The nuclear legacy of the Russian Arctic
"The nuclear legacy in the north-west of Russia includes the building of a former military base in Andreyeva Bay, spent nuclear fuel from nuclear submarines, sunken nuclear and radiation hazardous objects at the bottom of the Arctic sea" https://bellona.org/publication/nuclear-legacy-arctic#Arctic#Cryosphere#Nuclear#Russia
Russian ofcls claimed the order was in response to comments from the West about the possibility of more direct involvement in #Ukraine. #NATO called the announcement “irresponsible.”
The announcement of the exercise was Russia’s most explicit warning in its >2yr #invasion of #Ukraine that it could use tactical #NuclearWeapons there.
The #Kremlin said the order came in response to comments by 2 European leaders that raised the prospect of more direct Western intervention in the #war.
The exercise, the Defense Ministry said, would involve forces of the Southern Military District, an area that covers Russian - #occupied#Ukraine & part of #Russia’s border region w/ Ukraine. It said the exercise would take place “in the near future.”
"Rheinmetall Boss Says Ukraine Could Get Artillery Rounds with 100KM Range if Berlin Books Orders
Armin Papperger, CEO of Germany’s Rheinmetall said his company could deliver extended-range artillery munitions but only if Berlin guarantees large, multi-year orders to justify the investment. "
New #Blog post: Spending an Afternoon in the Sizewell Control Room Simulator
I'm a bit late in writing something, but @popey, @8none1, @sil got to spend an afternoon in the operations training centre at #Sizewell B #nuclear power station
I've been seeing so many different cats, that I keep getting the "10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories" song by Emperor X stuck in my head:
In case you don't know the story: this song was commissioned by the 99 Percent Invisible podcast for their episode on how to warn people in the far future to stay away from nuclear waste deposits.
The idea is that no civilisation existed for as long as the time that radioactive waste remains dangerous. Hence, we need ways to warn people that are robust for lost of language, symbols, etc.
One idea was to breed cats that light up in the presence of radiation, and to then create a folk song about the importance of keeping cats, and the importance of leaving (with the cat) when the cat changes colour.
I hadn't realized that a sodium cooled reactor could use the sodium as a heat store to modulate its electrical output to market demand, while still having the reactor running at full power. But apparently that's what the TerraPower design is supposed to do. Now, you could of course place any kind of heat battery between the reactor primary circuit and the turbine secondary circuit, but efficiency matters. #nuclear#terrapower https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052024/wyoming-terrapower-nuclear-plant/
if i noticed something when talking with outspoken pro-nuclear people it's that you really can't trust anything they say. they are intellectually bankrupt, will use all kinds of shady argumentation tactics, ad hominems, and can't even be bothered to write their own arguments (instead using AI for that)
Why do PWR reactors use boric acid, as opposed to some random salt of boron? Apparently boron salts are often well soluble, from the nuclear POV we only care about boron being present, and I'd expect salts to cause fewer chemical problems due to their closer-to-neutral pH. In fact some random papers (https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/28/034/28034575.pdf) describe tradeoffs involved in maintaining pH as boric acid concentration changes.
There clearly must be some reason why boric acid is preferred over any simple boron salt. What is it?
yeah, the future of online discussions has arrived in the #fediverse as well: found the replies of a guy regarding #nuclear energy to be a bit too suspiciously samey sounding, so I checked with an #ai detector. lo and behold!
(is there maybe a browser plugin to detect this stuff automatically?)