Atomic Energy News

AUKUS defense ministers have reaffirmed their resolve to bolster security and stability and ensure that the Indo-Pacific remains a region free from coercion and aggression.A statement was released after Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III hosted Richard Marles MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Australia, and Grant Shapps, Secretary of State for Defence, United Kingdom, at the Defense Innovation Unit Headquarters in California on December 1.AUKUS is a trilateral security partnership for the Indo-Pacific region between Australia…

A group of partners in South Korea has set out to develop, demonstrate and commercialize vessels powered by small modular reactors (SMR).Nuclear power for ships has been gaining interest amid stricter greenhouse gas emissions regulations in the international shipping sector.Nine participating institutions, including KAERI, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Gyeongju-si, Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO), Korean Register (KR), H-Line Shipping Co., Ltd., HMM Co., Ltd., Wooyang Shipping Co., Ltd., Sinokor Merchant Marine Co., Ltd.

A U.S. Navy nuclear engineer and his wife have been charged with selling secret information about nuclear submarines to an undercover FBI agent who posed as an operative for a foreign country, the Justice Department said on Sunday.Jonathan Toebbe and his wife, Diana, were arrested on Saturday in West Virginia and charged with violating the Atomic Energy Act, the Justice Department said in a statement. They are scheduled to appear in a West Virginia federal court on Tuesday.Toebbe…

Thordon Bearings, manufacturer of water-lubricated and grease-free polymer bearing technologies, has appointed Anthony Hamilton as its new Technical Director. Reporting directly to CEO Anna Galoni, Hamilton will lead the Burlington-headquartered company’s engineering, CAD and New Product Development teams.“We are delighted to welcome Tony to the Thordon family as we look to strengthen the company's product portfolio in existing and new markets,” said Galoni. “Tony is a seasoned solutions-based leader having held senior technical positions in the marine…

Iran said on Wednesday the United States had agreed to remove all sanctions on Iran's oil and shipping but Washington said "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" in talks to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.The remarks by outgoing President Hassan Rouhani's chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi echoed previous assertions by officials in Rouhani's pragmatist camp that Washington is ready to make major concessions at the nuclear talks in Vienna that began in April.The indirect talks adjourned on Sunday for consultations in capitals…

Japan will release more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear station into the sea, the government said on Tuesday, a move opposed by neighbors including China, which called it "extremely irresponsible."The first release of water will take place in about two years, giving plant operator Tokyo Electric Power time to begin filtering the water to remove harmful isotopes, build infrastructure and acquire regulatory approval.Japan has argued…

Nearly a decade after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan's government has decided to release over one million tonnes of contaminated water into the sea, media reports said on Friday, with a formal announcement expected to be made later this month.The decision is expected to rankle neighboring countries like South Korea, which has already stepped up radiation tests of food from Japan, and further devastate the fishing industry in Fukushima that has battled against such a move…

Russian state atomic energy agency Rosatom and compatriot private transportation and logistics company Delo Group will jointly develop international multi-modal shipments and transit shipments Asia-Europe-Asia via the Northern Sea Transit Corridor.Rosatom is the authorized infrastructure operator of the Northern Sea Route and owner of the world-only nuclear icebreaker fleet.Delo Group assets include six sea ports in the Baltic Sea, one sea port in the Azov-Black Sea region and one sea port in the Far East basin which are the key regions for foreign trade cargo flows.The companies signed documents on JSC Atomenergoprom’s equity investments in Delo Group with an ownership interest of 30%.For Rosatom the document was signed by Director of JSC Atomenergoprom Kirill Komarov; for Delo Group it w

French naval defence and marine renewable energy company Naval Group launched the Suffren, the first of six nuclear submarines of the latest generation in Cherbourg, in a  ceremony presided over by the President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macro.The industrial group said in a press note that this event is a key step for the Barracuda program for the benefit of the French Navy.The Suffren is the first of the Barracuda-class series, designed to replace the Rubis-class generation. Naval Group is in charge of the construction of this submarines series, including the design and construction of the ship and information systems as well as the manufacturing of the main components of nuclear boiler rooms.Hervé Guillou…

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping during a meeting held in St.Petersburg, the Russian Federation.The MOU reconfirms and further develops the cooperation between the two organizations related to the training of seafarers especially in the field of Northern Sea Route operations.MOL has been operating icebreaking LNG carriers for the Yamal LNG project that navigate in the Northern Sea Route, and MOL crews have had special training such as polar water training courses for navigation officers and cold climate survival training course at the Makarov Training Centre…

Iran has fired a diplomatic warning shot at Washington by raising the prospect of building nuclear reactors for ships while staying within the limits set by its atomic deal with major powers, a U.N. nuclear watchdog report showed on Thursday. U.S. President Donald Trump has long railed against the 2015 nuclear deal for reasons including its limited duration and the fact it does not cover Iran's ballistic missile programme. He has threatened to pull out unless European allies help "fix" the agreement with a follow-up accord.

Damen Oskarshamnsvarvet Sweden has been awarded the contract to manufacture high-precision special steel tanks together with their integrated cassettes for OKG; operator of three nuclear reactors on Sweden’s Simpevarp peninsula. With two reactors due to be decommissioned and dismantled, the tanks will be used to store radioactive reactor parts as part of the disposal process. While Damen Oskarshamnsvarvet Sweden is best known as one of the ship repair and conversion yards in the Baltic Sea, it has over many years built up a reputation as a niche fabricator of high quality steel structures of all kinds. Its certifications include ISO 3834-2…

Governments at the recent meeting of Parties which regulate the dumping of wastes at sea have called for more action to address marine litter in the oceans, particularly plastics and microplastics, which present a severe and long lasting threat to the marine environment. Parties to the London Convention and Protocol, meeting for their 38th/11th session, expressed concern around the issue of litter and plastics in the marine environment, but also acknowledged that there has been…

1813 - HMS Shannon, commanded by Capt. Philip Broke, captures USS Chesapeake, commanded by Capt. James Lawrence off the coast of Boston, Mass. During the battle, Capt. Lawrence is mortally wounded, but as he is carried below deck, he orders the iconic phrase: "Tell the men to fire faster! 1871 - Two ships under the squadron command of Commodore John Rodgers, on USS Colorado, are attacked from Korean forts and batteries. The squadron is carrying Frederick Low, U.S. foreign minister to China, who was sent to negotiate trade with Korea.

The media in Tehran said on Saturday that Japan plans to extend a contract to purchase crude oil from Iran. Shana news agency – affiliated to Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum – has reported that Japan’s contract will be extended until April 2017. It added that the volume of oil that the country will purchase from Iran will also increase from the current level of 110,000 barrels per day. No figure was nevertheless provided on how much this will increase. Japan is one of Iran's biggest oil buyers but its crude imports have nearly halved from 2011 levels before sanctions. Japan has chose to lift its sanctions on Iran after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed the country had implemented measures promised under the newly-reached deal on its nuclear programme…

India's Reliance group announced a tie up with Andhra Pradesh government for building a strategic shipyard on the eastern seaboard of the country, which will be co-located with strategic facilities of the Indian Navy and Department of Atomic Energy. The facility is said to be co-located with the Indian Navy’s base and BARC’s nuclear facility at Rambilli, approximately 70 Km south of Visakhapatnam. The new facility would complement the company’s existing facility at Pipavav in Gujarat, with a clear focus on building strategic assets for the Indian Navy. Ambani also urged on the need for development in critical areas of naval defence capability in the region in order to compete with the world.

The recently introduced Wärtsilä 31 engine, which has been acknowledged by Guinness World Records as being the world's most efficient four-stroke diesel engine, has been selected to power a new generation icebreaker currently under construction at the PJSC Vyborg Shipyard. The ship is being built on behalf of FSUE Atomflot, the enterprise of ROSATOM, the State Corporation for Atomic Energy. The order was signed in September. When delivered, the icebreaker will serve the Yamal LNG project in Sabetta, located northeast of the Yamal peninsular in Russia. The project is one of the largest industrial undertakings in the Arctic. Fuel efficiency and reliability were the two major deciding factors behind the choice of the Wärtsilä 31 engine.

Plans to terminate commercial tours to the North Pole on the nuclear-powered icebreakers of the Atomflot company in 2016 have surged the demand for these tours. Sergey Shirokiy, the chief of the tourist department of the Russian Arctic national park summed up the results of the tourist season. Over the six years since the opening of the park on the Franz Joseph Land high-latitude archipelago, it was visited by a record number of 1,225 tourists from 41 countries this year. "Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom (which owns Atomflot) said last year it would terminate the cruises to the North Pole and this led up to an agitated demand this year," Shirokiy said. However, Atomflot said later its nuclear icebreakers would continue making cruises to the Pole.

Our oceans need an immediate and substantial reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. If that doesn’t happen, we could see far-reaching and largely irreversible impacts on marine ecosystems, which would especially be felt in developing countries. That’s the conclusion of a new review study published today in the journal Science. In the study, the research team from the Ocean 2015 initiative assesses the latest findings on the risks that climate change poses for our oceans, and demonstrates how fundamentally marine ecosystems are likely to change if human beings continue to produce just as much greenhouse gases as before.

P.Sudhakar, Chairman & Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) handed over a critical homeland security system - Radiological Detection Equipment (RDE) to Neeraj Bansal, Chairman In charge, Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT), Mumbai in presence of Dr. R.K.Sinha, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy at an impressive function at JNPort today. JNPort is the largest container port in India handling the major container traffic of the country. JNPort has further equipped itself in handling all kinds of cargo as per international safety standards by installing this Radiological Detection Equipment (RDE). This security system would neither be a hindrance to the moving cargo nor will add another security clearance layer.

Iran, the United States and five other major powers reached an agreement to restrain the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. Q: Can you outline the timeline from here? "The P5+1 will now work on a UN resolution to endorse the deal; separately, domestic legislatures and other processes will review text, in the U.S, that includes a 60-day review period; 90 days from today the deal goes into implementation mode in which Iran does a number of nuke steps, and the P5+1 establish legal conditions for relief, but it doesn't get activated until the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) issues a report verifying Iran did what it said it would do, which Secretary (of State John) Kerry put at about 6 months, and which I think is about right, as noted before.

Two huge explosions tore through an industrial area where toxic chemicals and gas were stored in the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing at least 50 people, including at least a dozen fire fighters, officials and state media said on Thursday. At least 700 people were injured, more than 71 seriously, the Tianjin government said on its Weibo microblog, and the official Xinhua news agency said two fires were still burning. Wednesday night's blasts, so large that they were seen by satellites in space, sent shockwaves through apartment blocks kilometres away in the port city of 15 million people. Internet videos showed fireballs shooting into the sky and the U.S. Geological Survey registered the blasts as seismic events.

An international research team reports results of a three-year study of sediment samples collected offshore from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in a new paper published August 18, 2015, in the American Chemical Society's journal, Environmental Science and Technology. The research aids in understanding what happens to Fukushima contaminants after they are buried on the seafloor off coastal Japan. Led by Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist and marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)…