"Testing has been completed of a device for carrying out irradiation tests of various radioisotopes - such as yttrium-90 - at the two pressurised heavy water reactors that make up Phase III of the Qinshan nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang province.

There is no isotope irradiation test function module in the original design architecture of the pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR), People's Daily reported. It said this meant that the Qinshan project team needed to create a special device that could seamlessly embed the isotope irradiation test function and is compatible with the existing design of the reactor, as a core irradiation test platform. It noted medical isotopes are mostly short-half-life isotopes, which require the rapid loading and unloading of irradiation test targets during the normal operation of the reactor.

"After repeated adjustments, the project team and the design institute finally designed a prototype of the device concept," People's Daily said. The isotope irradiation test platform reportedly has the ability to automatically load and unload isotope irradiation targets online.

"During the debugging and verification process of the device, it underwent thousands of action tests, which fully verified the reliability of the device," People's Daily said. "On 3 April 2023, the National Nuclear Safety Administration officially approved Qinshan Nuclear Power to use the irradiation test device to conduct yttrium-90 irradiation tests. On 23 April, the project team continued to work for nearly 120 hours during the overhaul of Qinshan No.3 Plant, successfully completing the device installation, cold commissioning and system identification operations. On 14 December, with the first yttrium-90 target successfully unloaded from the reactor, the hot test of the device was successfully completed."

The report noted that this marks the official completion of the first commercial reactor isotope research and development platform in China.

"The platform has successfully realised the research and development and production of short-half-life medical isotopes for domestic commercial reactors, opening up a new path for the localisation of medical isotopes and the development of radioactive drugs," it added. "In the future, Qinshan Nuclear Power will continue to deepen the production of reactor-irradiated isotope irradiation, and contribute to the independent and controllable supply of medical isotopes and the expansion of diversified applications of nuclear technology in China."

China National Nuclear Corporation's Qinshan comprises seven reactors, making it China's largest nuclear power plant. Construction of Phase I of the plant - a 300 MWe pressurised water reactor (PWR) which was the first indigenously-designed Chinese nuclear power station to be built - began in 1985, with the unit entering commercial operation in 1994. Qinshan Phase II is home to four operating CNP-600 PWRs, built with a high degree of localisation. Units 1 and 2, comprising the first stage of Phase II, began operating in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Units 3 and 4 entered commercial operation in October 2010 and April 2021. Phase III consists of two 750 MWe pressurised heavy water reactors supplied by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd and commissioned in 2002 and 2003.

In April this year, CNNC announced that the Qinshan plant has started mass production at one of its PHWRs of carbon-14, which is used in medical and scientific research and in fields including agriculture and chemistry as well as in medicine and biology. Apart from very limited production in experimental reactors, it was previously imported."

#Nuclear #News #China

world-nuclear-news.org/article…

Qinshan plant set to increase production of isotopes

Testing has been completed of a device for carrying out irradiation tests of various radioisotopes - such as yttrium-90 - at the two pressurised heavy water reactors that make up Phase III of the Qinshan nuclear power plant in China's Zhejiang provin…

^{World Nuclear News}

"Small modular reactors could play an important role and contribute to the Dutch energy transition, a joint report by NRG-Pallas and TNO concludes. The study shows that there is room for more than 13 SMRs in 2050.

The study, the partners said, utilises "NRG-Pallas' expertise in innovative reactor technologies and TNO's energy system model OPERA".

Two scenarios drawn up by TNO were used in this study: ADAPT and TRANSFORM. These scenarios are based on different visions of the future for the Dutch energy system. In both visions, the aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 and to achieve greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050.

In order to investigate the sensitivity of the results with respect to boundary conditions and assumptions, a few 'what-if' analyses were performed. These what-if analyses examined whether investment in and use of SMRs change when input parameters are varied.

"The results show that SMRs have a role to play in the Dutch energy transition," the study says. "The optimal contribution of SMRs to 2050 was calculated for various assumptions about future society. The results show that two to more than 13 SMRs (of 150 MWe) can be deployed with room for further expansion of this number in 2050."

It adds: "These results are contingent on policy objectives, expected market availability and realisation periods. If constraints on the potential deployment capacity are partially lifted, as is done in some of the what-if analyses, it is observed that there may even be room for more than 27 SMRs (of 150 MWe). This what-if analysis result can be interpreted as a more economically optimal solution, but is obviously conditional on the aforementioned aspects used to define the potential limits for the scenarios being sufficiently adjusted to allow for this to occur.

"On the other hand, with delayed introduction of SMRs or no nuclear at all, a carbon neutral energy system in 2050 is possible as well. The exact optimum depends mainly on the future of industry, and more specifically on the future heat demand from activities such as refineries and (bio-)aromatics production, and the degree of electrification in society. Nevertheless, it can be concluded that SMRs are an important option for decarbonisation of the industry by supplying process heat."

An earlier scenario study by TNO showed that in an energy system without new nuclear power plants, the system costs are 1% to 2.5% higher than with nuclear energy. "Although nuclear power plants are initially more expensive than wind turbines and solar panels, the loss of nuclear energy as an energy supply should be compensated for by greater use of more expensive flexibility options, such as energy storage," NRG-Pallas noted.

In April 2023, in its draft Climate Fund for 2024, the Dutch government budgeted funds totalling EUR320 million (USD352 million) for the development of nuclear energy. The funds will be used for the preparation of the operational extension of the existing Borssele nuclear power plant, the construction of two new large reactors, the development of small modular reactors and for nuclear skills development in the Netherlands.

In August 2022, the UK's Rolls-Royce SMR signed an exclusive agreement with ULC-Energy to collaborate on the deployment of Rolls-Royce SMR power plants in the Netherlands. ULC-Energy - established in 2021 and based in Amsterdam - aims to accelerate decarbonisation in the Netherlands by developing nuclear energy projects that efficiently integrate with residential and industrial energy networks in the country."

#Nuclear #News #Netherlands #SMR

world-nuclear-news.org/article…

SMRs to help decarbonise Dutch energy system, study concludes

Small modular reactors could play an important role and contribute to the Dutch energy transition, a joint report by NRG-Pallas and TNO concludes. The study shows that there is room for more than 13 SMRs in 2050. ;

^{World Nuclear News}

As the scale of the environmental and economic damage from #Dnipro dam destruction is not yet fully comprehended, I just wanted to make one note on social perception of risk.

For the last year everyone has been concerned about about the hypothetical threat of #nuclear power plant attacks in Zaporizhzhia NPP. It never happened thanks to mobilization of international community to execute pressure on Russian occupational forces that included numerous visits of IAEA, diplomats from the West and China etc and even installing a permanent IAEA monitoring mission in ZNPP.

At the same time, over one night #Russia has materialized actual threat of scale that may go well beyond any worst case scenario in ZNPP after it was shut down. Warnings about impact of a hydro dam failure were already voiced in 2022 after Russia has planted explosives on the dam in Novaya Khakovka and hinted it will be used as a weapon if necessary. But there were no Chinese diplomats coming to Moscow, no IEA monitoring mission on the dam and media forgot about it the next day.

Why? Because water seems to be a “natural” threat that everyone is familiar with. In case of #Fukushima it was the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that killed over 20’000 people but world’s attention is still focused on the nuclear plant disaster today where zero people were killed. Some environmental organisations intentionally distorted the tragedy by attributing all these deaths to the plant failure!

Is water any safer? Well, it’s not - if you’re killed by water, you’re dead in the same way as if you were hypothetically killed by gamma radiation. 1975 Banqiao dam disaster[^1] in #China killed 26,000 to 240,000 people, and rendered 12’000 km2 unusable for decades due to sediments and pollution. Since then, there’s a few dam failures[^2] globally almost each year - e.g. 2021 Rishiganga dam killed over 60 people. Last dam failures in USA were in 2020. Fujinuma dam failure in Japan in 2011 as result of the same Tōhoku earthquake killed 8 people, which is 8 more than Fukushima NPP disaster!

Yet hydro power is widely considered “clean and safe”, which is pretty much the same cognitive bias as legal qualification of gloves or boots used at a nuclear power plant as “nuclear waste”, while coal ash or natural gas mining tailings are not, even though they have much higher actual content of radioactive elements 🤷‍♂️ In terms of human deaths per amount of electricity, hydro power is 43x more deadly than nuclear,[^3] which is why it’s important to look at the actual data and science rather than yield to the socially accepted biases, where coal is “dirty but safe” and hydro power is “clean and safe”. You can’t talk over physics, which is why in countries that do this[^4] you can actually see more people being harmed,[^5] and the fact they’re harmed by “natural” coal or water doesn’t make a slightest difference to them.

[^1]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Ban… [^2]: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_fail… [^3]: ourworldindata.org/safest-sour… [^4]: write.as/arcadian/ideological-… [^5]: grist.org/energy/the-cost-of-g…

#Finland Olkiluoto #nuclear power plant block 3 is now going into full power after being first connected to the electrical grid in May 2022. The power capacity of the new block is 1600 MW and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) 42 EUR/MWh, even after all delays that plagued the plant due to changing legislative environment.

yle.fi/a/74-20027287

Olkiluoto 3 aloittaa ”säännöllisen sähköntuotannon”, mutta sillä on lähinnä symbolinen merkitys – lue, miksi

Edessä ei ole dramaattisia muutoksia.

^{Elli-Alina Hiilamo (Yle Uutiset)}