Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. For those old enough to remember, this should sound familiar. For those who don’t, listen up. I spent over 50 years in the nuclear industry, advancing to Senior Vice President and managing projects at 70 nuclear power plants. I once believed in the dream. I helped build the dream. And now, watching this third act unfold, I can only shake my head at the déjà vu. Because the nuclear industry’s latest pitch is not a revolution, but a rerun—an expensive distraction from real climate solutions. Lees verder →

Kernenergie en veiligheid: A wargame sought to test if a major radiological release that would prompt the evacuation of millions of civilians in South Korea could distract key US allies from assisting and rebuffing an all-out military invasion of Taiwan. The short answer was yes.
The game originally presumed that China, wanting to keep the United States, South Korea, and Japan out of a fight over Taiwan, would ask North Korea to strike the Kori nuclear power plant in South Korea to force massive evacuations. But a brief by Joshua Stanton, an expert on North Korea, changed that scenario significantly. Stanton argued that a North Korean military offensive was not the only threat Seoul faced. In addition, military planners need to worry about what South Koreans sympathetic to the North might do. Lees verder →

Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids
The Finnish nuclear power plant Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the French company Areva, to be bailed out by the French government. TVO, the reactor owner, says now that the new reactor has been commissioned, there is often too much production on the Finnish grid, and the reactor has to be dialled down, or curtailed, in much the same way that renewables often are. It is still not allowed to run at full capacity. “The electricity system in Finland faces on an increasingly frequent basis a situation where more down-regulating production capacity is needed because there is too much production,” TVO notes. Lees verder →

From the IPFM: During a visit to the Civaux nuclear power plant on 18 March 2024, France's Minister of the Armed Forces unveiled a plan to use the plant to produce tritium for the French nuclear weapons program. Civaux is a civilian power plant that belongs to and is operated by Electricité de France. According to the report, the nuclear regulator, l'Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, is expected to issue an approval in September 2024. The first test assemblies will be loaded in the reactor during a scheduled refueling in 2025. Continue reading →

An analysis by the Norwegian NGO Bellona of transborder trade operations with the customs code 840130 (irradiated fuel assemblies or fuel elements) show a more than twofold increase of import to EU countries of fresh nuclear fuel in cash terms – from 280 million Euros in 2022 to 686 million Euros in 2023. In physical terms this means an increase of deliveries from 314 tons of nuclear fuel to 573 tons.
Bellona also reported that the import of enriched uranium from Russia to the USA grew in 2023 to a record level of $1.2 billion, 40% more than the import volume for 2022. With rising prices, import also increased in physical volumes by around 20%, from 588 tons in 2022 to 702 tons in 2023.

Jan vd Putte quickly changed from dressing as the pied piper at the protest during the IAEA nuclear power conference to warn for the Russian nuclear power conglomerate Rosatom and its role in Ukraine.