• Cement prison for old radioactive waste

    The cold war may be over, but its radioactive legacy is not; between 1950 and 1990, nuclear weapons materials production and processing at several federal facilities generated billions of gallons of water contaminated with radioactive byproducts; researchers at Idaho National Laboratory test an inexpensive method to sequester strontium-90 where it lies. The researchers can coax underground microbes to form calcite, a white mineral form of calcium carbonate and the main ingredient in cement. Calcite should be able to trap strontium-90 until long after it has decayed into harmless zirconium

  • New technology speeds cleanup of nuclear contaminated sites

    Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on cleanup of some major sites contaminated by radioactivity, primarily from the historic production of nuclear weapons during and after the Second World War; Oregon State University researchers have invented a new type of radiation detection and measurement device that will be particularly useful for cleanup of sites with radioactive contamination, making the process faster, more accurate and less expensive

  • China says it has mastered the process of reprocessing nuclear fuel

    One way to extend to energy productivity of nuclear fuel is to reprocess it after it has been used; reprocessing nuclear fuel costs significantly more than using it once and storing it as waste; it is also controversial because extracted plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons; China has just announced that it has mastered the technology for reprocessing fuel from nuclear power plants, potentially boosting the supplies of carbon-free electricity to keep the country’s economy booming

  • WikiLeaks: Yemen radioactive stocks "easy al-Qaeda target"

    Yemeni official told U.S. diplomats that the lone sentry standing watch at Yemen’s national atomic energy commission (NAEC) storage facility had been removed from his post, and that the facility’s only closed circuit TV security camera had broken down six months previously and was never fixed; “Very little now stands between the bad guys and Yemen’s nuclear material,” the official warned, in a cable dated 9 January this year sent from the Sana’a embassy to the CIA, the FBI, and the department of homeland security; when told of the Yemeni nuclear storage problem, Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University nuclear terrorism expert, said: “Holy cow. That’s a big source. If dispersed by terrorists it could make a very nasty dirty bomb capable of contaminating a wide area”

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  • Debate over extending operation of aging NY reactor

    The Indian Point Energy Center is located on the banks of the Hudson River just twenty-four miles north of Manhattan; its reactors are aging: the first reactor at the center began operating in 1962 and shut down in 1974; two new reactors were built in 1974 and 1976; the plant operator seeks permission from the U.S. government to extend operations at the plant; many locals oppose the extension, citing what they say are inadequate emergency evacuation plans in the event of a disaster, and the damage the plant cooling system inflicts on aquatic life

  • Safety concerns remain about Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design

    The United States and the United Kingdom are yet to approve the latest reactor design from Westinghouse; regulators in both countries are not convinced that the reactor can effectively withstand man-made or natural disasters; these concerns notwithstanding, China is pushing forward with an ambitious nuclear energy program which will see sixty AP1000 reactors built by 2010; the scope and pace of the Chinese program, and the fact that at its core is a reactor with possible design weaknesses, are a cause of more concerns

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  • Fusion power nears

    The long-sought goal of a practical fusion-power reactor has inched closer to reality with new experiments from MIT’s experimental Alcator C-Mod reactor, the highest-performance university-based fusion device in the world; MIT advance helps remove contaminants that slow fusion reactions

  • Nuclear power faces waste, weapons proliferation problems

    New report concludes that nuclear power will continue to be a viable power source but that the current fuel cycle is not sustainable; due to uncertainty about waste management, any projection of future costs must be built on basic assumptions that are not grounded in real data; the “once-through” policy, mandated by the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, creates a lot of highly radioactive waste; reprocessing and recycling of spent fuel lessens the waste problem, but significantly increases the risk of weapons proliferation

  • Day of using nuclear fusion to generate power from sea water nears

    New X-ray imaging capability developed at Sandia National Laboratory may help remove a major impediment in the worldwide, multi-decade, multibillion dollar effort to harness nuclear fusion to generate electrical power from sea water

  • Two nuclear reactors shut down Sunday because of problems

    Two nuclear reactors — Indian Point nuclear power plant, about twenty-five miles north of New York City, and Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vermont — had to be shut down Sunday; Indian Points was shut down because a transformer caught fire, and Vermont Yankee was shut down because radioactive water began leaking from one of its pipes

  • Goal of eliminating HEU reactors faces hurdles

    To lessen the risk of terrorists getting their hands on bomb-grade materials, the U.S. has led an effort to end the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in research reactors around the world; 72 HEU reactors have been modified or shuttered, but various government and academic facilities still operate around 130 HEU reactors — and these operators are reluctant to switch because of the complexities involved in changing to a new technology

  • Experts: Stuxnet "a game changer"

    EU cybersecurity agency warns that the Stuxnet malware is a game changer for critical information infrastructure protection; PLC controllers of SCADA systems infected with the worm might be programmed to establish destructive over/under pressure conditions by running pumps at different frequencies; Dr. Udo Helmbrecht, chief of EU’s cybersecurity agency: “Stuxnet is a new class and dimension of malware—- The fact that perpetrators activated such an attack tool, can be considered as the ‘first strike’ against major industrial resources. This has tremendous effect on how to protect national [cyber and critical infrastructure] in the future’

  • Regulators: N.J. nuclear plant employee was an Islamic jihadist

    A 26-year old American, Sharif Mobley, now under arrest in Yemen for terrorist activities, became an Islamic militant while working for six years at several nuclear plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland; the man — who told fellow workers “We are brothers in the union, but if a holy war comes, look out” — had unescorted access to the interior of the plants; to have unescorted access to secure areas of a nuclear power plant, a person must undergo a background investigation, including a criminal record check and a psychological assessment — but the rules did not account for temporary workers who migrate from plant to plant, as Mobley did

  • Nuclear power making a come back

    If Germany, where most of the public is suspicious of nuclear power, plans to extend the life of its nuclear reactors, the world must have entered a new atomic age; indeed: around the world, more than 150 reactors with a total net capacity of almost 170,000 megawatts are planned and more than 340 more are proposed, according to the World Nuclear Association

  • India's ambitious thorium-based nuclear energy plans

    With 40 percent of its population not yet connected to the electricity grid and an economy growing by about 8 percent each year, India’s ambitious 3-stage energy security plan includes exploiting the country’s vast reserves of thorium; India could thus find itself a leading global exporter of an alternative nuclear technology that is more efficient than today’s uranium-plutonium fuel cycle