The THTR Circulars from 2011

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THTR Circular No. 135, May 2011

Content:

Distract them - give them the bullets!

The hour of the miracle-doer

Comments by Rainer Moormann

Voter Cheating - 3 Months, 7 Years, or 11 Years - Which is Worse?

Finally!

Distract them - give them the bullets!

I already had the travel bag in hand on Friday afternoons to go to an eco-congress. The phone rang, I hesitated for a moment and then picked up the receiver, it could be important. At the other end, the familiar voice of a WA editor who wanted to write an article about the end of the THTR after the disaster in Fukushima. "When looking through the old documents and reports again" he noticed that at that time there was no "incident" at all, but only one "incident" that did not have to be reported.

Incidentally, this is also what the reactor operators say, who should know. Is it true or not? - At first a little irritated, I put my bag down to quickly reel off the full program: destroyed bullets, switched off measuring devices, escaped radioactive aerosols, attempts to cover up ...

During the short journey to the congress, I was already imagining what might be in the WA. Perhaps the headline threatened: "It was not an incident" (... that is how it happened). During the congress I calmed down again. Who even reads the newspaper these days? Or sentences that are more than five words long? - Well, don't panic - it's only in a newspaper, a medium that is dying out. In the months before, journalists had to be content with a meager THTR fuel element ball offered for one euro on Ebay as an "exclusive report". Some even used it creatively to reopen the THTR's considerable breakdown history.

Something really bad had to happen before most people would wake up for a while, and so did the media. Large demonstration with tens of thousands in Cologne (etc.) and vigils and demos every week in 800 cities. Anyone in Hamm who wanted to be informed about the weekly number of participants added one to two hundred to the information in the Westphalian Gazette and you got the right result!

There were increasing inquiries about cancer studies, how dangerous is the THTR today and how it was back in 1986 with the - well - accident. Journalists stopped by in Hamm again, I was allowed to give a long interview on page two of the WA, in short, we had our hands full. There was no time for the THTR newsletter. One step of movement is more important than a thousand pages of printed paper. Since the nuclear companies fight for their license to print money every day, the rule of thumb is: don't let up!

Springerpresse, FAZ am Sonntag, Focus: You rediscovered your heart for supposedly inherently safe reactor lines where nothing bad can happen. Our THTR in Hamm. Or the small AVR test reactor in Jülich. If light water reactors have already fallen into disrepute worldwide, why not go back to pebble-bed reactors and get state subsidies for them, as has been customary in the social democratic home state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 1961?

Too bad that now of all times a three-part WDR series and the daily topics in the first television program reported on the Jülich incident of 1978. At that time radioactive water leaked into the ground and the current attempts to dismantle the expensive reactor ruins revealed a number of other weak points from the heyday of the social democratic state reactor. What social democrats no longer like to talk about today. In order to prevent this from happening, the NRW Science Minister Svenja Schulze came up with a grandiose diversionary maneuver: She sent the startled media pack, together with environmentalists, into the desert behind allegedly lost THTR fuel element balls!

The several weeks pre-Easter hunt for the unloved atomic eggs let the real scandal in the Jülich pebble-bed reactor - which was successfully suppressed under social democratic reigns - recede into the background. Although our reactor bankruptcy homepage specializes in THTR, we were the only homepage to report on this bogus ball hide-and-seek game - not!

For good reason. The facts were simply too uncertain and too thin. The possibility of drawing wrong conclusions from them is too great. After weeks it turned out that the bullets were never gone. The excitement was artificially created by Minister Svenja Schulz so that the really important things are not talked about. As expected, the right-wing state parliament opposition made a racket and hypocritically demanded her resignation because of "irresponsible panic-mongering". The above-mentioned three-part disclosure report by WDR was once again veiled with this last chapter of the farce. This is how politics is done in this country.

Our tasks as BI Hamm go beyond this superficial excitement. Through our work we want to prevent, forever and worldwide, that THTR scrap reactors are made acceptable and built again.

The THTR lobby tries to raise its profile at the expense of the Fukushima victims

Only a few days after parts of Japan were laid to rubble and a terrible, long-lasting nuclear power disaster struck the people, the lobby of a special nuclear power plant is trying to capitalize on this disaster in the truest sense of the word.

The economic beneficiaries of research on pebble bed reactors as part of the new planned Generation IV reactors appear in the journalistic organs of the energy companies and spread their litany, which has been the same for decades:

With their miracle reactors there would be neither a meltdown nor a meltdown; they are inherently safe and because of the laws of nature nothing bad can happen.

Too bad that your thorium high-temperature reactor (THTR) in Hamm after an endless series of breakdowns and accidents (1) Had to be shut down in 1989. In the many hundreds of millions of euros of expensive dismantling attempts at the small 46 MWth (or 13 MWel) THTR research reactor at Forschungszentrum Jülich, it is currently shown that, for example, due to higher temperatures and higher pressure, only different problems and possible accidents occur than with light water reactors.

Rainer Moormann, as a scientist involved in the dismantling of the Jülich research reactor, found these problems in a study that received international attention in 2008 (2) clearly and factually named. The development of the South African HTR, called Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), had to be stopped in 2010 after 1,5 billion euros had already been spent. The propagandists of the HTR line don't like to talk about this.

One of them is Professor Antonio Hurtado (3). He did his doctorate in HTR at the RWTH Aachen and is now head of the professorship for hydrogen and nuclear energy technology at the TU Dresden. A few days after the catastrophe in Fukushima on March 18, 3, in an interview with Springer's "Welt", he mourned not the many victims of the nuclear disaster, but his own favorite reactor type, with which he earned his money: "At least that was in Germany the end for the wonderful technology of the inherently safe reactor in general. From my point of view, this is a great shame and a missed opportunity to have reactors in the portfolio in addition to the current light water reactors that pursue a different safety philosophy with regard to public acceptance " . He said: "Most of the know-how is still available in this country. At the TU Dresden we have a competence center for high-temperature reactor technology. Numerous projects are carried out here with international partners".

Hurtado names countries interested in HTR "Canada, China, India, the USA and at least so far Japan" and points to another spatial focus of HTR development in our region: "Our neighbor Poland is interested in considering a pebble bed reactor in the triangle of Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. There, the process heat from the reactor could be used well to enable carbon dioxide-free refinement of the domestic lignite from the area there ".

On March 27, 2011, Alard von Kittlitz made a brilliant achievement of subtly weird demagoguery in the FAZ Sunday newspaper in the completely serious hymn to the THTR bankruptcy reactor "The most beautiful of machines"! It is astonishing with what audacity this Kittlitz wipes away the frightening experiences of the Westphalian population with this breakdown reactor in Hamm and makes him a dream object of his macabre-crazy obsession with technology:

"There was something like that once, at least the promise, in North Rhine-Westphalia, in Hamm-Uentrop. Until the Chernobyl catastrophe came, everyone lost their heads, and politicians said they should also vote for the headless The most promising bridgehead for the future was torn off again, because it too shone, and all radiation had gone bad. (...) The THTR was a miracle. (...) So it came about that the THTR 300, whose shiny silver cooling tower was later almost declared a monument, finally shut down in September 1989 amid bickering, and with it the thorium technology in Germany. "

Quarrelsome opponents of nuclear power plants destroy the shiny silver glimmer of hope of the nuclear community - "The most beautiful of machines", the THTR! - These devoted hymns of praise for a failed breakdown reactor have an unreal and embarrassing effect on those who witnessed the incidents and the many blockades and demonstrations in the 80s at the THTR in Hamm. As an esoteric stab-in-the-back legend, however, it does not appear in some obscure right-wing sect leaflet, but in the leading journal of West German entrepreneurship, and this gives it a different weight. To ensure that its lucrative profits and subsidies are also secured in the future, the THTR lobby is now positioning its writers and professors at the expense of the victims in Fukushima. We will counter this disgusting spectacle with our arguments and our actions.

Links:

1. See: http://www.reaktorpleite.de/die-thtr-pannenserie.html
2. See: http://www.reaktorpleite.de/htr-studie-2008-r-moormann.html
3. See: http://www.reaktorpleite.de/nr.-117-november-07.html

To the interview with Prof. A. Hurtado in 'Die Welt' on March 18.03.2011, XNUMX on the topic: 'Are there safe nuclear power plants?'

In the above interview, a pebble bed reactor is described as an inherently safe nuclear power plant and suggested as a possible alternative to conventional reactors. For the following reasons, these explanations convey a far too positive image of this technology:

1. Pebble bed reactors are very far from being technically feasible.
After more than 10 years of development, South Africa gave up the pebble bed reactor (PBMR) last autumn, but not without investing around € 1.5 billion. The German globular heap community was closely involved in this development.

According to the government, the reasons for terminating the project were:

- Cost increase by more than 20 times the original forecast and serious time delays, both caused by unsolved technical and safety problems

- Exit of all investors and customers from the project

The government announced that in the event of a possible future construction of nuclear power plants, it would no longer rely on pebble bed reactors, but on conventional reactors, as it sees pebble bed reactors still in the experimental stage.

2. The safety properties of spheroid heap reactors are considerably less favorable than those of modern light water reactors.

Lothar Hahn, later technical director of the semi-public GRS (Society for Plants and Reactor Safety, Cologne) analyzed the safety properties of pebble bed reactors in an expert report from June 1986 and came to the following conclusion:

On the alleged "inherent" safety of the HTR: Since the beginning of high-temperature reactor development, interested parties have tried to suggest to the public that the HTR is "inherently" safe. This cleverly engineered advertising strategy has undoubtedly had some success, because it has led to unprecedented disinformation, even in the atomic energy debate. Like hardly any other assertion by the nuclear industry, it is based on scientifically untenable assumptions and incorrect conclusions. (1)

Building on Hahn's report, but taking into account the current state of knowledge, it should be briefly explained here why Hurtado's argument does not get to the core.

a) Hurtado argues that there is no core meltdown in the pebble bed reactor such as B. possible with the light water reactor. The statement is correct, but it ignores the real problem. It is not primarily about the possibility of core meltdown, but rather the question of whether and how radioactive fission products (the "radioactive cloud") can be released.

b) Pebble bed reactors are similar in terms of their design and safety behavior to the Chernobyl RBMK reactor than conventional light water reactors and can therefore only be compared to light water reactors to a limited extent in terms of their accident spectrum.

c) In the case of the pebble bed reactor, core melt accidents are not critical, but rather:

Water ingress accidents

(Formation of explosive gas mixtures, corrosion and destruction of fuel elements, increase in nuclear reactivity).

Leaks in the reactor vessel that:

- lead immediately to the release of large amounts of radioactive dust accumulated in the reactors into the environment, since pebble bed reactors cannot have a tight containment like conventional reactors (e.g. Fukushima).

- result in air ingress (result: graphite fire as in Chernobyl with destruction of the fuel elements and release of a large part of the radioactive inventory); Due to the lack of a tight containment in the pebble bed reactor, such incidents are catastrophic, similar to those in Chernobyl (also no tight containment).

d) Hurtado argues that the pebble bed reactor could be used because of a negative temperature coefficient (2) do not compare with the Chernobyl-RBMK. That is misleading, because the cause of the Chernobyl accident was not primarily a positive temperature coefficient but a positive "void coefficient of reactivity" (3) in the water-graphite system, which led to the runaway of the reactor. Such positive void coefficients are impossible in the light water reactor, but not in the pebble bed reactor in the event of a severe water ingress accident while the reactor is running. This is due to the high graphite content in the pebble bed reactor, similar to the Chernobyl reactor. There was a serious water in-surge accident with the reactor running in the test pebble bed reactor AVR through human error in 1978. Fortunately, the amount of water in the reactor core was not enough for the reactor to run through at the time.

e) A very serious safety disadvantage of pebble bed reactors lies in the fact that, in principle, it is not possible to measure promptly in the reactor core. Much too high and safety-endangering temperatures in the AVR reactor core remained hidden until shortly before its end of operation.

f) Hurtado argues with the high quality of the spherical fuel element, which is said to be able to withstand 1620 ° C. This is misleading as it only applies for a short time. If the fuel assemblies are exposed to high temperatures for a long period of time, radioactive ponds migrate massively out of the fuel assemblies. This happened in the AVR test reactor with the following result: Even 80 years after shutdown, the reactor will, in the best case, be able to be dismantled remotely, possibly not at all (in any case extremely high costs).

g) The disposal costs of pebble bed reactors are inherently much higher (factor 5 - 10) than with conventional reactors. There is still no reasonably cost-effective solution for graphite.

h) There has been no interest in the pebble bed reactor in the German energy industry for a long time. This is probably due to the poor operating results of the German pebble bed reactors AVR and THTR-300. France (Areva) has effectively discontinued its HTR program.

Rainer Moorman

Notes:

1. See: http://www.reaktorpleite.de/htr-sicherheit-1986-l-hahn.html
2. Negative temperature coefficient:
   The temperature coefficient describes the relative change in a material property or a component as a function of the change in temperature compared to a specified temperature. A negative temperature coefficient means here that the reactor output decreases with increasing temperature.
3. Void coefficient of reactivity:
   A positive void coefficient means that the reactor output increases with a decrease in the water density in the reactor core (e.g. due to the evaporation of liquid water). Then it gets hotter and more water evaporates, ie the reactor output continues to increase, etc. until the reactor core disintegrates. That was the cause of the Chernobyl reactor accident. This can also happen in the HTR if water penetrates the reactor core in the event of an accident. Very large amounts of water flowed through the core while the AVR was running in 1978. At the HTR, such accident sequences simply had not been investigated. It only came out in 1987 when external experts spoke of Chernobyl-like behavior in the course of a security check.

The decision of the federal government to shut down 7 nuclear power plants in Germany for three months now raises questions. "Why is it suddenly without problems with fewer nuclear power plants? Wasn't there an argument that without an extension of the service life the energy supply would be endangered? Now it suddenly works even if only ten nuclear power plants are still supplying electricity. And what is behind the very fast action " (1)?

The SPD and the Greens bitterly complained about black and yellow election tactics and electoral deception before the upcoming state elections and asked reproachfully: Why didn't the shutdown of the nuclear power plant work out beforehand?

- And why not already during the 7 years of the red-green coalition (1998 - 2005) or during the period of the current "nuclear phase-out" (1998 - 2009), we ask opponents of nuclear power plants! Why does everything suddenly go that was absolutely impossible under red-green? The current red-green opposition politicians are complaining precisely those who did not even manage to shut down a single additional nuclear power plant during their own reign!

In addition, in 2005 the red-green state government of North Rhine-Westphalia approved the expansion of the uranium enrichment plant (UAA) Gronau from 1.800 tons of uranium separation work to 4.500 tons per year and referred to 150 jobs being created (2). The fuel produced there is supplied to over 30 nuclear power plants in Europe. When Social Democrats and Greens protest in Gronau on the anniversary of Chernobyl, they are demonstrating against a nuclear facility that their own NRW parliamentary groups voted for expansion!

Furthermore, reference should be made here to the very special North Rhine-Westphalian experience in the matter of promoting high-temperature reactors under a red-green NRW state government and federal government at the same time. With tens of millions of euros from the state budget, both governments supported nuclear projects, studies and investigations at NRW test facilities in the Jülich Research Center (3). Numerous protest letters and questionnaires from our citizens' initiative on this topic were not answered at all by the red-green governments for up to a year, until at some point a meaningless letter arrived (4). - On July 12, 2004, even further research on high-temperature technology was recognized by the NRW state government as a "valuable contribution to the international safety of HTR reactors" (5) designated!

While State Environment Minister Bärbel Höhn kept going in and out of the Jülich Research Center, where further research was being carried out on dangerous nuclear technology, it was suddenly completely impossible for us as a citizens' initiative to have any kind of dialogue with the fine red-green ladies and gentlemen on the government bench to lead. We were completely written off and fobbed off with a few empty phrases (6)! All ministries simply walled up. Even the export of German nuclear technology to South Africa for the PBMR continued (7).

During the alleged "exit" there were even attempts by social democratic and green top politicians under a red-green government to extend the running times of nuclear power plants again and to have high-temperature reactors built again!

In 2001, Fritz Fahrenholt, as a "member of the Council for Sustainable Development at the Federal Chancellor" Schröder in "Vorwärts", propagated increased THTR research in order to have these reactors built again (8). In 2005, the Greens member Frank Bsirke, as Ver.di chairman, signed a sensational position paper together with the right-wing, social democratically oriented yellow "union" IGBCE, in which longer nuclear power plants and even a withdrawal of the ridiculous pseudo-exit was demanded (9).

And don't forget: It was the Social Democratic Federal Environment Minister Gabriel who refused in 2008 to commission a child cancer study in the vicinity of the THTR Hamm (10)!

It is almost a truism: full-bodied promises in the parliamentary opposition and subsequent failure in the government are two sides of the same coin for parties.

May hundreds of members of the parties take to the streets for a real nuclear phase-out out of sincere indignation and out of sincere will. - On the government bench, the party leaders screw it up again and again and buckle in front of the nuclear lobby. For this reason, we must not rely on the promises of parties and should instead build on our own strength. Direct action, civil disobedience and mass protests are giving governments a leg up. Naive and gullible followers make the nuclear industry easier to do business with.

The past shows: Anyone who subscribes to Rotgrün with a 30-year warranty for nuclear power plants will later receive a 42-year warranty for nuclear power plants from Schwarzgelb as a receipt.

Anyone who has seen through the apparent 3-month deception of the current federal government should take note of the red-green nuclear political past with the same critical awareness and better fight for a nuclear-free future through independent political action in citizens' initiatives.

Notes:

1. New Germany from December 16.03.2011th, XNUMX
2. THTR circular No. 98 - March 2005
3. THTR circular No. 92 - August 2004 - Core competence remains in Jülich
4. THTR circular No. 89 - March 2004
5. THTR circular No. 92 - August 2004 - NRW state government is happy about HTR nuclear export
6. THTR circular No. 83 - July 2003
7. THTR circular No. 101 - October 2005
8. THTR Circular No. 71 - 2001
9. THTR circular No. 102 -November 2005
10. THTR circular No. 120 - March 2008

X-thousands of people will jointly oppose the restart of the nuclear power plant in June 2011 - with large, non-violent mass blockade actions directly at the power plants. Info: www.x-tauschmalquer.de

Large anti-nuclear demonstration in Munster

Saturday, May 28, 2011. Start: 12 noon, Münster Hauptbahnhof / Berliner Platz.

Arrival from Hamm: Meet at the train station at 10.30 a.m. With 5-tickets then at 11.02 a.m. by train.

By bike: From 8 a.m. from Hamm main station.

Please subscribe to the hammer action newsletter so that you are always informed: www.hamm-gegen-atom.de

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