From France the standard kind and from US maybe a new kind: Nuclear power in the news again.
This week two news events featured nuclear power. In the US the Dept. of Energy announced a fairly small, on the atomic scale, grant for study of new, more efficient high temperature “next generation” reactors. In France President Sarkozy waved the flag for gallic technology to help fill expected international orders for hundreds of new reactors in coming decades.
The U.S. news got coverage, but one hopes it will get deeper in coming days or weeks. The essence is simple: About $40 million to the General Atomics Co., and to Toshiba-owned Westinghouse Electric Co., to refine “Next Generation Nuclear Plant” designs. Such reactors, cooled by helium, would run at higher temperatures than standard reactors and, some say, would be more efficient and inherently more stable than water-cooled ones now widely in use. This is an opening into whether high-temperature, so-called “fast” reactors are also going to go on a faster track. Such things use a fuel cycle that burns, or transmutes, most of the radioactive waste that make long-term disposal such a headache. They also are complex, and may make weapons proliferation harder to control, worry some. But of that, nothing here in these tidbits:
Stories:
- Reuters – Tom Doggett: US Govt awards $40 mln for advance nuclear reactor ;
- Wall St. Journal – Ian Talley: DOE Announces $40Mln For Next Generation Nuclear Project ; A super shorty.
- World Nuclear News : Teams compete for NGNP design ; A trade pub, perhaps no surprise, fills in a lot of blanks, including an allusion to related work on “deep burn” reactors that could radically reduce the volume of waste from nuclear energy.
Grist for the Mill: DOE Press Release ;
And from France the bigger story – the offense by the government, featured at a conference in Paris, to encourage a rapid expansion of nuclear power, including in developing countries.
- Reuters – Marie Maitre, Crispian Balmer: Sarkozy backs nuclear energy / Other sources cause greater pollution, he says ;
- Voice of America – Lisa Bryant: French President Pushes Use of Nuclear energy ;
- Financial Times – Peggy Hollinger, Ed Crooks: Sarkozy in call over nuclear energy funding ; Good, broad-look story with solid money estimates. Among other eye-catching numbers: the Nuclear Energy Agency estimates that between 100 and 400 new reactors are likely worldwide in the next 20 years.
And finally, a news that isn’t the news that it means to be news – nukes in Israel:
- NYTimes – Steven Erlanger: Israel Intends to Build Civilian Nuclear Plants ; Maybe electricity is the ostensible topic, but a rare aspect of nukes in the MidEast is first up in this article’s lede: “Israel, widely believed to have nuclear weapons…” and then it goes on about power reactors. This leads to a question for the nation’s and the world’s political and diplomacy writers. Why is it, in stories about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it is left implicit for many readers that success would make Iran the first nuclear-armed power in the region? Yet, for years, everybody who follows such things “knows” that Israel has them. I would never equate an Israeli bomb to an Iranian bomb in terms of threat to world stability – but one would think that any story about Iran’s ambitions ought to mention that it may be trying to match Israel’s arsenal. It almost seems like willful blindness in news coverage.
Pic: older illus of General Atomics Helium Cooled Gas Turbine Reactor;
- Charlie Petit
