First contract signed for Cernavoda completion

[NNadir]

First contract signed for Cernavoda completion

A year-long, CAD8.4 million (USD6.6 million) contract will see Canada's Candu Energy prepare the licensing basis for two new Candu pressurised heavy water reactors at Romania's Cernavoda nuclear power plant. The signing was celebrated by the governments of Romania and Canada, as well as the USA.

"The potential to develop two new-build nuclear reactors demonstrates that the Romanian government, along with several other of our public sector clients around the world, recognise that safe, reliable, affordable, low-carbon nuclear energy is how we will combat and ultimately, win the battle against climate change,’’ said Ian Edwards, president and CEO of SNC-Lavalin, which owns Candu Energy. The deal was signed with EnergoNuclear, the project company set up to complete Cernavoda.

The contract was described as the first in a 24-month 'prepatory stage' towards completing the partially-built Candu-6 units Cernavoda 3 and 4, on which work stopped in 1991...

...Although this contract is focused on Canadian contribution, the USA is a major partner for Romania in this project. US Charge d’Affaires in Romania David Muniz said, “The United States is working to provide Romanians with clean, safe, reliable, and affordable energy while ensuring trusted partners contribute to Romania’s vital national and energy security needs."

Kathryn Huff, the US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, called the signing "a major milestone" adding that it supports the goals of the intergovernmental agreement between the USA and Romania and "continues the strong relationship between our countries in the field of nuclear energy."

In addition, Nuclearelectrica's announcement included a statement from Thomas White, the CEO of US engineering firm Sargent & Lundy, which has previously worked on Candu projects in Canada and Romania. He said, "We’re thrilled to continue our business relationship with Candu Energy and Romania," but details of the company's involvement were not immediately available...

...Nuclearelectrica CEO Cosmin Ghita noted that completion of Cernavoda 3 and 4 will bring up to 19,000 indirectly generated jobs while raising nuclear to 36% of electricity supply and 66% of Romania's clean energy total. When all four units are in operation, Cernavoda will avoid a total of 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year, he said.

Dr. Huff is one of the Biden administration's finest appointments to the DOE and undoes some of the damage done to the environment by the unfortunate appointment of Gregory Jaczko to the NRC in a previous administration.

Dr. Jaczko regrettably was a fool who worked actively to see that climate change and the vast number of deaths from air pollution were ignored, possibly because he perceived that nuclear energy was "too dangerous." It follows that he thought that climate change and air pollution weren't "too dangerous." About 7 million people die each year from air pollution, more than six orders of magnitude more than die from radiation. Jaczko couldn't care less.

The CANDU (aka HWR) is my favorite thermal spectrum reactor, since it can run on the DUPIC cycle using "once through" uranium, which makes up the bulk of used nuclear fuel. In the process, it consumes additional reactor grade plutonium. Plutonium/thorium/uranium fuels in HWR can achieve very high burn ups, making up for the loss of precious plutonium and consuming depleted uranium but more commonly they achieve low burn ups using natural (unenriched) uranium.

Heavy Water Reactors operate in Canada, Romania, India, and Korea. I wish we had some in the United States, but they have never been licensed here.

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. So, 2 questions on a statement you made in the posted article.

"fuels in HWR can achieve very high burn ups, making up for the loss of precious plutonium and consuming depleted uranium but more commonly they achieve low burn ups using natural (unenriched) uranium."

(1) Does this mean there will be no spent fuel rods to bury for 200,000 years?

(2) Would this reactor design be a viable way to consume existing spent fuel rods as a fuel source for this plant?

Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki are what 98% of the less intelligent folks (who never took a single advanced physical/nuclear chemistry course) understand about nuclear energy. If you answer my questions in the affirmative, then that seems to be a win/win. Romania gets much more cleaner power (free of Russian oil, therefore, influence) and the world gets a solution to the spent fuel rods.

[NNadir]

2. How is it that you choose 200,000 years?

There is, to my mind, no reason to bury anything in used nuclear fuel for any reason. Many people, most people, think there are reasons, but I don't agree. However it would take many years to describe why I believe that. I have worked very hard to come to that conclusion, spent many tens of thousands of hours reading about the physics and chemistry of all of the components of used nuclear fuel.

Most of what is in used nuclear fuel is unreacted uranium, about 95% plus or minus 1%. Another 1% is transuranium actinides, chiefly plutonium, but also small amounts of neptunium, americium and traces of curium.

To answer your question, the DUPIC cycle utilizes this "once through" uranium as fuel, and depending on the process used, consumes much of the plutonium as well. Therefore it has higher mass efficiency than enriched uranium. Once through uranium is more valuable than natural uranium because it contains significant quantities of the unnatural uranium isotope U-236. This is a precursor to neptunium and thus the very valuable isotope Pu-238.

However, to completely consume all of the uranium mined, we need the fast neutron cycle, which has been the focus of my thinking for many years, and what I am encouraging my son to study.

The fact that people only think about Chernobyl, TMI, and Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki is absurd and is a reason why we are experiencing climate change and other aspects of wholesale destruction of the environment.

About 7 million people die each year from air pollution. Combined all the listed things don't add up to a month of air pollution deaths, including the two cities destroyed by nuclear weapons.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place 75 years ago. The number of people who died in those attacks is relatively trivial compared to the number of people killed in the very same war by petroleum fueled weapons, aircraft, napalm, etc. If we account for the number of people killed by fossil fuels and fossil fuel powered wars since 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are even more trivial. If we were really concerned about weapons of mass destruction - we're not - we'd ban petroleum, wouldn't we?

In the 19 years I've been writing at DU, according to the papers I to which I routinely post links to several iterations of Lancet papers on the subject of risk, I estimate that between 110 million and 130 million people died from air pollution. Note I started writing in 2002, roughly 23 years after Three Mile Island.

The most recent Lancet iteration of the Global Burden of Disease study is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

Still people want to talk to me about Three Mile Island as if it mattered. I had one of these appalling head up the ass conversations here just last week. Some moron was carrying on about insurance for Three Mile Island. I think in this context this is simply insane. I cannot take anyone doing so seriously, morally seriously, intellectually seriously or educationally seriously.

In what moral universe does the concern that someone someday somewhere might face a health impact from Three Mile Island compare to the fact that in the last 19 years, air pollution has wiped out roughly ten times the population of Pennsylvania?

Air pollution is fossil fuel waste. Climate change is fossil fuel waste. Both kill people, in vast numbers. The difference between fossil fuel waste and what some people who know very little about used nuclear fuels call "nuclear waste," is that so called "nuclear waste" doesn't kill people.

We don't have to wait 200,000 years to find out if fossil fuel waste, aka "air pollution" will kill someone. Between six and seven million people die each year from air pollution. This works out to somewhere between 16,500 and 19,000 people per day, more than Covid killed worldwide on its worst day. In turn that works out to between 700 to 800 people an hour. If I 15 minutes writing this post, air pollution killed about 200 people while I did so.

We couldn't care less, but we do want to talk about Three Mile Island. Fukushima. Chernobyl.

Excuse my language, but what the fuck is wrong with us?

I would submit that more people have been killed by the air pollution created by power plants powering web pages where people carry on about Three Mile Island than were killed by the supposed radiation effects on health, if in fact there were any.

Selective attention, whether it derives from ignorance, deliberate or otherwise, or venality, kills people.

I've spent more than 30 years contemplating nuclear fuels. I argue that we need more of it, not less of it, and I think it outrageous that I even have to have this conversation again and again and again and again and again.

It is, to my mind, insane.

[progree]

3. The administration (like a half dozen+ past administrations) seems to be struggling a lot

on this issue, and I don't see any mention from the administration about trying to recycle and recover the energy still there

https://www.google.com/search?q=biden+administration+on+nuclear+waste+management

Biden seeks willing hosts for nuclear waste storage sites, Reuters 11/30/21
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/biden-renews-hunt-willing-hosts-nuclear-waste-storage-sites-2021-11-30/

There seems to be a can-do spirit in the administration, for building wind mills, for example Energy Secretary Granholm recently:

“When the winds of change blow, some build walls, others build windmills.”


Energy secretary: Offshore wind brings 'gust' of job growth, AP, 12/5/21
https://kstp.com/national/energy-secretary-offshore-wind-brings-gust-of-job-growth/6322616/?cat=12678


but not the same can-do spirit about using the energy in the partially spent fuel. But they seem to perceive it as a big problem where the partially spent fuel (what they call waste) is located now (mostly at power plant sites) for some reason.

Anyway, it's all this hullabaloo that creates a perception that it is a problem rather than a solution. Perhaps a messaging problem?

[NNadir]

6. There is a difference between what they can politically say publically...

...and what they can do privately.

Dr. Huff is a brilliant young woman, a professor who worked at the cutting edge of technology, including fuel cycle issues. Her presence at the table tells me a great deal about what I need to know about this administration.

The "investment" in solar and wind is a very bad mistake, but it is one any Democratic administration is almost compelled to make, because some attitudes among us that are, frankly, seriously mistaken. I view our faith in solar and wind as our party's answer to right wing creationism, or, more recently, their antivax stance.

As a party, we need to do what I, a lifelong Democrat, did a long time ago, change our minds about nuclear energy.

The presence of Dr. Huff is a clear signpost that the Biden administration is privately enlightened. I suggest reading her interview at the DOE website.

[OAITW r.2.0]

4. Thanks for the response. I get your deep frustration with the 98% of us that think as we do.

We are not nearly as smart as you, in your knowledge, of nuclear energy. TMI must have had a huge impact on your career. Nonetheless, the 5 blights remain.

So can you answer my 2 questions - yes or no? A one paragraph explanation for a "sorta" answer would suffice as well. Or is it too complicated for a lay person with a simple Jesuit education to understand?

Seriously, if both answers are essentially yes, then I am a huge supporter for this energy creation.

[NNadir]

5. TMI had no impact on my career.

I'm in the pharmaceutical business, not the energy business.

At the time of the TMI nonsense I was a dumbshit antinuke. It was Chernobyl that caused me to take on a serious science based investigation of nuclear energy, and what I learned as a result surprised me.

The mechanism by which Three Mile Island killed people is the same mechanism by which the rise of Donald Trump killed people, the media driven equivalent of "but her emails..."

I think I made myself clear enough. I wonder if you ask for one word answers to the question "Can we prevent fossil fuel waste from killing anyone at anytime anywhere?" to support the continued use of fossil fuels.

My opinion, which I can readily support with facts, is that there is no such thing as "nuclear waste." There are only nuclear resources some of which are happily radioactive.