Problem of nuclear regulator in bed with nuclear industry
Nuclear regulatory reform must weed out entrenched interests, Mainichi Daily News, 2 Feb 12, Bills relating to a shift in the nation’s nuclear power policy were approved by the Cabinet on Jan. 31. In addition to the establishment of a new nuclear regulatory agency under the Environment Ministry, the government is aiming to legislate the lifespan of nuclear reactors, and require plant operators to outline specific measures against severe nuclear accidents.
Significant harm has been done by allowing the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), an administrative body tasked to regulate nuclear power safety, to exist under the umbrella of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), a major promoter of nuclear power.
Divorcing nuclear regulation from nuclear promotion and centralizing regulatory duties into one agency stands to reason.Changing the agency’s name from the originally proposed “nuclear power safety agency” to “nuclear power regulatory agency” is likewise pertinent, considering the new agency’s nature. Read more »
End of the line for Japan’s dangerous, super expensive fast breeder nuclear reactor
Japanese parliamentarian and a critic of nuclear power Taro Kono said: ”We spend billions of yen every year just to maintain Monju. It’s crazy. We spend so much money just to keep things not running.”…
critics and nuclear watchdog groups call Monju Japan’s most dangerous reactor, because it uses plutonium fuel and cools its reactor with sodium, which can explode if it comes into contact with water.
Fast-breeder reactor faces closure, The Age, February 2, 2012 TSURUGA: Japan’s long and expensive pursuit of a super-efficient nuclear reactor is on the brink of failure amid new government concerns about its runaway costs.
The four-decade project to develop a so-called fast-breeder reactor has consumed more than $13 billion in funding, so far producing onlyaccidents, controversies and a single hour of electricity. Read more »
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s State of the Art Spin on ionising radiation
Nuclear accidents pose little risk to health: NRC The study found there was “essentially zero risk” to the public of early fatalities due to radiation exposure following a severe accident.
The long-term risk of dying from cancer due to radiation exposure after an accident was less than one in a billion and less than the U.S. average risk of dying from other causes of cancer, which is about two in one thousand.
The study, called the State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA), looked at the radiological health consequences for potential severe accidents at Exelon Corp’s Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and Dominion’s Surry nuclear plant in Virginia.
USA radioactive leaks from nuclear reactors
the regulations in place for American facilities are actually more lax than one would expect.
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has repeatedly weakened safety requirements for facilities, regularly allowing antiquated plants to continue operating by making it easier to pass
tests in lieu of actually upgrading the facility.
California nuclear plant shut down over radioactive leaks, RT Question More, 01 February, 2012, A leak at a Southern California nuclear facility that regularly provides power to roughly 1.4 million households has caused the plant to shut down a reactor.
Despite officials insisting that everything will be perfectly alright at the San Onofre nuclear site, this is not the first time as of late that power plants have raised serious questions about their safety in America. Read more »
Continung talks – U.N. and Iran
UN Nuclear Experts Plan Another Visit to Tehran (includes video) VOA News, 1 Feb 12, The United Nation’s nuclear agency’s chief inspector says he had a “good” visit to Iran and plans to make another trip in the “very near future” to discuss Iran’s controversial nuclear program.
Speaking Wednesday in Vienna after returning from Tehran, Herman Nackaerts said his team of International Atomic Energy Agency experts had three days of “intensive discussions” with Iran about all of its nuclear aims.
The West fears Iran is developing a nuclear weapons capability. Iran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful. Nackaerts said the IAEA and Iran have “a lot of work” to do, but that
both sides are committed to resolving outstanding issues. He declined to elaborate. ..
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/middle-east/UN-Nuclear-Experts-Plan-Another-Visit-to-Tehran-138498174.html
Complicated nuclear politics in Sweden
Political quarrel about uranium mining, Stockholm News, MATS ÖHLÉN 1 Feb 12, A rather peculiar situation has emerged in the Swedish Riksdag. Despite the fact that the Centre Party is clearly in favour of prohibiting uranium mining in Sweden, it’s about to vote down such a
proposal from the Greens. The reason is that the Centre Party is loyal with its coalition parties in the governing four-party alliance.
The Greens have earlier proposed a prohibition in the Riksdag but was voted down by among else the Centre Party. In a new attempt to get support for the proposal, the Greens have now reformulated their proposal exactly as the Centre Party does in it’s party congress decision in the issue.
After the initial preparation of the issue in the parliamentary Committee of Industry in Trade, it was clear that the Centre Party will vote against the proposal also this time. This according to the chief whip of the Centre Party group in Riksdag Anders W. Jonsson.
“If the Centre Party would vote in favour of the Green’s proposal, it would seriously damage our possibilities to convince our coalition parties in the government offices to present such a proposal”, Jonsson says to public broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR)…..
Lise Nordin the economic spokesperson for the Greens is very critical towards the Centre Party. ”The Centre Party choose power before the environment. Now they have the chance to decide that all threatened areas finally get a closure in this issue. But when it comes to it in the RIksdag, the Centre Party doesn’t stand up for the ideas which it claims to represent”, Lise Nordin says to SR. http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?NID=8356
Highlights of the week’s nuclear news
Christina Macpherson's websites & blogs
International: Drama continues as USA and Israeli hawks want war with Iran, while other opinions advise the difficult path of diplomacy.
More revelations of the secrecy and ineptitude of Japanese government following the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
USA’s “Blue Ribbon Panel on Nuclear Future” comes out with its Final Report - with no solution to nuclear wastes, but no suggestion of stopping producing them!
USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission gets anxious about a new report on earthquake possibilities near nuclear power plants.
France in somewhat of a financial pickle over its nuclear reactors – can’t afford new ones, can’t afford to shut down existing ones, can’t afford to upgrade their safety – but forced to do the latter, by the European Union’s new safety rules.
World’s most costly and slow environmental cleanup – Hanford nuclear waste
Hanford Site: Radiation Levels High, Plant Progress Slow, Care 2, by Joel Boyce January 30, 2012 ”…..At the Hanford nuclear waste site in Washington, a 10-year project to create a functioning treatment plant has already tripled its expected budget, and at $12.3 billion so far, the costs are still continuing to grow. According to USA Today, the project is both the most costly and the most complicated environmental cleanup ever attempted.
The plant was originally supposed to be in operation last year, but it’s already been delayed to 2019, and could easily take years more, and who knows how many more billions of dollars beyond that. Engineers interviewed in the story spoke of inherent design problems and official concerns that an uncontrolled nuclear reaction could occur inside the plant. There is no less than 56 million gallons of nuclear waste waiting to be processed, but one senior scientist says they’re still trying to move forwards with their “failed design.”
NPR covered a leaked report that revealed radiation levels in the area are higher than previously believed. The nuclear sludge is currently being stored in old underground tanks that were never intended to be a permanent solution. If they begin to leak and get into ground water, the area affected could be huge. Washington Governor Chris Gregoire is urging the department of energy to hurry up with this already far-delayed project. “The Columbia River is at stake, all of that area and its vitality.”
The sad thing is this incredible quantity of nuclear waste is not even the by-product of useful energy, but the massive nuclear stockpiles produced by the US throughout the Cold War. Hanford is where Manhattan Project scientists first initiated plutonium production for some of the first atomic bombs, including “Fat Man,” dropped on Nagasaki (“Little Boy”, dropped on Hiroshima, was a simpler uranium-235 bomb). It remained open as a plutonium production site until 1968.
At its height, the US had an arsenal of some 60, 000 nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the world thousands of times over. Subsequent treaty agreements saw both the US and former Soviet Union begin to downsize their nuclear arsenals. Meanwhile, however, the overwhelming quantities of waste remain.
More time, money, and research will be needed, it seems, to erase this very messy mistake. http://www.care2.com/causes/hanford-site-radiation-levels-high-plant-progress-slow.html#ixzz1lAK7uaZu
Dim prospects for global nuclear industry
Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012, Platts a leading global provider of energy, metals and petrochemicals information., London, 30 January 2012 Even before the Fukushima disaster, the long-awaited nuclear renaissance in the West seemed to be running out of steam. There were two main factors behind this failure; the new Generation III+ reactors produced to take account of the lessons of Chernobyl that would spearhead the revival were not living up to their promises, and, more importantly, banks were proving unwilling to provide finance
Energy Economist – Report.
The key markets for the renaissance were the US and the UK. As pioneers of nuclear power, potentially large markets and countries that seemed to have abandoned plans for new nuclear plants, a successful revival in these countries would have been a powerful endorsement for these new technologies. Read more »
A nuclear world in peace – the peace of death
As they said in the streets of Delhi in 1998: “No food, no clothing, no shelter? No worry, we have the bomb.”….
not one country that had an atomic bomb in 1968 when the NPT was signed has given it up. Judging by their actions rather than the rhetoric, all are determined to remain nuclear-armed.
The U.S. has a special responsibility to lead the way to nuclear abolition as the only country to have used atomic bombs and as the world’s biggest military power
Within our lifetime, we will either achieve nuclear abolition or have to live with nuclear proliferation and die with the use of nuclear weapons.
To prepare for nuclear war is to seek the peace of death, Japan Times, By RAMESH THAKUR , 31 Jan 12, CANBERRA — The world faces two existential threats: climate change, and nuclear Armageddon. Action on both is required urgently. Tackling the first will impose significant economic costs and lifestyle adjustments, while tackling the second will bring economic benefits without any lifestyle implications.
Those who reject the first are derided as denialists; those dismissive of the second are praised as realists. Although action is needed now in order to keep the world on this side of the tipping point, a climate change-induced apocalypse will not occur until decades into the future.
A nuclear catastrophe could destroy us at any time, although, if our luck holds out, it could be delayed for another six decades. The uncomfortable reality is that nuclear peace has been upheld, owing as much to good luck as to sound stewardship. Read more »
New study on earthquake risks near USA nuclear plants
Quakes and U.S. Reactors: An Analytic Tool, NYT. By MATTHEW L. WALD With the release of a computer model of all known geologic faults east of Denver, nearly all of the nuclear power plants in the United States are about to embark on a broad re-evaluation of their vulnerability to earthquakes. The new mapping is the first major update of the fault situation for plants since 1989.
The map has been in preparation since 2008, well before the earthquake and tsunami that caused three meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan last March or the quake near Mineral, Va., last summer that shook a twin-reactor plant beyond the degree expected. Still, those events have lent urgency to the effort to assess the American plants’ ability to withstand quakes.
The new study does not calculate the risk of damage from an earthquake or even specify how much ground motion is likely at the reactor sites. That work is left to the plants’ owners, supervised by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The industry began to realize after the Fukushima disaster that engineers do not have a strong understanding of which structures and systems at the plants are most vulnerable…..
Not everyone is pleased with the route that the commission is taking when it comes to future construction. David Lochbaum, a reactor expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the agency had already approved sites for new reactors and designs for new reactors based on computer analyses of earthquake hazards.
If considerable study is needed on the quake vulnerability of existing reactors, he argues, the uncertainty surrounding the soundness of future plants must be even greater. “How can we know more about the reactors that haven’t been built than the ones that have been built?’’ he said. http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/quakes-and-u-s-reactors-an-analytic-tool/
Radioactivity poses risk in Japan’s tsunami debris
citizens say they are worried about radioactivity or even say that we should refuse to import this debris. ”They worry about their children, they are afraid that radiation levels are too high.”
Radiation experts agree that children are at greatest risk from cancers and genetic defects because they are still growing, are more prone to thyroid cancers, and because they will have more time to develop health defects…..
Radiation fears slow tsunami clear-up, News 24, 1 Feb 12, Tokyo – Giant piles of debris from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami scar the country’s once picturesque northeast coast – and the clear-up is hamstrung by fears the rubbish may be contaminated by radiation. Read more »
France, no new nuclear reactors, and can’t afford to shut down existing ones
France must extend nuclear reactor lifespans-audit Jan 31, 2012 Some 22 nuclear reactors will reach 40 years old by 2022
* EDF wants to extend reactors lifespan to 60 years
* Heavy investments needed in short, medium term
PARIS, Jan 31 (Reuters) - France has no option but to extend the lifespan of existing nuclear plants, because any investments in new nuclear capacity or an increase in its reliance on other forms of energy would be too costly and come too late, the French Court of Audit said.
The French independent government body, which is charged with conducting financial and legislative audits, said in a report that a lack of investment decisions to build new reactors meant there were few choices left. Read more »
New costly earthquake security could close some US nuclear plants
New Quake Risks Seen for Nuclear Plants WSJ, By REBECCA SMITH, JANUARY 31, 2012, Nuclear reactors in the central and eastern U.S. face previously unrecognized threats from big earthquakes, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday. Experts said upgrading the plants to withstand more substantial earth movements would be costly and could
force some to close. Read more »
Japan’s government put use by date on nuclear reactors
Japan Cabinet OKs bill to cap nuke reactor life, Macon.com By MARI YAMAGUCHI – Associated PressTOKYO, 1 Feb -12 -- Japan’s Cabinet approved bills Tuesday aimed at bolstering nuclear safety regulations following last year’s Fukushima disaster, including one that would put a 40-year cap on the operational life of nuclear reactors.
The approval came as International Atomic Energy Agency experts generally endorsed “stress test” results at two idled reactors in western Japan, bolstering the Tokyo government’s efforts to restart the facility, though the IAEA team said some safety measures needed clarification.
Japan currently has no legal limit on the operational lifespan of its 54 reactors, many of which will reach the 40-year mark in coming years. One reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant had been in use 40 years when the tsunami struck last March.
The legislation, which still needs parliamentary approval to take effect, does allow for an extension of up to 20 years.
Critics have blasted that exception as a loophole,…… Critics, ….. say the tests are meaningless because they have no clear criteria, and view the IAEA as biased toward the nuclear industry.
1 THIS MONTH
http://kcpw.org/blog/local-news/2012-01-27/victims-of-nuclear-testing-radiation-
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3413882.htm Is the world facing a groundwater crisis?
of the week http://climaterealityproject.org/thin-ice/
EVENT
February 18 Hindsdale, Chicago American Association of University Women - nuclear disaster preparedness H.OB.aauw.reservations@gmail.com.
March 2012 is “March Against Nuclear Madness” and Beyond Nuclear has created a new March Against Nuclear Madness Facebook page.
Nuclear power and water – theme for February 2012
Too much water. It is a laugh that nuclear power is touted as a solution to global warming More likely, global warming is the death knell for nuclear power.
Very many nuclear reactors are located along coastlines, where they are vulnerable to storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis. With climate change and rising sea levels, these events are becoming more frequent and more extreme.
So far, we have considered water only as it relates to only the normal operations of nuclear reactors. Even then, nuclear reactors have leaks, especially as they age, allowing radioactive substances to disperse into water systems.
Uranium mines are vulnerable to flooding. When this happens, the disaster is an economic one, as well as environmental. Canada’s Cameco company and Energy Resources of Australia have found this out to their cost. Both uranium companies are still in financial plight due to the Cigar Lake (Canada) floods of 2006, and 2008, and the Ranger mine (Australia) floods of 2011.
But Fukushima has shown the world how a natural climate event can disrupt nuclear power. In the event of a nuclear accident the effects of nuclear power on water are hugely damaging, catastrophic.
Some figures and facts on nuclear/uranium and water.
URANIUM MINING Water use in a typical uranium mine is approximately 200 to 300 gallons per minute, In water-short Australia, BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam uranium mine has been for years taking 35 million litres of water each day from the underground aquifer, at no cost whatever. When BHP digs its new biggest hole in the world, it will pay a small fixed price for removing even greater amounts, exceeding 42 million litres.
NUCLEAR REACTORS A typical 1000-megawatt pressurized-water reactor (with a cooling tower) takes in 20,000 gallons of river, lake or ocean water per minute for cooling, circulates it through a 50-mile maze of pipes, returns 5,000 gallons per minute to the same body of water, and releases the remainder to the atmosphere as vapor. A 1000-megawatt reactor without a cooling tower takes in even more water–as much as one-half million gallons per minute. The discharge water is contaminated with radioactive elements in amounts that are not precisely known or knowable, but are biologically active.
Some radioactive fission gases, stripped from the reactor cooling water, are contained in decay tanks for days before being released into the atmosphere through filtered rooftop vents. Some gases leak into the power plant buildings’ interiors and are released during periodic “purges” and “ventings.” These airborne gases contaminate not only the air, but also soil and water.
200 billion gallons of water withdrawn from America’s water supply each day for every terawatt of electricity produced by nuclear reactors,
At least 20 USA nuclear plants have admitted leakage of radioactive tritium into the groundwater.
Spills and leaks are common at In Situ Leach mines. The South Australian Department of Primary Industry and Resources lists 59 spills at Beverley mine from 1998 to 2007.
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