ANS Nuclear Cafe

Recently, a tremendous success story culminated at the Hanford Reservation - the completion of radioactive sludge removal from one of the K-Reactor basins.  Announcement of the completion of this task ends a years-long process that was a major barrier to finally cocooning the K reactors, which are the last two other than B left in their original state (albeit long since shut down and defueled) at Hanford.  (Of course, B Reactor has been preserved as a historic landmark and can be toured.)

The news this week that NASA has contracted for as many as 12 of the new Orion manned space flight capsules brings again to focus the fact that the US is returning to manned space flight in a big way.  While orbital flights will be first, it's clear that a return to the moon is in the cards and that, perhaps, we may go to Mars.

In a move that has relieved some observers but angered others, a Tokyo District court has found three former executives of Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) not guilty on the charges of not having prepared the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant against the tsunami that occurred in 2011.

Happy birthday to RadioNuclear! The podcast, sponsored since 2019 by ANS, turned two years old earlier this month. The host, Doug Hardtmayer, and the Society would like to thank everyone who continues to listen and support the show!

In a news briefing in Tokyo earlier this week, Japan's Minister of the Environment, Yoshiaki Harada, told reporters that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) will have to dump radioactive water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear power plants into the Pacific Ocean.

With very serious issues like health care, gun control, Russian tampering, and prison reform, it's unlikely that a narrow issue like a candidate's stance on nuclear power will sway anyone about voting for them.

Thank you for joining us on Episode 24 of RadioNuclear! In this episode, we briefly discuss the passage of H.B. 6 in Ohio, effectively saving the two nuclear plants in Ohio for the time being. This week we also talk about a recent article detailing the true cost of using battery storage for energy. How much could using them for 100% renewable energy cost? Tune in to find out!

What does it mean to be a leader? That question is at the heart of the Young Professionals Congress 2019 (YPC19).

What role can nuclear power play in getting humans to Mars or eliminating climate change? Nuclear energy has an increasing role in medicine and safety and security. Industry leaders, policymakers, and innovators will convene at Purdue for a three-day event: What if Nuclear Innovation Could Change the World? taking place on Sept. 3-5.

On August 5, 2012, at 10:17 p.m. PDT, NASA's giant rover Curiosity landed on Mars, the fourth planet in our solar system from the Sun. Curiosity rover is 3 meters long, 2.8 meters wide, and 2.1 meters tall weighing 900 kilograms (around 2,000 lbs). Slowing the giant laboratory down from entry-level hypersonic speeds to near zero and safely landing it on Martian surface was immensely complicated. It required a rocket-powered crane to land the rover on the surface. Curiosity's primary goal was to determine if Martian soil and climate offered favorable conditions for life in past. The rover contains several instruments on board to understand the planet conditions better. These instruments include spectrometers for material characterization, radiation detectors, cameras for taking pictures (and selfies), and weather sensors.

"How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Ready for RadioNuclear 23? In this episode, we discuss the landmark achievement at Purdue's research reactor, PUR-1, on going to a fully digital I&C System, the increasing support for nuclear power from Japanese courts, and the recent increase in radioactivity from a sunken Soviet Union Submarine, the Komsomolets. We also give a brief update on pronuclear legislation in Ohio and discuss the relationship renewables and nuclear must play in the future.

Remember when you were a child on a long road trip to grandma's house before cars were equipped with televisions? My dad would tell us to imagine that we were watching an episode of Star Trek, and my sister and I would run through every nuance of the show in our minds. As the imaginary show ended, we were amazed to find ourselves in front of grandma's house.

The nearness of the completion of Rosatom's Akademik Lomonosov floating two-unit nuclear power plant is apparently raising interest in, of all places, the Philippines.  This island nation, which very nearly had a nuclear plant but which halted its operation when fully completed, has at least one official body considering the use of Russian-style floating nuclear plants to offset what it feels is an impending severe shortage of natural gas fuel as a major field is expected to run out.

I just knew it! I was hoping I'd be wrong, that HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework and consult even one actual nuclear scientist or radiobiologist. Or even just read the United Nations Chernobyl Forum Report, the best source of information on the disaster for non-nuclear people.

We continue now our look at Appendix III of WASH-1250, the unpublished (except in final draft form) AEC study on reactor safety from 1973.  This appendix describes the rise of the anti-nuclear movement in the United States; the previous installment contains roughly the first half of this important historical record.  We now present the second part, word for word unaltered.

We are quite aware today that a major force in delaying nuclear plant licensing has been the action of "intervenors" - persons, or more often groups pretending to act as concerned individuals, who attend open meetings, file motions, and start all sorts of legal proceedings intended to delay nuclear plants long enough that the owners decide to quit.  How did this all start?

Episode 22 of RadioNuclear is now available. In this episode, we discuss the recent miniseries "Chernobyl", which recently concluded on HBO. We debunk some of the more egregious articles written in the wake of the show (see links to these articles below). We also discuss good ways to engage with individuals who are captivated with the show, and not necessarily familiar with nuclear technology.

(This article was submitted in concert with a presentation given at the 2019 American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting entitled "Teaching the Value of Nuclear," and is the first of two articles on that presentation.)