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Hurricane Harvey made land fall in Texas this week and the flooding was historic. What is shaping up to be the most costly natural disaster in American history, the storm has left refineries shut down, interrupted wind and solar generation, caused a constant worry about gas explosions, and caused a chain of events that led to explosions and fires at the Arkema chemical plant that is only the beginning. The two nuclear reactors at the South Texas Project plant near Houston were operating at full capacity despite wind gusts that peaked at 130 mph as the Hurricane made landfall. The...

0 The disgraced former leader of state-owned power company Santee Cooper – an entity which just wasted billions of dollars on an abandoned nuclear power plant – will receive a whopping $16 million payout from South Carolina taxpayers. You read that right … the former CEO of this colossally mismanaged public utility is being rewarded to the tune of $16 million for his role in perhaps the biggest command economic debacle in the history of the Palmetto State.

According to earlier reports, U.S. Pacific Command spokesman and Cmdr. David Benham suggested two North Korean missiles "failed in flight" while the third one had "blown up almost immediately." The U.S. Pacific Command has since revised its evaluation of the missile launch, now reporting no missile failures -- in line with the South Korean military assessment.

As President Rouhani addresses Parliament, he made it very clear that id the US decides to go ahead with more sanctions, then Iran will scrap the “Obama Deal” (which did not just involve Obama) and resume their nuclear and missile projects. The only surprising thing about this whole affair is that it took them this long. Rouhani was outlining the plans for his new term when his “chat” took a decidedly anti-Trump turn; he declared that with Trump n the White House shows the world that Washington is “not a good partner”. Let’s for a moment ignore that most nations...

On a sunny August Friday, people stream past the ornate, Art Deco US Post Office building in Manhattan's East Village, where its forlorn and faded "Fallout Shelter" plaque is an ominous reminder, however distant, of today's nuclear threat. The yellow and white metal sign on the Cooper Station Post Office is one of perhaps thousands that can be found scattered throughout the city -- largely forgotten relics of the days when the threat of annihilation via a Soviet nuclear attack seemed like a very real and terrifying proposition. But as the war of words between US President Donald Trump and...

RIGHT now, a British Trident nuclear submarine is gliding deep beneath the waves, primed and ready to launch a devastating strike if the worst should ever happen. Our nuclear subs operate in the depths of the ocean, where nobody can detect them, and are always on alert to respond to the threat of a nuclear war. Trident sub commanders keep in contact with the surface as much as possible, but they're relatively cut off from Britain when on deployment. In the event of a sudden and unexpected strike, the sub crews may have no way of knowing exactly what's happening...

NASA looks at reviving atomic rocket program David Szondy August 10, 2017 A new engine being developed for NASA will use low-enriched uranium Cermet fuel rods (Credit: NASA) View gallery - 4 images When the first manned mission to Mars sets out, it may be on the tail of an atomic rocket engine. The Space Race vintage technology could have a renaissance at NASA after the space agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama signed a contract with BWXT Nuclear Energy to develop updated Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) concepts and new fuel elements to power them. The Apollo missions to...

The fat-headed menace in Pyongyang is getting aid and comfort from the American left and it should stop, now. Regardless of how hurt their feelings, we are in a real, dangerous crisis with North Korea. Dictator Kim Jong Un consumes American culture and undoubtedly American media and their widespread, vitriolic criticism of President Trump’s diplomatic tactics has already emboldened him. Gone are the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the media chose country over nuclear annihilation. Today, their last emotion before bed and first when they awake is hate for Trump.

Pakistan has built a 'hardened, secure, underground' complex in a remote mountainous region in the restive Balochistan province that could serve as a storage site for nuclear warheads, an American think tank said on Wednesday. The Institute for Science and International Security, a nonprofit and non-governmental institution, said its observation is based on satellite imagery and investigation. It said in a report that the underground complex in the southwestern province 'could serve as a ballistic missile and nuclear warhead storage site'. The purpose of the complex is not yet available publicly. But, the report authored by David Albright, Sarah Burkhard,...

Tuesday's bombshell Washington Post story that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has determined North Korea is capable of constructing miniaturized nuclear weapons that could be used as warheads for missiles – possibly ICBMs – left out a crucial fact: DIA actually concluded this in 2013. The Post also failed to mention that the Obama administration tried to downplay and discredit this report at the time.

MANILA, Aug 7 (Reuters) - North Korea is ready to give the United States a "severe lesson" with its strategic nuclear force if it takes military action against it, and will not put its nuclear programme or its missiles on the negotiating table, it said in a statement to a regional meeting on Monday. In a transcript of a statement by Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, which was distributed to media in Manila, Pyongyang called new U.N. sanctions "fabricated" and warned there would be "strong follow-up measures" and acts of justice.It said the resolution showed the United Nations had abused its...

China delivered frank advice to North Korea, its outcast neighbor, on Sunday, telling Pyongyang to make a “smart decision” and stop conducting missile launches and nuclear tests. The statement by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi came on the heels of a U.N. Security Council decision to impose additional sanctions on North Korea and its exports, and suggested that the American push to further isolate the regime of Kim Jung Un is reaping some dividends. But Wang also called on the United States to dial back the tension.

On January 24, 1966, at about 7:02 in the morning, Air India 101 ‘Kanchenjanga’­– a Boeing 707 airliner– crashed on Mont Blanc near the Franco-Italian border. All 117 people on board were killed, including Homi Jehangir Bhabha, hailed as the father of the Indian nuclear program. His remains were never recovered from the Alps: Vikram Sarabhai delivered his condolences in Bombay (present-day Mumbai) on January 25, and became Bhabha’s successor as the chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. In summer 2016, over half a century later, the Bossons glacier in Chamonix, in the French Alps, elicited a series of...

Thorium is an abundant material currently disposed of as waste. It is found in coal ash piles and mine tailings. A single Rare Earths mine could produce enough Thorium byproduct to power the entire planet. To do so requires a very different nuclear reactor than the kinds we use today. Not one that uses solid fuel rods, but a reactor in which the fuel is kept in a liquid state. Not one that uses pressurized water as a coolant, but a reactor that uses extremely stable molten salts.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s (DOE/NNSA) will conduct a low-altitude helicopter flight over portions of the Arlington, Va., area July 22 to measure naturally occurring background radiation. Officials from NNSA announced that the radiation assessment will cover approximately three square miles. A twin-engine Bell 412 helicopter, operated by the Remote Sensing Laboratory Aerial Measuring System from Joint Base Andrews, will be equipped with radiation sensing technology. The helicopter will fly in a grid pattern over the area at 150 feet (or higher) above the ground surface, at a speed of approximately 80 miles...

A Germany nuclear plant was damaged because its operators increased and decreased its output to respond to energy grid fluctuations. The incident supports the theory that nuclear and renewable energy generation are incompatible. EURACTIV’s partner Der Tagesspiegel reports. The Brokdorf nuclear power station, located in northern Germany, was taken offline in February after maintenance showed its reactor’s fuel rods had begun to unexpectedly oxidise. A regional nuclear supervisory body has now ruled that the plant can be booted back up but only in “safe mode”, according to Schleswig-Holstein’s energy transition minister. State Minister for Energy Robert Habeck (Greens) added that...

India is estimated to have produced enough plutonium for 150-200 nuclear warheads, say US experts WASHINGTON: India continues to modernise its atomic arsenal with an eye on China and the country's nuclear strategy which traditionally focused on Pakistan now appears to place increased emphasis on the Communist giant, two top American nuclear experts have said. An article published in the July-August issue of the digital journal - After Midnight - has also claimed that India is now developing a missile which can target all of China from its bases in South India. India is estimated to have produced enough plutonium...

France’s new environment minister said Monday nearly a third of the country’s reactors could be shut under plans to scale back the amount of electricity produced from nuclear power. In 2015, the previous Socialist-dominated parliament passed a law obliging the government to reduce the proportion of electricity generated from nuclear to 50 percent by 2025 compared with around 75 percent now. “We can all understand that to reach this target, we’re going to have to close a certain number of reactors,” Nicolas Hulot told RTL radio. “It will be perhaps as high as 17 reactors, but we need to look...

China’s first nuclear submarine was developed with the aid of an abacus, according to the scientist who led the project in the late 1950s. Now 93, Huang Xuhua, chief designer of the Long March-1, said he still owns one of the suanpan [abacuses] that were used by his team almost 60 years ago, Chutian Metropolis Daily reported on Monday. “Lots of critical data used in the development of the nuclear submarine jumped out from this suanpan,” he was quoted as saying. Often referred to as the “Father of China’s nuclear subs”, Huang worked for China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, which had...

Since May, hackers have been attacking the U.S. energy infrastructure, including at least one company which manages a nuclear power plant in Kansas. The New York Times reported Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued an urgent report about the attacks last week: Among the companies targeted was the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan…Wolf Creek officials said that while they could not comment on cyberattacks or security issues, no “operations systems” had been affected and that their corporate network and the internet were separate from the...