Electricity generation from nuclear energy: IAEA, USDOE pledge support

Written by Ebele Orakpo

Monday, 17 November 2008

President Umaru Yar’Adua in the bid to improve electricity supply which is crucial to the realisation of Vision 20-2020, has reiterated the need for Nigeria to generate electricity from nuclear power plants. Electricity plant As a result, a five-day national workshop on Security of Radioactive Sources in Land and Marine Transport was organised by the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA) in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, Austria, and United States Department of Energy (USDOE). The workshop which was held at the Sheraton Hotels and Towers, Ikeja, Lagos was the 33rd public engagement the NNRA has organised over the past seven years for different operating organisations dealing with sources of ionizing radiation and nuclear materials in the country. A representative of the US Department of Energy (USDOE), Mark Hawk, in his goodwill message noted that Nigeria is the first country to hold a national workshop on security of radioactive sources in land and marine transport. He stated that USDOE and IAEA are pleased to work with countries in the area of training, pledging the readiness of the US Department of Energy and IAEA to support Nigeria in this area.

Mr. Vincent Nkong-Njock, of the IAEA in his address said the workshop was very timely “in the wake of many events that happened worldwide in 2001 which prompted the IAEA and member-states alike to act swiftly by coordinating the response of the international community to the threats caused by illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive materials and it is also expected to foster a better understanding of the nature of the threats of potential malevolent use, on ways to diminish the likelihood of such threats occurring and on the necessary measures for preparedness and response in case they do actually occur.”

Declaring the workshop open, chairman of the occasion, the Commandant-General, National Security and Civil Defence Corps, Dr. John Abolurin, represented by the Deputy Commandant-General, National Security and Civil Defence Corps, Sulleiman Bello said the objective of the workshop was to sensitise handlers, transporters, Clearing and Forwarding agents and users of radiation sources on ensuring safety and security during transportation in accordance with the provisions of the Act and other regulations made pursuant to it.

He noted that movement of nuclear material and radioactive sources of significance are now common place in Nigeria, stating that in 2003, “we moved fissile materials to the Research Reactor in Zaria. Furthermore, in 2006, we also moved more than 300,000 Ci of radioactive materials to the Gamma Irradiation Facility in Sheda. Additionally, many high-risk radioactive sources are transported around the country on a daily basis for various uses especially in the petroleum industry, which is the largest importer and user of radioactive materials in the country. Thus, the role of transporters will ever become more crucial.”

In his keynote address, the Director-General of NNRA, Prof. Shamsideen Elegba noted that “this national project will involve the transportation of nuclear fuel into the country and within the country by water, by rail and by road. Nigeria is already a party to all the international conventions and treaties dealing with safety and security of radioactive sources and nuclear materials. This is part of our preparation for a successful nuclear power project,” he said.

According to the organisers, “the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority has the statutory responsibility under the Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Act 19 of 1995, for nuclear safety and radiological protection regulation. The NNRA is, therefore, empowered to categorise and license activities involving the handling and transportation of radioactive sources.

Our national experience since the inception of the agency has shown that radiological incidents and accidents, especially loss of control of radioactive sources, have occurred most frequently during transportation. This thus forms the weakest link in the chain of Import-Export-Use-Transport-Export of radioactive sources.”
source: www.vanguardngr.com

Nuclear energy is clean and efficient

source: www.desmoinesregister.com

President-elect Barack Obama needs to include nuclear energy in his plans to address our energy needs. While he says he supports the use of nuclear power, his comments that we should not build new plants until we solve the waste problem require a political solution.

Scientifically we know how to have less waste and treat what waste there is. The weapons proliferation fears of the 1970s created the political barrier to executing this strategy. The volume of nuclear waste is more than a million times smaller than the waste from burning coal and has been stored at plants across the country since the beginning of U.S. nuclear power in 1958.

The volume of waste produced since then in its current form would cover one football field to a depth of 20 feet - not a huge problem. What is not so easily solved is our need for more electricity, which the Department of Energy predicts will grow by 25 percent by 2030.

That much power cannot be effectively produced with alternatives because we just cannot build that many windmills (that produce power only when there is the right amount of wind) and certainly not with fossil fuels (that we are trying to avoid because of climate change and air pollution).

I have been an environmental professional since 1997, and there are no sustainable primary-power options with carbon emissions to the environment as low as nuclear. We can even build reactors to create more fuel than they use - truly, a renewable-fuel source. There are applications submitted for more than 30 new nuclear plants that utilities want to build. These need to move forward.

We need to start building the facilities that will deliver clean, abundant and domestic energy. And we should build 200, not 30.

- Thomas Draur, Johnston

West queries IAEA aid for Syria during atomic probe

Fri Nov 14, 2008
source: www.reuters.com

By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - Western powers have questioned an International Atomic Energy Agency offer to help Syria look into building a nuclear power plant while it is under investigation for alleged covert atomic activity, diplomats said on Friday.

But they said that whether the United States and close allies act to bar the "technical cooperation" project at an IAEA governors meeting in two weeks -- a rare and politically divisive step -- will depend on the findings of the agency's first investigative report on Syria due next week.

Diplomats tracking the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday that traces of uranium turned up in some test samples taken by IAEA inspectors from a Syrian site Washington says was a nascent atomic reactor before it was bombed by Israel in 2007.

The IAEA declined comment pending the report.

Syria has said the site was a disused military building and that U.S. intelligence driving the IAEA investigation is fabricated. It suggested that the uranium particles came with munitions Israel dropped on the site.

Some diplomats and analysts said the traces were more likely to have come from uranium that was at some stage of processing for fuel, but the origin remained unclear.

The IAEA was expected to caution that the findings warranted further investigation before conclusions could be drawn.

Vienna diplomats, who asked for anonymity, said the mere fact Syria was being probed over nuclear proliferation concerns meant that approving the nuclear power plant study now could send the wrong message.

A restricted IAEA document obtained by Reuters listed a proposal for a "technical and economic feasibility study and site selection" for a power station at a cost of $350,000 from 2009 through 2011.

OTHER PROJECTS NOT IN DISPUTE

This was one of eight draft technical cooperation (TC) projects in Syria of the sort the IAEA does in many member states seeking to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

TC plans come up for ratification by the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors every November. Such projects must be approved by consensus.

The other seven projects listed for Syria had innocuous medical, farming or safety applications and diplomats said these would face no objections.

The United States, Britain and France -- among the biggest contributors of funding for IAEA aid projects -- aired the issue of power plant study in a meeting of Western diplomatic missions accredited to the IAEA, diplomats said.

"Eyebrows were raised and questions were posed about the timeline for this power plant study, whether it's premature before other issues are resolved," said one European diplomat.

"There was some question as to whether it would be appropriate first to assess Syria's energy needs," said another.

But diplomats said many delegations on the global governing body were loath to "politicize" IAEA technical aid without urgent reasons and Western powers were awaiting the IAEA report before deciding a course of action.

In a rare step, the board stripped Iran of some TC projects two years ago. But, unlike Syria, Iran had already been found by the IAEA to have hidden proliferation-sensitive activity and had come under U.N. sanctions which prohibited such IAEA aid.

Nuclear Recycling Could Be Emerging Technology in America

Nov 18, 2008 12:57 PM

source: www.kndo.com

Nuclear recycling is done in France, Japan, and now it's starting in Canada, but not in the U.S. When President Carter was in office he signed an order to ban nuclear recycling technology, but later President Reagan over turned it.

Today, there are many interests from American companies and the federal government. Companies like Energy Northwest think it's vital for the nuclear power industry.

At Energy Northwest gray domes hold all of the old nuclear fuel that they have used in the last 25 years.

"It's the only operating nuclear power station in the Pacific Northwest and it produces about enough electricity to run the city of Seattle," said Brad Peck, Energy Northwest Executive Project Manager.

Nuclear power from this plant has no green house gas emissions and the left over waste could all fit in a building the size of a convenience store.

"Nuclear power and the increase of cost of uranium in recent years has meant that the cost of fuel has gone up which makes recycling used fuel that much more attractive," said Peck.

Right now there is no commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel.

"There's been talk of reprocessing for many years at this point no one has come forward with an application for a reprocessing facility in the U.S," said Michael Layton, Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

There are a lot of issues people have with nuclear energy, but out of the 104 nuclear plants in America that have been running for 30 years, there has not been one related death.

"I think as we take this next step and start recycling and close what we call the fuel cycle we will be much better off and we will see nuclear power take on a true renaissance," said Peck.

If a company wanted to build a nuclear fuel recycling facility they would have to get a license from the NRC. It would be a similar process that is needed to build a nuclear reactor. In the U.S. there are 30 applications to build new nuclear plants.

Crisis opens the door to a new nuclear era

Source: www.al.com

Thursday, June 26, 2008

FINALLY, THE nation is moving back to the future of alternative energy.

It took a new energy crisis and the emergence of climate change as a global issue to persuade U.S. leaders to embrace — in some cases, warily — nuclear power. Unfortunately, the lingering effects of Three Mile Island Syndrome lasted almost 30 years, causing the country that originally harnessed the atom to fall well behind Europe and Japan in developing peaceful uses for nuclear energy.

But with the price of carbon-based energy soaring and the search for ways to cut carbon emissions intensifying, nuclear power advocates have suddenly found powerful new allies in Washington, including the two men vying for the presidency.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, recently called for a major expansion of the nuclear power industry. Sen. McCain wants to see 45 new nuclear facilities come on line by 2030.

Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. McCain's likely Democratic foe, seems to be slowly warming up to nuclear power. During a meeting with the nation's governors last week, he said nuclear power was "not a panacea," but added that it was worth investigating with an eye toward future development.

That's hardly a ringing endorsement, but it's an improvement over the traditional anti-nuclear militancy of his party's left wing. Congressional Democrats also are quietly moving toward a more pro-nuclear stance. Many environmental activists aligned with the Democrats now realize there is no other energy alternative that has the potential to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2005 energy bill passed by Congress re-opened the door to nuclear power by providing federal loan guarantees to help companies with the massive cost of building new reactors. Currently, proposals for 15 new reactors are moving through the regulatory pipeline.

That falls far short of what the country needs to reduce pollution and escape dependence on foreign energy resources. According to a government study, if the U.S. power industry expanded its nuclear footprint to the same size as France's nuclear power industry, which provides 80 percent of that country's electricity, CO2 emissions in the United States would fall to the level specified by the Kyoto climate treaty.

Currently, nuclear plants supply 20 percent of the nation's electricity. The presidential candidates and congressional leaders should set a goal of more than doubling that percentage in the next 20 years.

Congress can help by removing regulatory obstacles and speeding up the glacial process of licensing nuclear facilities. In licensing and regulating nuclear plants, the government should take into account that the commercial nuclear power industry has a better safety record than any other power-generating industry.

The lack of nuclear waste disposal sites is the biggest obstacle to the growth of the nuclear industry. Obstructionists continue to block the development of a national waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Nuclear advocates may be stymied if they fail to make an all-out push for the Yucca Mountain project.

Fifty years ago, nuclear power was considered the wave of the future. But a lot of Americans are just now finding out that it's the cleanest, most efficient alternative to fossil fuels.

With the Three Mile Island hysteria finally behind us, the nation is ready to go nuclear, big-time.