On 29th December 2003 on the customs check-point of Meghri town (on the boarder of Armenia) in the scrap metal shipment which was to be exported from Armenia there was detected a radioactive source. On the source covering the identification mark “C 58191” is weakly viewed. The metallic container of the source was damaged and the major part of the contained material is absent. The dose rate of the source in 5sm distance was 160 mcSv/hour (microSieverts per hour); on the damaged side the beta sensor registered more than 7200 particles/sm2. The detected source was transported to the radioactive waste storage facility (RADON). There were no adverse health effects on the personnel who found and transported the source.The investigation is conducted in order to find the owner of the source and detect the circumstances at which the source was fallen into the scrap metal shipment.
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. For those old enough […]
Kernenergie en veiligheid: A wargame sought to test if a major radiological release that would prompt the evacuation of millions of civilians in South Korea could distract key US allies from assisting and rebuffing an all-out military invasion of Taiwan. The short answer was yes. The game originally presumed that China, wanting to keep the […]
Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids The Finnish nuclear power plant Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the […]
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK's nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money...The […]
Last year, the Dutch Province of Limburg started an alliance in which, besides the local government, research institutes, small nuclear reactor (SMR) developers, utilities, industrial customers and funders cooperated. With this "Limburg SMR alliance" Limburg tried to lead the way towards an SMR in Limburg. The preferred site for a first SMR would be Chemelot, […]