[nuclear news] poland stripped of fuel; iran ‘peaceful purpose’ production rushing ahead; nuclear plant sailing the oceans

Can you see Poland getting all gung-ho and nuking Latvia? Nor can I. Can you see Iran getting all gung-ho and nuking Israel?

And yet this is what the International Atomic Energy Agency has just cheerfully facilitated. On Thursday they ‘safely removed a sizable quantity of Soviet-era highly enriched uranium from a facility in Poland as part of an effort to secure nuclear materials worldwide’ - 40 kilograms of the weapons-grade material from Poland's only nuclear research center, now to be sent to a facility near Novosibirsk, Russia to turn "the fissile material into low enriched uranium that cannot be used to make a bomb."

Oh well, that’s a relief then. And – er – what about Iran? Well, here’s the IAEA report:

The Security Council, seriously concerned that the IAEA was still unable to provide assurances about Iran´s undeclared nuclear material and activities after more than three years, today demanded that Iran suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, and gave it one month to do so or face the possibility of economic and diplomatic sanctions to give effect to its decision.

Demanded? Right. And Iran’s response? President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad explains:

"We will not bow to the language of force and threats. The Iranian people see taking advantage of technology to produce nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes as their right. Those who think they can use the language of threats and force against Iran are mistaken. If they don't realise that now, one day they will learn it the hard way."

Reports indicate that they’ll soon have the low-grade ready [post on this on Saturday] and you’ll be relieved to know the high-grade is on the way. Meanwhile, Russia’s great idea for India solves the nuclear problem for non-signatories.

"The Hindu", reported a conversation between Indian national security adviser Brajesh Mishra and Russian atomic energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev on a Russian offer to India of floating nuclear plants.

According to an energy spokesman, Nikolai Shingarev, Mishra showed interest in the proposal, which could circumvent a ban imposed by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in 1992. That ban prohibits nuclear cooperation between NSG member nations and India and other countries that have refused to place all their nuclear facilities under international control.

Floating nuclear plants are altogether different because ownership of the plant remains with the supplier. The supplier also provides the operational crew, security to the plant, stores the radioactive waste, generates power and sells the generated electricity and/or thermal heat to the buyer.

The buyer has no responsibility for or control over the plant, and can be anyone. In this case, the supplier is the Russian Federation, a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and a member of the NSG, and the buyer is India - neither a signatory to the NPT, nor a member of the NSG.

The Nuclear Suppliers Group is a group of countries that seeks to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons through the implementation of two sets of guidelines for nuclear exports and nuclear-related exports.

The NSG first met in November 1975 in London, and is thus popularly referred to as the "London Club". It has 40 members thus far, including four of the five nuclear weapons states. Besides unofficial nuclear weapons states, such as India, China is the only official nuclear weapons state that is not a member.

According to the NSG`s official history, the group was established following "the explosion in 1974 of a nuclear device by a non-nuclear-weapons state, which demonstrated that nuclear technology transferred for peaceful purposes could be misused".

Though the concept of building a series of floating nuclear power plants to meet energy requirements in Russia`s remote territories is more than a decade old, the decision to offer floating nuclear plants to other countries was not made until 2002.

From 1991 to 1994, Malaya Energetika, a publicly traded company created under the auspices of the Ministry for Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation (Minatom), conducted a competition to produce the best design for a small-capacity nuclear power plant.

The winning project called for construction of a floating nuclear power plant with two KLT-40C pressurized water reactors, the type used in Russia`s Arktika and Taymyr-class nuclear icebreakers.

The principal design requirement was to provide electrical power in remote regions where winter temperatures are as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. These remote regions lack the financial resources to purchase sufficient amounts of fuel or coal, and building full-scale nuclear power plants in such remote and thinly populated areas is not considered a realistic option.

In October 2001, during an international seminar in Moscow on "Small Power Plants: Results and Prospects", Minatom announced that 33 towns and villages in the Russian Far North would receive small nuclear power plants, 11 of them floating plants.

The floating plants are intended for Severodvinsk, Vilyuchinsk, Pevek (Chukotskiy Autonomous Okrug), Sovetskaya Gavan (Khabarovskiy Kray), Nakhodka (Primorskiy Kray), Rudnaya Pristan (Primorskiy Kray), Nikolayevsk-na-Amure (Khabarovskiy Kray), Olga (Primorskiy Kray), Dudinka (Taymyrskiy Autonomous Okrug), Onega (Arkhangelsk Oblast), and the construction site of the Trukhanskaya hydroelectric plant (Evenkiyskiy Autonomous Okru).

The plan, unveiled by Russian scientists at the time, said work would begin in 2003. A spokesman for the state-run Rosenergoatom Company, which operates Russian nuclear power plants, confirmed recently that the world`s first floating nuclear power plant is in the city of Severodvinsk (in the Arkhangelsk region) by Sevmash.

With Candesal, a Canadian company, Malaya Energetika is now in the process of developing a special desalination platform for attachment to the floating nuclear power plants. With this attachment, the reactor would be able help desalinate sea water.

According to Kuzin, such desalination plants would have wide-ranging demand in countries with dense populations along their coastlines. India, China and Indonesia are likely nations to be interested in such floating desalination platforms.