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AVR, AVR Reactor, cesium, environment, fleecing of America, Germany, H-Canyon, helium, High temperature reactor, Idaho, INL, Iran, Iranian, Kam Ghaffarian, nuclear accident, nuclear energy, nuclear power, nuclear waste, Pebble Bed Reactors, Savannah River Site, SGT, taxes, Taxpayer, taxpayer fleece, taxpayers, THTR, US DOE, X-Energy
The US DOE is throwing $40 million of taxpayer money to X-Energy, a “start-up” company owned by an Iranian, about whom little can be found, for more research on the American invented and twice or thrice rejected, and dangerously failed in Germany, Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor, even as Germany desperately tries to dump its failed Pebble Bed spent nuclear fuel on America. German experience with Pebble Bed reactors, including highly contaminated sites from Pebble Bed nuclear accidents, proves that the Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor is unsafe and unreliable.
We would say that all of the parties involved in this should be hung upside down by their toenails, but there is great need for nuclear clean-up workers so they must be sent to clean-up Fukushima, WIPP, Savannah River Nuclear site, etc.
Germany is trying to send nuclear waste from its failed Pebble Bed reactors from a secure concrete facility in Germany, across the Atlantic, only to be parked outside or under tarp in the sweltering heat of South Carolina, and melted at H-Canyon which had criticality safety issues last autumn. The comment deadline is March 11: “Environmental Assessments; Availability, etc.: Acceptance and Disposition of Spent Nuclear Fuel“. http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOE_FRDOC_0001-3020 (There are even more insanities and lies, but they cannot all fit here. There are to be 30 shipments! See recent H-Canyon safety problems here: http://www.dnfsb.gov/sites/default/files/Board%20Activities/Reports/Site%20Rep%20Weekly%20Reports/Savannah%20River%20Site/2015/wr_20150306_116.pdf)
To add insult to injury, the US DOE is throwing up $40 million of US taxpayer money to a start-up, X-Energy, owned by Iranian Kam Ghaffarian, for this same type of nuclear reactor! The Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor is a US invention, which was rejected more than once, seemingly due to the same or similar problems that caused it to contaminate where it was used in Germany. Meanwhile, the US DOE “Advanced Reactor Concepts“, Technical Review Panel, Public Reports, Oct 2014 – with a clear conflict of interest – lies and deceives about its safety and success, with one of the most egregious deceptions repeated on the X-energy web site. Someone needs to sue X-energy for false advertising, and the US DOE for misuse of taxpayer monies.
It would be interesting to know why Kam Ghaffarian does not say on the web site of X-Energy or his other company, SGT, anything about where he was educated. His SGT colleague, Harold Stinger, gives his Alma Mater and extensive background. Ghaffarian allegedly has a background in Information tech and electronics. Why does he want to hide where he was educated? Harold Stinger doesn’t appear involved in X-Energy. While Ghaffarian doesn’t look qualified enough to know anything about nuclear dangers or safety, one would think he might be able to read in languages other than Farsi. One can but be reminded of the creation of the Clive Nuclear Waste Dump-Envirocare (now owned by EnergySolutions) and its founder Khosrow Semnani of Iran.
Oh, wait, Iranian researchers are interested in Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactors and they are trying to sell small nuclear reactors to Hungary. Ghaffarian wants to sell small Pebble Beds. Is this a coincidence? In 2012: “Neutronic simulation of a pebble bed reactor considering its double heterogeneous nature“, by Amin Abedi a Naser Vosoughi b , a Department of Electrical Engineering, East Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran, b Department of Energy Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran. A little over one month after Ghaffarian was promised the US DOE money, “Iran proposes nuclear power cooperation with Hungary“, Thu, 18 Feb 2016, says Reuters: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/utilitiesNews/~3/0ydAgTqbscY/iran-nuclear-hungary-idUSL8N15X56J
The Pebble Bed Nuclear reactor was already rejected in the 1940s and the inventor, Farrington Daniels, went on to become an advocate of solar energy. In 1962 Pebble Beds were described by Oak Ridge National Lab (now a participant in this robbery, as seen below) as an old concept and in 1957 fuel problems were studied, and this model was dismissed. It was taken up by the Germans in this period, who built the AVR and the THTR, both of which suffered accidents and emitted large amounts of radiation into the environment. The German AVR site is one of the most contaminated in the world due to “fuel temperature instabilities” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/american-inventor-of-failed-pebble-bed-nuclear-reactor-design-became-solar-expert-by-1950s/
The US DOE is throwing $40 million of taxpayer money to Iranian Kam Ghaffarian’s “X-energy… to solve design and fuel development challenges“, i.e. problems, of the Xe-100 Pebble Bed Advanced Reactor: “X-energy is partnering with BWX Technology, Oregon State University, Teledyne-Brown Engineering, SGL Group, Idaho National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to solve design and fuel development challenges of the Xe-100 Pebble Bed Advanced Reactor“. http://energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-new-investments-advanced-nuclear-power-reactors-help-meet
Lie 1 regarding this nuclear reactor type, from the US DOE “Advanced Reactor Concepts“, Technical Review Panel, Public Reports, Oct. 2014, p. 12:
“Similar HTGR have been safely operated for years in Germany (AVR and THTR)…”
Lie 2 and Distortion, repeated on the X-energy web site from “Advanced Reactor Concepts“, Technical Review Panel, Public Reports, Oct. 2014, p. 12:
“When deployed for electricity generation the Xe-100 (TM) can be placed in close proximity to power users due to its intrinsic safety that excludes the possibility of core melt.”
Just as alleged with the X-Energy Pebble Bed, the THTR-300 was supposed to be safer because it couldn’t “meltdown”. However, in 1984, it was shown by the Institute of Nuclear Safety Research of Forschungszentrum Jülich, that a loss of coolant in the THTR-300 leads to very high temperatures (2300 ° C), which resulted in a massive radioactive release, even without a “meltdown”. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_THTR-300 (Accessed 20 Feb 2016)
Regarding the AVR, the current Wikipedia article notes: “Its Helium outlet temperature was 950 °C, but fuel temperature instabilities occurred during operation with locally far too high temperatures. As a consequence the whole reactor vessel became heavily contaminated by Cs-137 and Sr-90. Concerning beta-contamination AVR is the highest contaminated nuclear installation worldwide as AVR management confirmed 2001. Some contamination was also found in soil/groundwater under the reactor, as the German government confirmed in February, 2010. Thus the reactor vessel was filled in 2008 with light concrete in order to fix the radioactive dust and in 2012 the reactor vessel of 2100 metric tons will be transported about 200 meters by air-cushion sled and seven cranes to an intermediate storage.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor (Accessed 20 Feb. 2016, GMT). Recall that Wikipedia tends to be often sabotaged by the pro-nuclear lobby. Download the wiki article as a pdf quickly before this important info is deleted!)
Note Idaho National Lab Conflict of Interest, p. 20 “Advanced Reactor Concepts“, Technical Review Panel, Public Reports, Oct. 2014
Pebble Beds Proven Unreliable; Unsafe
The AVR reactor was connected to the grid from 1967 to 1988. The THTR (Thorium High Temperature Reactor) was connected to the grid in 1986 and only worked for about 423 days, so fraught was it with problems. Both suffered accidents, emitting radiation into the environment, and disease clusters have been found in the environs. https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/let-germany-keep-its-high-level-nuclear-balls-along-with-its-wc-golden-ball/
Regarding THTR Pebble Bed: The THTR-300 was supposed to be safer because it couldn’t “meltdown”. However, in 1984 it was shown by the Institute of Nuclear Safety Research of Forschungszentrum Jülich, that a loss of coolant in the THTR-300 leads to very high temperatures (2300 ° C), which resulted in a massive radioactive release, even without a “meltdown”. A report from 1988 for the NRW state government (Germany), long kept confidential, states that THTR-300 flooding incidents from steam generator pipe breaks could lead to scenarios similar to the Chernobyl accident. This similarity to the Chernobyl reactor is due to the use of graphite as a moderator in both types of reactor. This reactor also had problems with reliability. Among other things, the absorber rods were pressed from above into the pebble, causing fracture damage to the fuel assemblies significantly more often than predicted. A total of 25,000 damaged fuel elements were found, which were a thousand times more than expected in a 40-year operation. THTR-300 was only in full service for 423 days due to constant problems. Just 6 months after it was connected to the power grid, on May 4, 1986, a fuel pebble became lodged in a fuel feed pipe leading to the core and some radioactive dust from ball breakage and erosion was released to the environment. This was just a couple of days after Chernobyl. The operators played down the incident, which caused a loss of trust in the controlling authority. The Westphalia ministry of commerce created a fact finding committee. After a couple of weeks the power plant was switched on again. The fuel elements broke more often than calculated. The fuel factory in Hanau was decommissioned for security reasons. The fuel supply was difficult before and at risk through this decision. It was decided to shut down THTR-300. 120 known incidents were logged in its short lifetime. In 1988 the reactor had to be shut down cold, after six weeks of operation for at least a week to remove defective fuel elements from the collection. The high fracture rate was probably a consequence of the unfavorable helium friction properties, for the THTR-300.
Although the friction of the control rods could be reduced, this would cause an unacceptably high corrosion rate of the metallic components. The resulting ball break threatened to worsen the reactor cooling through blockage of coolant gas holes in the bottom reflector. In 2013 it was announced by an official inquiry that in the vicinity of the THTR-300 is an increased risk of thyroid cancer (64%) for women. According to the study the causes are not related to the THTR. This is disputed by parts of the environmental movement. The study on the incidence of cancer was originally requested by environmentalists, because of the uncertainties regarding the amount of radiation emitted during the incident on May 4, 1986.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernkraftwerk_THTR-300 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 (As accessed in 2014)
The AVR reactor (German: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor) was a prototype pebble bed reactor at Jülich Research Centre in West Germany. Construction began in 1960; the first grid connection was in 1967 and operation ceased in 1988. A 1988 report for the NRW state government, only made available in 2011, discusses the serious safety deficiencies of pebble reactors – especially the AVR. Since its accident there is radioactively contaminated soil and groundwater, under the reactor. According to a FZJ (Jülich Research Center) report by Moormann, published in 2008, excessively strong radioactive contamination of the reactor was due to inadequate monitoring of the reactor core, as well as due to long-lasting operation at excessive high temperatures [which apparently characterizes this reactor type], meaning that fission products could emerge from the graphite balls. Moormann emphasized that these are inherent problems of pebble bed reactors (ie not just an AVR problem) and the question arises whether the pebble bed concept is even feasible or justifiable. “In April 2014 a report of independent experts on the AVR operation was published. This report lists hidden or downplayed events and accidents, discusses an illegal manipulation of the reactor safety system during an accident and criticizes a far too optimistic interpretation of the AVR operation with respect to potential future pebble bed reactors. As a consequence of the report Juelich Research Center regretted failures and scientific misbehavior with respect to the AVR“. There was also a leukemia case cluster in children in the region of the Jülich Research Facility-Reactor. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_(Jülich) As accessed in 2014)
In 1962 the US Oak Ridge lab wrote: “The pebble-bed reactor concept is an old one, having been among the proposals considered for the Daniels Pile in 1945. Little attention was devoted to it, until five years ago” [i.e. 1957] “when the Sanderson & Porter Company, with AEC support, began to investigate the design and development of pebble-bed reactors. Most of their effort was devoted to the study of fuel-handling problems and to development of a fuel for the reactor, with, in particular, the aid of the Battelle Memorial Institute. In Germany, a combine of the Brown-Boveri Company and Krupp began actively in 1956 to develop a pebble-bed reactor and to plan for its construction…. construction in Germany began recently.” http://web.ornl.gov/info/reports/1962/3445605487489.pdf
Krupp was a major Nazi company and Swiss Brown Boveri morphed into ABB: “In August 1959 the contract was placed with Brown Boveri and Friedrich Krupp for construction of a prototype high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactor developed by them in collaboration. This prototype, with a net electrical output of 15 Mw, will be installed at Julich, Germany, and operated by Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor. With the construction of this plant, the Brown Boveri concern has a major share in the realization of the first German project for a nuclear power reactor.” http://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/4071333
The US should ask Scotland what they learned from playing around with the failed German radioactive pebbles, instead of making a similar mistake. The associated low level nuclear waste is being buried (half under, half above ground) on the waterfront at Dounreay, Scotland.
The nuclear industry has no originality and just keeps recycling the same dangerous radioactive crap.
Aren’t people tired of being robbed, killed and taken for idiots by the nuclear industry yet?
When will the English speaking world stop being so masochistic as to take everyone’s nuclear waste, and when will the German government invest in trying to develop nuclear waste solutions, rather than trying to work out sneaky ways of dumping their nuclear waste on others? The current sneak plan was spear-headed by the current German Ambassador to the Vatican, who had her Ph.D. revoked for plagiarism – Annette Schavan, the German chauvinist. No wonder! It seems that laziness is a way of life for her.
Mining Awareness + 
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