincing victory in the Super Bowl just a few short days ago, today's Nuclear Matinee videos come straight from the great state of Washington, home to Energy Northwest's 1,170-megawatt Columbia Generating Station-which, incidentally, produces enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle.

Hanul (formerly Ulchin) Nuclear Station at night. (Courtesy KEPCO E&C)

Over the past four years, the South Korean nuclear power program has suffered a set of very public setbacks that cast doubt on the entire program's integrity, to the point where even the South Korean president's attention was directed at the enterprise, in addition to public support being damaged. A recent well-publicized realignment in energy policy has seen a reduction in the expected percentage that nuclear energy would contribute to South Korea's fuel mix, and in some quarters it was augured that the program had been crippled.