Antinuclear

US’ next-gen nuclear submarines suffer delay with costs soaring past $130 billion.

The US Navy’s next-generation nuclear submarines face delays and rising costs, surpassing $130 billion.

Interesting Engineering, Bojan Stojkovski Oct 05, 2024 

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan watchdog that reviews government operations for Congress, highlighted problems with the construction of the new submarines.

The GAO noted that both cost and schedule targets for the lead submarine have consistently been missed, according to the report released on Monday, Gizmodo reported.

“Our independent analysis calculated likely cost overruns that are more than six times higher than Electric Boat’s estimates and almost five times more than the Navy’s. As a result, the government could be responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional construction costs for the lead submarine,” the GAO said in its report.Re-Timer and cold plasma, the best of IE this week

Navy plans to replace aging Ohio-class subs 

The country’s nuclear weapons are deployed through three methods: intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from silos, bombs dropped from strategic bombers, and missiles fired from stealth submarines. …………………………………………………………………..

General Dynamics Electric Boat is currently building the first Columbia-class submarine, but the construction is facing significant challenges. According to the GAO report, the program has struggled with ongoing issues such as delays in materials and design products, despite efforts over the years to address these problems. The report also stated that swift and substantial action is needed to improve the construction performance.

Submarine construction faces skilled labor shortages

Some of the challenges are systemic, as there are few skilled workers in the US capable of building nuclear submarines. Between the 1980s and 2020, the submarine supplier base, which provides critical parts and materials, has drastically reduced from around 17,000 suppliers to just 3,500. 

This has led Columbia-class shipbuilders to increasingly depend on single-source suppliers, limiting competition for contracts, according to the GAO.

As Defense One writes, the Navy and shipbuilders provide “supplier development funding” to support these critical suppliers. This funding is divided into two categories: “direct investments in suppliers,” which cover expenses like equipment, factory upgrades, and workforce development, and “specialized purchases to signal demand,” which involve placing orders to ensure that suppliers remain capable and motivated to produce, even when their products are not immediately required.

However, the GAO found that the Navy has not adequately assessed whether its financial investments in the supplier base are being utilized effectively. The GAO report outlined that the Navy has inconsistently defined the necessary information to evaluate whether these investments have led to increased production or cost savings and how these outcomes align with the program’s objectives  https://interestingengineering.com/military/us-nuclear-submarines-delayed-exceeding-costs

October 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Today. In praise of Joe Biden – an unfashionable opinion.

Yeah. We’ve all gotta agree. Joe Biden is silly, demented, – blah blah.

Well, I don’t agree. I watched that famous debate, after which everyone affirmed that Biden was a disaster.

The thing is – Biden made a couple of obvious glitches – mixing up names – during this debate (something that could happen to anybody, in the stress of the moment).

So the media, and the rest of the world, blindly agreed on how badly Biden debated. Never mind the fact that he gave a clear and lucid discussion on the achievements and policies of his government.

Meanwhile – the media coverage of the more colourful Trump was much more fun. There was definite disagreement about it between media outlets. The big question was exactly how many lies did Trump tell? Was it 32? No – some argued that it was only 28.

So – now that we’re all convinced that Biden doesn’t matter -we can ignore what he says and does about current urgent issues?

On the present Israeli military crisis – how will Israel punish Iran for its attacks on Israel? There’s this great idea that I’m sure that Netanyahu would love – to attack Iran’s nuclear site. But the Israelis do need the USA’s blessing to do that. But President Biden has said that while he is working with Israel  he wouldn’t support strikes on Iran’s nuclear facility.

On the present Ukraine military crisis, the Western media seems to be in complacent agreement that Ukraine can defeat Russia, and all that Ukraine needs is long-range missiles – supplied by USA/NATO. These missiles could strike deep inside Russia, could potentially strike Moscow. Russia’s President Putin has repeatedly warned against this. Now Putn has changed Russia’s doctrine on using nuclear weapons, making it clear that he is prepared to use them, in the event of Ukrainian attacks deep within Russia.

President Biden, while allowing Ukraine some use of long-range missiles in areas near Ukraine, continues to rule out strikes deep within Russia.

For this attitude, Biden gets criticism, near to ridicule, from the media, almost universally – summed up by the Washington Post editorial board –  “Mr. Biden needs to give permission and set the ground rules quickly.”

Donald Trump has come out with a very sensible-sounding policy on Ukraine. Trouble is – (a) you cannot trust a word that this man says, and (b) Trump’s record as president promotes nuclear war – undoing the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia.

It is now perhaps only President Joe Biden who is stalling and preventing the rush to nuclear Armageddon.

I can only conclude that the Western media in general (some exceptions):

 *doesn’t do its homework – check on the facts. 

*likes to please its nuclear-military-industrial-complex sponsors

 *finds Trump much more entertaining to write  about.

I am grateful to Julie Hollar, who clearly set out the case for questioning the corporate media’s judgement in covering this issue of the risk of Ukraine using long-range missiles.

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October 5, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Hey Australia, Ontario is no model for energy and climate policy

Energy and climate strategy should prioritize options with lowest economic, environmental, technological and safety risks. Ontario’s does the opposite.

by Mark Winfield October 4, 2024,  https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/october-2024/ontario-energy/

Over the past few weeks, word has begun to reach Ontario of a series of stories in the Australian media in which the province is being held up as a model for climate and energy policy Down Under.

It seems that Peter Dutton, the leader of the federal opposition Liberal (the conservative party in Australian politics), has been promoting Ontario’s nuclear heavy energy plans as a pathway for Australia.

For those in the province familiar with the ongoing saga of its energy and electricity policies, the reactions to the notion of Ontario being an example of energy and electricity policymaking have ranged from “bizarre” to “you couldn’t make this up.”

Poor maintenance and operating practices led to the near-overnight shutdown of the province’s seven oldest reactors in 1997, leading to a dramatic rise in the role of coal-fired generation and its associated emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and smog precursors. The refurbishment of the “laid-up” reactors themselves went badly. Two ended in write-offs, and the others ran billions over budget and years behind schedule, accounting for a large portion of the near doubling of electricity rates in the province between the mid-2000s and 2020.

Towards a $100-billion nuclear binge?

Only two other provinces followed Ontario’s lead on nuclear. Quebec built two reactors and New Brunswick one, each of them completed in the 1970s or the early 1980s. The Gentilly-1 facility in Quebec was barely ever operational and closed in 1977. The Gentilly-2 facility was shut down in 2012, and assessed as uneconomic, particularly in light of Ontario’s experiences in attempting to refurbish its own. The construction and then refurbishment of the Point Lepreau facility has repeatedly pushed New Brunswick Power to the brink of bankruptcy.

The current government of Ontario, led by Conservative Premier Doug Ford, has seemed determined to ignore the nuclear experiences of these provinces, and its own history of failed nuclear megaprojects. The government’s July 2023 energy plan includes the refurbishment of six reactors at the Bruce nuclear power facility (owned by OPG), and four reactors at the OPG’s Darlington facility. It subsequently added the refurbishment of four more reactors at OPG’s Pickering B facility, an option that had previously been assessed as unnecessary and uneconomic. The plant had originally been scheduled to close in 2018. There are also proposals for four new reactors totaling 4,800 MW in capacity at Bruce and four new 300MW reactors at Darlington. (The current capacity is 6,550 MW at Bruce, and 3,512 MW at Darlington.)

The total costs of these plans are unknown at this point, but an overall estimate in excess of $100 billion would not be unrealistic:

• $13 billion for the refurbishment at Darlington;
• approximately $20 billion for the refurbishment at Bruce;
• $15 billion for Pickering B (based on Darlington costs and plant age for both this case and Bruce);
• about $50 billion for the new build at Bruce, based on previous new build proposals;
• and the Darlington new build (unknown, but likely $10 billion or more).

Even this 100$-billion figure would assume that things go according to plan, which rarely happens with nuclear construction and refurbishment projects.

The government’s ambitious nuclear plans have not been subject to any form of external review or regulatory oversight in terms of costs, economic and environmental rationality, or the availability of lower-cost and lower-risk pathways for meeting the province’s electricity needs. Rather, the system now runs entirely on the basis of ministerial directives that agencies in the sector, including the putative regulator, the Ontario Energy Board, are mandated to implement.

The province’s politically driven policy environment is very advantageous to nuclear proponents. When previous nuclear expansion proposals had been subject to meaningful public review, the plans collapsed in the face of soaring cost estimates and unrealistic demand projections. This was the case in the early 1980s with the Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning – aka the Porter commission, at the turn of the 1990s with the Ontario Hydro demand and supply plan environmental assessment, and in the late 2000s, with the Ontario Power Authority’s integrated power system plan review.

A halt to renewable energy

There is a second dimension to Ontario’s electricity plans that also should not be overlooked. Upon arriving in office the Ford government promptly terminated all efforts at renewable energy development,  including having completed wind turbine projects quite literally ripped out of the ground at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It then scrapped the province’s energy efficiency strategy for being too effective at reducing demand. Repeated offers of low-cost electricity from the hydropower-rich neighbouring province of Quebec were ignored. The results of studies by the province’s own electricity system operator on energy efficiency potential and the possible contributions of distributed generation, like building and facility-level solar photovoltaics (PV) and storage, have been largely disregarded.

These choices have left the province with no apparent option but to rely on natural gas-fired generation to replace nuclear facilities that are being refurbished or retired. With existing facilities dramatically ramping up their output, and new facilities being added, GHG and other emissions from gas-fired generation have more than tripled since 2017, and are projected to continue to increase dramatically over the next years. On its current trajectory, gas-fired generation will constitute a quarter of the province’s electricity supply, the same portion provided by coal-fired plants before their phase-out, completed in 2013. The province has recently announced a re-engagement around renewable energy, but the seriousness of this interest has been subject to considerable doubt.

Given all of this, it would be difficult to see Ontario as a model for Australia or any other jurisdiction to follow in designing its energy and climate strategy. The province has no meaningful energy planning and review process. Its current nuclear and gas-focussed pathway seems destined to embed high energy costs and high emissions for decades to come. And it will leave a growing legacy of radioactive wastes that will require management of timescales hundreds of millennia.

A rational and transparent process would prioritize the options with the lowest economic, environmental, technological and safety risks. Higher-risk options, like new nuclear, should only be considered where it can be demonstrated that the lower-risk options have been fully optimized and developed in the planning process. Ontario’s current path goes in the opposite direction. To follow its example would be a serious mistake.

October 5, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment