I find it curious that I’ve seen no technical explanation of what the exact problem is. Has anyone seen an article explaining what the real issue is and why the French company is asking the US for an export license?
An export license means we gave or sold technology to France but it requires the US’ okay, an export license, to give the technology to anyone else. This means the tech can either be used to make weapons directly or has some dual use capability where it can solve a civilian problem but also can be used to facilitate weapons production.
I saw an article this morning that the Chinese said it was the cladding on 6 fuel rods in the bundle of 60,000. Said it was damaged prior to insertion into the reactor and was normal.
Interesting perspective. So this could all be staged to circumvent the export restrictions on technology that the Chinese want for their weapons program?
The export license from what I understand is for the Zircalloy fuel cladding. The ongoing problem seems to be a partial fuel melt from the Chi-coms pushing the plant above the design rating and melting some fuel rods (see: Three Mile Island). The radioactive noble gasses occur when the cladding fails and the nuclear fuel is exposed to the coolant (water) while the fuel is undergoing fission. Take it for what it’s worth from a lay person. Something’s going on and it ain’t good.
Great, another planned technology theft. Plantheft
maybe, like the biolab, France provided some proprietary info along with funding and, anticipating an imminent disaster this time, seeks an export license to cover their backside so they can distract attention from themselves and say, look, America approved!
Westinghouse licensed the PWR technology to Frammatome long ago. Frammatome has developed it further. That’s what the Chinese are using. The leak means the zirconium cladding on the fuel rods has been damaged possibly by being exposed w/o being covered by water..