ANS Historic Landmark N.S. SAVANNAH Hosts Gala Weekend

May 22, 2014, 1:52PMANS Nuclear CafeWill Davis

NS Savannah, Baltimore, May 17, 2014

The weekend of May 17-18, 2014, saw a beehive of activity on board the beautiful nuclear powered ship N.S. Savannah, docked now in Baltimore. The ship was being prepared on May 18  for open public touring-a rare event indeed for this ship that is still a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensed facility-in commemoration of National Maritime Day (which actually is May 22.) To this end, the ship was abuzz with workers from the U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) and its ever-present Ship's Master, Erhard Koehler, as well as workers from other organizations and, of course, the N.S. Savannah Association (NSSA), which works with MARAD to preserve and restore the ship.

Nuclear Video Matinee: Fukushima Health Effects in North America (?)

May 2, 2014, 8:57PMANS Nuclear Cafe

Studies by Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano purporting to link radiation from Fukushima to health effects in the United States have made for alarming headlines in news outlets on occasion, and have come under fire by critics who charge flawed methodology (for example, What Can We Do About Junk Science and Researchers Trumpet Another Flawed Fukushima Study).

Return to the 1970s

May 1, 2014, 5:57PMANS Nuclear CafeWill Davis

LetsGoBookIn the 1960s, visions for nuclear power were hopeful and plentiful; nuclear plants of all sorts imaginable* were under consideration and under construction in areas both urban and remote, while future plans portrayed an enormous nuclear plant build-out with a complete fuel cycle that included fuel recycling and breeder reactors.

Food Irradiation Can Save Thousands of Lives Each Year

April 29, 2014, 4:57PMANS Nuclear CafeLenka Kollar

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 in 6 people get food poisoning each year in the United States and that 3000 die from foodborne illness. Food irradiation can drastically decrease these numbers by killing harmful bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella in meat and produce. The U.S. government endorses the use of food irradiation, but does not educate the public about its benefits. Food irradiation has not caught on in the United States because consumers fear that radiation will mutate the food. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires a label (pictured below) for any food that has been irradiated.

Nuclear Video Matinee: Offshore Nuclear Plants

April 25, 2014, 6:00AMANS Nuclear Cafe

Jacopo Buongiorno of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discusses some of the advantages of a nuclear reactor concept under development in collaboration with industry and other universities: floating off-shore nuclear power plants, constructed entirely in a shipyard, anchored off the coast, linked to the electric grid via undersea cable. Earthquakes and tsunamis would not be a threat, the ocean would be readily available to serve as a heat sink for reactor cooling, emergency evacuation planning would be a lesser consideration...

Nuclear video matinee: Africa looks to nuclear power

April 18, 2014, 6:00AMANS Nuclear Cafe

The World Bank reports that fewer than 10 percent of African households have access to the electrical grid.  Some countries such as Kenya and Nigeria are looking to add nuclear energy to their grids, Egypt has plans to implement nuclear energy and South Africa wants to expand its share.  This video from Voice of America News discusses some recent developments in nuclear energy in Africa and pros and cons.

Pioneering STURGIS will go to shipbreakers

April 17, 2014, 3:55PMANS Nuclear CafeWill Davis

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Nuclear barge STURGIS; photo from US Army Corps of Engineers

Last week, we were reminded of a mostly forgotten but ambitious effort spanning the late 1950's and 1960's by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the U.S. Army-to develop a versatile range of small nuclear power plants-when it was announced that CB&I had been awarded a contract to decommission the former Army nuclear power plant barge STURGIS.  While many have recently touted the Russian Akademik Lomonosov as the "first floating nuclear power plant," the expected completion date for that plant in 2016 will put it almost exactly a half century later than the successful STURGIS.

ANS Annual Meeting: Special Session on Past and Present Critical Experiments

April 15, 2014, 6:00AMANS Nuclear Cafe

The ANS Nuclear Criticality Safety Division (NCSD) is sponsoring a special session at the upcoming American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting in Reno, Nev., June 15-19. The session is titled "Critical and Subcritical Experiments" and will commence the morning of Wednesday, June 18. This session will contribute to the long history and hundreds of technical papers related to critical-mass experiments that first began at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the 1940s.