Joint U.S., Soviet Recycling Program of Weapons-grade Uranium

USEC Inc., a global energy company and provider of enriched uranium fuel and nuclear industry-related services for commercial nuclear power plants, announced it has completed by 90 per cent the conversion of weapons-grade uranium from dismantled former Soviet Union nuclear warheads into low enriched uranium fuel under the program called Megatons to Megawatts(TM).

Megatons to Megawatts(TM) is a 20-year, commercially financed government-industry partnership in which 500 metric tonnes of Russian weapons-grade uranium is transformed to low enriched uranium for use as commercial reactor fuel. USEC, as executive agent for the U.S. government, and JSC "Techsnabexport" (TENEX), for the Russian government, implement the programme.

Its main focus was to convert the equivalent of 20,000 nuclear warheads into nuclear fuel by end 2013. So far, the fuel generated from the conversion equals more than 193 billion gallons of gasoline, corresponding to more than 17 months of U.S. consumption

In past years, this type of fuel has helped generate 10 per cent of the United States' electricity needs.

"For nearly two decades, the Megatons to Megawatts(TM) program has provided a reliable source of fuel for commercial nuclear power plants while reducing the quantities of weapons-grade uranium remaining in the world," John K. Welch, USEC president and CEO, said in a statement.

"As we near the end of this historic nonproliferation program, USEC is preparing to transition to our new contract with TENEX, which will continue to provide a reliable supply of LEU for the company while we work to deploy the American Centrifuge technology."

Nuclear Fusion: Simulation Shows Potential

Experimental nuclear fusion reactor is seen at a laboratory in the Southwest Institute of Physics in Chengdu, Sichuan Province April 15, 2011.

High-gain nuclear fusion could soon be a possibility according to new computer simulations.

A series of computer simulations performed at Sandia National Laboratories revealed that a fusion reactor can release an output of energy that is greater than the energy fed into the reactor.

The method being tested at Sandia appears to be 50 times more efficient to drive implosions of targeted materials to create the fusion reaction.

Nuclear fusion occurs when two atoms fuse together to form a heavier atom. This process releases a vast amount of energy. However nuclear fusion only occurs naturally at incredibly high temperatures like the center of a star.

Even though the process has been impossible to recreate in Earth, scientists have been studying ways to make nuclear fusion possible because nuclear fusion is a very attractive power source since the fuel is free and the process releases massive amounts of energy.

Scientists have looked at two competing approaches for the artificial creation of nuclear fusion: magnetic confinement and inertial confinement.

Magnetic confinement uses magnetic force to contain the fusing plasma within a device while inertial confinement uses lasers to trigger the fusion process.

Magnetic confinement is being used in the 500-megawatt ITER fusion reactor in France while inertial confinement is being used in California's National Ignition Facility.

Magnetic confinement is regarded as the better alternative and according to the computer simulations performed at Sandia the method is more efficient as well.

The researchers at Sandia are testing a method called magnetized inertial fusion in which two coils generate a magnetic field that confines the fusion reaction.

A metal cylinder lines the insides of each of the coils. The cylinder has a metal liner of deuterium and tritium which is then hit with a current of tens of millions of amperes. The current destroys the liner but it generates a strong magnetic field.

"People didn't think there was a high-gain option for magnetized inertial fusion but these numerical simulations show there is," said Sandia researcher Steve Slutz, the paper's lead author. "Now we have to see if nature will let us do it. In principle, we don't know why we can't."

The computer simulations showed that the output was 100 times that of 60 million amperes put into the system. Actual tests are necessary to validate the computer simulations and they are already under way at Sandia. A laboratory result is expected by late 2013.

The work was reported in the January 13 issue of Physical Review Letters and was supported by Sandia's Laboratory Directed Research and Development office and by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

China and Satellite Hacking Claims

The Earth-observing Terra spacecraft. Credit: NASA

In a post on AllThingsNuclear.org, scientist Laura Grego examines U.S. claims linking the Chinese military to alleged hacking attacks on two Earth observation satellites, and concludes there is very little evidence to back them up.

“Why would China try to hack a low-resolution earth-monitoring satellite, much of whose data are distributed free and freely, and for which system China even has operated a ground station to assist in collecting data?” she writes.

Grego questions whether the incidents were indeed hacking, and says that even if they were, it is unclear what advantage an unauthorised user could obtain from Landsat-7 and Terra, “which are not strategically important or national security-related satellites.”

She further notes that no evidence of Chinese involvement is presented in the draft of the U.S.-China Security and Economic Commission’s annual report to Congress. Greco says the report’s assertion that the incidents “appear consistent with authoritative Chinese military writings” is based on one book by a “marginal figure” in China.

All you need to know about Laser Fusion

There's a big new kid on the nuclear energy block.

Last week British firm AWE (formerly the Atomic Weapons Establishment), based in Aldermaston, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Harwell, UK, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California said they would team up to develop laser fusion as a clean energy source.

Laser fusion is an alternative to magnetically induced nuclear fusion, which is used in the Joint European Torus (JET) now operating in Culham, UK, and the test reactor ITER, under construction in Cadarache, France.

Historically, laser fusion has been used focused mostly for weapons testing, while power generation research has concentrated on magnetic fusion. Is that about to change?

What is laser fusion?
At high temperatures and pressures, the nuclei of the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium form a plasma and can be fused to form helium, releasing energy and a neutron.

Firing a synchronised barrage of laser pulses can vaporise the surface of a pellet filled with these isotopes, forcing the pellet to implode and so producing fusion conditions inside the pellet for a few billionths of a second.

The physics resembles the detonation of a thermonuclear (or hydrogen) bomb – although on a much smaller scale – and so the US has used laser fusion to simulate these explosions.

What advantages does it have over magnetic fusion?
Magnetic fusion reactors zap heavy hydrogen gas with a powerful electrical pulse to produce a plasma. A strong magnetic field is then required to confine the plasma before fusion can take place.

That's hard, because plasmas can quickly leak or become unstable. By contrast, laser fusion produces much higher temperature and pressures, so fusion occurs faster, and the plasma must be confined for only billionths of a second.

Fusion of either kind is attractive as a power source because the fuel is more abundant than uranium, and the process does not produce the highly radioactive isotopes generated by splitting uranium atoms.

What stage is the tech at, and who is working on it?
Laser fusion has been studied since the 1960s, with most US funding coming from the nuclear weapons programme.

Today's biggest fusion laser is the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Livermore. By the end of next year, Livermore hopes to reach "ignition" by producing more energy from fusion than is needed to generate the laser pulse.

Smaller lasers are used in fusion programmes at Rutherford Appleton, the University of Rochester in New York and Osaka University, Japan; France is building a NIF-sized system called Megajoule Laser. ITER, meanwhile, is a decade from igniting magnetic fusion.

When will laser fusion come to the power grid?
Livermore's Mike Dunne says that if all goes well, a plant delivering about 440 megawatts of electricity could be up and running in a decade; full-scale versions that follow would deliver about 1000 megawatts.

But don't hold your breath. "So far this is at the border of science fiction," says Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project of the Federation of American Scientists. "The technological hurdles are not nearly explored yet."

Is there anything I need to worry about?
Laser fusion reactors will not have a large volume of hot material that might melt down if power failed, as occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan earlier this year. But fusion neutrons are hazardous and will make other materials in the reactor radioactive.

The tritium in the fuel is also radioactive: it emits beta particles so is dangerous if inhaled and has a half-life of 12.5 years.

Fukushima Nuclear Plant still emitting dangerous levels of Radiation

This Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) handout shows an image taken by a gamma ray camera showing the bottom of a ventilation stack standing between Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's No1 and No2 reactors, where radiation exceeding 10 sieverts (10,000 millisieverts) per hour was found, as shown in red.

Pockets of lethal levels of radiation have been detected at Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in a fresh reminder of the risks faced by workers battling to contain the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Picture: REUTERS/TEPCO

Taiwan on the Nuclear Watch List

Taiwan has placed a local company on a watch list after the firm sold specialised equipment to Iran, an official said on Wednesday.

"The company is on an observation list, which means it must obtain prior export permits, after it imported 108 pressure sensors from Europe and sold them to Iran in March 2008," said an official at the Bureau of Foreign Trade.

Pressure sensors can measure altitudes and are therefore used in aircraft and rockets.

The official, who declined to identify the company, stressed that the device is neither high-tech nor restricted, rejecting media reports that it could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported last month that Iran had tried unsuccessfully to buy the device for more than a year from European and American firms before turning to a Taiwanese company.

UN officials are investigating whether the European companies conducted proper checks of end-user certificates for the equipment, the paper said.

The international community has warned Iran to stop construction of its second uranium enrichment plant, wary that it is trying to develop a nuclear bomb.

Iran rejects the charges and says it wants to build up a civil energy programme.

Russian Companies Move to Support Bulgarian Nuclear Energy Project

Bulgaria's nuclear plant project in Belene following the withdrawal of German utility RWE, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said Friday.

"Russia wants to see the project continue and we are currently holding constructive dialogue with the Bulgarian government to find a fair corporate solution allowing us to secure the further development of Belene," Shmatko said after intergovernmental energy talks in Sofia.

He said he had spoken to the Bulgarian government of "the interest of Russian companies to become shareholders in Belene."

RWE's withdrawal from the 10-billion-euro (14.6-billion-dollar) project for a new nuclear power plant on the Danube prompted Bulgaria to seek new investors to take up the German utility's 49-percent stake in the project.

Severe shortage of funding for the 2,000-megawatt plant also made Bulgaria's government consider selling part of its own 51-percent share in Belene, according to Economy and Energy Minister Traicho Traikov.

"The entry of new investors in the project under mutually acceptable conditions is of interest to Bulgaria. The Russian side, on the other hand, is interested in securing the development of the project ... So the participation of Russian companies as shareholders is an option," Traikov said Friday.

Traikov did not however say when the government would call the international tender for new investors for the plant, for which it had already chosen a builder -- the Russian company Atomstroyexport.

Neither Traikov nor Shmatko would say how big a stake the Russian investors might take up.

Shmatko meanwhile said Russia was ready to provide Bulgaria with a government loan to help it fund the project.

Bulgaria's new right-wing government had refused to offer the necessary state guarantees for the credit and Shmatko said Friday that Russia understood Bulgaria's reluctance to take up more debt amid the current economic and financial crisis.

But he underlined the importance of the project for both Bulgaria and Russia and said it was necessary to overcome "the current uncertainties" surrounding Belene's future.