from HR 6, as amended by the Senate
(2) alternatives for --(A) designing a pilot program to determine the feasibility of using renewable electricty to power electric vehicles as an adjunct to a renewable fuels mandate;
(B) allowing the use, under the pilot program designed under subparagraph (A), of electricty generated from nuclear energy as an additional source of supply;
This is the Vermont Yankee cooling structure last August.
Twenty five years ago Maggie Thatcher chose what Jimmy Carter declined. War.
In Argentina, four out of ten veterans have attempted suicide at least once, five out of ten veterans are diagnosed with alcoholism, and seven out of ten suffer from sleeping disorder, and most of the families of veterans report fear of the violent reactions in minor conflicts. For details, see pagina/12. Until late 2003 no one knew that the price they would pay, humility of surrender and capture, was the alternative to first-use of nuclear weapons against the deployed force structure, and the force structure's logistical tail, including targets in Argentina.
The government of Margret Thatcher sent tactical nuclear weapons (free-fall bombs, the WE177) with the invasion force, and shuffled them about, causing seven weapons containers to become damaged under unstated circumstances, and leaving open the possibility that one or more weapons containers were lost when the destroyer Sheffield was sunk after being engaged by an Exocet (surface-to-surface) missile.
There is an important review of the press, UK and Argentine, at Le Monde, on the conflict, 25 years later.
Links: UK MOD WE177 tactical free-fall nuclear bombs dismantlement announcement (1998)
This was originally written on December 7th, 2003, and for some reason I can't recall, left in draft state, for me to find today. The original is in the extended area.
Lars Fagerberg was shown the door Thursday for the near melt-down last August. For background see Forsmark 1 lost power ....
... Sprinkling was activated in the containment. ... and The shift team ... prepared to activate the automatic depressurization system ...
The operators were prepared to breach into the containment vessel. What happens after that is a roll of many loaded dice. As recently as three years ago the Portland Press Herald editorialized on the predictability, and hence the safety, of nuclear reactors.
The PCF, or at least its direction, just did an about face on remaining nuclear. I'll have more on this in a day or two. See this for a view of the political forces engaged.
In France the candidates for the '07 presidential have all taken positions on the question of nukes and Kyoto. The local context is the current (center-right) government's plan of record to chase the evolutionary "advanced" tail of the deuterium oxide D2O cooled and moderated pressurized heavy water reactor series (PHWR) and build a third-generation PWR -- the "European Pressurized Reactor" (EPR) -- at Flamanville (Manche).
Is it also, effectively, close to zero?
An elite US unit secretly removed a cache of weapons-grade uranium this week from a vulnerable ... San Jose Murky News
The International Atomic Energy Agency secretly completed the removal of 40 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear reactor ... IHT
Russia has taken back dozens of kilograms of highly enriched spent uranium from a reactor built with Soviet assistance in ... RIA Novosti
The Department of Energy has moved 90 pounds of highly enriched uranium from a research facility ... WSJ
The US yesterday removed nearly 100 pounds of weapons-grade uranium from a research reactor in Poland, one of the largest recoveries yet of material that could ... MOSNEWS
Poland has returned to Russia close to 40 kg (88 pounds) of highly enriched uranium, enough to make an atomic bomb, as part of a global ... Reuters
A facility that uses 20-80% 235 HEU, which is not exactly "weapons grade", 90% 235 would be, to make isotopes for cancer treatment, has been de-fueled. The Soviet Union built 17 HEU-fueled reactors abroad, and the spent fuel from these reactors is scheduled to return to Russian control by 2012-13. Over 900kg of spent HEU from Soviet-built plants in six countries: Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Libya, Latvia and Uzbekistan, has been returned to Russia, and down-blended to LEU.
Of course, it is more fun to tart up the copy and write "secretly" and "weapons grade" and "terrorists" and "gun-type device" than to write about a well-known IAEA coordinated de-fueling of research reactors built during the heyday of the "Atoms for Peace" competition between the US and the SU. A process that isn't without problems, which the authors, Soviet and American, of their respective "Atoms for Peace" program, didn't think through to the end.
There are at least 120 still-operating HEU-fueled reactors.
The World Information Service on Energy site hasn't been updated since mid-July (it is holiday time in Europe), so there is no news there. There are four back-up generators at Forsmark 1, a 968 MWe BWR that become operational in 1980. When power was lost to the reactor, in particular to its monitors and cooling pumps, two of the four generators could not be started.
Not confidence building. Since the MSM coverage has been wicked scanty, to the point of finding out which of three units experienced the failure, and what the failure was, is a multi-hour challenge, here's some of the RASK report down by SKi staff the following day.
From SKi:
On July 25 at the Forsmark unit 1 NPP there was a short circuit in a 400kV outdoor switching station. Due to this the plant scrammed in a way that included a number of subsequent events in a complex scenario.
After disconnecting the unit from the grid due to the short circuit there was a partial scram and both turbines for a short while transferred to house load operation. After the turbine trip the reactor scrammed. A number of conditions in the safety trains (in system 516, the reactor protection system) tripped: several scram conditions, I-isolation and N-chain. The reactor scram could be seen through WRNM even though the indication for control rod positions was unclear due to the unit partly having lost its power supply. Water was pumped in using two of the lines in system 327, the auxiliary feedwater system (2x22,5 kg/s). Four of the eight reactor recirculation pumps were in operation.
Pressure relief of steam from the reactor to the condensation pool was done through two pressure relief valves in system 314, the automatic depressurization system (about 2x50 kg/s) that had been opened via the N-chain.
Reactor pressure and water level in the reactor went down. The display of the reactor level was ambiguous since some actuators were not active due to loss of power. The water level was down 2 m and the pressure went down to 12 bar after about 20 minutes. The emergency cooling system which had already started on isolation signals pumped water into the reactor vessel for a short while when pressure had been reduced. Sprinkling was activated in the containment.
The shift team checked the level in the reactor vessel in order to be prepared to activate the automatic depressurization system if the level were to be reduced to 1.1 m, in accordance with the Emergency Operating Procedures.
After 23 minutes the shift team realized that there was a possibility to manually restart the two diesels that had stopped, and after this the situation was quite quickly stabilized. The 6 kV bus bars were then already operational.
The reactor was then at hot stand by.
After the shift handover to the ongoing shift the leaving head shift engineer had a debriefing with her team.
SKI concludes that the event badly affected important redundant components, namely the DC/AC inverters for feeding of the battery secured 500 kV-bus bar from a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply). This means that this is a common cause failure event. If the other two subs had been knocked out as well this would have led to a total loss of power, including the battery secured net. This is a more severe case than was anticipated in the Safety analysis report. During the visit there was no obvious direct cause for two subs being knocked out, whereas the other two were not.
SKI furthermore states that:
The work on assessing the course of the event seems to be well described in spite of the difficulties obtaining the information about it. The events in the reactor part, however, were not well described. In spite of a very unclear signal display, knocked out computer screens as well as the loud speakers being out of order, the control room personnel seems to have done their job according to their instructions. The control room also received valuable help from the control room personnel at units 2 and 3. The head shift engineer also summoned the next shift about an hour prior to the scheduled time. The motive for this was to make sure that they were informed of the event well in advance, and the head shift engineer also judged that it was uncertain whether her shift team could complete the whole shift.
Possible causes for the event and contributing conditions
The initiating event occurred in connection with maintenance work done by SVK (The company that administers and runs the national electrical grid in Sweden), and this was done while unit 2 was out of operation due to its refuelling outage. SVK had written a work order and had informed FKA about it. FKA would have had the right to react on the maintenance being done exactly at this moment (and has done so in other cases), however this time there was no need to react and ask for the maintenance work to be postponed. The reason for the short circuit in the switching station has not been ascertained and SVK has still to submit a report on the disturbance.
The 70 kV-net was probably instable. This is to be confirmed by SVK. The instable voltage in the 70 kV-net led to the 6 kV-net also being unstable. When automatic switch tried to connect the 500 V-net the 6 kV-net was too unstable, and automatic switch then tried to feed the 500 V-net from the diesels. It is essential that a complete picture of the steps in the event be put together and confirmed.
The reason for two of the battery secured bus bars being knocked out is, according to the primary analysis, that the voltage transient tripped the rectifier as well as the inverter, which according to the utility FKA is due to incorrect design. The inverter should have been in operation to make the batteries feed the 500 kV-net. The tuning of the protective devices should be done in such a way that these trip selectively, so that the DC/AC-converter for battery voltage to the 500 kV-net is protected.
The UPS (AEG delivered) were installed in about 1993-1994 as an improvement of the former rotating transformers. Information from AEG to the utility FKA, but not confirmed, claims that a similar event occurred in an NPP in Germany, and that AEG was aware of the problem and had taken measures to prevent this error reoccurring. This implies routines and practices connected to experience feedback need to be checked.
One problem was that the list of events was far from complete. Many events were registered, however with no time recorded, and probably some events were missing altogether. This has meant that detective work is needed to investigate the course of events.
That reads like the operators were prepared to breach into the containment vessel. What happens after that is a roll of many loaded dice.
Ironically, on April 27, 1986 workers at Forsmark were found to carry radioactive particles. The origin of the presumed leak was investigated and it eventually became clear that the contamination came from the atmosphere. This was the first place outside the Soviet Union that detected the Chernobyl plume of April 26, 1986.
Stéphane Lhomme has been arrested. He's the spokesperson for Sortir du nucléaire, a network of 718 anti-nuclear organizations, and his arrest was carried out by the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), "sous le contrôle de la section antiterroriste du parquet de Paris".
EDF is proposing to build a new type of pressurised reactor near Cherbourg. It is designed to fail if struck by a large airplane. This engineering cost/benefit design choice is documented. The document is classified "confidential defense", and its existance and contents are well-known. Never the less, the claim of suspicion of its possession is suffieicient to cause the national courts to issue warrents for an arrest and the search and seizure of the archives of the person arrested.
As a "terrorist".
The "European Pressurized Reactor", a 3rd generation pressurized water reactor with a cute name, will cost 3 billion Euros, and according to EDF, that money would not be better spent on improving energy efficiency and developing renewables, and all 58 reactors in France share the design choice that the Avrea group ("CO2 free power") has selected for is "EPR" design, which it is building in Finland, and has bid in China, and will market the US.
What EDF is really afraid of is that the French state won't be irrevocably committed to, won't have suspended or "compressed" the review process for, a Gen3 reactor, before Chirac, de Villepin, and Sarkozy and the French Right are voted out of power in 2007.
Here's the non-classified cover letter (pdf) to the classified original, which is chock-a-block with plane+nuke=ouch references.
I would like to make some money. A lot of money. An obscene amount of money.
I have a plan.
I will cause the value of the hydrocarbons I already control to triple, and I will prevent the entry of a competitor into the market for fissiles, which will have a secondary medium-term effect of raising further the value of the hydrocarbons I already control.
I will bomb Iran.
I will say the cause for war is not this.
I will say it is some other malarky.
And morons will guest post on Juan Cole's Informed Comment a Wicked Dumb Guest Post or at ABC or at XYZ or ... that all Iran needs to do is ... not get into the enriched uranium fuel market, and instead chase the evolutionary "Advanced" tail of the deuterium oxide D2O cooled and moderated pressurized heavy water reactor series (PHWR), and stay the hell out of the rest of the Gen III and all of the Gen IV reactor fuel market. Because the malarky is seasoned to taste.
Prior work: Iranian Nuclear Fuels, Inc.
See also: Wampum's Atomkraft series.
Because not paying attention is one of my core skills, I didn't notice when Patrick Moore decided that the best response to atmospheric carbon loading is fission. Stewart Brand is of the same mind.
I'm not. Then again, I didn't co-found Greenpeace or start the Whole Earth Catalog. I spent those years organizing Diablo Canyon and Seabrook protests, in the Narcoleptics AG, linking uranium mining on Indian land to waste disposal, also on Indian land, with "military" and "civilian" enrichment and use of enriched uranium, and production of plutonium in between -- the whole fuel cycle -- from cradle to ... there is no grave.
Last fall I was writing the Venezuelan Embassy and CITGO months before the deal was announced that brought discounted fuel oil to low income Mainers and the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies. Because Abenakis are not Federally Recognized Indian Tribes, and the Maine Legislature even declared Abenakis extinct in the late 1800s, to "settle" the land claim question forever (or not), the DC firm hired by Venezuela didn't include Abenakis in the token amount of oil steered to the Penobscots and Passamaquoddies. It was worse in Massachusettes, where none of the Venezuelan oil went to Indians. Even so, it cost Pleasant Point Gov. Melvin Francis, Passamaquoddy Tribe, his life driving home from the close-the-deal meeting.
In 2001 Maine generated 22.7 million metric tons of CO2.
1000 megawatts of electricity burns 7,300 metric tons of fossil carbon, and produces 7,300 metric tons of atmospheric carbon. Maine needs a lot of 1000 megawatt reactors to offset its 2001 carbon budget, a lot more than just one new, Generation III reactor in Wiscasset.
A reactor in every town large enough to burn 1000 megawatts of electricity is probably not what anyone has in mind. It is surprising that the only solution to the rising curve of atmospheric carbon loading is centralized, very highly capitalized, weapons programs adjuncts, with enormous temporal persistence issues. Then again, the Sierra Club had a leadership challenge in its last cycle by a group convinced that Indians from Mexico and points south were the primary forces causing environmental degredation in the US, and the ZPG folk never shook their sanitary hysterectomies roots for Indian and Colored women in the Eugenics Movement of the first half of the 20th century.
The 2001 statewide Field Poll in California had a 59% favorable for construction of new nuclear reactors. The pro-nuke number in 1984, the last time the Field Poll posed the question, was only 33 percent. It is clear that we don't live in the 80's any longer. Nukes having twice Bush's favorables is funny, but not wicked funny. I know who the nuclear nut men are, and they're not particularly altruistic, or able to thrive in a democratic, decentralized, political culture. And they don't have a compelling, or a competitive product.
We could use a term like "liberal hawks", which describes the Dems who signed up for the triumphalist portion of the NeoCon adventure in carbon procurement, for the folks who've signed up for the historically inevitable triumph of Peaceful Nuclear Energy (second round).
Fission hawks?
Its been 30 20 years this month. The WHO puts the mortailty at 4,000. The report, Chernobyl's Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts, runs to 600 pages in three volums.
It is pretty grim reading, and of course, nukes are back on the table, the plutonium economy (MOX) of Japan, Russia, France, and the US, the down-blended uranium economy (HEU) of Russia, France, and the US, and the 3.5% (LEU) economy of everybody, including Iran.
[typo corrected by reader astroprof. thx! ebw]
guest post by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of armscontrolwonk.com.
This is first part in a three part series on Iran’s nuclear capabilities that I am writing at the urging of Noah Shachtman from DefenseTech.
When some moron like Charles Krauthammer claims Iran is now just “months” away from a bomb, you can pretty much ignore him: He has no idea what he is talking about.
Overall, Iran is probably a little less than a decade away from developing a nuclear weapon. The key question here is how long it will take Iran to enrich a few tens of kilograms of uranium to more than 90 percent U-235.
Dafna Linzer reported that the US Intelligence Community does not believe that Iran could do so before “early to mid next decade”—a revision of previous assessments that Iran would “have the ability to produce nuclear weapons early in the next decade.”
Why so long? The answer is that Iran still has to build, install and operate its centrifuges to enrich uranium.
David Albright and Corey Hinderstein at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) released an estimate that breaks down the steps for Iran to make fissile material for a bomb, along with a nifty satellite image (at right) of Iran’s Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz.
Most references to Iran being “months” away from a bomb are really statements about how close Iran will be once it completes the FEP—something, as you will soon see, that will take a few years.
***
But, first a little digression …
Iran plans to house about 50,000 centrifues in the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz in order to produce low enriched uranium for a notional civil nuclear power program. The output of a centrifuge is measured in “seperative work units”—a measure of the amount of work required to enrich a given amount (product) uranium. In math:
Separative work per unit of product = V(XP) – V (XW) – F/P *[V(XF) – V(XW)]
V(S) = (2*S – 100) * LOG (S/(100-S)]
F/P = (XP- XW)/(XF-XW), where
XF = feed assay (W/O)
XP = product assay (W/O)
XW = tails assay (W/O)
V = separation potential
S = XF, XP, or XW
F/P = feed to product ratio
URENCO understood that most of us find math a quaint endeavor in the age of the calculator, so they posted a sweet SWU calculator on their website. Now, you too can caclulate how much SWU is required to produce 25 kg of HEU (a few thousand depending on some technical factors).
Each of Iran’s centrifuges has an output between 2-3 SWU/year. Iran plans a that the full scale FEP at Natanz will house 50,000 centrifuges, giving the plant a capacity of 150,000 SWU/year—enough for annual reloads of LEU for the Bushehr reactor or, if configured differently, 25-30 nuclear weapons worth of HEU per year. (More on Natanz)
Of course, those are Iran’s plans. Iran probably only has about 700 centrifuges, as well as components for another 1,000 or so.
***
So, the real question, however, is how quickly Iran could assemble and operate 1,500 centrifuges in a crash program to make enough HEU for one bomb (say 15-20 kg).
Albright and Hinderstein have created a notional timeline for such a program:
Total time to the bomb—about three years.
David and Corey state that this timeline is a worst case estimate that assumes Iran encounters no significant problems along the way:
This result reflects a worst case assessment, and thus is highly uncertain. Though some analysts at the IAEA believe that Iran could assemble centrifuges quicker, other analysts, including those in the US intelligence community, appear to believe that a date of 2009 would be overly optimistic. They believe that Iran is likely to encounter technical difficulties that would significantly delay bringing a centrifuge plant into operation. Factors causing delay include Iran having trouble making so many centrifuges in that time period or it taking longer than expected to overcome difficulties in operating the cascades or building a centrifuge plant.
The interesting question is what technical problems the US IC expects Iran to encounter. The thing about a crash program is that things, well, crash. In another paper, Albright and Hinderstein note some of the potential problems:
Iran might not be able to meet such a schedule for bringing a centrifuge plant into operation. The suspension of manufacturing and operating centrifuges could be reestablished, or Iran might have trouble making so many centrifuges. In addition, Iran does not appear to have accumulated enough experience to operate a cascade of centrifuges reliably. Iran had assembled 164 centrifuges into a cascade just before the suspension, but it did not acquire sufficient experience in operating the cascade to be certain it would perform adequately. Centrifuges can crash during operation, causing other centrifuges in the cascade to fail—in essence, destroying the entire cascade. Thus, Iran might need a year or more of additional experience in operating test cascades before building and operating a plant able to make HEU for nuclear weapons.
Yes, centrifuges spinning at supersonic speeds can crash. Especially if you don’t get the lead out.
***
Well, not really lead—but molybdenum hexafluoride (MoF6) (Folks in the 18th century thought molybdenum was lead—hence the name derived from molybdos, or lead in Greek).
I’ve previously emphasized one technical problem—the inability of Iran to make relatively pure uranium hexafluoride (“hex”) to be fed into centrifuges for enrichment. (See Got Gas? Iran Stinks at Making UF6, Aug 13, 2005)
Before introducing UF6 into a centrifuge cascade, the Iranians must rid the gas of impurities like MoF6 or the impurities will plug cascade piping, crashing Iran’s centrifuges.
Richard Stone in this week’s Science Magazine further documents the problems that Iran is having purifying hex at its Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) near Esfahan:
Creating purified UF6, which can be fed as a gas into centrifuges for isotope separation, would be a much bigger one. According to an official at the U.S. State Department, Iran has struggled to convert UF4 into UF6, a dangerous process involving highly toxic and corrosive fluorine gas. The official also claims that Iranian UF4 is tainted with large amounts of molybdenum and other heavy metals. These oxyfluoride impurities in UF6 “might condense” and thereby “risk blockages” of valves and piping, an IAEA specialist told Science.
Iran’s bad at making hex in part because the Clinton Administration convinced the Chinese to stop building the UCF—a major nonproliferation victory that Stone mentions. Stone cites an interview that Dr Mohammad Saeidi, AEOI deputy for planning and international affairs, discussing the deleterious impact of the Chinese cut-off. (See: Sticks and Stones: China, Iran and the UCF, Sep 05, 2005 . Contains the full-text of the interview, in the event you’re interested.)
Stone also mentions a series of stories by Mark Hibbs detailing Iran’s difficulty in using pulse columns to purify uranium. (Iran’s UF6 Is Crap, Sep 28, 2005 and Chinese mixer-settlers at UCF, Oct 20, 2005).
How long will it take Iran to get it’s act together on hex? Hibbs reported a wide variety of estimates among intelligence services:
Intelligence analysts do not agree on how long it will take Iran to solve current process chemical problems at its restarted Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) at Isfahan.
These difficulties have thus far prevented Iran from producing uncontaminated uranium hexafluoride (UF6) feedstock for its gas centrifuge enrichment program. Last month, as Iran prepared to operate the plant, Vienna officials said that Iran would require “at least several months” to address its problems (NF, 15 Aug., 1).
According to Israeli government analysts now examining related technical issues, it may take Iran two or three months to begin producing pure UF6. According to U.K. government experts, however, Iran may need about 18 months to do that.
But government analysts do agree on one point: The higher the enrichment level sought by Iran from its gas centrifuges, the more critical it will be for Iran to first eliminate technical problems associated with producing pure UF6.
***
Iran still faces a number of technical challenges before it can start churning out fissile material. Those challenges are going to years to solve.
Parts 2 and 3 will discuss whether Iran could mate a warhead to a missile and prospects for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Just before Memorial Day Peter Daou excitedly sent me mail about a project he'd gotten involved with, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on immediate actions to address high-risk situations involving nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. [It] is co-chaired by CNN founder Ted Turner and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. Warren Buffett serves as Advisor to the Board of Directors. He went on to push a video they'd put together, which is now on quite a few sidebars.
I looked at the scenario in the blurb and sent Peter a note (extended area). My thoughts about this project were encoded in Indian politeness in the last line. I'm glad these folks are interested in the prevention of use of nuclear weapons, but I'd prefer they helped Dr. Helen Caldicott and WISE and the Federation of American Scientists and ... before starting yet another high-profile inside-the-beltway operation. Stopping the Nuclear Nutmen with warm milk, stale grahm crackers and library paste, backed up by simply getting arrested, was wicked hard back during the Reagan/Bush administrations. It would have helped to have had money. Blowing what money there is on suits because the money came from suits and suits are most comfortable when surrounded by suits isn't an interesting proposition -- except for suits and wannasuits.
The US has about 20,000 fission and fission-fusion devices, and Russia has a slightly larger inventory of devices, and both states have large stockpiles of fissiles. Absent Mutual Assured Distruction of symmetric weapons inventoried states, there isn't a lot that can be said in favor of retention of these device inventories, or their primary historic delivery systems. NB that the current BRAC round does not define "military necessity or utility" in a nuclear weapons capacity context, and that the bases identified by the current SecDef (and war criminal) for closure or re-alignment map much more closely to the Red/Blue political division of the United States than to obsoleted nuclear weapons capacities -- the bombers, missile fields and boomers are budgetary untouchables.
One can, like Geo. Bush in a debate during the last cycle, and in rhetoric before and since, define the risk of fission and fission-fusion weapons as the risk that an actor will acquire one device and deploy it in a city, as the US did in Hirshima and Nagasaki, and allocate resources nominally reducing that risk model, up to and including war against ... Iran.
One can, like John Kerry in the same debate during the last cycle, and in rhetoric before and since, define the risk of fission and fission-fusion weapons as the risk that the existing stockpiles of devices and fissile materials will eventually be re-purposed, and allocate resources nominally reducing that risk model, up to and including unilateral partial disarmament.
Unfortunately, the scenario in the video now in mass distribution by the project Peter is associated with is much, much closer to the first risk model than the second, and as a political message and teaching/motivating vehicle, tends to support the Bush resource allocation plan. Up to and including ...
So, sixty years to the day after Trinity, with weapons inventories of nearly 60,000 devices between the US, Russia, China, the UK, France, Isreal, Pakistan and India, and enough weapons-grade fissiles in stockpile to double that on demand, and the NPT itself now junk, destroyed by the Bush regime's insistance upon Iran as a nacent weapons state, rather than upon inventory reduction, and the Nuclear Nutmen now in control (again) of the US and Russian and Chinese and Japanese and French and Indian and ... energy policies, it is Happy Birthday Everybody! There is cake and soda and hats and party favors for everyone!!
Continue reading "Happy Birthday to You and You and You and You" »
The issue to understand is why would Iran want 20 centrifuge machines for "research and development ".
USEC and the NRC provide the immediately obvious answer to the question, why a commercial plant developer would seek to operate a set of 20 centrifuge machines:
On Feb. 12, 2003, USEC Inc. submitted a license application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to construct and operate the so-called American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility at its Portsmouth plant in Piketon, Ohio. "Scheduled to begin operation in 2005, the demonstration facility will contain a lead cascade of up to 240 centrifuge machines, the first new centrifuge enrichment machines in the United States. The lead cascade is the basic building block of a commercial enrichment plant. It will yield cost, schedule and performance data before USEC begins construction of a $1 billion to $1.5 billion commercial plant later in the decade."As of March 24, 2003, the license application is available for download from ADAMS [ebw: the NRC's on-line document library, still partially shutdown due to "terrorist" concerns].
Cost, schedule and performance data, before construction of the production facillity. Pretty sane stuff.
At the Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference (PBNC) in Honolulu last March Ron Green claimed that USEC's centrifuge design features untapped technical margins which would allow the throughput to increase to about 400 SWU/year/machine. This was later "clarified" that the centrifuges wouldn't be run at 20% over the design and it turns out there is a lot of "iffyness" about generating ecomically reliable data from small lead cascades, and running them "maintenance free". Incidently, USEC's lead cascade (03/04) is 30, down from the (02/03) quote of 240 centrifuge machines. The USEC number is 300 SWU/year/machine. Cite: Nuclear Fuel April 26, 2004, WASTE MANAGEMENT; Vol. 29, No. 9; Pg. 4 "Many questions remain about USEC's centrifuge performance", by Mark Hibbs, Bonn.
Ron Green is the Senior VP for Wowserisms at USEC. He's more wedded to powerpoint than to a slide rule, so he wouldn't do quite so well in the management team of Iranian Nuclear Fuels, Ltd. I'm not even going to try and count how much of the news fleets, print and pancake, goes running off with "20 shinny spinning things make us wicked dizzy so it must be bombs" but it should be Iraqi WMDs deja news all over again. They know there's a schedule to keep, flap in December, elections in January, withdrawal from urban centers (other than those logistically necessary for the pivot), the mid-term litmust test vote for Congress and then Drang nach Osten before high-summer, with air before ground by several thousand sorties.
One other thing: The spot price is now about $18.50/lb U3O8 compared to a price of about $11.20/lb on July 30, 2003.
And another: Urenco�s current TC12 technology produces about 40 SWU/year/machine. I'll have to dig up the numbers for the TC21, and of course, the wicked evil P-series machines.
And another: USEC permitting paperwork allows them to enrich up to 10%, which is a lot bigger than 3.5%. Glad I'm not a minority investor. Pre-planned negligence.
If you live in Hartsville (Tennessee), and you read wampum, rethink one or both of those properties.
Dr Pat Upson, Managing Director, Technical, in Urenco Limited (responsible for all site operations, new plant design and construction, research and development, centrifuge manufacturing and diversification, former Enrichment Division Manager of British Nuclear Fuels, Ltd.) and the other partners of the re-spun Louisiana Energy Services (aka "LES-II", who remind you that as the -II business model does not require government funding or customer investment, other than the three surviving LES-I partners, Exelon, Entergy, Duke, the rest is just narrowly-held commercial debt and reactor vendor Westinghouse, they don't have to listen to voters, or rate-payers) would like to move in with you, or move you out, for the long long haul.
I suppose I should put these things together again. I sort of thought it was one of those everybody-knows things, then I noticed that the IHT is fianlly surfacing the legal, and more importantly, the North-South economic aspect of the <scary-music> reason why one or more nuclear weapons states is about to start a third war in as many years in West Asia</scary-music>. So maybe not everybody knows.
Nominally of course, the cause for pre-emptive war is non-proliferation, a variation on the Niger-yellowcake-goes-to-Iraq story that the regime milked during the midterm.
So, start with my posts on Lisa's blog, first on January 14th, Domestic Enriched Uranium production means ..., then on February 17th, In Defense of Howard Dean. The really salient point is this, William H. Timbers, the company's president and chief executive officer, waxes optimistic about the USEC's long-term future in the global enriched uranium market:
The American Centrifuge will reinforce USEC's long-term position as the global leader in the uranium enrichment marketplace. It represents the first of what I hope will be a new generation of nuclear power construction projects in the United States. Increasingly, America is recognizing the need to boost the use of nuclear power to support our energy independence and to protect national security.
Does the NPT cover the entire fuel cycle? Most of its signatories are absolutely certain that it does, and that raw yellowcake need not be exported to China, Russia, Europe or the United States and processed into fuel, and imported back to its {country|region|economy} of origin, and then re-exported when spent for re-processing to China, Russia, Europe or the United States. A few of the signatories, the United States and the UK, and perhaps, only perhaps, Holland, Germany and France, construct the NPT as entitling all of its signatories to only some parts of the entire fuel cycle, and a few of its signatories to all of the entire fuel cycle.
So, the right way to understand the Iranian position is they are positioning to be in competition with USEC (NYSE:USU), BNF (UKGOV), COGEMA (NYSE:CCJ), and whatever comes out of the Russian and Chinese commercial fuel ventures. A Southern State, perhaps the only one, to compete with the Northern States for the fuel market for commercial reactors in the South. An echo of the Non-Aligned Movement's expression in fissiles, which began on 19 December 1945 with the establishment of the now rather well-known Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). When the Americans bomb the Parchin conventional weapons complex, and the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, the Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) in Isfahan, the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility, and on down the first-strike laundry list, they will be bombing Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's vision of an economically decolonized South.
Time to re-read Samir Amin's "L'accumulation � l'�chelle mondiale".