tagged w/ Ban Nuclear Power
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A United Nations Security Council diplomat says there has been a nuclear test in North Korea, after a magnitude 4.9 "artificial earthquake" was reported.
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CNN BREAKING NEWS:
U.S. Geological Survey reports a seismic disturbance in North Korea, centered near the site of two prior nuclear tests.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Developing11:19 PM ET
North Korea Is Believed to Have Conducted Third Nuclear Test, South Korea Says
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LOS ANGELES TIMES:
Breaking News:
Nuclear test by North Korea suspected
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BBC News:
LATEST:
North Korea 'quake' amid test fears
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A United Nations Security Council diplomat says there has been a nuclear test in... more
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MSNBC...
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Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California knocked offline by jellyfish-like creatures called salp
Diablo Canyon Power Plant / AP
This photo provided by the Diablo Canyon Power Plant on Friday shows salp, a gelatinous sea creature, at a nuclear reactor intake structure.
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By James Eng, msnbc.com
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In Japan, it was a monstrous earthquake and tsunami that brought down the Fukushima nuclear plant. In California, it’s a tiny, jellyfish-like sea creature called salp that’s causing problems at the Diablo Canyon atomic plant.
An invasion of salp has prompted Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to temporarily shut down a nuclear reactor at Diablo Canyon, in Avila Beach, San Luisa Obispo County, on the central California coast.
A giant swarm of the transluscent barrel-shaped organisms this week clogged intake screens that are used to keep marine life out of the seawater that is used as a coolant for the nuclear plant.
On Wednesday, PG&E officials reduced power output at the Unit 2 reactor, then decided to shut it down altogether “until conditions improve at the intake structure.” The plant’s other reactor, Unit 1, had already been shut down earlier in the week for a planned refueling and maintenance outage.
“Safety being the number one priority, there was such an influx of salp and you need ocean water to cool the reactors,” PG&E spokesman Tom Cuddy told msnbc.com on Friday. “At that point we made a conservative decision to safely shut down the unit.”
PG&E owns and operates the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, whose two reactors together produce approximately 2,300 net megawatts of electricity – enough to serve nearly 3 million northern and central California homes.
Cuddy said he wasn’t sure when the Unit 1 reactor would come back online.
“We’ll turn the unit on to full power when it’s safe to do so – when the salps leave,” he said. “The bottom line is we’re taking a methodical and conservative approach.”
Lara Uselding, a spokeswoman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees reactor safety and security, said the plant is not in any danger.
“It’s not a normal operation condition, but the plant is safe and all the systems operated as designed,” she said.
Salps are tiny, gelatinous organisms that move by contracting, thus pumping water throughout their bodies. They can reproduce and multiply quickly.
Though salps look a bit like jellyfish, they are actually more closely related to organisms that have backbones. They typically grow to 1 or 2 inches long and usually do not appear at the coast, says Larry Madin, a salp expert and research director at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
“They’re typically more of an offshore living organism," Madin says. He surmises that the swarm at Diablo may have been carried in on currents blown by wind.
Other than clogging the cooling system filters of a nuclear plant, the organisms pose no danger, says Bruce Robison, senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif. They don’t sting, they don’t have teeth and they’re not poisonous.
Salps passively feed off tiny organic particles in the water and can reproduce sexually or asexually. “They can have their population size expand tremendously within a short period of time, which makes them very abundant. In a small space, they can take up all the space,” Robison says.
Madin said the slimy swarm at Diablo would probably go away in a few days, carried off by currents. Or, says Robison, they’ll quickly die off when their food supply runs out.
So the best bet, experts say, is for nuclear officials to just wait it out.
Despite the outage, California is not expected to experience any electricity shortages because it has ample reserves, said Stephanie McCorkle, spokeswoman California ISO, which operates the state's power grid and wholesale markets.
It’s not the first time that sea creatures have interfered with nuclear plant activity.
In 2008, a swarm of jellyfish led to a sharp decrease in power generation at Diablo Canyon, according to the Los Angeles Times. Similar jellyfish problems have cropped up at nuclear plants in the U.S., Japan, Israel and Scotland over the years, the newspaper said.
“It happens. It’s something you would expect along the coast,” Uselding said.
But Madin said this is the first time he’s heard of salps interfering with the operation of a nuclear plant.
.MSNBC...
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Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California knocked offline by... more
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http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Federal-Inspectors-Investigate-Problems-at-San-Onofre-143431286.html
NBC Los Angeles...
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Federal Inspectors Investigate Problems at San Onofre
Failed stress tests prompt inspection team to investigation the nuclear power plant, which leaked radiation in January
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By Dave Douglass and Antonio Castelan
| Monday, Mar 19, 2012 | Updated 9:08 PM PDT
A federal inspection team is beginning its examination of steam generator tubes at the San Onofre nuclear power plant. One of those tubes leaked in January, prompting a reactor shutdown, and more tubes failed during a series of tests last week. Antonio Castelan reports.
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KNBC-TV
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A federal inspection team is beginning its examination of steam generator tubes at the San Onofre nuclear power plant. One of those tubes leaked in January, prompting a reactor shutdown, and more tubes failed during a series of tests last week. Antonio Castelan reports.
An inspection team from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began investigating faulty steam generator tubes at the San Onofre nuclear power plant Monday.
A series of failed tests last week involving steam generator tubes that are a key part of the plant's two reactors prompted the regulatory commission to send in a team of experts to find out why the vital energy source was failing.
The team plans to spend at least five days at the SoCal plant operated by Southern California Edison.
The trouble began in late January, when a tube in one of the reactors leaked.
That reactor was shut down, but not before a small amount of radioactive gas may have escaped into the atmosphere. Edison said neither plant employees nor the public was at risk.
Still, initial tests found that hundreds of steam generator tubes were showing signs of premature wear.
"We're seeing an unusual amount of wear in relatively new steam generators and, yes, that's unusual," said Victor Dricks with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The problems at San Onofre have residents in nearby San Clemente worried.
"This is a huge amount of risk for us to be living so close to," said resident Patty Davis. "It's a big concern."
The federal inspectors will be looking at the design and construction of the plant's steam generators, as well as their transport from Japan where they were manufactured.
Each reactor contains thousands of steam generator tubes. San Onofre's second reactor is also shut down right now for routine maintenance.
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Click on link to view video:
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Los Angeles Times...
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Report faults workers for ammonia leak at San Onofre nuclear plant
February 10, 2012 | 7:39 pm
PHOTO:
San Onofre nuclear power station
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Failure by workers to recognize and repair degraded equipment led to an ammonia leak that caused an emergency alert at the San Onofre nuclear plant in November, federal regulators said Friday.
The findings by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, first reported by the Associated Press, faulted plant operator Southern California Edison for failing to follow its own procedures at San Onofre, the twin-reactor plant located just south of the Orange County border.
The commission concluded that that problem had "very low safety significance."
Edison conducted its own investigation and found the same contributing factors as the NRC, according to a company news release. The utility said that it has made changes to address the problem.
The NRC found San Onofre workers "failed to adequately identify, evaluate and correct a problem" in a water purification system, which led to the ammonia leak.
No one was injured because of the leak, although some workers were evacuated as a precautionary measure.
.Los Angeles Times...
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Report faults workers for ammonia leak at San Onofre... more
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ENE News...
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Published: December 27th, 2011 at 03:46 AM EDT | Email Article Email Article
By Enenews Admin
Physician: “When it comes to Fukushima, we are all downwinders”
Nuclear waste stockpile – Ottawa Citizen
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Dale Dewar, Ottawa Executive Director, Physicians for Global Survival (Canada)
[...] My physics professor in 1962 was skeptical about the environmental cost of nuclear power. He could not have been the only person to raise a voice of caution so I’m sure that, beneath the superficial history of nuclear power, there is a story of deals, deception, and press releases.
While we students thought that the professor was a bit of a fuddyduddy, time has proven him correct. The actual cost of nuclear power is beyond our wildest dreams. [...]
Given that birds and insects affected by Chernobyl are showing chromosomal abnormalities, there is no reason to suspect that humans cannot expect the same over generations.
When it comes to Fukushima, we are all downwinders.
.ENE News...
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Published: December 27th, 2011 at 03:46 AM EDT | Email Article... more
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Los Angeles Times...
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Report: Japan, utility at fault for response to nuclear disaster
December 26, 2011 | 11:33 pm
Report: Japan, utility at fault for response to nuclear disaster
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REPORTING FROM SEOUL -- Japan’s response to the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was flawed by poor communication and delays in releasing data on dangerous radiation leaks at the facility, which was struck by an earthquake-triggered tsunami on March 11, a government-appointed investigative panel has found.
The report attaches blame to both Japan’s central government as well as the utility that operates the plant -- the Tokyo Electric Power Co. -- depicting a scene of harried officials incapable of making decisions to stem radiation leaks as the situation at the coastal plant worsened in the days and weeks following the disaster.
The 507-page interim report, the product of interviews with hundreds of utility workers and government officials, said poor planning also worsened the disaster response, noting that authorities had grossly underestimated tsunami risks that followed the 9.0-magnitude earthquake.
The 40-foot-high tsunami that struck the plant was twice as tall as the highest wave predicted by officials. The erroneous assumption that the plant’s cooling system continued to function after the tsunami struck worsened the disaster, the report claimed.
The report, whose final version is due to be completed next year, also found that plant workers had no clear instructions on how to respond to such a disaster, causing miscommunications, especially when the disaster destroyed backup generators. Ultimately, the series of failures led to the worst nuclear catastrophe since Chernobyl.
Workers failed to immediately seek alternative sources of water to cool the overheating reactors because they assumed the system was working, even though numerous warning signs told them otherwise.
"This accident has taught us an important lesson on how we must be ready for a disaster," concluded the panel, headed by University of Tokyo professor emeritus Yotaro Hatamura.
The government also received its share of criticism after dangerous radioactivity leaked into the atmosphere, causing the evacuation of 80,000 nearby residents, most of whom have still not returned to their homes.
Fearing a national panic, Tokyo government ministries failed to relay critical information to the public, instead using language that attempted to lessen the severity of the evolving crisis, which included meltdowns at three of the plant’s reactors.
Following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his advisors had stationed themselves on the fifth floor of the prime minister's office, where they made key decisions in consultation with top ministers and Tepco officials. But the officials did not share information with other crucial ministries or even with the crisis-management headquarters set up in the basement of the office several floors below, the report said.
The panel also faulted government officials for delaying warnings on the spread of radiation in the region around the plant, unnecessarily exposing communities to exposure when they could have been immediately evacuated.
The panel recommended that the government and the utilities that run nuclear plants employ experts knowledgeable in assessing tsunami risks.
"The nuclear disaster is far from over," the report concluded.
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Photo: The Unit 4 reactor building of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station as seen November 12.
Credit: David Guttenfelder / AP Photo
.Los Angeles Times...
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Report: Japan, utility at fault for response to nuclear... more
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WBEZ...
Nuclear energy in Japan in post-Fukushima era
by Worldview May. 25, 2011
Click on Link to Listen to This Story
(Getty Images/Athit Perawongmetha)
http://www.wbez.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/story_image_medium/segment/photo/2011-May/2011-05-25/112053597.jpg
Photo: A dog wanders the abandoned streets of Futaba, a town within the exclusion zone near the Fukushima power plant.
This week, the Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted that three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant suffered meltdowns shortly after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March.
From the somber legacy of World War II to this latest crisis, nuclear energy in Japan has a complicated history. Now, as bad news continues to emerge out of the Fukushima catastrophe, Japan is forced to do some soul searching about nuclear power, which supplies thirty percent of the nation’s energy.
Norma Field is a professor of Japanese studies at the University of Chicago. Field recently had a conference on nuclear energy in Japan. She dropped by with a longtime critic of Japan’s nuclear energy policies, filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka. Kamanaka was screening her latest documentary, Ashes to Honey: Toward a Sustainable Future, when the earthquake and tsunami struck in Tokyo.WBEZ...
Nuclear energy in Japan in post-Fukushima era
by Worldview May. 25,... more
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Holes feared in two Japan nuclear reactors
By Kyung Lah, CNN
May 25, 2011 5:16 a.m. EDT
Photo: An aerial view of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The holes may be as big as 7 to 10 centimeters
A hole in the reactor's containment vessel means there is a high probability of leakage
The nuclear plant has suffered cooling problems and radiation leaks since March
Tokyo, Japan (CNN) -- Two of the damaged reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan may be riddled with holes, according to the facility's owner.
The holes may be as big as 7 to 10 centimeters ( 2.8- 3.9 inches), Tokyo Electric Power Co. said in a 225-page document submitted to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
In the report, Tokyo Electric says the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 may have developed a hole as big as 3 centimeters in diameter 18 hours after the quake.
Fifty hours after the quake, the hole may have widened to 7 centimeters, the report said.
TEPCO admits to more possible meltdowns
In reactor No. 2, the containment vessel may have developed a hole as wide as 10 centimeters 21 hours after the quake.
The nuclear plant has suffered cooling problems and radiation leaks since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
The hydrogen explosion four days after the crisis began may have led to the formation of a second hole in reactor No. 2, as wide as 10 centimeters in diameter.
"This report is not conclusive. No one has entered these areas and we cannot confirm this as fact," TEPCO said, adding that the report is making preliminary assumptions about what happened inside the reactors.
A hole in the reactor's containment vessel means there is a high probability of the leakage of radioactive material into the reactor building.
The amount of radioactive material in all three of the reactor buildings has hampered TEPCO's ability to build an effective cooling system. TEPCO says a cooling system is a critical step to leading to a cold shutdown, still estimated to be five to eight months away.
Nuclear experts and scientists have long suspected this sort of damage to the containers of the reactors at the crippled plant, as well as a full meltdown of the fuel rods in reactors 1, 2 and 3.
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/25/japan.nuclear.report/t1larg.nuclear.plant.air.photo.service.jpgHoles feared in two Japan nuclear reactors
By Kyung Lah, CNN
May 25, 2011 5:16 a.m.... more
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U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help With the Fine Print
by John Sullivan, Special to ProPublica April 13, 2011, 8:05 p.m.
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Photo: Ohio’s Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station (US NRC)
In the fall of 2001, inspectors with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were so concerned about possible corrosion at Ohio’s Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station that they prepared an emergency order to shut it down for inspection. But, according to a report from the NRC inspector general, senior officials at the agency held off – in part because they did not want to hurt the plant’s bottom line.
When workers finally checked the reactor in February of 2002, they made an astonishing finding: Corrosive fluid from overhead pipes had eaten a football-sized hole in the reactor vessel’s steel side. The only thing preventing a leak of radioactive coolant was a pencil-thin layer of stainless steel.
The Davis Besse incident has resurfaced in the wake of the ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant. Stories recounting close ties between Japanese nuclear regulators and utilities there have reinvigorated critics who say the NRC has not been an aggressive enough U.S. watchdog.
The NRC says that is not the case, and commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko defended the agency’s independence and professionalism. “I have a great staff who are dedicated to public health and safety, and people who interact with this agency, they know that and they see that,” he said in an interview.
Critics of the NRC say the problem at Davis Besse, 20 miles southeast of Toledo, is a prime example of the agency’s deference to industry. The inspector general concluded that a conflict between the NRC’s twin goals of inspecting the plant to protect public safety and a desire to “reduce unnecessary regulatory burden” on the owner led to the delay in finding the gaping hole.
In 2003, then NRC’s Chairman Richard Meserve disputed the inspector general’s report, which found that the agency’s decision on Davis Besse “was driven in large part by a desire to lessen the financial impact” on the plant’s owner. Meserve said the NRC had adequate technical grounds for the delay.
The agency insists that it vigilantly watches operations at 104 commercial reactors and frequently issues violations to nuclear companies that step out of line. Since 2001, the agency has averaged about 120 significant enforcement actions a year at power plants and other nuclear facilities it oversees.
While the Davis Besse case focuses on singular allegations of influence, critics say the industry routinely exercises its muscle in a more pervasive way: through contributions to NRC regulatory guides that advise nuclear companies about how to best follow the agency’s rules.
Large parts of the guides, issued by NRC, incorporate or endorse material written by the industry’s trade group, the Nuclear Energy Institute. The guides – containing detailed technical procedures and reference materials – are a key part of NRC’s oversight. They provide the nuts and bolts advice that nuclear operators follow to stay in compliance but often refer to even more detailed industry guides.
The NRC’s guide on fatigue, for example, details how many hours employees in key jobs can work, how to respond when a worker is too tired, and how many days off employees in certain jobs need. It officially incorporates, with a few exceptions, another 60-page guide compiled by the industry group.
In an e-mail, Thomas Kauffman, a spokesman for NEI, passed along responses to ProPublica’s questions from the trade group’s director of engineering, John Butler. “NRC endorsement, with or without exceptions, of industry guidance is a common practice,” Butler said.
Some examples from a list the trade group provided to ProPublica:
How to apply for an operating license extension. Many aging plants are seeking to extend their original 40-year licenses. The 10-page NRC document endorses a 245-page NEI guide that tells applicants how to identify critical equipment and inspect it to be sure it meets relicensing standards.
How to protect plants from fires. The NRC’s regulatory guide cites an NEI document that “provides the majority of the guidance applicable” for analyzing fire risk at plants, with some specific exceptions.
How to upgrade plant control rooms. The NRC regulatory guide says that “when possible, this guide has incorporated (NEI’s) ‘Control Room Habitability Guide,’ ” again with some limits.
The NEI said its role in contributing to NRC’s guides does not mean the nuclear industry has too much influence. Kauffman said the NRC has final say on what NEI adds and frequently makes changes.
“They review them completely,” Kauffman said. “It is one thing to draft something and put it out there; it is quite another for the NRC to decide to accept it.”
NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said in an e-mail that the NEI is not the sole source of information in agency regulatory guides and that NRC accepts comment from a broad array of sources.
“If any stakeholder – company, industry organization, individual or public group – backs up a request with appropriate information, the NRC will consider it,” Brenner said. “The NRC regularly denies industry requests that lack proper support, and we’ve taken properly supported rulemaking requests from non-industry sources on many occasions.”
“The NRC is the final arbiter of what becomes a regulation,” he said, “with safety the total focus of our effort.”
But others said the reliance on the industry creates a potential conflict of interest.
Jim Riccio, who follows nuclear issues for Greenpeace, said that allowing the NEI to play such a large role means the industry can shape much of what nuclear companies are required to do.
Riccio said NRC’s precursor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, was disbanded after Congress concluded it had become too concerned with promoting nuclear power instead of regulating safety.
In a 1974 overhaul, development of nuclear energy was transferred elsewhere and protection of the public was given to the NRC, a five-member body whose members are appointed by the president.
Riccio asserted that over the years, NRC has become more accommodating to the industry.
“The problem with inviting the industry in is that they tend to dominate the process,” he said. “The NRC has a problem distinguishing between the public they serve and the industry they regulate. “U.S. Nuclear Regulator Lets Industry Help With the Fine Print
by John Sullivan,... more
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PART ONE...
The New York Times
Photo: India's Konkan coastline, near the site of a proposed nuclear power plant, has been hit by earthquakes in recent years
April 13, 2011
Resistance to Jaitapur Nuclear Plant Grows in India
By VIKAS BAJAJ
MADBAN, India — When a farmer named Praveen Gawankar and two neighbors began a protest four years ago against a proposed nuclear power plant here in this coastal town, they were against it mainly for not-in-my-backyard reasons.
They stood to lose mango orchards, cashew trees and rice fields, as the government forcibly acquired 2,300 acres to build six nuclear reactors — the biggest nuclear power plant ever proposed anywhere.
But now, as a nuclear disaster unfolds in distant Japan, the lonely group of farmers has seen support for their protest swell to include a growing number of Indian scientists, academics and former government officials. “We are getting ready for bigger protests,” Mr. Gawanker said.
While the government vows to push ahead — citing India’s energy needs — Indian newspapers recently reported that the environment minister wrote Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to question the wisdom of large nuclear installations. And a group of 50 Indian scientists, academics and activists has called for a moratorium on new projects. “The Japanese nuclear crisis is a wake-up call for India,” they wrote in an open letter.
Opponents note that the area was hit by 95 earthquakes from 1985 to 2005, although Indian officials counter that most were minor and that the plant’s location on a high cliff would offer protection against tsunamis.
The heated debate shows how the politics of nuclear energy may be changing, not only in the United States and Europe but in developing countries whose economies desperately need cheap power to continue growing rapidly.
For Indian officials intent on promoting nuclear energy, the partial meltdowns and radiation leaks at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan could not have come at a worse time. Currently, India gets about 3 percent of its electricity from the 20 relatively small nuclear reactors in the country. But it is building five new reactors and has proposed 39 more, including the ones here in Madban, to help meet the voracious energy needs of India’s fast-growing economy.
Only China, the other emerging-economy giant with a ravenous energy appetite, is planning a more rapid expansion of nuclear power. Beijing has indicated that it, too, plans to proceed cautiously with its nuclear rollout.
CONTINUED...PART ONE...
The New York Times
Photo: India's Konkan coastline, near the... more
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The New York Times...
PART ONE...
New Doubts About Turning Plutonium Into a Fuel
Shaw Areva Mox Services
Photo: THE VISION A plant being built near Aiken, S.C., would turn weapons-grade plutonium into a fuel called mox.
By JO BECKER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: April 10, 2011
On a tract of government land along the Savannah River in South Carolina, an army of workers is building one of the nation’s most ambitious nuclear enterprises in decades: a plant that aims to safeguard at least 43 tons of weapons-grade plutonium by mixing it into fuel for commercial power reactors.
THE PROBLEMS The cost has soared to nearly $5 billion, and the structure — as big as eight football fields — is half finished.
The project grew out of talks with the Russians to shrink nuclear arsenals after the cold war. The plant at the Savannah River Site, once devoted to making plutonium for weapons, would now turn America’s lethal surplus to peaceful ends. Blended with uranium, the usual reactor fuel, the plutonium would be transformed into a new fuel called mixed oxide, or mox.
“We are literally turning swords into plowshares,” one of the project’s biggest boosters, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said at a hearing on Capitol Hill last week.
But 11 years after the government awarded a construction contract, the cost of the project has soared to nearly $5 billion. The vast concrete and steel structure is a half-finished hulk, and the government has yet to find a single customer, despite offers of lucrative subsidies.
Now, the nuclear crisis in Japan has intensified a long-running conflict over the project’s rationale.
One of the stricken Japanese reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant uses the mox fuel. And while there has been no evidence of dangerous radiation from plutonium in Japan, the situation there is volatile, and nuclear experts worry that a widespread release of radioactive material could increase cancer deaths.
Against that backdrop, the South Carolina project has been thrown on the defensive, with would-be buyers distancing themselves and critics questioning its health risks and its ability to keep the plutonium out of terrorists’ hands.
The most likely customer, the Tennessee Valley Authority, has been in discussions with the federal Department of Energy about using mox to replace a third of the regular uranium fuel in several reactors — a far greater concentration than at the stricken Japanese reactor, Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit No. 3, where 6 percent of the core is made out of mox. But the T.V.A. now says it will delay any decision until officials can see how the mox performed at Fukushima Daiichi, including how hot the fuel became and how badly it was damaged.
“We are studying the ongoing events in Japan very closely,” said Ray Golden, a spokesman for the utility.
At the same time, opponents of the South Carolina project scored a regulatory victory this month when a federal atomic licensing panel, citing “significant public safety and national security issues,” ordered new hearings on the plans for tracking and safeguarding the plutonium used at the plant.
Obama administration officials say that mox is safe, and they remain confident that the project will attract customers once it is further along and can guarantee a steady fuel supply. Anne Harrington, who oversees nuclear nonproliferation programs for the Energy Department, noted that six countries besides Japan had licensed the routine use of mox fuel. She accused critics of “an opportunistic attempt” to score political points by seizing on Japan’s crisis.
“Mox is nothing new,” she said.
Even so, the critics say there is an increasing likelihood that the South Carolina project will fail to go forward and will become what a leading opponent, Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls a “plant to nowhere.” That would leave the United States without a clear path for the disposal of its surplus plutonium.
A cheaper alternative, encasing it in glass, was canceled in 2002 by President George W. Bush’s administration. The energy secretary at the time, Spencer Abraham, is now the non-executive chairman of the American arm of Areva, a French company that is the world’s largest mox producer and is primarily responsible for building the South Carolina plant.
After the cold war, the United States and Russia were left with stockpiles of plutonium, and the fear was that one or the other would reverse course and use the plutonium to make new weapons, or that, in what the National Academies of Science called a “clear and present danger,” thieves could make off with it.
Plutonium is easy to handle because the radiation it gives off is persistent but relatively weak. The type used in weapons, plutonium 239, has a half-life of 24,000 years and emits alpha rays. They make the plutonium feel warm to the touch but are so feeble that skin easily stops the radiation. If trapped inside the body, though, alpha rays can cause cancer.
At the same time, plutonium is preferred over uranium as nuclear bomb fuel because much less is needed to make a blast of equal size. And while it is difficult to work with, it does not need to undergo the complex process of purification required for uranium.
The 43 tons of surplus plutonium in the American stockpile could fuel up to 10,000 nuclear weapons and even more “dirty bombs” — ordinary explosives that spew radioactive debris. Alternatively, they could fuel 43 large reactors for about a year.
After studying a range of options, the Clinton administration decided to build a mox fuel plant to dispose of a portion of the plutonium, awarding a contract to a consortium now called Shaw Areva Mox Services.
The rest of the plutonium was to be mixed with highly radioactive nuclear waste and immobilized in glass or ceramic blocks, making it difficult and dangerous for any thief to extract. The government judged the mox route to be more expensive, but the dual-track approach was seen as insurance should either fail.
That strategy also helped persuade Jim Hodges, the Democratic governor of South Carolina from 1999 to 2003, to sign off on plutonium shipments to the Savannah River Site. When the Bush administration canceled the glass-block disposal program, Mr. Hodges was furious.
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CONTINUED...The New York Times...
PART ONE...
New Doubts About Turning Plutonium Into... more
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The New York Times...
April 9, 2011
Japan Orders Nuclear Plant Operators to Obtain More Emergency Generators
By ANDREW POLLACK and MATTHEW L. WALD
TOKYO — Radiation readings spiked sharply in one reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after a powerful aftershock late Thursday, according to data released by the government, a development that might indicate new damage to the already compromised reactor.
But the plant owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the gauge used to measure radiation was most likely broken.
The high radiation was measured in the drywell of Reactor No. 1, directly below the reactor pressure vessel and part of the primary containment that is a crucial barrier preventing the escape of radioactive materials. The drywell reading raised the worrisome possibility that highly radioactive water had escaped, and perhaps even material from the nuclear core, although this was far less likely.
Experts said, however, that keeping water in the drywell could limit the damage from any leak.
On Tuesday the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission set off alarms when it said that such a leak might have happened in the No. 2 reactor at the plant, based on a high radiation reading in its drywell. But the agency has since appeared to step back slightly from that theory, emphasizing that its judgment was based on speculation because no one can get close enough to the reactor to judge what is really happening.
And on Saturday, Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the commission, agreed with the power company’s assessment that the high reading in the No. 1 reactor was most likely in error because there had not been a sharp increase in pressure or temperature in the drywell.
The radiation readings, while still quite high, were down Friday from the highest level, which was recorded a half-hour after the 7.1- magnitude aftershock.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had expressed concern in a recent report that the damaged nuclear power plant could prove unusually vulnerable to aftershocks.
Peter Yanev, a longtime consultant specializing in the earthquake resistance of nuclear power plants, said that the aftershock late Thursday had not been strong enough to cause new damage to previously undamaged equipment. But the Japanese authorities have not released detailed information on the extent of damage from the initial earthquake nearly a month ago, he cautioned. “If you have something severely damaged, teetering, it can fall over” in a later shock, Mr. Yanev said.
The Japanese government, meanwhile, ordered reactor operators on Saturday to bring in additional emergency diesel generators, as the aftershock again demonstrated the potential for such events to shut down portions of the power grid.
The new government order came after problems were reported at two other nuclear power plants, both run by the Tohoku Electric Power Company. The plants suffered temporary losses of cooling to spent fuel pools, electricity cutoffs and problems with backup diesel generators after Thursday’s aftershock.
The Higashidori plant lost all outside power. Although it had three backup diesel generators, two were out of service for periodic maintenance. The remaining one worked for a while, but later, after some outside power was restored, it stopped because some of its oil spilled out.
At the Onagawa plant, three out of four outside power lines went down, but the plant continued to operate on the fourth line. Although diesel backup was not needed, it was discovered that one of the plant’s two diesel generators had been out of order since April 1.
“There was no problem this time,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which regulates the atomic energy industry, at a news conference. However, he said, nuclear plant operators will now be required to have more backup diesel generators available and working.
Mr. Nishiyama said his agency was also trying to find the causes for the loss of cooling to spent fuel pools. The cause of one stoppage seemed to be essentially a blown fuse, Mr. Nishiyama said.
Loss of cooling can allow spent fuel to heat up, which can lead to the release of radioactive materials.
The government also moved to ban the planting of rice in soil containing too much radioactive material, which has been released from the Fukushima Daiichi plant in the weeks since a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. Sales of some milk, vegetables and fish have been prohibited because of contamination, but the new measures affect the nation’s staple crop, a foundation of its culture as well as its diet.
The new policy on rice will ban planting of the crop in soil that has more than 5,000 becquerels of cesium-137 per kilogram of soil.
So far, radiation testers have found only two spots in northeastern Japan, both in the town of Iitate, 25 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, that has had cesium levels that high. Cesium-137 can damage cells and lead to an increased risk of cancer.
The national and prefectural governments are now hurriedly performing broader soil surveys to identify which areas would be off limits to planting.
With planting about to begin, “we don’t have so much time,” said Sumito Yasuoka, an official in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, who said farmers pressed the government to let them know if they could plant their crop. The government also wants to assure consumers that the rice they eat will be safe.
The level of 5,000 becquerels per kilogram was chosen because rice grown in such soil would be expected to end up with about 500 becquerels of cesium 137 in the rice. That is the existing limit for vegetables and some other foods, Mr. Yasuoka said.
Fukushima Prefecture is the nation’s fourth-largest rice producer, and rice is its biggest crop, so any ban on planting would cause financial hardship.
“It hurts terribly,” said Yoshinori Sato, an official of an agricultural cooperative in Fukushima Prefecture with 13,000 households as members. Mr. Sato said that about half the rice acres his co-op’s members hoped to plant this year might be off limits, either because of radiation or because of tsunami damage.
Mindful of the sensitivities, Michihiko Kano, the minister of agriculture, visited Iitate on Saturday and promised that farmers who were not allowed to grow rice because of soil contamination would be compensated.
Andrew Pollack reported from Tokyo and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York and Yasuko Kamiizumi, Ken Ijichi and Kantaro Suzuki from Tokyo.The New York Times...
April 9, 2011
Japan Orders Nuclear Plant Operators to... more
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Japan reactor core may be leaking radioactive material, official says
By the CNN Wire Staff
March 25, 2011 1:35 p.m. EDT
Click picture to play video
Japan nuclear core may be leaking
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: Japan nuclear agency: Screeners have examined 87,813 people for exposure
NEW: Work stops at two other reactors with high radiation levels in water, utility says
Discovery of contaminated water suggests nuclear core leak, Japan officials say
Three workers who stepped in the water were exposed to radiation
Tokyo (CNN) -- Authorities in Japan raised the prospect Friday of a likely breach in the all-important containment vessel of the No. 3 reactor at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a potentially ominous development in the race to prevent a large-scale release of radiation.
Contaminated water likely seeped through the containment vessel protecting the reactor's core, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.
Three employees working near the No. 3 reactor Thursday stepped into water that had 10,000 times the amount of radiation typical for a nuclear plant, Nishiyama said. An analysis of the contamination suggests "some sort of leakage" from the reactor core, signaling a possible break of the containment vessel that houses the core, he said.
The workers have been hospitalized and work inside the reactor building has been halted, according to the agency.
Work inside two other reactor buildings also had to stop and workers had to be pulled back Friday after the discovery of high levels of radiation in water at those locations, a Tokyo Electric Power Company official said Saturday. Water is still being pumped into the containment vessels, the utility official said.
Nuclear power experts cautioned against reading too much into the newest development, saying the workers exposed to radioactive water might not suffer injuries any more serious than a sunburn.
Moreover, evidence of radioactivity in the water around the plant is not necessarily surprising given the amount of water sprayed onto and pumped into the reactors, said Ian Hutchinson, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts institute of Technology.
"I am not particularly alarmed," he said.
The reactor thought to be leaking contaminated water is the same one cited in the dramatic evacuation last week of a small crew of workers who had stayed behind after the plant's owner pulled most employees from the area. The workers were pulled back March 16 after white smoke began billowing from the reactor and radiation levels spiked.
At the time, the Japanese nuclear safety agency said it suspected damage to No. 3's containment vessel, but a government spokesman the next day said there had been no indication of a "major breach of containment."
That reactor is of particular concern, experts have said, because it is the only one at the plant to use a combination of uranium and plutonium fuel, called MOX, that is considered to be more dangerous than the pure uranium fuel used in other reactors.
Plant workers were also carefully watching the plant's No. 1 reactor, concerned that an increase in pressure noted inside that reactor could be a troublesome sign. Earlier, buildups of hydrogen gas had driven up pressure that led to explosions at three of the nuclear plant's reactors, including the No. 1 unit.
Nishiyama conceded that "controlling the temperature and pressure has been difficult" for that reactor, which on Friday had been declared stable.
The hospitalized employees were working to reconnect power to the No. 3 reactor building when they encountered water that was about 5 inches (15 centimeters) deep. Water rushed over the boots of two workers, who may have received what is called a "beta burn." The third worker had taller boots but was hospitalized as a precaution, according to Nishiyama.
The men were exposed to the water for 40 to 50 minutes, said Tokyo Electric, which owns the plant. The workers may have ignored alarms on devices intended to measure radiation levels, believing the readings to be wrong, said the International Atomic Energy Agency, citing Japanese authorities.
The two workers whose skin was exposed to the contaminated water had the highest levels of radiation recorded so far, the power company said.
One, in his 30s, was exposed to 180.7 millisieverts and the other, in his 20s, tested at 179.37 millisieverts.
Nishiyama said the third man -- who was exposed to 173 millisieverts but at first did not go to the hospital because his boots were high enough to prevent water from touching his skin -- has also gone to the same research hospital out of "an abundance of caution."
CONTINUED...Japan reactor core may be leaking radioactive material, official says
By the CNN Wire... more
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