Trump reimposes Iran nuclear deal sanctions, The Hill, BY REBECCA KHEEL , 7 Aug 18 The Trump administration announced Monday the reimposition of sanctions on Iran that were lifted as part of a nuclear agreement with the country.
The sanctions will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and follow through on the order President Trump gave when he withdrew from the nuclear pact in May.
“The United States is fully committed to enforcing all of our sanctions, and we will work closely with nations conducting business with Iran to ensure complete compliance. Individuals or entities that fail to wind down activities with Iran risk severe consequences,” Trump said in a statement Monday……..
The sanctions that will come back into effect after midnight target transactions with U.S. dollar banknotes; trade in gold and precious metals; direct or indirect sales of graphite and metals such as steel and aluminum; certain transactions related to the Iranian rial; certain transactions related to issuing Iranian sovereign debt; and Iran’s automotive sector.
Additionally, authorizations will be revoked for the import of Iranian-origin carpets and foodstuff and the export of commercial aircraft.
The second wind-down period, which ends Nov. 4, will be the more significant one, as that is when sanctions on oil sales snap back. The senior administration official said that will have an “exponential effect” on Iran.
The reimposition of sanctions comes as protests have persisted across Iran, with demonstrators voicing dissatisfaction with a weak economy and financial corruption.
Meanwhile, the rial has lost half its value since April as the U.S. sanctions have loomed.
Administration officials touted both those developments Monday as a sign Trump’s Iran policy is working. But they pushed back on suggestions they are calling for the Iranian people to rise up against their government………
The sanctions reimposition also comes shortly after Trump threatened Iran.
After Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last month said that Americans “must understand that war with Iran is the mother of all wars and peace with Iran is the mother of all peace,” Trump issued a tweet telling Rouhani to “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”
As Europe struggles through a major heatwave, the French energy company EDF says it has halted a fourth nuclear reactor, this time one at the country’s oldest nuclear plant at Fessenheim in eastern France.
In a statement, EDT said the Fessenheim nuclear reactor was temporarily shut down Saturday.
Since Thursday, four French nuclear reactors in three power plants near the Rhine and the Rhone Rivers, including Fessenheim, have had to be temporarily shut down. EDF said the decision was made to avoid overheating the rivers.
Nuclear power plants use water from the rivers to cool down the temperatures of their reactors before sending the water back into the rivers. Rivers that are unusually warm can experience mass fish die-offs, which has happened in Germany in the past week.
Government incentives and trade barriers once sparked a gold rush for uranium, leading to a boom in mining for the nuclear fuel.
However, U.S. uranium miners have endured decades of distress as foreign competition entered the market and demand faltered as nuclear energy fell out of favor.
Uranium miners are now asking the Trump administration to erect trade barriers torn down more than 30 years ago to preserve the industry.
At the dawn of the atomic age, U.S. government incentives and trade barriers sparked a gold rush for uranium, the chemical element that was fueling the nuclear arms race at the time.
Now, 60 years later, American uranium miners want the government to use similar tools to prevent the collapse of the industry — and the few remaining U.S. companies still producing uranium for the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants. Continue reading →
Ionizing radiation increases cancer risk for frequent flyers, Elko Daily Free Press, Robert Ashley, M.D Aug 3, 2018
“…….Commercial airline flying is a relatively new experience. The concept of flying to multiple locations for business would have been inconceivable 100 years ago. The evolution of the human body has not been adapted to flight, so the exposure of humans to prolonged airplane travel is a change that may have health consequences. At higher altitude there is greater exposure to ionizing radiation. Flight attendants and pilots spend much of their working time 30,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, so their health may give us an indication of potential hazards with flying.
A recent study in the journal Environmental Health looked at 5,366 former and current flight attendants and compared them with a control group of the same age and health. More than 80 percent of the flight attendants were women. The average age of the participants was 52 and the average duration at the job was 20 years.
The authors looked at the number of cancers in the flight attendants and found a greater rate of cancer overall compared with the control group. In women, there was a 51 percent greater prevalence in breast cancer, a 2.27 times greater risk of melanoma and a 4.09 times greater risk of other types of skin cancer. The elevations of skin cancer were not as great among male flight attendants. There were also increases in the rates of uterine, cervical, gastrointestinal and thyroid cancer among female flight attendants. …….
Steve Dale Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 3 Aug 18 ‘ANSTO has ambitions to dominate the world’s market for medical isotopes’ – oh the luxury of having your follies funded by the taxpayer.
ANSTO’s messy, fragile isotope factory is for producing Moly99/Technetium99 – but Technetium for gamma imaging is slowly being replaced with positron emission tomography (PET) scans.
““Technetium is more or less like black and white TV,” Wilson said. “It’s low definition.”
By varying the target material used in the cyclotron, the technology can produce other medical isotopes like radioactive fluorides for PET, something traditional nuclear reactors cannot produce.”
University’s cyclotron facility could fully supply province’s demand for medical isotopes HINA ALAM, Edmonton Journal : May 15, 2018
For an Albertan who needs it, the journey of a radioactive isotope that has the ability to detect a potential heart or a bone cancer could begin at the University of Alberta’s Medical Isotope Cyclotron Facility…….
Although tests conducted over the past few months have shown that the U of A facility is capable of meeting the province’s need for 1,000 diagnostic procedures a day, there are still hurdles to overcome and its future use for producing technetium is still unclear…..
But research lead and university oncology department chairman Sandy McEwan sees a silver lining….
There are three isotopes that are commonly used — technetium-99m, a radioactive molecule of fluorine used in PET (positron emission tomography) scanning, and isotopes of iodine, used to detect and treat thyroid cancers.
Technetium-99m is the most common of these, and has a half-life of six hours, meaning that only half of it remains after that time. This is advantageous because the imaging scan is quick and the technetium doesn’t linger around in the body. This also means that the isotope must be produced quickly.
In the cyclotron, McEwan said it takes about six hours to make enough technetium-99m for the province each day.
……… ……The U of A technology shows that the isotope can be made locally and the science replicated across the country.
As it stands now, a dose of technetium-99m produced by the cyclotron at U of A is about 10 per cent more expensive compared to a dose of technetium-99m produced by traditional reactors.
“But that includes costing everything,” McEwan said. “It includes costing the cyclotron, the building, the research, the operations — everything.”
McEwan said the technetium-99m produced by the cyclotron is of a slightly higher purity profile than what you get from a reactor.
Also, most of the reactors are extremely old, said John Wilson, manager of the facility……
“Nuclear reactors are the highest capacity source for technetium-99m but are very, very expensive and create nuclear waste,” he said. “No one wants a reactor built close to where they live.” Jan Andersson, a researcher at the facility said as the supply stands now, reactors produce molybdenum-99, which has a half-life of 66 days and decays into technetium-99m, which is used in patients. This allows isotope to be supplied from far away but only if the reactors are running.
McEwan believes that technetium PET imaging will soon fade to give way to newer technologies, and the cyclotron is well-positioned to handle that.
“The cyclotron is Canadian,” he said. “We have a made-in-Canada solution.”
“(F)irst, that the NRC has the statutory authority to license and regulate consolidated interim nuclear waste storage facilities, and secondly, that the comprehensiveness of that federal regulatory scheme pre-empts virtually any state involvement,
The chair of a New Mexico legislative committee that monitors radioactive and hazardous materials in the state says he finds it troubling Attorney General Hector Balderas has concluded the state cannot legally stop a New Jersey-based company from the building a nuclear waste storage facility.
Holtec International, a New Jersey-based company specializing in nuclear storage, has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to construct a nuclear waste storage facility about 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Carlsbad.
The facility, to be located in western Lea County, could eventually store up to 10,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel, as much as 120,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste, from nuclear power plants around the country. It would be stored just below the surface.
The facility is intended to be a temporary storage site, storing nuclear waste only until a permanent storage facility can be built. But opponents fear that it could become permanent because plans for a long-term repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have stalled because of opposition. Continue reading →
Morrison cited several fears some of the townsfolk have about the project, such as negative impact on tourism, water contamination from the DGR boring project and the risk of accident while transporting high level waste along the highway.
Morrison said money has already come into Hornepayne because of its progression into the project. NWMO’s Learn More Project provides funding to cover travel expenses for individuals who represent the community to meet with the NWMO at its office in Toronto. It also funds the hiring independent experts to advise the community ($15,000 or less) and pays to support authorities to engage citizens in the community to learn about the project ($20,000 or less).
“Businesses that are for the project get some of that money from council and businesses that aren’t don’t get any.”
Nuclear waste debate divides Northern town Ben Cohen Special To The Sault Star, August 3, 2018 Hornepayne, Ont., a community of 980 people about 400 kilometres northwest of Sault Ste. Marie, is one of the five finalists to see who becomes home to a nuclear waste facility.
In 2011, the town entered a bid to become a repository for 5.2 million log-sized bundles of used nuclear fuel. They were joined by 21 other Canadian communities that have since been whittled down due to internal protest or geological unsuitability.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) of Canada’s plan is to take this used fuel, known as “high-level nuclear waste,” contain it in steel baskets stuffed into copper tubes and encased in clay, and place that in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR), a 500-metre deep hole reinforced with a series of barriers. This is where it will stay for the 400,000 years it remains radioactive.
Bradley Hammond, senior communications manager for NWMO, told the Sault Star that the project only moves forward if it receives “broad social acceptance” within the selected communities.
“We won’t proceed in an area with opposition,” he said, adding that he has complete confidence that NWMO will find a suitable town by 2023.
When asked if there was a plan in place if all five of the finalist communities, Huron-Kinloss, Ont., Ignace, Ont., Manitouwadge, Ont., and South Bruce, Ont., back out of the project, Hammond indicated there isn’t, because that would be impossible.
A rally is being held in Hornepayne Aug. 14 to oppose the town being used for nuclear waste storage. Those at the helm of the rally said the project “exploits” their small town. Continue reading →
The principal factor behind the reserve capacity rates are the energy-saving efforts that were ingrained across Japan after the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“Energy saving has become common at factories and homes
Japanese households will be able to crank up their air conditioners to survive the record-setting heat wave without the risk of power outages, thanks to conservation efforts and the spread of renewable energies.
The central government had previously encouraged residents and businesses to cut their summer power usage to prevent energy shortages.
But for the third consecutive year, the government has not issued such a request.
Instead, the government has asked people to be wary of heatstroke symptoms as the torrid temperatures are expected to continue through August.
“Please turn on air conditioners and give the highest priority to preventing heatstroke,” a government official said. Continue reading →
Unlike traditional nuclear methods of generating isotopes for medical imaging, the new particle accelerator at South Campus can generate a wider range of isotopes without producing nuclear waste.
The particle accelerator, known as a cyclotron, can produce enough isotopes for 1,000 diagnostic procedures a day – enough for both Calgary and Edmonton. John Wilson, the facility’s manager said the technology may soon replace nuclear reactors in providing medical isotopes for major cities across Canada.
“We’re the first to show that it can be produced to this quantity,” Wilson said.
More than 70 percent of the world’s diagnostic imaging is done using technetium-99m, a radioactive tracer. When fused with a drug or other molecule, its passage through the body can then be monitored using gamma cameras.
Wilson said the method can be used to track tumour growth and drug metabolism in cancer patients.
Technetium-99m has been traditionally supplied through splitting atoms in a nuclear reactor to produce molybdenum-99, which then decays into technetium-99m. However, only six percent of the material produced in a nuclear reactor can be used, the rest is nuclear waste.
Using a particle accelerator, Wilson said technetium-99m can now be produced directly by firing a stream of protons at a target material. The method bypasses the safety and environmental concerns surrounding traditional nuclear reactors.
“When the electricity stops, the (isotope) production stops,” Wilson said. “It’s a much safer technology.”
But Wilson said what makes the cyclotron useful is its ability to generate difficult to produce medical isotopes.
While most hospitals and clinics continue to rely on technetium for gamma imaging, Wilson said the technology is slowly being replaced with positron emission tomography (PET) scans.
“Technetium is more or less like black and white TV,” Wilson said. “It’s low definition.”
By varying the target material used in the cyclotron, the technology can produce other medical isotopes like radioactive fluorides for PET, something traditional nuclear reactors cannot produce.
Since 2010 the Canadian government has been investing in the creation of alternative medical isotope sources.
In 2009, countries across the globe faced a medical isotope shortage when the two major nuclear reactors producing technetium-99m were briefly out of service. The National Research Universal Reactor in Chalk River, Ontario was closed due to a heavy water leak the same period the High Flux Reactor in Petten, Netherlands was shut down for a month-long maintenance.
After 61 years of operation, the Chalk River reactor has since been decommissioned in 2016, and Wilson believes the 57-year-old High Flux Reactor in Petten likely won’t last much longer.
“There’s only about six or seven reactors in the world that are producing [medical isotopes] and they’re ageing,” Wilson said. “It’s not that it wasn’t good technology, it’s just that nobody wants to build reactors anymore … Nobody wants a reactor built in their backyard.”
While the cyclotron is ready for use, Canada’s federal and provincial governments have yet to determine how the technology may be implemented across the country and how it may be integrated into existing healthcare practices.
However, Wilson is optimistic that the new cyclotron will set the province up for success down the line as the demand for technetium shifts.
“The cyclotron gives you a more or less stable continuous source (of isotopes),” Wilson said. “You don’t have to worry about what’s happening on the outside.”
Group: Nuclear waste could be trucked from Illinois to Port Huron, Bob Gross, Port Huron Times Herald, 3 Aug 18
A coalition of environmental groups claims a letter from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicates that nuclear waste from power plants in Illinois will be trucked to Port Huron and shipped from there to an unknown destination.
“A spill, release or fire here or near waterways that flow into the St. Clair River could potentially ruin one of the largest fresh water deltas in the world – the St. Clair Flats – and potentially poison forever drinking water and freshwater ecosystems for up to 40-plus million people of the Great Lakes, including residents of Canada, the U.S., U.S. Tribes, First Nations and other indigenous peoples,” said Kay Cumbow of the Great Lakes Environmental Alliance in Port Huron, in a news release.
According to the news release from Don’t Waste Michigan, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, a letter dated July 13, from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to “Secured Transportation Services,” cites an application under 45-day review by the NRC for a highway transport route for high level radioactive waste from the LaSalle nuclear reactors in Illinois to the “Port Huron, Michigan Port of Exit.”
The letter was found July 23 among 467 documents on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s online ADAMS library, according to the news release. The number of transports is not given.
Secured Transportation Services, which is based in Buford, Georgia, is identified on the company’s website as the “leading transportation coordinator for spent nuclear fuel in North America.”
The letter only refers to shipping from central Illinois to Port Huron by a land route, according to the news release. It does not show where or how the waste would move from the city.
In a follow-up interview, Cumbow said the groups have more questions than answers about possible spent fuel shipments coming to Port Huron from Illinois………..
Cumbow said the letter only references highway route approval.
“Once it gets to Port Huron, we don’t know where it goes,” she said.
She said the waste is highly radioactive.
“It’s lethal when you are exposed to it,” Cumbow said. “Shielded, you’re fine. Any accident with this stuff, if there was a serious incident with this stuff, there is a likelihood people will be killed.
“The other thing is we don’t know what’s approved in Canada,” she said. “We don’t know where it is going. It might be going to Canada or it might be going through Canada to somewhere else.”
She said safety issues posed by the state’s crumbling road and bridge infrastructure are other concerns.
“There might be a little bit of this going across the border, or there might be a whole lot of it going across the border,” Cumbow said. “We just don’t know. I think as a society we should be looking at ways to stop poisoning our land and water.”
According to the news release, NRC spokesman Alex Sapountzis is quoted in an email to an NRC librarian as stating that “details of all spent nuclear fuel routes are designated as Safeguards Information/sensitive information and therefore will not be placed in ADAMS. All a member of the public will see in ADAMS is that in a letter we state we accepted for review a route (it has all the information we need to conduct our review) and then an approval letter (based on the information the applicant submitted, we accept the route and for transport by road it’s good for 5 years or by rail for 7 years).”
Proposed waste storage site meets opposition, AlibiBy Joshua Lee 2 Aug 18
Public outcry against a proposed plan to build a nuclear waste facility in southeastern New Mexico seemed overwhelming last week as citizens spoke at numerous public meetings held by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission across the state.
Holtec International, …. applied with the NRC to build a temporary storage facility in Lea County—meant to hold spent nuclear fuel shipped from sites across the country……
The $2.4 billion facility would hold around 500 canisters of spent uranium fuel—8,680 metric tons..’ If the plan is approved, future expansion of the site could increase the number of canisters to 10,000—storing approximately 120,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. ..
The facility is meant to serve as a temporary storage space for the waste, however a permanent home has yet to be found. …k.
The lack of a federal plan for permanent storage of the spent waste has raised concerns among opponents of Holtec’s plan regarding the likelihood that the new facility, meant to serve as an interim storage site, could become the waste’s lasting home. At a number of public meetings arranged by the NRC, residents and environmental advocacy groups spoke against the project, citing safety issues that have occurred at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and fears of contamination near sites of cultural significance.
Also of concern is the transportation method of the high-level radioactive materials. The spent waste will be shipped via train to Lea County…….It is unclear exactly which rail corridors are expected to be used for the waste’s transportation, as it’s not mentioned in the proposal……
Among the questions asked were whether New Mexico has the infrastructure needed to handle the volume of shipments that would be coming into the state. In the case of an accident, the letter asked if emergency preparedness procedures are in place. ,,,,
The only response Steinborn said he’d received was from the New Mexico Environment Department, saying they would investigate the matter in the future.
The preliminary analysis, by a team of scientists at the World Weather Attribution network, uses data from seven weather stations in Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The team were not able to get sufficient data at short notice to include a UK station.
The findings suggest that rising global temperatures have increased the likelihood of such hot temperatures by five times in Denmark, three times in the Netherlands and two times in Ireland.
The sizeable year-to-year fluctuations in summer weather in Scandinavia makes it harder to pin down a specific change in likelihood for the heatwaves in Norway, Sweden and Finland, the researchers say. However, “we can state that, yes, heatwaves have increased – and are increasing – in Scandinavia as in the rest of Europe”, says one of the scientists involved.
Climate change link
From the UK to Canada through to Oman and Japan, the northern hemisphere has seen a pattern of prolonged heatwaves in recent weeks. The record-breaking temperatures have been linked to wildfires in Sweden, Greece and California and heatwave deaths in several countries.
Many news reports have speculated on the potential role that rising global temperatures could be having on the spate of extremes this summer. Carbon Brief has published a summary of all the media coverage from recent weeks.
Now, in a rapid analysis over the past few days, scientists have been able to quantify the impact that climate change is having.
The study uses data from individual weather stations, explained Dr Friederike Otto, the deputy director of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, in a press conference this morning:
“What we have done in this study is look at locations – individual weather stations, so at the place where people live – to represent the heatwave that people are actually experiencing.”
These stations were selected because they had “data immediately available to us”, added Otto, and also because they had long records that could be analysed. Because the team needed data as close to real-time as possible – while they were carrying out their analysis – they used forecasts of temperature for the most recent few days.
The locations of each station were: Dublin, Ireland; De Bilt, Netherlands; Copenhagen, Denmark; Oslo, Norway; Linköping, Sweden; Sodankyla, northern Finland; and Jokioinen, southern Finland.
The researchers defined the heatwave at each location by taking the hottest three-day period in the year so far. Although this is a short period compared to the extended heatwave for much of Europe this summer, using longer period would have left fewer hot events to analyse, the researchers say.
……… Single-event attribution
The new research is the latest in what are known as “single-event attribution” studies. The fast-moving area of research aims to identify the influence that human-caused climate change does – or does not – have on extreme weather events around the world. Carbon Brief has previously mapped all the peer-reviewed attribution studies in the scientific literature.
The research was conducted by World Weather Attribution – a network of scientists in six institutions established to provide near-real time analysis of possible links between climate change and extreme weather events.
It should be noted that the findings are still only preliminary, the researchers say:
“It is important to note that, compared to other attribution analyses of European summers, attributing a heatwave early in the season with the whole of August still to come will only give a preliminary result of the 2018 northern hemisphere heatwave season.”
As more and more survivors who directly witnessed the nuclear attack die, students are taking on responsibility for telling their stories, Guardian Daniel Hurstin Nagasaki, 2 August 18
The 500 students at Shiroyama Elementary School gather in the assembly hall on the ninth day of every month to sing a song. This is no ordinary school anthem, however.
Dear Children’s Souls deals with the most traumatic chapter in the school’s long history: the moment 1,400 students and 28 staff members died when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the southern Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the second world war.
Nearly 73 years have passed since the bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 – and Hiroshima three days earlier – but the school feels a special responsibility to keep the memories alive.
“Shiroyama Elementary School is situated closest to the ground zero of the A-bombing compared to other municipal elementary schools in Nagasaki,” explains the softly spoken principal, Hiroaki Takemura, adding that the hypo-centre was just 500m away.
“The feelings for peace are very strong here.”The task is becoming increasingly vital as more and more of the survivors who directly witnessed the events pass away. The ranks of these survivors, known as hibakusha, have halved over the past two decades and their average age is now 82. As they become less mobile, they find it more difficult to travel and give first-hand accounts of the horrors of nuclear war in the hope of preventing any repeat amid growing global tensions. Continue reading →
OSLO – This year’s unusually warm summer in the Nordic region has increased sea water temperatures and forced some nuclear reactors to curb power output or shut down altogether, with more expected to follow suit.
The summer has been 6-10 degrees Celsius above the seasonal average so far and has depleted the region’s hydropower reservoirs, driving power prices to record highs, boosting energy imports from continental Europe and driving up consumer energy bills.
Nuclear plants in Sweden and Finland are the region’s second largest power source after hydropower dams and have a combined capacity of 11.4 gigawatts (GW).
Reactors need cold sea water for cooling but when the temperature gets too high it can make the water too warm for safe operations, although the threshold varies depending on the reactor type and age.
Unscheduled power output cuts in Swedish and Finnish reactors could push prices even higher, said Vegard Willumsen, section manager at Norway’s energy regulator NVE.
“If nuclear reactors in the Nordics shut down or reduce power due to the heatwave, it could also put pressure on the supply and consequently on the Nordic power prices,” he added.
WHY IS WATER TEMPERATURE AN ISSUE?
The Nordic region’s nuclear plants comprise either pressurised water reactors (PWR) or boiling water reactors (BWR) – and both can be affected by warm sea water.
Typically, power would be reduced at the 12 reactors after a certain temperature threshold has been reached and then fully shut down at a higher threshold.
BWRs can keep operating for longer and would only shut down after a several-degree rise in water temperatures from the moment power reductions are triggered.
However, PWRs require a shorter time to shut down after they start reducing power.
Utility Vattenfall, which operates seven reactors in Sweden, shut a 900-megawatt (MW) PWR unit – one of the four located at its Ringhals plant – this week as water temperatures exceeded 25 degrees Celsius.
The firm’s second plant at Forsmark consists of three BWRs and Vattenfall had to reduce output by 30-40 megawatt per reactor earlier in July as the sea water in the area exceeded 23 degrees Celsius.
Finland’s Fortum reduced power at its Loviisa plant last week when water temperatures reached 32 degrees C, close to a threshold of 34 degrees.
The extent to which water temperature affects nuclear plants also depends on the depth that they receive water from. Colder water is deeper.
It also depends on how warm the water is after being used in the reactors and released back into the sea. If used water exceeds 34 degrees Celsius, it can cause major output reductions or shutdowns for certain plants due to safety regulations.
Sweden’s biggest reactor – 1.4 GW Oskarshamn 3 – should be less vulnerable to very hot summers due to the depth of water, said a spokesperson for operator OKG, a unit of Uniper Energy.
“Water intake (is) at a depth of 18 metres where the water naturally is cooler than on the surface … should it be too hot, we would, of course, reduce the capacity accordingly,” he said.
Oskarshamn 3 will reduce power if sea water reaches 25 degrees but it was below 20 degrees on Tuesday.
Similarly, Teollisuuden Voima’s Olkiluoto plant in Finland has deeper water which is colder than a 27-degree threshold.
TVO has also built an additional safety mechanism – a canal – which it can use under certain conditions to release used warm water on the other side of the Olkiluoto island.
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
Holtec International, a New Jersey-based company specializing in nuclear storage, has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to construct a nuclear waste storage facility about 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Carlsbad.
Antinuclear 