Free Republic

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:Section 1. Purpose. The United States originally pioneered nuclear energy technology during a time of great peril. We now face a new set of challenges, including a global race to dominate in artificial intelligence, a growing need for energy independence, and access to uninterruptible power supplies for national security. It took nearly 40 years for the United States to add the same amount of nuclear capacity as another developed nation added in 10 years. Further, as American...

The Department of Energy finally fired Sam Brinton after he was accused of stealing luggage in Las Vegas and Minneapolis. He was arrested for the Minneapolis crime and has a felony arrest warrant out for the Vegas crime. “Sam Brinton is no longer a DOE employee,” a Department of Energy said in a statement. “By law, the Department of Energy cannot comment further on personnel matters.” .....

U.S. offers unmanned chopper to help remove Fukushima spent fuel TOKYO, April 17, Kyodo The U.S. government has told Japan that it can use a U.S. unmanned cargo transport helicopter to set up cranes to remove spent fuel rods from storage pools at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, Japanese and U.S. sources close to the matter said Saturday. The K-MAX helicopter, developed jointly by Lockheed Martin Corp. and KAMAN Aerospace Group of the United States, is being considered to set up the huge cranes. The proposal has been communicated to the unified command headquarters set up by the Japanese...

Bush budget seeks to recycle spent nuclear fuel WASHINGTON: President George W Bush has asked the US Congress for 250 million dollars in research funds to restart a controversial program that would reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The United States abandoned the technology in the 1970s because it was too expensive and there was fear terrorist groups or rogue nations could get access to the plutonium and make nuclear bombs. However, the administration said it wants to phase-out the old recycling methods that separated plutonium from the spent fuel and created a nuclear proliferation risk. Using new technology, the plutonium would...

WASHINGTON (AP) - About 40 percent of the nation's nuclear power plants have begun moving spent fuel out of cooling pools and into massive dry casks, embracing a storage approach that a National Academy of Sciences panel said offers safety advantages. The nation's 64 active nuclear power plants, which together house 103 reactors, all now store nuclear waste in pools of water after it is removed from reactors. Eventually, the spent fuel is supposed to be shipped to a national nuclear waste dump planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada. As Yucca Mountain has been delayed, utilities are increasingly moving some...

A ceremonial meeting opened with the US national anthem, as the construction of the new complex was financed by the USA. Specialists say that the complex meets Russian and American safety norms. The CTR program was created ten years ago when the then-presidents of Russia and America concluded an agreement on the 10+10 utilization program. At the ceremonial opening in Severodvinsk, Mr. Lugar said that the program had been originally designed for the utilization of strategic nuclear submarines of the Russian Navy, a problem about which the USA was and is currently very concerned. At that, America doesn’t care where...