See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident

Describes an unex­plained 1979 nuclear test, with the pos­si­ble respon­si­ble par­ty as apartheid-era South Africa.

I am seek­ing if there is a link between the great leader of Atom­ic Ener­gy in Argenti­na Abel Julio Gon­za­lez and the attempt of ultra right­ists to devel­op an atom­ic mil­i­tary com­plex in Argenti­na with the help of ger­man sci­en­tists.

If one was to design a next-gen­er­a­tion nuclear pow­er plant design, what fea­tures might one want to include in that of tech­nol­o­gy? That’s the ques­tion that’s sud­den­ly become much more top­i­cal now that Bill Gates and War­ren Buf­fet have select­ed a loca­tion in Wyoming for their joint next-gen­er­a­tion Natri­um reac­tor nuclear pow­er plant. As we might expect, the new sodi­um-cooled design is cheap­er and have a sim­pler than tra­di­tion­al nuclear pow­er plants. That’s due, in part, to a reliance on sodi­um and molten-salt, instead of water, for trans­fer­ring the heat from the reac­tor a steam reac­tor or save the heat for lat­er use. That brings us to anoth­er fea­ture of the new design, which is that the plan­t’s gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty can be rapid­ly brought up or down depend­ing on demand. And due to the sim­pli­fied design, the cost of these plants could come in at around $1 bil­lion, a frac­tion of the cost of tra­di­tion­al plants. It all sounds great so far, right?

Well, how about the fuel? Are these the kind of next-gen­er­a­tion nuclear reac­tors that rely on far less dan­ger­ous sources of nuclear fuel like tho­ri­um reac­tors? Nope. They use ura­ni­um. Not only that, they use high­ly enriched ura­ni­um. Yep. While the tra­di­tion­al water-cooled reac­tor relies on fuel with around 3.5% ura­ni­um-235 con­tent, the fuel for these Natri­um reac­tors uses 20% ura­ni­um-235 mate­r­i­al, mak­ing the fuel for these plants tempt­ing for groups seek­ing weapons-grade enriched ura­ni­um for nuclear weapons. 20% enrich­ment is the thresh­old for “high­ly enriched ura­ni­um”. While weapons-grade ura­ni­um is going to typ­i­cal­ly be enriched at lev­els exceed­ing 85%, note that it is tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble to build a nuclear bomb with fuel as low as 20%. So the fact that these new nuclear reac­tors rely on 20% enriched ura­ni­um fuel is kind of a big deal.

Also keep in mind that, thanks to the sim­pli­fied design, the plants also require 80% less expen­sive rein­forced con­crete. So if any ter­ror groups decide to wage an attack on one of these Natri­um reac­tors, it’s going to be a lot eas­i­er to pull that attack off. Recall the plans by the Flori­da-based Atom­waf­fen cell to trig­ger a nuclear melt­down at a Mia­mi-area nuclear plant by mor­tal attack. Those kinds of attacks sound like they will be a lot more viable in a plant that uses 80% less rein­forced con­crete. So let’s hope the sim­pler design of these plants helps mit­i­gate the con­se­quences of suc­cess­ful attack on the struc­ture. Because while there are def­i­nite­ly some ben­e­fits to these Natri­um reac­tor designs, it sounds like the main ben­e­fits are in the cheap­er costs to build the plants. Cheap­er and sim­pler is is nice, but not necesseari­ly the top pri­or­i­ty when con­sid­er­ing nuclear pow­er:

Reuters

Bill Gates’ next gen­er­a­tion nuclear reac­tor to be built in Wyoming

Tim­o­thy Gard­ner
Valerie Vol­covi­ci
June 2, 2021 7:27 PM CDT

Bil­lion­aire Bill Gates’ advanced nuclear reac­tor com­pa­ny Ter­raPow­er LLC and Paci­fi­Corp (PPWLO.PK) have select­ed Wyoming to launch the first Natri­um reac­tor project on the site of a retir­ing coal plant, the state’s gov­er­nor said on Wednes­day.

Ter­raPow­er, found­ed by Gates about 15 years ago, and pow­er com­pa­ny Paci­fi­Corp, owned by War­ren Buf­fet’s Berk­shire Hath­away (BRKa.N), said the exact site of the Natri­um reac­tor demon­stra­tion plant is expect­ed to be announced by the end of the year. Small advanced reac­tors, which run on dif­fer­ent fuels than tra­di­tion­al reac­tors, are regard­ed by some as a crit­i­cal car­bon-free tech­nol­o­gy than can sup­ple­ment inter­mit­tent pow­er sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emis­sions that cause cli­mate change.

“This is our fastest and clear­est course to becom­ing car­bon neg­a­tive,” Wyoming Gov­er­nor Mark Gor­don said. “Nuclear pow­er is clear­ly a part of my all-of-the-above strat­e­gy for ener­gy” in Wyoming, the coun­try’s top coal-pro­duc­ing state.

The project fea­tures a 345 megawatt sodi­um-cooled fast reac­tor with molten salt-based ener­gy stor­age that could boost the sys­tem’s pow­er out­put to 500 MW dur­ing peak pow­er demand. Ter­raPow­er said last year that the plants would cost about $1 bil­lion.

Late last year the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy award­ed Ter­raPow­er $80 mil­lion in ini­tial fund­ing to demon­strate Natri­um tech­nol­o­gy, and the depart­ment has com­mit­ted addi­tion­al fund­ing in com­ing years sub­ject to con­gres­sion­al appro­pri­a­tions.

Chris Levesque, Ter­raPow­er’s pres­i­dent and CEO, said the demon­stra­tion plant would take about sev­en years to build.

“We need this kind of clean ener­gy on the grid in the 2030s,” he told reporters.

Nuclear pow­er experts have warned that advanced reac­tors could have high­er risks than con­ven­tion­al ones. Fuel for many advanced reac­tors would have to be enriched at a much high­er rate than con­ven­tion­al fuel, mean­ing the fuel sup­ply chain could be an attrac­tive tar­get for mil­i­tants look­ing to cre­ate a crude nuclear weapon, a recent report said.

Levesque said that the plants would reduce pro­lif­er­a­tion risks because they reduce over­all nuclear waste.

In addi­tion to bring­ing car­bon-free pow­er online, Wyoming Sen­a­tor John Bar­ras­so said con­struc­tion of the demon­stra­tion project could lift up the state’s once active ura­ni­um min­ing indus­try.

...

———-

“Bill Gates’ next gen­er­a­tion nuclear reac­tor to be built in Wyoming” by Tim­o­thy Gard­ner and Valerie Vol­covi­ci; Reuters; 06/02/2021

“Nuclear pow­er experts have warned that advanced reac­tors could have high­er risks than con­ven­tion­al ones. Fuel for many advanced reac­tors would have to be enriched at a much high­er rate than con­ven­tion­al fuel, mean­ing the fuel sup­ply chain could be an attrac­tive tar­get for mil­i­tants look­ing to cre­ate a crude nuclear weapon, a recent report said.”

Any­one look­ing to build a nuclear bomb? Head on over to the new Natri­um plant in Wyoming. That’s the implic­it adver­tise­ment that comes with this tech­nol­o­gy, so while these types of plants may be sim­pler and cheap­er to build, that ‘cheap­er and sim­pler’ approach bet­ter not be applied to plant secu­ri­ty.

But it sounds like there is one advan­tage to this high­ly enriched ura­ni­um fuel: it requires few­er refu­el­ing stops. So it sounds like there are few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to inter­dict the nuclear fuel on the way to, or from, the plant. That said, it also means fuel­ing these plants will involve the reg­u­lar ship­ping of weapons-grade ura­ni­um. So let’s hope these refu­el­ing cycles are extreme­ly high-secu­ri­ty events:

Sci­ence Mag­a­zine

Depart­ment of Ener­gy picks two advanced nuclear reac­tors for demon­stra­tion projects

By Adri­an Cho
Oct. 16, 2020 , 12:40 PM

Hop­ing to revive the mori­bund U.S. nuclear pow­er indus­try,Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) announced this week it will help build two rad­i­cal­ly new nuclear reac­tors with­in 7 years. Fund­ed by DOE’s new Advanced Reac­tor Demon­stra­tion Pro­gram, the designs include exot­ic fea­tures such as cool­ing by sodi­um or heli­um instead of water in a bid to be safer and more eco­nom­i­cal than con­ven­tion­al pow­er reac­tors.

DOE offi­cials “were try­ing to do some­thing new and push the tech­nol­o­gy for­ward but also to stay with­in that 7‑year time frame,” says Ash­ley Finan, a nuclear engi­neer and direc­tor of the Nation­al Reac­tor Inno­va­tion Cen­ter at Ida­ho Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry who was not involved in the choice. “I think these two [designs] were judged to be ready for demon­stra­tion.”

DOE will split the total cost of build­ing each plant with pri­vate indus­try. Each project receives $80 mil­lion this year and could receive a total of between $400 mil­lion and $4 bil­lion in fund­ing over the next 5 to 7 years. The agency also intends to make addi­tion­al, small­er awards this year for less mature ideas, Finan says. A com­mit­tee of experts whose ros­ter has not been pub­lished select­ed from sev­er­al designs, she says.

The two win­ning designs devi­ate fun­da­men­tal­ly from a con­ven­tion­al pow­er reac­tor, which is essen­tial­ly a boil­er. With­in the core of a nuclear reac­tor, atoms of ura­ni­um fuel split in a chain reac­tion, releas­ing ener­gy and free-fly­ing neu­trons, which then split oth­er ura­ni­um atoms. In a con­ven­tion­al pow­er reac­tor, the ener­gy heats high­ly pres­sur­ized “cool­ing” water that cir­cu­lates through the core. Still under pres­sure, the cool­ing water flows to an exter­nal steam gen­er­a­tor, where it boils water in a sep­a­rate cir­cuit, pro­duc­ing steam that dri­ves tur­bines to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty.

Instead of water, the 345 megawatt Natri­um reac­tor from Ter­raPow­er, Inc., and GE Hitachi would use molten sodi­um met­al as a coolant. Because sodi­um has a much high­er boil­ing tem­per­a­ture than water, the coolant would not have to be pres­sur­ized, reduc­ing the plant’s com­plex­i­ty and cost. The sodi­um would trans­fer its heat to molten salt, which could then flow direct­ly to a steam gen­er­a­tor or to a stor­age tank, to be held to gen­er­ate steam and elec­tric­i­ty lat­er. In con­trast to a con­ven­tion­al nuclear pow­er plant, the Natri­um plant could quick­ly ratch­et up or down its total out­put even as its reac­tor con­tin­ues to run steadi­ly and effi­cient­ly. That could com­ple­ment renew­able sources such as wind and solar ener­gy, which pro­duce fluc­tu­at­ing pow­er lev­els that need to be evened out.

In con­trast, the Xe-100 design from X‑Energy would use pres­sur­ized heli­um gas to cool its ura­ni­um-based fuel. That fuel would be pack­aged not in the con­ven­tion­al met­al-clad rods, but in “pebbles”—spheres of graphite infused with count­less ceram­ic ker­nels that con­tain the ura­ni­um. Like a giant gum­ball machine, the reac­tor would hold 220,000 peb­bles, which would slow­ly descend through the core and, as their fuel was spent, would exit from a port at the bot­tom. Heat­ed to 750°C, the heli­um would gen­er­ate steam in a sec­ondary cir­cuit to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty. In prin­ci­ple, the peb­bles can’t melt, elim­i­nat­ing the risk of a melt­down. Each Xe-100 would gen­er­ate 80 megawatts, and a plant would con­sist of four of the mod­u­lar reac­tors.

Both plants should be sim­pler and cheap­er than con­ven­tion­al nuclear pow­er plants. Because Natri­um sodi­um coolant is unpres­sur­ized, the reac­tor requires a small­er con­tain­ment struc­ture than a con­ven­tion­al reac­tor. The plant also “decou­ples” the reac­tor and the elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing por­tions of the facil­i­ty, which sit on oppo­site sides of the stor­age tanks. Those fea­tures should allow engi­neers to reduce use of expen­sive rein­forced con­crete by 80%, says Tara Nei­der, a Ter­raPow­er engi­neer and project direc­tor for the Natri­um design. “Natri­um is all about mak­ing a nuclear plant sim­pler so it can be more effi­cient,” she says. Both com­pa­nies say they have yet to choose sites for their reac­tors.

Both reac­tors would also depart from con­ven­tion­al designs in using a fuel that is more high­ly enriched in ura­ni­um-235, the fis­sile iso­tope that is key to gen­er­at­ing a chain reac­tion. To min­i­mize the risk that the fuel, fresh or spent, could be divert­ed to cre­ate a nuclear weapon, water-cooled pow­er reac­tors run on fuel that it is 3.5% ura­ni­um-235. The Natri­um and Xe-100 reac­tors would use fuel enriched to 20%, which would enable them to run longer on a batch of fuel and extract more ener­gy from it. Such fuel isn’t cur­rent­ly pro­duced in the Unit­ed States, but cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ers could make it rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly, Finan says. The fuel would also be dif­fi­cult to divert to weapons, she says, in part because it would require few­er refu­el­ing stops.

As in many things nuclear, what’s old is new: Since the birth of the nuclear age in the 1950s, engi­neers have built a hand­ful of sodi­um-cooled reac­tors and even a cou­ple of peb­ble-bed reac­tors. But the dev­il is in the design details, and both Ter­raPow­er and X‑Energy aim to make reac­tors that are safe and can com­pete with cheap­er forms of pow­er. Ulti­mate­ly, Ter­raPow­er hopes to mar­ket a Natri­um plant for less than $1 bil­lion, Nei­der says.

...

————

“Depart­ment of Ener­gy picks two advanced nuclear reac­tors for demon­stra­tion projects” by Adri­an Cho; Sci­ence Mag­a­zine; 10/16/2020

“Both reac­tors would also depart from con­ven­tion­al designs in using a fuel that is more high­ly enriched in ura­ni­um-235, the fis­sile iso­tope that is key to gen­er­at­ing a chain reac­tion. To min­i­mize the risk that the fuel, fresh or spent, could be divert­ed to cre­ate a nuclear weapon, water-cooled pow­er reac­tors run on fuel that it is 3.5% ura­ni­um-235. The Natri­um and Xe-100 reac­tors would use fuel enriched to 20%, which would enable them to run longer on a batch of fuel and extract more ener­gy from it. Such fuel isn’t cur­rent­ly pro­duced in the Unit­ed States, but cur­rent man­u­fac­tur­ers could make it rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly, Finan says. The fuel would also be dif­fi­cult to divert to weapons, she says, in part because it would require few­er refu­el­ing stops.”

Don’t wor­ry about the fact that these reac­tors use high­ly enriched ura­ni­um that could be stolen to use for nuclear weapons because there won’t be a large num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties for theft. Those are the kinds of assur­ances we’re get­ting. Non-assur­ing assur­ances that ignore the real­i­ty that, whether or not these reac­tors have infre­quent refu­el­ing cycles, there’s still going to be the need for the nuclear fuel indus­try to start pro­duc­ing, stor­ing, and ship­ping this kind of weapons-usable fuel if this type of nuclear tech­nol­o­gy becomes pop­u­lar. There’s no deny­ing that mak­ing weapons-grade ura­ni­um the stan­dard fuel for new nuclear pow­er plants is going to inevitably make weapons-grade ura­ni­um more plen­ti­ful and avail­able for loss and theft.

Of course, while the threat of lost weapons-grade ura­ni­um is an obvi­ous huge risk with this tech­nol­o­gy, there’s also the obvi­ous huge risk of a melt­down. Which rais­es the ques­tion: does this sodi­um-cooled reac­tor tech­nol­o­gy have a his­to­ry of melt­downs? Yep. A large­ly under-rec­og­nized his­to­ry that includes the worst nuclear acci­dent in US his­to­ry. And it does­n’t sound like there’s any­thing in this new sodi­um reac­tor design that has some­how avoid­ed the risk of future melt­downs. They would pre­sum­ably be tout­ing new safe­ty fea­tures if such fea­tures were avail­able.

So as we can see, this new nuclear tech­nol­o­gy being advanced by War­ren Buf­fet and Bill Gates appears to have one dis­tinct advan­tage: the plants are cheap­er to pro­duce. That’s the big advan­tage. Cheap­er nuclear pow­er infra­struc­ture. Which seems like the kind of advan­tage that’s most­ly just a short-term advan­tage with a lot of long-term costs.

So are deal­ing with Don­ald the Nuclear Dilet­tante? Don­ald the Mafia Don always look­ing for the next score? Don­ald the Black­mailed Stooge? Don­ald the Fas­cist Destroy­er of Worlds? All of the above? These are the kinds of ques­tions that are like­ly still dri­ving fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into the hoard of 11 addi­tion­al sets of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments seized from Mar-a-Lago Mon­day night.

As we saw, Trump report­ed­ly returned 15 box­es of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments to the Nation­al Archives back in Jan­u­ary. But did­n’t give it all back. Not by a long shot. It’s becom­ing one of the biggest mys­ter­ies of this sto­ry: Trump did­n’t just keep a few clas­si­fied doc­u­ments. He kept a trove. Why? Of what val­ue is this?

Those ques­tions of ‘why’ deep­ened sig­nif­i­cant­ly with an update about the most sen­si­tive doc­u­ments that appear to have been ani­mat­ing the fed­er­al offi­cials who called for the raid: Trump was hold­ing doc­u­ments on nuclear weapons. The doc­u­ments are described as some of the most sen­si­tive doc­u­ments the US pos­sess­es.

It also sounds like doc­u­ments involv­ing sig­nals intel­li­gence — a poten­tial­ly very sen­si­tive area — were turned over with the 15 box­es back in Jan­u­ary, sug­gest­ing there could be more sig­nals intel­li­gence doc­u­ments in the 11 sets of doc­u­ments the FBI retrieved on Mon­day. But it sounds like it’s the nuclear secrets that prompt­ed a ‘hair on fire’ response inside the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

Anoth­er fac­tor in this whole mess is that it turns out a Trump lawyer told the DOJ back in June that all of the clas­si­fied mate­ri­als had been returned. That was obvi­ous­ly was very untrue. Was the lawyer lying or mis­in­formed by Trump? We don’t know. But some­one was lying about the exis­tence of these doc­u­ments, quite pos­si­bly Trump him­self. Again, why? Why take such enor­mous legal risks just to pos­sess these mate­ri­als? Of what val­ue was this to Trump?

Is he traf­fick­ing in nuclear secrets? That would obvi­ous­ly be a high­ly lucra­tive trade. The kind of trade that could inspire a Mis­sion Impos­si­ble movie. But
was Trump that insane­ly cor­rupt? Per­haps. He does appear to be insane­ly cor­rupt. And let’s not for­get his dark fas­ci­na­tion with nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Trump was call­ing for an expan­sion of the US’s nuclear forces back in Decem­ber of 2016, before he even took office. He even seemed to wel­come a new nuclear arms race at the time.

It’s also worth recall the inter­est­ing ties to a South Africa’s clan­des­tine nuclear pro­gram held by one of Trump’s clos­est allies: Peter Thiel. Thiel’s dad led the South African Ura­ni­um-min­ing oper­a­tions. It’s the kind of sto­ry that serves as a reminder that the glob­al demand for this kind of tech­nol­o­gy is going to gen­er­al­ly be a clan­des­tine demand. In oth­er words, if there’s a thriv­ing elite black­mar­ket for nuclear secrets it’s not like we’re nor­mal­ly going to hear about it. It’s also a reminder that Trump’s close rela­tion­ship with the Sau­di roy­al fam­i­ly puts him in the prox­im­i­ty of the same “Safari Club” nuclear tech­nol­o­gy traf­fick­ing net­work that helped to facil­i­tate Pak­istan’s Sau­di-spon­sored nuclear ambi­tions.

There’s also Trump’s famous­ly cor­rupt rela­tion­ship with Turkey’s Pres­i­dent Erdo­gan. Recall Erdo­gan’s dec­la­ra­tions back in 2019 that Turkey want­ed nuclear weapons. Did Erodgan dan­gle some new Turk­ish Trump Tow­er deals in exchange for a tech­nol­o­gy assist?

And then there’s the inter­twined nuclear schemes being devel­oped dur­ing the 2016 Trump pres­i­den­tial cam­paign that were nev­er real­ly ful­ly fleshed out in all of the Trump-Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tions. There was Michael Fly­n­n’s plan for a nuclear ‘Mar­shall Plan’ to build nuclear pow­er plants across the Mid­dle East (minus Iran). And there was the scheme by Felix Sater and Michael Cohen, along with far-right Ukrain­ian politi­cian Andreii Arte­menko — a spe­cial­ist in diplo­ma­cy with both the US and Mid­dle East­ern nations — to build­ing of Ukraine’s nuclear pow­er sec­tor and poten­tial­ly turn Ukraine into an elec­tric­i­ty exporter as part of a broad­er peace plan pro­pos­al between Ukraine and Russ­ian. Nuclear-relat­ed schemes have in Trump’s orbit since before he was even elect­ed.

But also recall that dis­turb­ing sto­ry from 2020 that involved both nuclear pow­er and nuclear weapons: the Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) announced it was going to select a com­pa­ny for a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship in gen­er­at­ing next-gen­er­a­tion nuclear pow­er tech­nol­o­gy. As we saw, the com­pa­ny select­ed in Octo­ber of 2020 was Ter­raPow­er, backed by Bill Gates and War­ren Buf­fett. Ter­raPow­er uses sodi­um-cool­ing tech­nol­o­gy that report­ed­ly reduces the odds of a melt­down. And it also has a ‘fea­ture’ with some rather con­cern­ing secu­ri­ty impli­ca­tions: tra­di­tion­al water-cool nuclear plants run on fuel at 3.5% Ura­ni­um, which avoids the risk of fresh or spent fuel being divert­ed for use in nuclear weapons. These new Ter­raPow­er reac­tors can run on fuel up to 20% Ura­ni­um. And while a high­er Ura­ni­um con­cen­tra­tion allows the reac­tors to run more effi­cient­ly, 20% Ura­ni­um is also at the low end of what can poten­tial­ly be used to build a nuclear weapons.

So one of the last moves by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion involved cre­at­ing a gov­ern­ment-subidized crash course devel­op­ment of a nuclear pow­er tech­nol­o­gy that uses poten­tial­ly weapons-grade fuel. Might that have some­thing to do with Trump’s post-pres­i­den­tial fix­a­tion on the US’s nuclear secrets? Because if the US’s nuclear indus­try is being posi­tion for a big gov­ern­ment-sub­si­dized revival using new tech­nolo­gies involv­ing reac­tors using weapons-grade fuel, it’s not hard to imag­ine that the US’s nuclear secrets could be of immense poten­tial com­mer­cial val­ue in that new indus­tri­al sec­tor.

Or maybe the com­mer­cial val­ue of those nuclear doc­u­ments was far more direct: the ongo­ing main­te­nance and upgrad­ing of the US’s nuclear force and mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion to get those gov­ern­ment bids. The point being that it’s not at all hard to imag­ine those nuclear secrets were worth a for­tune.

Of course, the intel­li­gence val­ue was obvi­ous­ly immense too, and you can’t sep­a­rate com­mer­cial val­ue and intel­li­gence val­ue when you’re talk­ing about some­one like Trump. The quid pro quos write them­selves:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear doc­u­ments and oth­er items, sources say
The for­mer pres­i­dent said on social media that he won’t oppose a Jus­tice Dept. request to unseal the search war­rant

By Devlin Bar­rett, Josh Dawsey, Per­ry Stein and Shane Har­ris
Updat­ed August 12, 2022 at 2:50 p.m. EDT|Published August 11, 2022 at 2:16 p.m. EDT

Clas­si­fied doc­u­ments relat­ing to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Flori­da res­i­dence on Mon­day, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion.

Experts in clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion said the unusu­al search under­scores deep con­cern among gov­ern­ment offi­cials about the types of infor­ma­tion they thought could be locat­ed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and poten­tial­ly in dan­ger of falling into the wrong hands.

The peo­ple who described some of the mate­r­i­al that agents were seek­ing spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion. They did not offer addi­tion­al details about what type of infor­ma­tion the agents were seek­ing, includ­ing whether it involved weapons belong­ing to the Unit­ed States or some oth­er nation. Nor did they say if such doc­u­ments were recov­ered as part of the search. A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for com­ment. The Jus­tice Depart­ment and FBI declined to com­ment.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Mer­rick Gar­land said Thurs­day that he could not dis­cuss the inves­ti­ga­tion. But in an unusu­al pub­lic state­ment at the Jus­tice Depart­ment, he announced he had per­son­al­ly autho­rized the deci­sion to seek court per­mis­sion for a search war­rant.

Gar­land spoke moments after Jus­tice Depart­ment lawyers filed a motion seek­ing to unseal the search war­rant in the case, not­ing that Trump had pub­licly revealed the search short­ly after it hap­pened.

“The public’s clear and pow­er­ful inter­est in under­stand­ing what occurred under these cir­cum­stances weighs heav­i­ly in favor of unseal­ing,” the motion says. “That said, the for­mer Pres­i­dent should have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond to this Motion and lodge objec­tions, includ­ing with regards to any ‘legit­i­mate pri­va­cy inter­ests’ or the poten­tial for oth­er ‘injury’ if these mate­ri­als are made pub­lic.”

Late Thurs­day night, Trump said on social media that he agreed the doc­u­ment should be made pub­lic. In anoth­er post ear­ly Fri­day, he called the nuclear weapons issue a “hoax” and accused the FBI of plant­i­ng evi­dence, with­out offer­ing infor­ma­tion to indi­cate such a thing had hap­pened. Trump said agents did not allow his lawyers to be present for the search, which is not unusu­al in a law enforce­ment oper­a­tion, espe­cial­ly if it poten­tial­ly involves clas­si­fied items.

The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed Fri­day that the list of items seized by FBI agents dur­ing the search includ­ed 11 sets of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments; four were marked top-secret, three were secret and three were iden­ti­fied as con­fi­den­tial — the low­est lev­el of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. The Jour­nal report­ed that the inven­to­ry of what was tak­en also referred to a set of doc­u­ments marked “Var­i­ous classified/TS/SCI doc­u­ments,” a gov­ern­ment label for a more close­ly held form of top secret infor­ma­tion.

Mate­r­i­al about nuclear weapons is espe­cial­ly sen­si­tive and usu­al­ly restrict­ed to a small num­ber of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, experts said. Pub­li­ciz­ing details about U.S. weapons could pro­vide an intel­li­gence road map to adver­saries seek­ing to build ways of coun­ter­ing those sys­tems. And oth­er coun­tries might view expos­ing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said.

One for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial, who in the past over­saw inves­ti­ga­tions of leaks of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, said the type of top-secret infor­ma­tion described by the peo­ple famil­iar with the probe would prob­a­bly cause author­i­ties to try to move as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to recov­er sen­si­tive doc­u­ments that could cause grave harm to U.S. secu­ri­ty.

“If that is true, it would sug­gest that mate­r­i­al resid­ing unlaw­ful­ly at Mar-a-Lago may have been clas­si­fied at the high­est clas­si­fi­ca­tion lev­el,” said David Lauf­man, the for­mer chief of the Jus­tice Department’s coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence sec­tion, which inves­ti­gates leaks of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. “If the FBI and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice believed there were top secret mate­ri­als still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ moti­va­tion to recov­er that mate­r­i­al as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”

The Mon­day search of Trump’s home by FBI agents has caused a polit­i­cal furor, with Trump and many of his Repub­li­can defend­ers accus­ing the FBI of act­ing out of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed mal­ice. Some have threat­ened the agency on social media.

As Gar­land spoke Thurs­day, police in Ohio were engaged in a stand­off with an armed man who alleged­ly tried to storm the Cincin­nati office of the FBI. The man was killed by police lat­er that day; author­i­ties said nego­ti­a­tions had failed.

State and fed­er­al offi­cials declined to name the man or describe a poten­tial motive. How­ev­er, a law enforce­ment offi­cial iden­ti­fied him as Ricky Shif­fer.

Accord­ing to anoth­er law enforce­ment offi­cial, agents are inves­ti­gat­ing Shiffer’s pos­si­ble ties to extrem­ist groups, includ­ing the Proud Boys, whose lead­ers are accused of help­ing launch the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capi­tol. Both offi­cials spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.

A per­son using Shiffer’s name on Truth­So­cial, Trump’s social media site, post­ed a “call to arms” mes­sage short­ly after Monday’s FBI search became pub­lic.

“Peo­ple, this is it,” the mes­sage reads. “Leave work tomor­row as soon as the gun shop/Army-Navy store/pawn shop opens, get what­ev­er you need to be ready for com­bat. We must not tol­er­ate this one. They have been con­di­tion­ing us to accept tyran­ny and think we can’t do any­thing for 2 years. This time we must respond with force.”

...

The inves­ti­ga­tion into the improp­er han­dling of doc­u­ments began months ago, when the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion sought the return of mate­r­i­al tak­en to Mar-a-Lago from the White House. Fif­teen box­es of doc­u­ments and items, some of them marked clas­si­fied, were returned ear­ly this year. The archives sub­se­quent­ly asked the Jus­tice Depart­ment to inves­ti­gate.

For­mer senior intel­li­gence offi­cials said in inter­views that dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, high­ly clas­si­fied intel­li­gence about sen­si­tive top­ics, includ­ing about intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing on Iran, was rou­tine­ly mis­han­dled. One for­mer offi­cial said the most high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion often end­ed up in the hands of per­son­nel who didn’t appear to have a need to pos­sess it or weren’t autho­rized to read it.

That for­mer offi­cial also said sig­nals intel­li­gence — inter­cept­ed elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions such as emails and phone calls of for­eign lead­ers — was among the type of infor­ma­tion that often end­ed up with unau­tho­rized per­son­nel. Such inter­cepts are among the most close­ly guard­ed secrets because of what they can reveal about how the Unit­ed States has pen­e­trat­ed for­eign gov­ern­ments.

A per­son famil­iar with the inven­to­ry of 15 box­es tak­en from Mar-a-Lago in Jan­u­ary indi­cat­ed that sig­nals intel­li­gence mate­r­i­al was includ­ed in them. The pre­cise nature of the infor­ma­tion was unclear.

...

This spring, Trump’s team received a grand jury sub­poe­na in con­nec­tion with the doc­u­ments inves­ti­ga­tions, two peo­ple famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tion, who also spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss details, con­firmed to The Post on Thurs­day. Inves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed Mar-a-Lago in the weeks fol­low­ing the issuance of the sub­poe­na, and Trump’s team hand­ed over some mate­ri­als. The sub­poe­na was first report­ed by Just the News, a con­ser­v­a­tive media out­let run by John Solomon, one of Trump’s recent­ly des­ig­nat­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Nation­al Archives.

Peo­ple famil­iar with the probe have said it is focused on whether the for­mer pres­i­dent or his aides with­held clas­si­fied or oth­er gov­ern­ment mate­r­i­al that should have been returned to gov­ern­ment cus­tody ear­li­er. The peo­ple, who also spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the inves­ti­ga­tion, said that as author­i­ties engaged in months of dis­cus­sions on the sub­ject, some offi­cials came to sus­pect the Trump team was not being truth­ful.

Pres­sure had been build­ing for Gar­land to say some­thing so the pub­lic could under­stand why the Jus­tice Depart­ment — and a fed­er­al mag­is­trate judge — believed the extra­or­di­nary step of exe­cut­ing a search war­rant at the home of a for­mer pres­i­dent was nec­es­sary. But Gar­land has stuck with his prac­tice of not dis­cussing ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions.

“Uphold­ing the rule of law means apply­ing the law even­ly with­out fear or favor,” Gar­land said Thurs­day. “Under my watch, that is pre­cise­ly what the Jus­tice Depart­ment is doing.”

Trump and his allies have refused to pub­licly share a copy of the war­rant, even as they and their sup­port­ers have denounced the search as unlaw­ful and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed but pro­vid­ed no evi­dence to back that up.

Lawyers for the for­mer pres­i­dent can respond to the government’s fil­ing with any objec­tions to unseal­ing the war­rant, leav­ing it to the judge over­see­ing the case to decide. Trump also could pub­licly release the war­rant him­self.

The judge ordered the Jus­tice Depart­ment to con­fer with lawyers for Trump and alert the court by 3 p.m. Fri­day as to whether Trump objects to the unseal­ing.

If made pub­lic, the war­rant would prob­a­bly reveal a gen­er­al descrip­tion of what mate­r­i­al agents were seek­ing at Mar-a-Lago and what crimes they could be con­nect­ed to. A list of the inven­to­ry that agents took from the prop­er­ty would also be released. Details could be lim­it­ed, how­ev­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the mate­r­i­al col­lect­ed includes clas­si­fied doc­u­ments.

In addi­tion to the anti-law enforce­ment threats and vit­ri­ol on social media sites and else­where this week, the furor over the search war­rant has led to threats against the judge who approved the war­rant request.

...

Repub­li­cans around Trump ini­tial­ly thought the raid could help him polit­i­cal­ly, but they are now brac­ing for rev­e­la­tions that could be dam­ag­ing, a per­son famil­iar with the mat­ter said, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss inter­nal delib­er­a­tions.

————

“FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear doc­u­ments and oth­er items, sources say” By Devlin Bar­rett, Josh Dawsey, Per­ry Stein and Shane Har­ris; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 08/11/2022

“The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed Fri­day that the list of items seized by FBI agents dur­ing the search includ­ed 11 sets of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments; four were marked top-secret, three were secret and three were iden­ti­fied as con­fi­den­tial — the low­est lev­el of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. The Jour­nal report­ed that the inven­to­ry of what was tak­en also referred to a set of doc­u­ments marked “Var­i­ous classified/TS/SCI doc­u­ments,” a gov­ern­ment label for a more close­ly held form of top secret infor­ma­tion.”

11 addi­tion­al box­es of doc­u­ments. That’s a lot more than the 15 doc­u­ments Trump will­ing­ly turned over ear­li­er this year. What on earth could be in these 11 box­es Trump so des­per­ate­ly want­ed to keep his hands on? Well, nuclear weapons-relat­ed info, for starters. It’s one of the most sen­si­tive pos­si­ble areas Trump could have plun­dered. But per­haps the biggest clue that this was nuclear secrets Trump was hold­ing onto were gen­uine­ly ‘explo­sive’ in nature is the fact that Trump is already pub­licly call­ing the report­ing on nuclear secrets a “hoax” and is assert­ing that the FBI plant­ed evi­dence. That’s some omi­nous con­scious­ness-of-guilt behav­ior right there:

...
Late Thurs­day night, Trump said on social media that he agreed the doc­u­ment should be made pub­lic. In anoth­er post ear­ly Fri­day, he called the nuclear weapons issue a “hoax” and accused the FBI of plant­i­ng evi­dence, with­out offer­ing infor­ma­tion to indi­cate such a thing had hap­pened. Trump said agents did not allow his lawyers to be present for the search, which is not unusu­al in a law enforce­ment oper­a­tion, espe­cial­ly if it poten­tial­ly involves clas­si­fied items.

...

Mate­r­i­al about nuclear weapons is espe­cial­ly sen­si­tive and usu­al­ly restrict­ed to a small num­ber of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, experts said. Pub­li­ciz­ing details about U.S. weapons could pro­vide an intel­li­gence road map to adver­saries seek­ing to build ways of coun­ter­ing those sys­tems. And oth­er coun­tries might view expos­ing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said.

One for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial, who in the past over­saw inves­ti­ga­tions of leaks of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, said the type of top-secret infor­ma­tion described by the peo­ple famil­iar with the probe would prob­a­bly cause author­i­ties to try to move as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to recov­er sen­si­tive doc­u­ments that could cause grave harm to U.S. secu­ri­ty.

“If that is true, it would sug­gest that mate­r­i­al resid­ing unlaw­ful­ly at Mar-a-Lago may have been clas­si­fied at the high­est clas­si­fi­ca­tion lev­el,” said David Lauf­man, the for­mer chief of the Jus­tice Department’s coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence sec­tion, which inves­ti­gates leaks of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion. “If the FBI and the Depart­ment of Jus­tice believed there were top secret mate­ri­als still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ moti­va­tion to recov­er that mate­r­i­al as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.”
...

But this was­n’t just 11 box­es of nuclear secrets. So what else what in there? Well, the 15 box­es vol­un­tar­i­ly returned back in Jan­u­ary con­tained sig­nals intel­li­gence. So we can rea­son­ably guess there’s a lot more of that sit­ting in those 11 sets of mate­ri­als:

...
For­mer senior intel­li­gence offi­cials said in inter­views that dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, high­ly clas­si­fied intel­li­gence about sen­si­tive top­ics, includ­ing about intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing on Iran, was rou­tine­ly mis­han­dled. One for­mer offi­cial said the most high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion often end­ed up in the hands of per­son­nel who didn’t appear to have a need to pos­sess it or weren’t autho­rized to read it.

That for­mer offi­cial also said sig­nals intel­li­gence — inter­cept­ed elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions such as emails and phone calls of for­eign lead­ers — was among the type of infor­ma­tion that often end­ed up with unau­tho­rized per­son­nel. Such inter­cepts are among the most close­ly guard­ed secrets because of what they can reveal about how the Unit­ed States has pen­e­trat­ed for­eign gov­ern­ments.

A per­son famil­iar with the inven­to­ry of 15 box­es tak­en from Mar-a-Lago in Jan­u­ary indi­cat­ed that sig­nals intel­li­gence mate­r­i­al was includ­ed in them. The pre­cise nature of the infor­ma­tion was unclear.
...

What else will inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­er? We’ll see. Or prob­a­bly won’t see since they pre­sum­ably won’t be giv­ing detail info on the con­tents of these top secret mate­ri­als.

But we’ll like­ly see who else may be crim­i­nal­ly cul­pa­ble in these fias­co. Peo­ple like the Trump lawyer who report­ed­ly informed the Jus­tice Depart­ment back in June that all mate­ri­als had been returned:

The New York Times

Trump Lawyer Told Jus­tice Dept. That Clas­si­fied Mate­r­i­al Had Been Returned

The lawyer signed a state­ment in June that all doc­u­ments marked as clas­si­fied and held in box­es in stor­age at Mar-a-Lago had been giv­en back. The search at the for­mer president’s home on Mon­day turned up more.

By Mag­gie Haber­man and Glenn Thrush
Aug. 13, 2022Updated 5:51 p.m. ET

At least one lawyer for for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump signed a writ­ten state­ment in June assert­ing that all mate­r­i­al marked as clas­si­fied and held in box­es in a stor­age area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago res­i­dence and club had been returned to the gov­ern­ment, four peo­ple with knowl­edge of the doc­u­ment said.

The writ­ten dec­la­ra­tion was made after a vis­it on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cial in the Jus­tice Department’s nation­al secu­ri­ty divi­sion.

The exis­tence of the signed dec­la­ra­tion, which has not pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed, is a pos­si­ble indi­ca­tion that Mr. Trump or his team were not ful­ly forth­com­ing with fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors about the mate­r­i­al. And it could help explain why a poten­tial vio­la­tion of a crim­i­nal statute relat­ed to obstruc­tion was cit­ed by the depart­ment as one basis for seek­ing the war­rant used to car­ry out the day­long search of the for­mer president’s home on Mon­day, an extra­or­di­nary step that gen­er­at­ed polit­i­cal shock waves.

It also helps to fur­ther explain the sequence of events that prompt­ed the Jus­tice Department’s deci­sion to con­duct the search after months in which it had tried to resolve the mat­ter through dis­cus­sions with Mr. Trump and his team.

An inven­to­ry of the mate­r­i­al tak­en from Mr. Trump’s home that was released on Fri­day showed that F.B.I. agents seized 11 sets of doc­u­ments dur­ing the search with some type of con­fi­den­tial or secret mark­ing on them, includ­ing some marked as “classified/TS/SCI” — short­hand for “top secret/sensitive com­part­ment­ed infor­ma­tion.” Infor­ma­tion cat­e­go­rized in that fash­ion is meant to be viewed only in a secure gov­ern­ment facil­i­ty.

The search encom­passed not just the stor­age area where box­es of mate­r­i­al known to the Jus­tice Depart­ment were being held but also Mr. Trump’s office and res­i­dence. The search war­rant and inven­to­ry unsealed on Fri­day did not spec­i­fy where in the Mar-a-Lago com­plex the doc­u­ments marked as clas­si­fied were found.

Mr. Trump said on Fri­day that he had declas­si­fied all the mate­r­i­al in his pos­ses­sion while he was still in office. He did not pro­vide any doc­u­men­ta­tion that he had done so.

In an appear­ance on Fox News on Fri­day night, the right-wing writer John Solomon, whom Mr. Trump has des­ig­nat­ed as one of his rep­re­sen­ta­tives to inter­act with the Nation­al Archives, read a state­ment from the for­mer president’s office claim­ing that Mr. Trump had a “stand­ing order” that doc­u­ments tak­en out of the Oval Office and brought to the White House res­i­dence “were deemed to be declas­si­fied the moment he removed them.”

...

Last year, offi­cials with the Nation­al Archives dis­cov­ered that Mr. Trump had tak­en a slew of doc­u­ments and oth­er gov­ern­ment mate­r­i­al with him when he left the White House at the end of his tumul­tuous term in Jan­u­ary 2021. That mate­r­i­al was sup­posed to have been sent to the archives under the terms of the Pres­i­den­tial Records Act.

Mr. Trump returned 15 box­es of mate­r­i­al in Jan­u­ary of this year. When archivists exam­ined the mate­r­i­al, they found many pages of doc­u­ments with clas­si­fied mark­ings and referred the mat­ter to the Jus­tice Depart­ment, which began an inves­ti­ga­tion and con­vened a grand jury.

In the spring, the depart­ment issued a sub­poe­na to Mr. Trump seek­ing addi­tion­al doc­u­ments that it believed may have been in his pos­ses­sion. The for­mer pres­i­dent was repeat­ed­ly urged by advis­ers to return what remained, despite what they described as his desire to con­tin­ue to hold onto some doc­u­ments.

———–

“The exis­tence of the signed dec­la­ra­tion, which has not pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed, is a pos­si­ble indi­ca­tion that Mr. Trump or his team were not ful­ly forth­com­ing with fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors about the mate­r­i­al. And it could help explain why a poten­tial vio­la­tion of a crim­i­nal statute relat­ed to obstruc­tion was cit­ed by the depart­ment as one basis for seek­ing the war­rant used to car­ry out the day­long search of the for­mer president’s home on Mon­day, an extra­or­di­nary step that gen­er­at­ed polit­i­cal shock waves.”

Trump sure want­ed to keep his hands on the con­tents of these 11 box­es. They lit­er­al­ly offi­cial­ly lied to the DOJ about their exis­tence just two months ago...after a vis­it on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by the top coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cial in the Jus­tice Department’s nation­al secu­ri­ty divi­sion!

...
The writ­ten dec­la­ra­tion was made after a vis­it on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence offi­cial in the Jus­tice Department’s nation­al secu­ri­ty divi­sion.
...

What on earth could be in those doc­u­ments to make them worth this crim­i­nal per­il? Are we look­ing at a black­mail sit­u­a­tion? Or just gross greed? Odds are its’s a vari­ety of moti­va­tions giv­en the sheer vol­ume of mate­ri­als Trump with­held. Maybe the sig­nals intel­li­gence was with­held to show to his friends in places like Sau­di Ara­bia, while the nuclear secrets was kept for more com­mer­cial pur­pos­es? These are all ques­tions we had bet­ter hope inves­ti­ga­tors are mean­ing­ful­ly able to ask.

But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle from back in May of 2020 reminds us, when it comes to Trump’s fas­ci­na­tion with nuclear tech­nol­o­gy we don’t have to spec­u­lat­ed entire­ly about what he may have had an inter­est in. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion was intent on reviv­ing the US nuclear pow­er indus­try. And pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships with the Depart­ment of Ener­gy was their vehi­cle for that revival. Poten­tial­ly lucra­tive pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships.

And as we’ve seen, the tech­nol­o­gy ulti­mate­ly select­ed for this pilot pro­gram was Bill Gate’s Ter­raPow­er sodi­um-cooled nuclear reac­tors. The goal was a work­ing pro­to­type with­in 7 years. And as we also saw, one of the ‘fea­tures’ of the NuTer­ra reac­tors is that they oper­ate using Ura­ni­um enriched up to 20%, far high­er than the 3.5% Ura­ni­um fuel used by tra­di­tion­al water-cooled nuclear reac­tors. And as we also saw, the rea­son tra­di­tion­al reac­tors use less enriched Ura­ni­um is pre­cise­ly to min­i­mize the risk that the fuel, fresh or spent, could be divert­ed to cre­ate a nuclear weapon. So the hot new nuclear tech­nol­o­gy that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion select­ed for a big gov­ern­ment-sub­si­dized rapid devel­op­ment with­in 7 years was a plat­form that could gen­er­ate weapons grade Ura­ni­um. Might that be at all relat­ed to Trump’s fas­ci­na­tion with nuclear secrets? One of his admin­is­tra­tion’s 2020 deci­sion was to put in motion a process that could result in the com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion of weapons-grade Ura­ni­um. He pre­sum­ably knew this was the case. What sort of dark com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties did this gov­ern­ment-sub­si­dized plan for the com­mer­cial enrich­ment of nuclear fuel to weapons-grade lev­els open up for some­one in Trump’s posi­tion? These are the kinds of ques­tions that inves­ti­ga­tors had bet­ter be ask­ing right now:

Sci­ence

U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy rush­es to build advanced new nuclear reac­tors
New pro­gram aims to have two pro­to­type reac­tors run­ning with­in 7 years

20 May 2020
By Adri­an Cho

In the lat­est effort to revive the Unit­ed States’s flag­ging nuclear indus­try, the Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new pro­to­type nuclear reac­tors with­in 7 years, the agency announced last week. The reac­tors would be the cen­ter­piece of DOE’s new Advanced Reac­tor Demon­stra­tion Pro­gram, which will receive $230 mil­lion this fis­cal year. Each would be built as a 50–50 col­lab­o­ra­tion with an indus­tri­al part­ner and ulti­mate­ly could receive up to $4 bil­lion in fund­ing from DOE.

“This can be a game chang­er,” says Jacopo Buon­giorno, a nuclear engi­neer at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. “It’s time for the com­mu­ni­ty to go from design­ing paper reac­tors to build­ing demon­stra­tions.”

But even some pro­po­nents of nuclear pow­er doubt the pro­gram will spur con­struc­tion of new com­mer­cial reac­tors as long as nat­ur­al gas and renew­able ener­gy remain rel­a­tive­ly cheap. “New builds can’t com­pete with renew­ables,” says Robert Ros­ner, a physi­cist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. “Cer­tain­ly not now.”

Com­mer­cial nuclear reac­tors sup­ply 20% of the Unit­ed States’s elec­tri­cal pow­er and 50% of its car­bon-free ener­gy. How­ev­er, the U.S. nuclear indus­try has strug­gled for decades. Its fleet now com­pris­es 96 reac­tors, down from 113 in the ear­ly 1990s. More reac­tors are slat­ed to close and the nuclear indus­try’s share of the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply is expect­ed to start to fall. In spite of that drea­ry pic­ture, engi­neers have con­tin­ued to devel­op designs for advance reac­tors they say would be safer and more effi­cient.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion wants to breathe new life into the nuclear indus­try. In April, DOE announced plans to increase domes­tic ura­ni­um min­ing and estab­lish a nation­al ura­ni­um reserve. And it will put $160 mil­lion of the $230 mil­lion Con­gress pro­vid­ed for the reac­tor demon­stra­tion pro­gram toward select­ing two designs to be built posthaste, most like­ly at DOE’s Ida­ho Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry (INL).

The pro­gram aims to incu­bate ideas that aren’t already well along in devel­op­ment, says Ash­ley Finan, a nuclear engi­neer and direc­tor of the Nation­al Reac­tor Inno­va­tion Cen­ter at INL. For exam­ple, DOE is already work­ing with NuS­cale Pow­er to devel­op the com­pa­ny’s fac­to­ry-built small mod­u­lar reac­tors, which means it isn’t eli­gi­ble for the new pro­gram. The mon­ey also won’t go to the devel­op­ment of a reac­tor called the Ver­sa­tile Fast Neu­tron Source, which DOE has already begun to pre­pare to build at INL or Oak Ridge Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Ten­nessee and which will serve as a facil­i­ty for mate­ri­als sci­ence research.

Oth­er­wise, “This is an open call,” Finan says. “I think we’ll see a lot of inter­est and a lot of great appli­ca­tions for a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent reac­tor types,” she says. Buon­giorno says recent designs tend to focus on reac­tors that are small­er than the stan­dard gigawatt pow­er reac­tor. A stan­dard com­mer­cial reac­tor burns fuel that’s between 3% and 5% fis­sile ura­ni­um-235 to heat water and dri­ve steam tur­bines. New designs could cir­cu­late coolants such as molten salt and burn fuels con­tain­ing up to 20% ura­ni­um-235, which could make them more effi­cient.

Some observers say the ini­tia­tive is unre­al­is­tic. DOE offi­cials may strug­gle to iden­ti­fy the most promis­ing of the many dis­parate designs, pre­dicts M. V. Ramana, a physi­cist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia, Van­cou­ver. “You’ll be com­par­ing apples, oranges, grapes, plums, every­thing,” he says. The 7‑year time frame also strains creduli­ty, Ramana says, espe­cial­ly as DOE wants the reac­tors to pass licens­ing reviews at the Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion, which typ­i­cal­ly takes sev­er­al years. “It’s absurd to think they can do it.”

How­ev­er, Buon­giorno notes, the pro­to­types could be licensed for com­mer­cial use and con­struct­ed at the same time if they were sit­ed at a DOE facil­i­ty such as INL, which has built 52 dif­fer­ent exper­i­men­tal reac­tors since its birth in 1949 as the Nation­al Reac­tor Test­ing Sta­tion. Finan says the time frame is “aggres­sive,” but is meant to spur devel­op­ers in their work. “This is a goal that’s dif­fi­cult but achiev­able,” she says, “and that’s the right place to be.”

Ramana ques­tions whether the U.S. nuclear indus­try can be saved. Although issues of deal­ing with waste and the pub­lic’s appre­hen­sion about radioac­tiv­i­ty remain, the biggest issue con­fronting the nuclear indus­try is the high cap­i­tal cost of new reac­tors, which can be $7 bil­lion or more. In dereg­u­lat­ed mar­kets, util­i­ty com­pa­nies can­not afford such cap­i­tal expens­es, which is why cheap­er renew­ables may ulti­mate­ly replace nuclear ener­gy, he says. “This is a sun­set indus­try,” he says, “and the soon­er you rec­og­nize that the bet­ter.”

But the cost of wind and solar will climb, Ros­ner argues. Elec­tric­i­ty from renew­ables wax­es and wanes uncon­trol­lably, and when they expand to 20% or 30% of the mar­ket such inter­mit­ten­cy will make them sig­nif­i­cant­ly more expen­sive, he says. Nuclear will then become eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive and com­ple­men­tary to renew­ables as a steady source of car­bon-free ener­gy, he pre­dicts. “By 2030, if the Unit­ed States has a bunch of designs that are well advanced, that’s a good invest­ment because ulti­mate­ly we’re going to need those plants,” Ros­ner says.

...

———–

“U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy rush­es to build advanced new nuclear reac­tors” By Adri­an Cho; Sci­ence; 05/20/2020

“In the lat­est effort to revive the Unit­ed States’s flag­ging nuclear indus­try, the Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) aims to select and help build two new pro­to­type nuclear reac­tors with­in 7 years, the agency announced last week. The reac­tors would be the cen­ter­piece of DOE’s new Advanced Reac­tor Demon­stra­tion Pro­gram, which will receive $230 mil­lion this fis­cal year. Each would be built as a 50–50 col­lab­o­ra­tion with an indus­tri­al part­ner and ulti­mate­ly could receive up to $4 bil­lion in fund­ing from DOE.”

Some lucky part­ner was slat­ed to receive poten­tial­ly bil­lions in gov­ern­ment fund­ing in a 50–50 pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship. That was the announce­ment in May of 2020, with Bill Gates’s Ter­raPow­er being select­ed five months lat­er. lucky part­ner was select­ed end­ed up being Bill Gates’s Ter­raPow­er. And as this arti­cle indi­cates, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was already think­ing about these ‘more effi­cient’ reac­tor designs that can run on up to 20% enriched Ura­ni­um:

...
The Trump admin­is­tra­tion wants to breathe new life into the nuclear indus­try. In April, DOE announced plans to increase domes­tic ura­ni­um min­ing and estab­lish a nation­al ura­ni­um reserve. And it will put $160 mil­lion of the $230 mil­lion Con­gress pro­vid­ed for the reac­tor demon­stra­tion pro­gram toward select­ing two designs to be built posthaste, most like­ly at DOE’s Ida­ho Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry (INL).

The pro­gram aims to incu­bate ideas that aren’t already well along in devel­op­ment, says Ash­ley Finan, a nuclear engi­neer and direc­tor of the Nation­al Reac­tor Inno­va­tion Cen­ter at INL. For exam­ple, DOE is already work­ing with NuS­cale Pow­er to devel­op the com­pa­ny’s fac­to­ry-built small mod­u­lar reac­tors, which means it isn’t eli­gi­ble for the new pro­gram. The mon­ey also won’t go to the devel­op­ment of a reac­tor called the Ver­sa­tile Fast Neu­tron Source, which DOE has already begun to pre­pare to build at INL or Oak Ridge Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry in Ten­nessee and which will serve as a facil­i­ty for mate­ri­als sci­ence research.

Oth­er­wise, “This is an open call,” Finan says. “I think we’ll see a lot of inter­est and a lot of great appli­ca­tions for a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent reac­tor types,” she says. Buon­giorno says recent designs tend to focus on reac­tors that are small­er than the stan­dard gigawatt pow­er reac­tor. A stan­dard com­mer­cial reac­tor burns fuel that’s between 3% and 5% fis­sile ura­ni­um-235 to heat water and dri­ve steam tur­bines. New designs could cir­cu­late coolants such as molten salt and burn fuels con­tain­ing up to 20% ura­ni­um-235, which could make them more effi­cient.
...

How per­son­al­ly engaged was Trump on this DOE project? It sounds like the kind of thing that could have absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ed him. And hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to shape a kind of revival of the US nuclear pow­er sec­tor also sounds like the kind of top­ic that could have ani­mat­ed Trump. So when the oppor­tu­ni­ty came along to revive that nuclear pow­er sec­tor using enriched weapons-grade Ura­ni­um, we have to ask: just how per­son­al­ly inter­est­ed was Trump in this weapons-grade nuclear pow­er plant? The whole scheme just exudes a kind Trumpian destruc­tive grandeur.

So as we can see, part of what makes the news about Trump’s hoard­ing of nuclear secrets so dis­turb­ing is that the motive is not at all obvi­ous. Not because there’s no dis­cernible motive, but because there are so many plau­si­ble motives. Greed? Black­mail? Fas­cist espi­onage? Which was it? This is why it’s also use­ful to keep in mind that ‘All of the above’ is a viable motive when we’re talk­ing about some­one like Trump. Which pre­sum­ably explains, in part, the ‘hair on fire’ gov­ern­ment response.