Creusot Forge

Vintage postcard of the forging facility now under scrutiny for potential defects and records falsification by the French regulator and EDF as well as other recipients of its products (including the USA). Hope that reactor vessel in the bottom right corner was a good one!

Bugey Nuclear Power Plant site, Ain, France

11th century chapel of Saint-Vulbas with cooling towers at Bugey

Bugey Units 2 and 3 under construction

Up the Rhône toward the plant site

Plant control room

Westinghouse on the rocks

Westinghouse, owned by Toshiba, has filed for bankruptcy largely due to cost overruns and management challenges at construction of its AP1000 nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina. It's a rocky patch in its history of development in the nuclear power sector. This 1960s card shows a Westinghouse lab near Pittsburgh.

Three Mile Island anniversary

Yesterday - March 28 - marked the 38th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident, the event that had a significant impact for the better on nuclear safety in the United States. Here are two contemporary magazine covers: one from Time and the other from the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The cover titles are essentially the same for each: Nuclear Nightmare.

Alptraum Atomkraft - Nuclear Nightmare: after the reactor catastrophe in Harrisburg

L'atome pousse!

Not sure I get this one! But the one kid is lots of fun and the other has a great voice.

Triga Reactors - an atomic future

Postcard with first day cancellation of atomic energy conference in Geneva in 1958. Card reproduces poster by Swiss modernist Eric Nitscho for General Dynamics’ Triga reactor: “an inherently safe training, research, isotope production reactor designed and manufactured by the General Atomic Division of the General Dynamics Corporation.”

Back in the Ukraine SSR: Kiev Research Reactor

This research reactor, a10 MW tank type (VVR-M) was commissioned in 1960 at the Institute for Nuclear Research in Kiev. It was converted to LEU fuel in 2008 under the Global Threat Reduction Program. 

Nuclear icon

I visited decommissioned Fermi Unit 1 yesterday, the early sodium cooled breeder reactor named for Enrico Fermi, located near Detroit. The plant has been largely dismantled, and some "souvenirs" saved for display at a display at the nearby Monroe County Community College.

The photo shows the plant's state today. Below are a couple postcards prior to the plant's construction - an artist's conception with a portrait of Enrico Fermi and a photo of the visitors' center for the plant. 

This last card shows the completed plant, which achieved criticality in 1963 and ceased operation in 1972, and promotes Detroit as a "leader in progress" with reference to the automotive and nuclear industries:

Fermi Unit 2, a Mark I GE BWR, has operated since the late 1980s. DTE Electric received an NRC license for a potential unit 3 earlier this year using the GE Hitachi ESBWR design. The company has deferred a decision as to when it might proceed with Unit 3, but if it does the remaining structures of Unit 1 will be dismantled and removed to make way for the new unit's footprint at the site.

Hot day In South Texas

I visited the site on a hot July day. This is a huge site and may see two more units in years to come.

Zion in decommissioning

I visited Zion Nuclear Power Plant, 50 miles or so north of Chicago on Lake Michigan. The plant was shuttered in 1998.

Containment door open to one of the units. Reactor vessels are being sectioned for shipment and disposal.

Turbines being salvaged for some parts that can be used as replacement stock at other plants or recycled (because they are non-radioactive). 

Another view of the turbine hall.

The control room. Only a few circuits and annunciators remain operable for in-service systems. Spent fuel has been offloaded from the fuel pool to dry cask storage on-site.

Carbon-free energy

Visited Doel NPP in Belgium in May and took this shot of an old windmill in front of  the cooling towers used for Doel 3 & 4. The town of Doel adjacent to the plant is largely abandoned due to the expansion of the port of Antwerp. 

Gingerbread Nuke

A colleague passed along this photo of the "Pfefferkuchen Nuclear Plant" on display in one of the NRC offices. A new small modular reactor design perhaps?

Happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas and a happy 2015!

Nuclear Power in the Old Dominion

I'm headed back to the US for home leave soon and will spend some time visiting family in Virginia, so i thought a post on Virginia's plants would be appropriate. Virginia Electric Power Company licensed plants at two sites, Surry on the south bank of the James River near Norfolk and North Anna on man-made Lake Anna in Louisa County between Washington and Richmond.

The two Surry units were the first to operate, going on-line in 1972 and 1973. the plant is not far from the oldest brick dwelling, Bacon's Castle, a rare Jacobean style house dating from 1665 and named for Nathaniel Bacon, who led "Bacon's Rebellion" in 1676 and had captured this house and fortified it.

The North Anna site was originally anticipated to include four operating reactors, but only two of the originally planned facilities were completed. Unit 1 began operation in June 1978 and Unit 2 in December 1980. Unit 2's operational date was in part affected by the moratorium on licensing after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

My first visit to a nuclear power plant was to North Anna Unit 1 in 1978. In August 2011 one of the largest earthquakes on the East Coast occurred with its epicenter near the plant. The plant shut down safely and did not sustain significant damage, though the earthquake exceeded in some respects the original design basis for the plant.

The VEPCO plants are now operated by Dominion Power which also operates the Millstone plants  in Connecticut and until recently the Kewaunee Plant in Wisconsin. Dominion planned to construct a new reactor on the North Anna site and submitted an application in 2007 for a combined license (COL). After changing the possible design option for the new reactor, Dominion indicated in 2013 that it would revert to its original choice of the ESBWR and would submit necessary additional documentation in 2015.

Three Mile Island - 35 years later

At the time of the accident I had been at the NRC not quite 7 months. This was certainly the "significant emotional event" in the history of nuclear energy in the US and also had an impact internationally on nuclear safety.

Although the NRC was barely 4 years old at the time of the accident, some called for the abolition of the agency in favor of an agency run by a single administrator.  President Carter stuck with the Commission form of governance, but issued a Reorganization Plan in 1980 that enhanced the power of the Chairman in NRC's emergency response functions.  Improvement in emergency preparedness and response was one of the lessons learned from the TMI accident. Here's an information brochure issued by Pennsylvania after the accident:

Three Mile Island Unit 1 continues to operate today.

But I doubt we will see this wag's prediction come true for Unit 2!

Atomic laughs

Long before the Simpsons we can find examples of nuclear humor. I've found a number of old postcards that have radioactive stuff at the center of the humor.  The first card is from a set Tout au radium (Everything radium) by an early 20th century illustrator Ph. Norwins. The card shows an exchange between a young man and the father of the object of his affection. The father says that the suitor, penniless as he is, has some nerve asking for the hand of his daughter. The young man agrees that he's penniless but notes he has 10 grams of radium. Dad has a change of heart in the face of such "wealth" and welcomes the young man into his arms.


The card dates from a time when radium seemed to be a miracle substance - but before an understanding of the dangers of excessive radiation exposure. Radium seemed to be a miracle substance, useful for heating homes and useful in any number of radium consumer products from the 19th and early 20th century that would be unthinkable today.

Our second card shows a lady apparently getting her hair done - or at least getting an atomic wave! I hope the Eiffel Tower (seen through the open window) survives the shock waves!

                                 Your faithful blogger,

 

Mr. Burns

Greenpeace at Oskarshamn

A number of Greenpeace activists scaled the fence at the Oskarshamn Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden last week.  The entry was related to a protest against the age of the reactors, the first of which began operation in 1972.

Three of Sweden's ten operating nuclear reactors are at the Oskarshamn site. The others are at the Ringhals and Forsmark sites.

The Father of the Indian Nuclear Program

I am off to India Sunday to attend a wedding in Calcutta, my second trip in the past few months, the first being in November to lecture at a nuclear law course at National Law University, Delhi. In anticipation of the trip, I thought appropriate this first day cover from 1966 honoring Homi Bhabha, the nuclear physicist who is considered the "father" of the Indian nuclear program. The stamp was issued in April 1966, only a few months after his death in January in an airplane crash into Mount Blanc.

Bhabha founded some key Indian institutions, including the Atomic Energy Establishment Trombay, now named after him as the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. He was the first chair of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission and represented India at the IAEA. Bhabha is credited with developing India's approach to nuclear energy -- civilian and military -- including the emphasis on the thorium fuel cycle given India's rich thorium reserves.

Happy New Year - Atoms for Peace

Happy New Year! I've been away from the blog for a couple months, but hope to post more in 2014. Let's start off with this image from the IAEA's official holiday card.

Nuclear Furlough

My old friends and colleagues at the NRC got the word today that the agency is out of money due to the appropriations impasse, so the furlough process has begun for all but the "excepted" or "essential" employees - mostly resident inspectors at power plants, emergency operations center staff, and the like.  I thought I'd pull out a few oddball items from my NRC past -- old envelopes that came into the office.

 I'm not sure how BNA had the impression that NRC had something to do with toys!

Apparently GANE (now Nuclear Watch South) and the Catfish Alliance confused us with the FDA, though admittedly NRC does regulate nuclear medicine. GANE was probably sending something about Vogtle Units 1 and 2.

And finally, you've got to give the sender credit. He or she picked the stamp and added the sentiment before sending in what was probably one of the many petitions to close San Onofre 1.

Well, if you can't work, my furloughed friends, it's time to hit the bar! 

How 'bout we meet at...

Drinks on me!

50 Years Ago - US Senate Ratifies the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the US Senate's ratification of the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, Outer Space and under Water, commonly known as the Limited or Partial Test Ban Treaty. The treaty had been formally signed in Moscow on 5 August 1963 by the US, the USSR, and the United Kingdom. The treaty was the culmination of efforts that began in the mid 1950s and efforts to reach an agreement were given new impetus after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.

The postcard shows the US Senate in session, purportedly the first official photograph of the Senate in session as it voted on the treaty. The Senate approved a resolution of ratification of  the treaty by a vote of 80 to 19, greater than the required two-thirds majority vote under the Constitution.

A Comprehensive  Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1996 but has yet to enter into force for the lack of ratification by a number of countries, including the United States.  The web site of the CTBTO organisation has this sobering video of the history of nuclear testing by artist Isao Hashimoto: