directoryarmy.com Blog

Nuclear decommissioning is an expensive business. It is estimated that the decommissioning of existing sites in the UK will cost in the region of 70 billion GBP, but this is not taking the timescale of such operations into account. As the process happens in stages, the true cost is hard to determine.

In the UK the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is the body responsible for sourcing contractors to carry out nuclear site cleanup. It aims to provide cost effective decommissioning of existing sites and implementation of long term management of sites while they are being dismantled. It is not just power plants that require decommissioning; although concern about the safety of such nuclear establishments are at the forefront of public concern, there are also a number of other industries that require the same treatment when it comes to shutting down.

Particle accelerators, such as the much publicised Large Hadron Collider (LHC), uranium mines and isotope production plants all require the services of a safe decommissioning contractor. The official stance on the process is to return the buildings and the site itself to a safe and decontaminated state so that it can be dismantled or reused with no risk of nuclear contamination.

Due to the increase in demand for energy, the mid 1900s saw the introduction of nuclear power facilities; and it is these facilities that are coming to the end of a lifetime of service. The need for economic and safe treatment of such plants has reached a crescendo as the new generation of reactors are ready to take their place. There could be as many as 10 new-style reactors required to meet the energy needs in the UK and although the new designs mean that less fuel will be used and will last longer, there is a chance that existing decommissioning and waste storage techniques will not be adequate.

The crux lies in the fact that the new rods have a higher burn-up rate, which in turn creates a much more radioactive substance when it comes to disposal. The increased radioactivity of the uranium generates more heat, which becomes a problem during storage after use in a reactor. Being able to consider a flexible approach to the storage of nuclear waste requires an open minded appreciation of the route the development of nuclear power facilities could take. Keeping the estimated and real costs of decommissioning down becomes more difficult if the fuel is more radioactive. In addition, if more repositories are required to enable the safe storage of super heated rods, the costs are going to increase in the reclamation of sites post-nuclear use.

According to NDA, the radioactivity of the new type of uranium rod from the proposed reactors will be twice the level of our existing radioactive waste today. Although the disposal of the waste and the decommissioning of the sites will not be carried out until 2080, leaving the problem for the next 70 years is not an option. Far too often the industry is accused of leaving the safe handling of nuclear waste, fuel and facilities for future generations to work out, and at a time when we are currently paying a high price for safe nuclear decommissioning, we should appreciate the implications this may have on the future decommissioning contractors.

In one of this most important publications , Einstein has described the process of stimulated emission of radiation. This means that a photon hitting some atom may not only supply energy to this atom in an absorption process, but also send an already excited atom back to a state with lower energy. In the lattter case, an additional photon is emitted. A crucial aspect is Einstein’s insight that the additional photon should move in the same direction as the incoming photon. We thus have a process of light amplification: we get two photons out of one, or transform some light beam into a more energetic one. Furthermore, Einstein has realized that a net gain of optical power in some ensemble of atoms can occur only if there is a so-called population inversion: the upper energy level must be more strongly populated than the lower one, so that the effect of stimulated emission can exceed the one by absorption of atoms in the lower state. This state is often achieved by “optical pumping” e.g. of a laser crystal – an invention attributed to Alfred Kastler.

For a laser, one more thing is required: a “resonator”, in which a light beam can circulate, and an amplifying medium can at least compensate for the power losses in each round trip. This principle was first demonstrated with microwaves, and by the ground-breaking work of Schawlow, Townes and Maiman around 1960 it could also be applied to light.

As the work between 1917 and 1960 has certainly brought more than only the clarification of some minor details, it would be rather far-fetched to call Einstein the inventor of the laser. However, he has indeed realized the most important physical basis of the laser – the process of stimulated emission. This, by the way, was done not by observing physical phenomena, but via theoretical reasoning. After that, there was still a far way to the laser.

there is a similarity to the story of the nuclear bomb. According to the equation E=mc2, a huge amount of energy should be released when just a few grams of matter are converted to energy. Without doubt, this is a very important finding. Nevertheless, it is still another thing to identify a way to do this conversion. Such a way was found via the discovery of nuclear fission by the team of Lise Meitner, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in 1938, and the realization of the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction soon after. In this sense, Einstein is related to the atomic bomb perhaps more via his famous letter to president Roosevelt than by the mentioned equation. And Max Planck could present an equation , but no letter, and is not considered to be the father of the laser, but at most a father of the photon, which was later named so by Gilbert N. Lewis.

Nuclear power plants are very clean-burning and their efficiency is rather staggering. Nuclear power is generated at 80% efficiency, meaning that the energy produced by the fission reactions is almost equal to the energy put into producing the fission reactions in the first place. There is not a lot of waste material generated by nuclear fission although, due to the fact that there is no such thing as creating energy without also creating some measure of waste, there is some. The concerns of people such as environmentalists with regards to using nuclear power as an alternative energy source center around this waste, which is radioactive gases which have to be contained. The radiation from these gases lasts for an extraordinarily long time, so it can never be released once contained and stored. However, the volume of this waste gas produced by the nuclear power plants is small in comparison to how much NOx (nitrous oxide that is, air pollution) is caused by one day’s worth of rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles.

The splitting of an atom releases energy in the forms of both heat and light. Atomic power plants control the fission reactions so that they don’t result in the devastating explosions that are brought forth in atomic and hydrogen bombs. There is no chance of an atomic power plant exploding like a nuclear bomb, as the specialized conditions and the pure Plutonium used to unleash an atomic bomb’s vicious force simply don’t exist inside a nuclear power plant. The risk of a meltdown is very low. Although this latter event has happened a couple of times, when one considers that there are over 430 nuclear reactors spread out across 33 nations, and that nuclear reactors have been in use since the early 1950s, these are rare occurrences, and the events of that nature which have taken place were the fault of outdated materials which should have been properly kept up. Indeed, if nuclear energy could become a more widely accepted form of alternative energy, there would be little question of their upkeep being maintained. Currently, six states in America generate more than half of all their electrical energy needs through nuclear power, and the media are not filled with gruesome horror stories of the power plants constantly having problems.

The 85 year old black hatted black coated long white bearded Jewish born Rabbi and Messiah of Christianity and Islam shouted out from the cross, “The truth shall set you free!” The occupying rooster hatted Roman Soldier shouted back, “I’d like to thank the brave men and women of the Roman Empire Armed Forces and their families for the immense sacrifices they have made. God Bless Rome.”

It’s getting so that you can’t even start a new war in the Middle East anymore. This week while 2 of George Bush’s puppets General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were feeding baloney sandwiches to the U.S. House and Senate Israel bombed Syria. Syria turned the other cheek.

It’s getting so that being the President of the United States like George Bush is like being an SEO Professional. You get your puppets to go to the Capitol and spam the keywords “Iran Nukes Bad”, “Syria Nukes Bad”, “North Korea Nukes Bad”, “Al Qaeda Nukes Bad”. In the middle of all of this keyword spamming in the American Congress Israel bombs Syria. George Bush’s speech tomorrow night was supposed to be about the beginning of all out war in the Middle East between Saudi Arabia and their puppet George Bush against Syria and Iran, all of the Middle East oil goes to the winner.

The elder George Bush sits on the board of the House of Saud. His Chairman is Saudi King Abdullah. The Saudi Bin Laden family financed the oil company of George W. Bush. President Bush joked last week that he was looking forward to his retirement making speeches as if we didn’t know that Saudi King Abdullah has already paid the Bushes billions of Euros into Swiss bank accounts in the name Decider Jr. Investments Ltd. A guy is entitled to make a living and support his daughters. King Abdullah is paying both George Bushes to conquer all of the Middle East oil for him. Then he will buy china with the proceeds. His wives love Waterford.

The reason that the United States sent 30,000 more troops to Iraq was to conquer the Middle East oil fields this week with weapons of mass destruction but Syria didn’t take the bait. The leak is that Israel bombed a munitions dump in Northern Syria because it contained Iranian and get this, North Korean weapons which were then being handed off to Hezbollah, Hamas, and the insurgents in Iraq to kill American soldiers. What do you have to do to provoke a war in the Middle East with the Mahdi Army and Syria playing possum? The Ayatollahs are not idiots. They have time on their side and they are breathing in the nuclear fumes of two American carrier groups parked outside their bedroom windows.

George Bush has virtually handed Iraq to Iran if he leaves now. It’s all or nothing now for Junior. Either he goes down in history as America’s worst President ever or he shape shifts overnight into Winston Churchill by conquering Iran, Iraq and Syria for the United States of America. The Democrats aren’t blocking the funding for the Iraq War because they’re too busy playing “They got you in, we’ll get you out” with the American voters.

Today Tony Snow, another George Bush puppet auditoned for Saturday Night Live. Tony Snow said, “Victory is defined as helping the Iraqis develop the capability of defending themselves and governing themselves.” Pontius Pilate said the same thing to the Emperor Tiberius but he had a problem with his timing and delivery so he didn’t make it. Ambassador Ryan Crocker also auditioned for Saturday Night Live. He said, “I see encouraging signs on the diplomatic level. The Saudis are preparing to reopen their embassy in Baghdad for the first time since 2003.” They are opening a branch office.

On a lighter note, Ramadan and Rosh Hashanah began tonight. The Muslim people will be fasting from dawn till dusk for a month, and eating and smoking from water pipes all night for a month, like the Jewish coeds at Brigham Young University. George Bush is poised to tell America and the world that he is going to take the advice of his puppet General David Petraeus and bring home the 30,000 troops he just sent over next summer so that the American people see the troops coming home during the Presidential debates and vote Republican. He also wants to give the appearance of wanting to end the war before going for the jugular. If all goes according to Saudi King Abdullah’s plan, by next summer Barbara and Jenna Bush will be suntanning at the George Bush Palace Hotel and Casino in a Tehran mysteriously devoid of any Shiites, something about smallpox