ECA Update: January 26, 2015
Published: Mon, 01/26/15
Portman, Brown and Wenstrup push for Piketon cleanup funding
Highland County Press
January 23, 2015
U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) as well as Congressman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH-02) have urged Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shaun Donovan to fully fund decontamination and decommissioning operations at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.
In a letter to Donovan, the lawmakers expressed concern over volatility in the global uranium market and urged the Administration to fully fund cleanup in their Fiscal Year 2016 budget.
"As a delegation, we have repeatedly urged the Department of Energy to present a comprehensive management plan that fulfills the Secretarial commitment to the community," the lawmakers wrote.
"This plan should not rely upon the vagaries of the global uranium market. Clean-up and restoration work is critically important to southern Ohio, and merits your immediate attention to ensure financial stability, fulfill the federal obligation to the community, and sustain productivity at the site."
"We must hold the Obama administration accountable to the funding promises they've made to cleanup Piketon," Wenstrup said.
"This administration has undercut the project time and time again, and their incomplete budget requests have caused continued uncertainty for southern Ohio. I will continue to lead the fight for full funding, and am encouraged by the bipartisan support displayed with this funding request."
The letter was also signed my Reps. Steve Chabot (R-OH-01), Tim Ryan (D-OH-13), Bob Latta (R-OH-05), Jim Renacci (R-OH-16), Bill Johnson (R-OH-06), Steve Stivers (R-OH-15), Bob Gibbs (R-OH-07), Dave Joyce (R-OH-14) , Mike Turner (R-OH-10), Pat Tiberi (R-OH-12), and Marcy Kaptur (D-OH-09).
Text of the letter is available in the link above.
US Nukes Cost $348B Over Next Decade
Defense News
January 23, 2015
WASHINGTON -- The US government will spend an estimated $348 billion over the next decade to maintain, upgrade and operate its nuclear arsenal, according to a new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
That figure is slightly down from a Dec. 2013 estimate of $355 billion, but still represents an average price tag of $35 billion a year -- major costs in an era when the Pentagon is focused on finding savings.
The Pentagon's share of the $348 billion total is estimated at $227 billion, or about $6 billion more than the 10-year estimate published in 2013. The Department of Energy's total has shrunk by $13 billion in the newer estimate, down to $121 billion.
The drop in overall cost is due in part to "budget-driven delays in several programs, including a three-year delay for the new cruise missile and its nuclear warhead and longer delays in some programs for extending the useful lives of nuclear warheads," the CBO wrote in its report, released Thursday.
The overall breakdown looks like this:
Costs were estimated by looking at nuclear budget lines, examining long-range plans for each relevant program, and projecting each one out.
"Over the next two decades, the Congress will need to make decisions about the extent to which essentially all of the U.S. nuclear delivery systems and weapons will be modernized or replaced with new systems," the authors of the study wrote. Indeed, there are major upgrades planned to the bomber, nuclear submarine and ICBM fleets, something the CBO calculated into their long-term projections.
The CBO projects $40 billion to be spent on the bomber fleet during this time period, which includes an expected ramp up in the Air Force's new Long Range Strike-Bomber. The nuclear submarine forces are estimated at $83 billion over 10 years, while ICBMs will cost $26 billion over the next decade.
The command and control subcategory of systems dropped $1 billion, the result of planned reductions in costs at Strategic Command and Global Strike Command.
The full report is available in the link above.
Resurrecting a Meltdown-Proof Reactor Design
Technology Review
January 22, 2015
A new take on an old reactor design could make nuclear power cleaner and safer, and therefore more competitive with fossil fuels.
Terrestrial Energy, a startup in Ontario, Canada, is commercializing the reactor design, which is based on work done at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Terrestrial plans to start licensing the design in Canada later this year.
Terrestrial is designing a reactor that uses molten salt rather than water as a coolant.
Researchers at Oak Ridge have demonstrated and tested various molten salt reactors over the past several decades. Terrestrial has modified one of these designs in ways it says will make the technology cheap enough to deploy.
Conventional nuclear reactors cost far more to build than fossil-fuel power plants in large part because of safety regulations stipulating costly redundant pumps, containment structures, and other parts. Terrestrial CEO Simon Irish says the molten salt design could make it possible to simplify and reduce the cost of safety systems.
In molten salt designs, if the power goes off or the reactor is damaged, the system will cool off on its own without allowing radioactivity to spread. Conventional nuclear reactors must be actively cooled, with water continuously pumped through them. If the pumps stop, the fuel starts to overheat, which can lead to the release of radioactive materials into the environment.
A handful of other startups, including Transatomic Power, are also working to commercialize molten salt reactors. The technology is also a focus of R&D efforts in China.
Terrestrial's designs are more conventional than those being developed by Transatomic. The company plans to use the same materials employed in reactors tested at Oak Ridge, whereas Transatomic's designs use several new materials.
In Terrestrial's reactor, uranium is mixed with a liquid molten salt coolant. If the fuel gets too hot, that causes the mixture to expand, which slows down fission and reduces the heat of the fuel. This automatically regulates the temperature and prevents overheating. Also, the coolant only boils at a very high temperature, so unlike water it won't evaporate even if the pumps stop working.
Furthermore, if the reactor were damaged and the fuel and coolant mixture leaked out, the fission reactions would slow down and the molten fuel would solidify, limiting the spread of radioactive material.
Irish says the design will also reduce nuclear waste by about two-thirds because the reactor operates at temperatures twice as hot as a conventional reactor, which improves its efficiency and reduces the amount of fuel needed. He also says recycling the fuel, which further reduces waste, is simpler than with conventional reactors.
To make the Oak Ridge design more practical, Terrestrial modified it so it could be manufactured in a factory and shipped by truck to a power plant site.
Another distinctive feature of Terrestrial's design is that key parts are disposable. One challenge with the Oak Ridge molten salt design is that a critical material, graphite, doesn't last very long, which would mean a plant's operators would have to regularly replace it. The new design houses the reactor's main components, including the graphite, in a sealed unit that can be swapped out every seven years, theoretically making operating the plant easier.
Terrestrial has produced a preliminary design, and is working with Oak Ridge to produce an even more detailed design, which an engineering firm could use to produce blueprints. Terrestrial hopes to see the first commercial reactor started in the early part of the next decade.
Y-12 looking for tons (thousands of tons) of high-purity depleted uranium
Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground
January 22, 2015
According to information posted last week on its website, Consolidated Nuclear Security needs to acquire up to 6,800 metric tons of high-purity depleted uranium "and related material and services."
CNS is the contractor at the Y-12 National Security Complex, and a spokeswoman said the depleted uranium would be used in production of nuclear weapons. "That's what we do," Ellen Boatner said in response to questions.
"The DU will be used for production purposes," she said.
Depleted uranium is uranium stock that has lower-than-normal amounts of U-235, the fissionable isotope. It's often a byproduct of uranium-enrichment processes that extract and concentrate U-235 in products for reactor fuel and other uses.
Y-12, of course, is the nation's designated "Uranium Center of Excellence," and the plant is well known as the primary repository for highly enriched (bomb-grade) uranium. The Oak Ridge plant also has deep experience with depleted uranium, but Boatner said Y-12 doesn't have certain capabilities.
"While Y-12 does have varying forms of depleted uranium, the EOI (Expression of Interest) calls for high purity DU, which historically has been purchased for use at the site. Y-12 does not have the ability to create high purity DU."
The expression of interest posted by CNS is not a solicitation. It's an effort to see what capabilities are available for providing the needed DU.
"The purpose of this request is to identify small business sources and the availability of commercial sources and services," CNS said in the announcement.
CNS said it is potentially seeking sources for depleted uranium metal, DU metal "intermediary products" (such as depleted uranium tetrafluoride), DU metal production, containers for transporting and storage of depleted uranium products and metal, and a variety of support services.
The announcement said the National Nuclear Security Administration can supply up to 1,100 cylinders of uranium hexafluoride for possible use in DU metal production.
Responses are due to CNS by Feb. 5.
WIPP discovers fallen roof during inspection
Current-Argus News
January 21, 2015
CARLSBAD -- Mining and Ground Control engineers discovered on Jan. 15 that portion of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant ceiling in Panel 3 had fallen, officials said on Wednesday.
The roof was found during a routine ground control and bulkhead inspection by the WIPP geotechnical staff, and was estimated to be eight-feet long and eight feet wide, with a thickness of 24 inches, WIPP officials said in a release.
"The roof had already fallen before the geotechnical staff found it," said Tim Runyon, WIPP Recovery Communications manager.
The fallen piece of ceiling was found in the Panel 3 access drift of the WIPP underground, an area that is already labeled as restricted due to low levels of radiation contamination in the area, the release said.
Runyon said that problems in the restricted areas of the underground were anticipated after geotechnical inspections in November.
According to the news release, during these inspections, seven areas in the underground were identified as restricted areas due to significant bolt loss. All bolting activities at WIPP were halted since the February 2014 incidents until this last November.
"This event highlights the need to continue prioritizing roof bolting and ground control in both the contaminated and uncontaminated areas of the WIPP underground facility in order to ensure safety and habitability in the underground," stated a WIPP news release.
Roof-bolting in the underground started last mid-November, and WIPP officials have stated that bolting is a priority in the recovery process to ensure safety in the underground.
"Engineers have indicated that the area where the roof fall occurred can be re-bolted and recovered," the news release said.
Area near Hanford's N Reactor returning to plants and animals as cleanup concludes
Tri-City Herald
January 23, 2015
Animals are starting to return to the once-bustling area where Hanford's N Reactor operated for 24 years, irradiating fuel for weapons plutonium production and generating electricity.
Herds of deer and elk have been seen moving across the property and eagles are using the raptor poles along the Columbia River, not far from where a 62-foot-high guard tower once stood over the river.
The reactor area would be difficult to recognize for anyone who was there as recently as five years ago, let alone the workers there during its operation from 1963 to 1987.
Cleanup of the area is nearly complete. Some 114 buildings and related facilities around the reactor have been torn down and 107 waste sites have been cleaned up.
"Right now you go out there and the only existing building is the reactor cocoon," said Nina Menard, project manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology, the regulator for the project. "(Land) has been recontoured. It has been revegetated. As time goes on I think it will do very well."
What remains of the reactor now stands in a landscape colored yellow by straw crimped into the soil.
It has been cocooned, or sealed up, since 2012, with just its reactor core and an attached heat exchanger building once used in electricity production remaining. Other attached buildings were torn down.
The cocooned section will be left standing for 75 years to allow radiation in the reactor core to decay to more manageable levels.
The most recent work has been to restore the industrial area around the reactor, which has had hard use for decades, to shrub steppe habitat.
By September, 98 cleaned waste sites -- which included places where contaminates leaked or spilled and debris was buried -- had been backfilled. The work required 726,000 tons of backfill material.
In some places the ground was backfilled to as much as 14 percent below grade to leave a landscape that looks like it was created by nature. Between N Reactor and the Columbia River, crews put in stakes to show how deep the fill soil should be placed in different areas to create the final contoured landfill.
The disturbed soil was replanted this winter with more than 45,000 native plants and 1,500 pounds of seed. Then more than 100 tons of straw were pushed into the ground to keep seed from blowing away with the desert wind.
Two waste sites remain near N Reactor that still must be cleaned up, Menard said.
They've been left for last because they are in the area near the reactor where the Ice Age floods formed conical mounds in giant ripples across the ground. They have cultural significance to area tribes that call them Mooli Mooli.
Work on one of the remaining waste sites, less than an acre once used as a military dump site, is nearly completed. After the two sites are cleaned up, some load out and parking areas used for cleanup will be replanted.
Planting is done from late fall to early spring to take advantage of winter moisture, making that work outside the scope of Washington Closure Hanford's current contract.
Its contract expires at the end of September, and the Department of Energy has yet to announce whether the contract will be extended to allow Washington Closure to finish remaining cleanup work along the Columbia River or another contractor will be assigned.
Work started by Washington Closure to clean up fuel oil and diesel contamination near N Reactor is already continuing under CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Much of the contamination is 65 to 75 feet deep in the soil in places where it spilled from transfer pipes and storage tanks. N Reactor relied on the fuel oil and diesel for auxiliary power and to run a series of pumps and facilities near the reactor.
A process called bioventing is being used and is working efficiently and effectively, Menard said.
Bacteria feed on the fuel, but have used up most of the oxygen in the soil that they require. A series of blowers pushes oxygen into injection wells to spread out in the porous ground.
N Reactor operations also left radioactive strontium contamination in soil and groundwater near the Columbia River. It's being trapped with a partial chemical barrier injected into the ground to chemically bind up strontium before it reaches the river.
N Reactor was the newest of Hanford's nine plutonium production reactors and its heat-exchange cooling system passed the same water through the reactor about 100 times, rather than the single pass made by cooling water in Hanford's older reactors.
The result was less water discharged with chemicals such as hexavalent chromium to the environment, but the multiple passes meant that the cooling water had higher concentrations of radionuclides, such as strontium, than water discharged from other reactors.
N Reactor also was the longest operating production reactor at Hanford.
It holds a place in history after John F. Kennedy visited just four months before he was assassinated. He spoke to a crowd of 37,000 people allowed onto the nuclear reservation in 1963 to see him commemorate the start of the reactor's plutonium production operations and break ground for the reactor's power-generating component. |
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