U.S. Security Experts Help Kazakhstan Safely Transport, Store Soviet-Era Bomb Materials

Sandia provided security and logistics expertise to complete the transfer across Kazakhstan of spent fuel containing 11 tons (10 metric tons) of highly enriched uranium and 3.3 tons (3 metric tons) of weapons-grade plutonium that had been stored in a BN-350 fast-breeder reactor in the busy Caspian Sea port of Aktau in western Kazakhstan, said Dave Barber, who worked for Sandia's Global Physical Security Program at the time.

"We're making things safer in the world," Barber said."Before it was protected, the materials were vulnerable to theft by those who would steal them to build nuclear weapons. This project has secured enough material to make 775 nuclear weapons. That gives us a great feeling and should make people feel much better."

The removal of the weapons-grade materials marks the completion of 14 years of work that began at Sandia in 1996.

The last concrete and steel cask was transferred to a long-term storage facility in northeast Kazakhstan on Nov. 18. The 1,860-mile journey to get the casks to their resting place there would be like traveling from Washington, D.C., to Albuquerque through a sparsely populated, moonscape-like steppe.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) oversaw the project as part of its Global Threat Reduction Initiative (Photos here). In addition to Sandia, NNSA's team included Idaho, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest national laboratories, the U.S. Defense and State departments, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the International Atomic Energy Agency, several contractors and the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan and Russia.

Sandia protected the fuel while it was stored at the BN-350 reactor and at a temporary, outdoor concrete storage pad in Aktau; along a journey by train across Kazakhstan to Kurchatov; while it was at another interim storage pad there; and along a truck route to a long-term concrete storage pad in northeast Kazakhstan.

Sandia conducted vulnerability studies that Barber used to brief Congress, the Pentagon, and members of the National Security Council.

Sandia, in conjunction with Albuquerque-based Technology Management Co., also provided extensive travel and international field logistics for the project, Barber said.

"The United States was very worried about this material not being protected well enough and that it could be stolen, so the United States offered to protect this material," Barber said."In the interior, it would be much more difficult for adversaries to try to steal it."

The BN-350 at the Mangistau Atomic Energy Complex, which started operations in 1973, produced plutonium for the former Soviet Union's weapons program. The plant also provided 135 megawatts of electricity, 9 million gallons of water per day and steam for hot water and heating for Aktau. Since it was shut down by the Kazakh government in 1999, gas turbines generate the power, desalination of water and steam for the region.

The reactor sits on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea. The bustling port is a point of departure for ships carrying oil from Kazakhstan to Baku, Azerbaijan, where it enters pipelines that take it to Europe.

The fuel rods were placed into canisters, which were then put into 60 100-ton concrete and stainless steel casks. The casks were stored on a pad outside the reactor before being loaded into shipping containers to make the four-day train journey to Kurchatov, where they would be unloaded and placed onto trucks for the trip to their long-term storage facility.

Sandia worked with Kazakhstan's Ministry of Interior troops, providing them with technical advice, communications equipment and other support, Barber said.

To make sure all would go smoothly, in December 2009, Barber was one of three Americans who traveled on the train during a dry run to ensure that the security plan worked, that the loading and unloading of the casks went off without a hitch and that communications were reliable.

John Franklin of Sandia's National Security Studies Department researched options for procuring two railcars that carried guards on the train, one serving as a backup in case the other was hit. Before the train left, rail crews checked the thousands of miles of tracks for explosives. The trains were given top priority as they crossed the country, Barber said.

During that four-day train ride, Barber said he looked for changes in the terrain that adversaries could use to attack the trains along the route. He needn't have worried.

"What we found was that one end of Kazakhstan looks much like the other end. It was very flat, no real hills, few trees," he says."We could count the number of trees."

The real runs started in February, and the dozen trips from Aktau to Kurchatov and then to the final location went smoothly, Barber said.

"There were no incidents during the hot runs when we had the fuel in there," Barber said."We count that as a success."

Sandia National Laboratories is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness.

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Pollution Controls Used During China Olympics Could Save Lives If Continued, Study Concludes

This might translate to about 10,000 fewer lifetime cases of lung cancer in this large metropolitan area, scientists said, which is only one of several in China that have unhealthy levels of air pollution, largely from the burning of coal, biomass and automobile exhaust in a rapidly growing economy.

The findings were published inEnvironmental Health Perspectives, a professional journal, by researchers from Oregon State University and Peking University in Beijing. This is one of the first studies to actually study the health benefits of pollution control strategies in a Chinese population.

The research looked at the chemical composition and carcinogenic impact of a range of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs -- a group of compounds that result from almost any type of combustion, ranging from a wood stove to a coal-fired power plant or an automobile's exhaust.

PAHs are known pollutants that have been of declining concern in the United States due to pollution controls and the move to cleaner forms of energy production, but are making a huge comeback in the developing world with the advent of industrialization, population growth and heavy use of fossil fuels.

Other OSU research has also found that the level of pollutants in some Asian nations is now so high that PAH compounds are crossing the Pacific Ocean and being deposited in the U.S., even in remote areas. China is now the leading emitter of PAH pollutants in the world, followed by India and the United States.

"PAH pollution was definitely reduced by the actions China took during the 2008 Olympics, such as restricting vehicle use, decreasing coal combustion and closing some pollution-emitting factories," said Staci Simonich, an associate professor of chemistry and environmental toxicology at OSU."That's a positive step, and it shows that if such steps were continued it could lead to a significant reduction in cancer risk from these types of pollutants."

Some, but not all, of the steps taken during the Olympics have been continued, the researchers said, including some reductions in coal-burning emissions and other measures.

Other issues are more problematic. The number of vehicles in Beijing, for instance, is continuing to increase 13 percent a year, the report noted."Controlling vehicle emissions is key to reducing the inhalation cancer risks due to PAH exposure in Chinese megacities," the researchers wrote in their study.

Outdoor air pollution is a major health concern in China, the researchers said in their report. Associated health care costs are possibly as high as 3.8 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

It's been estimated that 300,000 people a year die in China from heart disease and lung cancer associated with ambient air pollution, including PAHs.

This research found that in Beijing, a metropolitan area with 22 million people, the existing level of PAH pollution would lead to about 21,200 lifetime cases of lung cancer, but that would drop to 11,400 cases if pollution controls similar to those imposed during the 2008 Olympics were sustained.

"This is definitely a health concern and one that deserves attention in China by both the government and public," said Yuling Jia, a postdoctoral research associate at OSU and co-author on this study.

"It's also worth noting that the leading PAH emitter in rural China is not automobiles or things like coal-fired power plants, but the biomass burning associated with many other local activities, such as wood fuel used for cooking or heating, or the burning of agricultural fields," Jia said."All of this needs to be considered."

Another factor on an individual level, the researchers said, is that some people are more vulnerable to PAH inhalation than others, due to their genetics, behavioral issues such as smoking, or occupation.

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation in the U.S., the National Science Foundation of China, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. It is one outgrowth of a recent,$12.4 million Superfund Basic Research Program Grant from NIEHS to OSU to study the health risks and impacts of PAH exposure.

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World Can Be Powered by Alternative Energy, Using Today's Technology, in 20-40 Years, Experts Say

According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering."It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper inEnergy Policyin which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.

Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters -- no more natural gas or coal -- and water would be preheated by the sun.

Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.

The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well.

"We wanted to quantify what is necessary in order to replace all the current energy infrastructure -- for all purposes -- with a really clean and sustainable energy infrastructure within 20 to 40 years," said Jacobson.

One of the benefits of the plan is that it results in a 30 percent reduction in world energy demand since it involves converting combustion processes to electrical or hydrogen fuel cell processes. Electricity is much more efficient than combustion.

That reduction in the amount of power needed, along with the millions of lives saved by the reduction in air pollution from elimination of fossil fuels, would help keep the costs of the conversion down.

"When you actually account for all the costs to society -- including medical costs -- of the current fuel structure, the costs of our plan are relatively similar to what we have today," Jacobson said.

One of the biggest hurdles with wind and solar energy is that both can be highly variable, which has raised doubts about whether either source is reliable enough to provide"base load" energy, the minimum amount of energy that must be available to customers at any given hour of the day.

Jacobson said that the variability can be overcome.

"The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle," he said."If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand."

Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.

"One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites," said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.

"With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can't use normal methods for matching supply and demand. You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management," he said.

Another method of meeting demand could entail building a bigger renewable-energy infrastructure to match peak hourly demand and use the off-hours excess electricity to produce hydrogen for the industrial and transportation sectors.

Using pricing to control peak demands, a tool that is used today, would also help.

Jacobson and Delucchi assessed whether their plan might run into problems with the amounts of material needed to build all the turbines, solar collectors and other devices.

They found that even materials such as platinum and the rare earth metals, the most obvious potential supply bottlenecks, are available in sufficient amounts. And recycling could effectively extend the supply.

"For solar cells there are different materials, but there are so many choices that if one becomes short, you can switch," Jacobson said."Major materials for wind energy are concrete and steel and there is no shortage of those."

Jacobson and Delucchi calculated the number of wind turbines needed to implement their plan, as well as the number of solar plants, rooftop photovoltaic cells, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal and wave-energy installations.

They found that to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing), Jacobson said.

One of the criticisms of wind power is that wind farms require large amounts of land, due to the spacing required between the windmills to prevent interference of turbulence from one turbine on another.

"Most of the land between wind turbines is available for other uses, such as pasture or farming," Jacobson said."The actual footprint required by wind turbines to power half the world's energy is less than the area of Manhattan." If half the wind farms were located offshore, a single Manhattan would suffice.

Jacobson said that about 1 percent of the wind turbines required are already in place, and a lesser percentage for solar power.

"This really involves a large scale transformation," he said."It would require an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system."

"But it is possible, without even having to go to new technologies," Jacobson said."We really need to just decide collectively that this is the direction we want to head as a society."

Jacobson is the director of Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.

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