Small & modular nuclear power reactors by Hyperion Power

Small & modular nuclear power reactors (SMR) by Hyperion

According to John “Grizz” Deal, CEO of Hyperion, more than a hundred letters of interest to purchase the HPM have come in from communities and industries on every continent. Conceived at LANL, the Hyperion Power Module (HPM) was licensed exclusively to Hyperion Power Generation Inc. in 2008. The HPM, developed by Otis Peterson, Turner Trapp, and Patrick McClure, uses the energy of low-enriched uranium fuel and meets all the non-proliferation criteria of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

Each unit will produce 70 megawatts or 27 megawatts electric—enough to provide electricity for 20,000 average American-sized homes or the industrial equivalent. Approximately 1.5 meters (slightly less than 6 feet) wide by 2 meters tall (slightly over 6 feet), the units can be transported by ship, rail, or truck to produce power for five to seven years depending on usage.

Manufacturers of refrigerator-sized nuclear reactors will seek approval from U.S. authorities within a year to help supply the world’s growing electricity demand.

John Deal, chief executive officer of Hyperion Power Generation Inc., intends to apply for a license “within a year” for plants that would power a small factory or town too remote for traditional utility grid connections.

With some of the new non-light water SMRs, such as the Hyperion Power Module, the customer does not have to deal with spent fuel because the reactor is shipped to the customer and back to the factory as a sealed, intact unit.

Source: Examiner.com

Fish found in Vermont Yankee tested positive for radiation

Scientist Cecylia Karch holds a fish caught near the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant at the Health Department lab in Burlington, Vt. (Toby Talbot / Associated Press)

Officials blame global nuclear activity of past, not local plant

When a fish taken from the Connecticut River recently tested positive for radioactive strontium-90, suspicion focused on the nearby Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as the likely source.

Operators of the troubled 38-year-old nuclear plant on the banks of the river, where work is under way to clean up leaking radioactive tritium, revealed this month that it also found soil contaminated with strontium-90, an isotope linked to bone cancer and leukemia.

Three days later, officials said a fish caught four miles upstream from the reactor in February had tested positive for strontium-90 in its bones. State officials say they don’t believe the contamination came from Vermont Yankee.

Tritium was reported leaking from the plant in January, and since then has turned up in monitoring wells at levels 100 times the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit.

Officials have said tritium has been flowing downhill from the plant to the adjacent river, though it is diluted quickly in the fast-flowing stream. Tests on river water have not produced measurable tritium readings. Now the question is whether strontium-90, generally considered a more dangerous isotope than tritium, may also have found its way to the river.

State health officials say Vermont Yankee most likely was not the source of the radioactivity in the fish, a yellow perch. Fish and other living things — including humans — around the world have been absorbing tiny amounts of strontium-90 since the United States, Russia and China tested nuclear weapons in the atmosphere in the 1950s and 1960s. A fresher dose was released by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

“It’s clearly consistent with the background levels from Chernobyl and weapons testing that went on until 1965,” said Michael Dumond, chief of prevention services, which includes radiological health, for the state of New Hampshire.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has determined that radioactive strontium is a human carcinogen, but the arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that tracks toxic substances says exposures must be at high levels before the risk of cancer is elevated.

David Deen, a Vermont legislator, Connecticut River Watershed Council river steward and fishing guide, is not mollified.

“As a guide, I’ll tell you when the fish you’re angling for are identified as having strontium-90 in them, it doesn’t do much for the image of pristine fishing.”

Source: The Detroit News

GCC nations meet at nuclear energy forum

Officials from the UAE and the GCC nations have assembled in the capital to discuss issues relating to the implementation of legislation regarding nuclear security, safety and safeguards. The five-day seminar aims at exploring best practices and provisions for nuclear safety 
legislation.

Attending the seminar are 70 high ranking delegates representing critical industries supporting and surrounding the delivery of peaceful nuclear power programmes across the region. Also attending the seminar are officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Environment, the State Regulatory Authority, law enforcement, police, intelligence, Customs and other government bodies.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) event is being organised in partnership with the Critical National Infrastructure Authority (CNIA), the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation (FANR) and the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC).

In his inaugural speech, Staff Brigadier Pilot Shaikh Ahmed bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, chairman CNIA, hoped the conference will help develop positive steps towards promoting and implementing the principles behind nuclear safety and security. He was confident that the conference will lay the basis for national policies and procedures for ensuring high levels of transparency, security, nuclear safety and non-proliferation.

The delegates will participate in a series of lectures, workshops and discussions outlining the IAEA’s requirements and recommendations in the area of nuclear safety and their applications, as well as presentations on the international instruments and synergies between safety, security and safeguards.

Mohamed Al Shamsi, Director of Nuclear Security at CNIA, said that the regulatory framework for the security and safety of nuclear infrastructure is of critical importance.

He termed it as a ‘fundamental’ element in the development of an effective and secure civil nuclear programme. “We are looking ahead to contributing to the discussions ahead and sharing and hearing best practices from across the GCC,” Al Shamsi said.

Source: Khaleej Times Online

New leak at Vermont Yankee found and fixed

A new leak of radioactive material has been found and fixed at the troubled Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, officials said Saturday.

Vapor and water containing 13 different radioactive substances was found late Friday coming from a pipe in a hole workers dug to find the source of an earlier leak.

“This was a new leak,” Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said in an e-mail. “The leak has been stopped. … There is no threat to public health or safety.”

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission also said the public faced no danger.

Spokeswoman Diane Screnci said an NRC inspector will arrive Tuesday to help the two agency inspectors assigned to the plant year-round. She said they will look at company efforts to find what caused the leak, the repair of the piping, and remediation of any effects of the leak.

“The observed short duration and small volume of leakage from the drain line appears to indicate that the event did not result in any impact to public health and safety,” according to an NRC statement.

Vermont Yankee was recently off line for routine maintenance and refueling. It went back in operation and was reconnected to the New England power grid early Saturday. Smith said the plant is expected to be running at 100 percent within the week.

The leak was the second mishap connected with the startup. On Wednesday, the reactor “scrammed” — went into automatic shutdown — when a problem developed with equipment in the switchyard where it connects to the power grid.

In January, plant officials announced that radioactive tritium, which can cause cancer when ingested in large amounts, had turned up in a monitoring well. In investigating, the company spent months digging wells, only to find more tritium and other radioactive substances.

Meanwhile, plant officials acknowledged they had misled state regulators and lawmakers regarding whether the plant had underground pipes that carried radioactive substances. The radioactive tritium was found in an underground pipe.

Vermont is the only state with a law authorizing the Legislature to vote on renewing the license of a nuclear plant. In February, the state Senate voted against a bill to give the plant the green light.

Consequently, the plant could close when its current license expires in March of 2012, although supporters of Vermont Yankee hope lawmakers will take the question up again in 2011.

The 38-year-old plant’s 650-megawatt reactor produces electricity used throughout New England. Owned by New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., the plant is located on the Connecticut River in southeast Vermont, not far from the Massachusetts border.

Source: Burlington FreePress

Pakistan gov’t sets aside Rs 18,500M to fund nuclear projects

The Pakistan government will provide Rs 18,500 million for nuclear projects, including two controversial new atomic power plants to be built at the Chashma complex with Chinese assistance.

The allocation for Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission’s projects, part of the government’s Public Sector Development Programme for 2010-11, came as the country marked the 12th anniversary of its first nuclear tests in 1998.

A total of Rs 12,599 million will be provided for the third and fourth nuclear plants to be built at the Chashma complex in Punjab province.

The complex currently has an operational 300 MW nuclear reactor supplied by China. A second 300 MW reactor is currently being built with Chinese assistance.

China and Pakistan signed an agreement last year for cooperation in building two more reactors with a generation capacity of 340 MW each at the Chashma complex.

Nuclear scientists have expressed concerns over the pact, saying it violates international guidelines forbidding nuclear exports to countries like Pakistan that have not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty nor have any international safeguards on reactors.

The Pakistan government will also provide Rs 3,360 million for the second reactor at the Chashma complex and Rs 300 million for a nuclear power waste facility at Chashma.

Rs 285 million will be provided for various ongoing schemes of the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority, including capacity building to implement the National Nucleus Security Action Plan, establishment of the National Dosimetry and Protection Level Calibration Laboratory and a School for Nuclear and Radiation Safety, official sources were quoted as saying by state-run APP news agency.

Source: Hindustan Times

SCE&G seeks rate hike to fund new reactors

South Carolina’s largest investor-owned utility plans to increase electric rates 2.73 percent to help pay financing costs for two nuclear reactors it plans to build.

South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. said in a news release Friday that the rate increase, set to take effect in October, will add about $3.33 to the monthly bill of a customer using 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each month.

The increase must be approved by state utility regulators. The Public Service Commission last year signed off on allowing SCE&G to raise rates an average of 2 percent a year through 2019 to prepay the financing costs of the $4.5 billion the company expects to spend for its portion of two nuclear reactors. The company is building the reactors with state-owned utility Santee Cooper.

Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia to host Allegro reactor

Moves have been made to site the Allegro advanced reactor in central Europe. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia have agreed to make a joint proposal to host the project.

The layout of Allegro (click to enlarge)

Allegro is to be a gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR) with thermal capacity in the range 50-80 MW. It has funding support as a demonstration project of the Generation IV International Forum, in which France, Japan, Switzerland and the EU are partners on the GFR concept.

It was France that suggested a joint hosting arrangement in central Europe, and the idea has received support from the Czech, Hungarian and Slovakian governments. Last week a memorandum of understanding on cooperation for the preparatory phase of Allegro was signed in Budapest by the countries’ lead nuclear research bodies, AEKI Budapest, UJV Rez and VUJE Trnava, respectively. It covers work for the next two or three years concerning the potential siting of the reactor in the countries, the selection of a specific site and also the overall organization of work for Allegro.

The trio of research bodies have made a joint proposal to have Allegro placed on the road map of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures – a forum at EU level to support large scale research and development facilities.

They will also prepare basic documents that will form the basis to make a later decision on construction and operation of Allegro in one of their countries. Support for this is coming from France’s Atomic Energy Commisison(Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique, CEA).

Allegro comes under the EU’s gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR) program among a range of Generation-IV reactors. It is meant to demonstrate GFR technology and establish its potential relative to a sodium-cooled alternative design as part of the Generation-IV International Forum.

Conceptual design and safety work for Allegro was carried out around 2005. The reactor’s primary coolant would be helium gas, with pressurized water in a secondary loop. The core would have either ceramic fuel and an outlet temperature of 850 deg C, or uranium-plutonium mixed oxide fuel and an outlet temperature of 560 degrees. The reactor could be built in the period between 2014 and 2022.

Allegro’s pilot-scale demonstration would validate the safety reference framework and test the capacity of high-temperature components and heat processes. It would be a step towards a power-generating GFR prototype.

Source: World Nuclear News

‘iRobot’ begs for attention as the real iPad goes global

Chinese pirates hawking a new crop of Apple Inc (AAPL.O) iPad knock-offs are hoping the real product’s global launch will provide much-needed publicity for their slow-selling wares.

They could find the sailing anything but smooth, however, as increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers are seeking the real deal of a product known for its hard-to-copy performance as much as its easier-to-replicate looks.

This week at an outlet in one of Shanghai’s top computer marts, the owner surnamed Li was trying his best to sell a new iPad clone, called the iRobot, passing it off as the iPad’s identical twin.

“It is expensive and it just arrived from Shenzhen. We haven’t sold many of these yet, maybe only two a day,” said a congenial Li, surrounded by an array of Apple-branded products of unknown origin, including three types of iPhone.

“So far, not many people know about the iPad, but after the Apple launch a lot of people will want one. If they can’t afford it, they will buy the fake,” he said.

The iPad officially went global on Friday with launches in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, and Switzerland. [ID:nTOE64Q08O]. It is set to come to Hong Kong in June, but no China date has been set yet.

An Apple spokeswoman in Beijing had no information on when the iPad would be availabe in China and no comment on the fake iPads.

Pirates hope to capitalise on their lower prices and earlier availability to woo Chinese customers, but have met limited success so far.

While Li’s iRobot costs $400 — less than the starting price of $500 for the real iPad — his iRobots and other iPad wannabes also come with a range of distinctively non-Apple traits such as cheap plastic casings, memory card slots and USB ports.

Such differences, along with lower performance in factors such as boot up time and ease of use, are turning off a growing number of potential Chinese customers to the bootleg products.

FAKE OR THE REAL ONE?

Zhou Xi, 26, a marketing executive who already owns an iPhone, said he would buy an authentic iPad or none at all.

“Look, people who have tried the real thing don’t buy the fakes,” said Zhou, a self-professed Apple lover slickly clad in tight jeans and aviator shades, as he shopped for a case for his iPhone at one of the mall’s Apple shops.

Xiao Yi, a 23-year-old office worker, said she immediately thought of an iPad when looking for the top prize to give away at an upcoming company dinner.

“I don’t know much about Apple and the brand, but I know it is a new product so I thought it would be impressive to give away,” Yi said browsing through iPhone accessories at an Apple store at the upmarket electronics mall in Shanghai.

She said she had not decided yet on whether to settle for a fake iPad instead.

Another shop salesman at the mall said demand for real iPads was high, with at least 10 people enquiring about them.

“The piracy problem is not that significant because of the functionality of the real one,” said Mirae Asset analyst Dean Li. “Apple has strong brand power. No matter how expensive, Chinese consumers won’t care about the price problems,” he said.

But not all Chinese have bought into the Apple ethos, reflecting the uphill climb the company and other Western brands continue to face in their battle against Chinese pirates.

Xiao Ling, a 20-year-old sales girl at a shop that claimed to be an authorised Apple distributer, said all products sold from her store were authentic, but her own tastes are less discerning.

“I will definitely buy the fake one, the real one is too expensive, plus it is all the same, only with the fake your don’t have to pay for the apps,” she said. ($1=6.829 Yuan)

Source: Reuters

“Tornado-force winds” keep Vermont Yankee reactor idle

Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor was poised to resume operations Thursday, but a townwide power outage was keeping it shut down, a Entergy Nuclear spokesman said.

Vernon was one of many southeastern Vermont towns blasted by a fierce thunderstorm Wednesday evening, and Vermont utilities said more than 6,000 people in Windham County were still without power Thursday.

In Vernon alone, there were 800 customers without power, said Green Mountain Power spokeswoman Dotty Schnure.

Larry Smith, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said the source of the reactor’s emergency shutdown Wednesday afternoon had been traced to incorrectly calibrated settings on a current transformer. He said the transformer was in Vermont Yankee’s original switchyard, not the new switchyard recently built by VELCO, the Vermont Electric Power Co. The new $54 million switchyard was put into service just this week.

Smith said the hold-up to the plant restarting was that its second backup power source, a tie line to the Vernon hydroelectric station, was offline and without it, the reactor couldn’t start.

Smith said Vernon experienced a severe storm Wednesday evening, and winds were measured at 83 mph around 11 p.m. He said there was widespread damage in Vernon and Brattleboro, with more than 40 trees down on Vermont Yankee’s property.

Downtown Brattleboro was particularly hard-hit, said Christine Rivers, a spokeswoman for Central Vermont Public Service. She said “tornado-force winds” had hit the town, with more than 6,000 customers there without power at one point.

Some people will be without power until Saturday, she said, because of the widespread damage.

In Greenfield, Mass., a city directly south of Vermont Yankee along the Connecticut River, there was so much storm damage that the city declared a state of emergency, said Smith, who said the plant itself did have power.

“We’re just on hold, waiting for the transformer to be repaired,” Smith said. “It could take until tomorrow.”

The lack of power forced the Vermont Public Service Board to cancel its public hearing slated for Thursday evening at the Vernon Elementary School. The hearing had been called to look into the radioactive tritium leak at Vermont Yankee, which first surfaced in early January. Entergy believes it has found the source of the leak and is in the process of cleaning up some of the radioactive contamination.

National Grid, a Massachusetts-based utility, owns the substation next to the Vernon hydro dam, and National Grid spokeswoman Amy Zorich said the transformer in the substation had experienced a fault at about 1:30 a.m. She said the company didn’t know the cause.

“Crews are still investigating,” she said.

Zorich said a mobile substation was being brought in from National Grid headquarters in Westborough, Mass., with hopes of having it functioning by midnight.

“We hope to restore power as soon as possible,” she said, although hooking it up is a complex task.

Source: Rutland Herald

South Korea aids UAE with nuclear energy plans

The United Arab Emirates has turned to South Korean companies to assist in developing their nuclear energy programs.

Gen. Sheik Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi crown prince and deputy supreme commander of the United Arab Emirates armed forces, accompanied by Sheik Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, foreign minister, and other senior officials, have visited the Doosan Group for Heavy Industries and Construction manufacturing plant in Seoul to monitor construction, The Gulf News reported Thursday.

They was hosted by Doosan Chairman Jeong Wun Park and Chairman of the Board Y.H. Park.

During his tour Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan told reporters, “The (United Arab Emirates’) peaceful nuclear program is a step forward in the (United Arab Emirates’) comprehensive development strategy due to its positive and promising aspects, which will complement the (United Arab Emirates’) constant development.”

They also visited the Shin Kori nuclear power plant where a Shin Kori 3 Generation III nuclear reactor is under construction, scheduled to come online in 2012, whose design is similar to the nuclear reactor that Doosan Group for Heavy Industries and Construction will build in the United Arab Emirates.

Source: Ethiopian Review / UPI

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