TOKYO, Feb. 14 — (Kyodo) _ Chubu Electric Power Co. applied Friday for a state safety assessment of one of its reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan that was forced to shut down in 2011 as the previous government viewed operation of the complex as too risky.
With the move, the total number of reactors for which applications for safety checks have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulation Authority rose to 17.
The NRA is expected to employ the same procedure to check the Hamaoka No. 4 unit as for the other reactors, effectively ignoring the unusual government request issued in May 2011 for operation of the plant to be suspended because of doubts about its preparedness for tsunami.
Located on the Pacific coast, about 190 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, the Hamaoka complex is known to be located on an assumed epicentral area for a massive earthquake. Two of the five reactors at the plant were retired in 2009.
Chubu Electric has been working to install huge seawalls and implement other measures to protect the plant, which are expected to be completed by September 2015.
Japan has revamped its regulatory setup by launching the NRA and also introduced a set of new safety requirements that reflect the lessons learned from the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, sparked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The country’s 48 commercial reactors have to satisfy the new nuclear regulations before they can be restarted.
The NRA has not finished any of the safety checks so far, and Japan is currently without nuclear power generation.
Tony Gosling with former Amnesty, NEF, & CAFOD’s ‘Old Labour’ Oxford economist Martin Summers
Analysis starts here http://youtu.be/7pgNEsSz54I?t=29m49s
IBMs Nazi database of the German population, then of occupied Europe, made the Holocaust possible…
Only after Jews were identified — a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately — could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labour, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed. But IBM’s Hollerith punch card technology did exist. http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com
German Television does first Edward Snowden Interview (ENGLISH)
German Television Channel NDR does an exclusive interview with Edward Snowden.
Uploaded on LiveLeak cause German Television thinks the rest of the world isn’t intereseted in Edward Snowden.
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f93_13…
Whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the documents about US mass surveillance. He spoke about his disclosures and his life to NDR journalist Hubert Seipel in Moscow.
“The Five Eyes alliance is sort of an artifact of the post World War II era where the Anglophone countries are the major powers banded together to sort of co-operate and share the costs of intelligence gathering infrastructure.
So we have the UK’s GCHQ, we have the US NSA, we have Canada’s C-Sec, we have the Australian Signals Intelligence Directorate and we have New Zealand’s DSD. What the result of this was over decades and decades what sort of a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn’t answer to the laws of its own countries.”
“If you ask the governments about this directly they would deny it and point to policy agreements between the members of the Five Eyes saying that they won’t spy on each other’s citizens but there are a couple of key points there. One is that the way they define spying is not the collection of data. The GCHQ is collecting an incredible amount of data on British Citizens just as the National Security Agency is gathering enormous amounts of data on US citizens. What they are saying is that they will not then target people within that data. They won’t look for UK citizens or British citizens. In addition the policy agreements between them that say British won’t target US citizens, US won’t target British citizens are not legally binding. The actual memorandums of agreement state specifically on that that they are not intended to put legal restriction on any government. They are policy agreements that can be deviated from or broken at any time. So if they want to on a British citizen they can spy on a British citizen and then they can even share that data with the British government that is itself forbidden from spying on UK citizens. So there is a sort of a trading dynamic there but it’s not, it’s not open, it’s more of a nudge and wink and beyond that the key is to remember the surveillance and the abuse doesn’t occur when people look at the data it occurs when people gather the data in the first place.”
“That’s a very difficult question to answer. In general, I would say it highlights the dangers of privatising government functions. I worked previously as an actual staff officer, a government employee for the Central Intelligence Agency but I’ve also served much more frequently as a contractor in a private capacity. What that means is you have private for profit companies doing inherently governmental work like targeted espionage, surveillance, compromising foreign systems and anyone who has the skills who can convince a private company that they have the qualifications to do so will be empowered by the government to do that and there’s very little oversight, there’s very little review.”
“The contracting culture of the national security community in the United States is a complex topic. It’s driven by a number of interests between primarily limiting the number of direct government employees at the same time as keeping lobbying groups in Congress typically from very well funded businesses such as Booze Allen Hamilton. The problem there is you end up in a situation where government policies are being influenced by private corporations who have interests that are completely divorced from the public good in mind. The result of that is what we saw at Booze Allen Hamilton where you have private individuals who have access to what the government alleges were millions and millions of records that they could walk out the door with at any time with no accountability, no oversight, no auditing, the government didn’t even know they were gone.” http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/s…
A high school student from Ibaraki explains her family’s journey to evacuated from the regions around the Fukushima disaster. This is the reality people deal with every day. Something as simple as changing schools can take a year. Her experiences have been translated into English here.
The author that published the high school girl’s story has published in Japanese a series of volumes documenting the stories of the many nuclear migrants who have left various regions impacted by the disaster. He fled Tokyo after his research led him to determine it was unsafe to live there with his children. He found no publisher interested in publishing his book even though he had worked in that industry for years. He explains his journey and effort to publish people’s stories here. The first chapter of his book has been translated into English and is available here.
This mother from Fukushima tells how hard it was to evacuate. She had limited financial resources to use to leave and was unsure if she would be compensated for evacuation by the government. This follows what we heard in 2011, those with the resources left on their own. Those with limited resources but wanted to leave could not. The school was unhelpful. She had a very hard time obtaining information she could use to make her own decisions about the environment and the health of her children. With the help of a private group she was able to move to Yamanashi. After moving her health and her children’s health improved. They all now have thyroid damage and will have to deal with the long term health problems and risks that will bring. Her entire testimony can be found here.
Koriyama was the fall back location for many people who had to evacuate the towns closer to Daiichi. This mother describes how contaminated soil has been handled in her neighborhood. The radioactive soil was buried in a park field behind her home. She witnessed the contaminated soil being buried. Now children play sports on this field every day. There is no word if there is a plan to ever remove the radioactive soil to a proper disposal site or if it will live in this busy park surrounded by homes forever.
Some may want to pick apart these people’s personal experiences but these experiences echo what we have heard over and over again from people in the region. Imagine if you had to suddenly pick up and move. Could you find a new job quickly? Do you have the savings to fund a sometimes very expensive move? Could you sell your home? Could you leave family behind? This doesn’t even address the multi-generational ties many people have to the places they called home.
This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team
Japan’s industry ministry is expected to retract its approval for about 670 solar power generation projects.
The ministry says these projects are unlikely to start operation in the near future. It approved them as power generators under a new power trading system that started in 2012.
Power utilities are, according to the new trading system, required to procure electricity generated from approved renewable energy sources at fixed prices.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry says it had given the thumbs up to about 196,000 solar power projects by the end of last October, but that only about 40 percent of them are in service.
It surveyed 6,045 projects it certified in the business year ending in March 2013. These projects were supposed to generate at least 400 kilowatts of electricity or more. It found that 4,699, or more than three-quarters, were not generating power.
Of these, 672 did not have the necessary land or equipment, or did not respond to the survey.
The ministry has decided to revoke approval of these projects next month after interviewing their operators.
The ministry suspects that to raise profits some operators have been delaying the set up of solar panels until prices fall further.
The ministry will also consider reviewing the current system as it didn’t set time limits for starting power generation after getting approval from the government.
Nukes over wind turbines? UK Research & Development policies are warped
Weapons of mass destruction get five times as much public research cash in the UK as renewable energy. Time for a rethink, says Stuart Parkinson
The scale of a nation’s public spending on different areas of research and development can be very revealing. For example, what sort of a nation would spend five times as much on developing weapons of mass destruction – including delivery systems – than on the R&D for renewable energy that is so central to tackling climate change? Figures just published reveal one such nation to be the UK.
Using data from freedom of information requests, campaign group Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), of which I am executive director, has pieced together recent R&D spending by the UK government on a series of major weapons systems and compared them with public R&D spending on measures to tackle major drivers of armed conflict, such as resource depletion, social and economic injustice, and climate change. This is the first time such an analysis has been carried out – for the UK or indeed anywhere else. What we have uncovered is deeply disturbing……
Jiji Press FUKUSHIMA (Jiji Press)—Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday that 130,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per liter were detected in groundwater sampled the same day from an observation well at its stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The level was the highest for radioactive cesium found in well water at the plant, which was heavily damaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, according to the power supplier.
The sampled water contained 37,000 becquerels of cesium-134 and 93,000 becquerels of cesium-137, TEPCO said.
The water also contained 260,000 becquerels of beta ray-emitting substances including strontium-90.
The level of cesium-134 and cesium-137 stood at 22,000 becquerels and 54,000 becquerels, respectively, in groundwater collected from the same well on Wednesday.
Near the observation well is a cable trench linked to the turbine building for the No. 2 reactor.
High-level radioactive water that has accumulated in the trench may be leaking, TEPCO officials said.
TEPCO released a report entitled, TEPCO’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Roadmap, that contained some astounding information regarding Unit 3. Follow Fairewinds Energy’s Arnie Gundersen as he shows you the 35-ton refueling bridge that fell in the Unit 3 spent fuel pool during the Unit 3 detonation explosion. Do the math. The bottom line here is that TEPCO has just acknowledged that at least 50-tons of rubble has fallen on top of and into the spent fuel pool in Unit 3. What does this 50-ton pile of debris mean to the Unit 3 spent fuel pool and its cleanup? http://fairewinds.org/media/fairewind…
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and his visiting Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán both declared their willingness to implement a planned upgrade of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line during Wednesday’s talks in Beijing.
Li also proposed that the two sides discuss the possibilities for co-operation in nuclear energy, possibly by involving a third party. He said China is ready to continue co-operation in infrastructure investment projects and agriculture, and hopes that Hungary can advance regional trade links.
Orbán said Hungary will play a positive role in co-operation between China and Europe and that the country is ready to implement large infrastructure projects. Declaring that the EU has practically stopped funding infrastructure projects in Central Europe, he said this presents an opportunity for China to take part in developing such projects.
Stating that political stability has been a “huge advantage” for China, he said “there is a good chance that Hungarian people will vote for political stability” on April 6.
….In fact, a U.S. plant came close to a fire-related meltdown in 1975. A worker at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama had accidentally caused a fire while using a candle to check for air leaks in a room directly below the control room for two reactors. The fire burned for almost seven hours, and damaged the electrical cables in the room such that all of the emergency cooling systems for one reactor shut down, along with most of the emergency systems for the other reactor.
“Only heroic operator actions prevented two meltdowns that day,” Lochbaum says.
The NRC adopted fire protection regulations to prevent another Browns Ferry incident in 1980, and updated them in 2004.
But “today, about half of the reactors operating in the US do not comply with either the 1980 or the 2004 regulations,”….
Could a nuclear accident like the 2011 meltdown that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan happen here?
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David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer, director of the Nuclear Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists and one of the authors of the new book-length account “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster,” thinks it’s more than possible. The safety preparations at the plant before the accident, he says, weren’t that different from the precautions taken at U.S. plants.
“It’s not that Japan was behind the standards of the rest of the world, or that the Japanese regulators or [Fukushima Daiichi operator] TEPCO was especially inept,” Lochbaum says. “They’re on par with everyone else.”
U.S. regulators have already been warning operators about the possibility of Fukushima-type disasters happening in the U.S. for years.
One of the most likely scenarios that could cause a meltdown is a flood. Nuclear reactors require a lot of water to carry away their waste heat, so they’re generally built next to oceans, lakes or rivers. Plants near lakes and rivers are often located downstream of a dam. In that case, if a dam bursts, the plant could be flooded and lose power, similarly to what happened at the Fukushima plant when the tsunami hit. In 2009, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff identified about 35 reactors in the U.S. (out of the 100 currently operating) that were vulnerable to dam failures, according to Lochbaum.
In June 2010, about nine months before Fukushima’s three reactors melted down, the NRC issued a letter to Duke Energy, the owner and operator of the Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca, South Carolina (view the letter here on Scribd). The letter – initially not released to the public, but unearthed by a reporter from The Cascadia Times in Oregon, through a Freedom of Information Act Request — lists various actions Duke Energy is supposed to take to mitigate the risk of flood damage.
This letter came after NRC risk analysts concluded that the failure of the Jocassee Dam had a 100 percent chance of causing Oconee’s three reactors to melt down, according to Lochbaum. (Duke’s own reports disagree.) The main reason for concern? The plant’s flood wall was five feet high; the flood waters caused by a dam breakage were estimated to rise about 14 feet. Fukushima’s seawall was also easily breached by a 50-foot tsunami wave.
“In other words, both Oconee and Fukushima were protected by flood walls that worked just fine, unless there was a flood,” Lochbaum says.
Another risk to U.S. nuclear plants is fire. Like floods, flames can disable safety systems and their backups.
The total study area, according to the report, is 80km around the site comprising four districts — Karachi, Dadu, Thatta and Lasbela. Here, too, the report uses population data of the 1998 census for the present and projected estimates.
(It is important to recall here the use of old population data in the plants’ site evaluation report has evoked a lot of concern from experts who believe that the use of old data would lead to gross underestimation of the risk in case of a disaster, and render emergency plans flawed.)
The report makes no mention of the quantity of effluent discharge or emissions from the reactors. It also leaves unanswered the question of how much seawater would be pumped into the system daily. The reason, perhaps, is that reactors, according to the report, are to be designed.
KARACHI: The protection cover of the reactors is designed to endure the impact of a plane crash and there will be no significant adverse effect on the surrounding environment or aquatic marine life during construction or operation of the nuclear power plants, says an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report on the Karachi Nuclear Power Project-2.
The report was submitted by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) to the Sindh Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), which held a hearing by an expert committee on the project last year.
According to the report, the twin nuclear power plants to be installed at the Paradise Point near Karachi are of the pressurised water reactor type, having a production capacity of 1,000-megawatt each. They are expected to be connected with the national grid in 2019/2020.
The project site is located near the western border of Sindh with Balochistan. It’s about 1.5 kilometre north-west of the existing unit (Kaupp-1). The elevation of the site spread over 585 acres is about 38 feet from the sea level. Additionally, some unused land of K-1 has also been utilised.
BRUNEI’S strategic location in Borneo could leave the country open to nuclear material smuggling and therefore accidents or criminal incidents, said a visiting expert on nuclear security.
Andrea Cavina said this threat existed even though Brunei did not conduct nuclear research or dispose of radioactive waste.
Cavina is one of three speakers from the United Nations Inter-Regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) invited to speak at the two-day National Action Plan workshop, which started yesterday.
The workshop, organised by the Brunei National CBRN (chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear) Team, aims to come up with a united approach to risk mitigation and emergency response to natural, accidental or criminal incidents by incorporating various practices from related government agencies.
It also seeks to list potential risks to be included in the National Action Plan, and also prepare steps for remediation that will be coordinated with international organisations such as ASEAN and the European Union.
Deputy Permanent Secretary (Security and Enforcement) at the Prime Minister’s Department Dato Paduka Hj Mohammad Juanda Hj Rashid, the guest of honour at the workshop’s launch, said: “Alhamdulillah, Brunei has never experienced any major incident involving CBRN, but nevertheless, this should not mean that we are not at risk of it happening in the future.”
He added that the risk of CBRN misuse or mishap would always be present because the era of globalisation had brought about a high degree of movement of people and goods.
“With the creation of the National Action Plan, it will help to mitigate, prevent and minimise potential threats of incidents involving CBRN,” he said.
Dato Hj Mohammad Juanda added that strengthening national CBRN capacities for prevention and detection had become increasingly important.
KALAMAZOO, MI – Calling nuclear energy “clean energy” is a misnomer, said Alfred Meyer, a member of the board of directors of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Alfred Meyer
“We have great objections to portraying nuclear as a clean energy source,” said Meyer, co-chairman of PSR’s radiation and health committee. “It’s our opinion that nuclear reactors cannot be used to solve climate change.”
Supporters of nuclear energy point to it as a source of energy that does not generate greenhouse gases. While that may be true inside the reactor chamber, Meyer said, he believes that leaves out many steps in the process.
“Let’s talk about uranium mining, refining, enrichment, fuel-fabrication and then, how do you take care of the waste for those millions of years?” he asked during an interview Thursday afternoon. “These are verifiable greenhouse gas emissions. There is less than coal, but it’s not carbon-neutral. To call it clean energy, I would have great objections to. Every step of the way, there’s pollution.”
Meyer was scheduled to deliver the talk, “Nuclear Power: What You Need to Know About Price, Pollution and Proliferation” Thursday evening at 7 p.m. at Western Michigan University’s Sangren Hall, in Room 1910. His WMU talk was part of a five-day tour across Michigan. On Friday, he will be appearing at Lake Michigan College, Room 141, 125 Veterans Blvd. in South Haven.
PSR, which formed in the 1960s out of concern for atmospheric testing, is opposed to all use of nuclear energy, Meyer said. The group has more than 50,000 members and 30 state and local chapters.
“The point of a reactor is to boil water. Isn’t it a bit arrogant that, in exchange for the privilege of boiling water for 40 to 60 years, to leave behind some of the most dangerous elements known to man?” he asked.
Meyer pointed to Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Covert Township as “a poster child for some of the issues. With Palisades, the issue is really safety and the potential danger for, if you will, polluting the community here.”
The tour is cosponsored by Beyond Nuclear and WMU Lee Honors College, WMU Environmental Studies program, WMU Institute of Government and Politics, Michigan Safe Energy Future, Don’t Waste Michigan, PSR Michigan Chapter, Alliance to Halt Fermi 3 and a Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes.
“There are many other, better options for us to have electricity. This is not our only choice,” Meyer said. “There are other options that are much healthier, much safer and don’t have the long-term implications.”
…USEC, which has been heavily subsidized by the U.S. government, was financially troubled at the time of the deal and subsequently announced a plan to enter bankruptcy. Its Paducah plant uses a 1950s era process called gaseous diffusion to enrich uranium. The process requires 20 times as much energy as modern centrifuge technologies, which has caused a dramatic drop in nuclear fuel prices and forced the closure of most plants using the old technology….
A report released last week suggests that public power customers in the Northwest could end up on the losing end of a speculative and politically motivated deal to subsidize an outdated and financially troubled nuclear fuel processing plant in Paducah Kentucky.
The plan is to sell most of that stockpile to the Tennessee Valley Authority in a series of transactions that begin in 2015 and run until 2022. It will use the rest to fuel its own plant, the Columbia Generating Station near Richland, Wash., until 2028.
It’s a convoluted deal, and its value depends on the economic beholder.
McCullough, for one, insists this is no deal at all for customers of the Bonneville Power Administration, who buy the plant’s output and financially backstopped the fuel purchase. He says it didn’t come through the normal channels, it doesn’t fit Energy Northwest’s typical fueling plans and it didn’t receive adequate vetting for a project of its size. At its most basic level, he says, its commodity speculation.
Moreover, McCullough says Energy Northwest and BPA have been cherry picking their accounting assumptions, first to make a questionable transaction look like a winner, and now to minimize the ongoing risks. His analysis suggests that it could ultimately cost BPA customers – 140 publicly owned utilities in the region – an extra $206 million over the life of the transaction.
“We have a federal agency speculating in a risky commodity,” he said. “Its dicey.”
Energy Northwest and Bonneville, meanwhile, say they’ve engineered a financial home run, or at least a triple, for ratepayers. They’ve locked in a fuel supply for the next two decades with limited downside risk, providing price certainty that’s highly valuable to ratepayers. When all is said and done, they say the deal will leave them with nine years of fuel to use in the reactor worth $236 million. According to their latest accounting methodology, they will have spent $65 million to buy it.
“Energy Northwest has a history of strategic fuel purchases that have resulted in some of the lowest fuel costs in the nation for Columbia Generating Station,” said Dale Atkinson, a vice president at Energy Northwest. “In the end, ratepayers are saving millions of dollars in the Northwest – and these savings will be reflected over the next two BPA rate cases.”
Robert McCullough
McCullough has spent the good part of the last year analyzing the economics of the Colombia Generating Station. The plant is the lone holdover from the financial fiasco that was the Washington Public Power Supply System, which attempted to build five nuclear plans in the 70s and 80s.
In December, McCullough released a study funded by an anti nuclear group, Physicians For Social Responsibility, concluding that Bonneville could save its ratepayers $1.7 billion over the next 17 years simply by closing the remaining nuke and purchasing power on the open market.
Energy Northwest has released its own study – and a special website – extolling the plant’s virtues. It maintains the plant is a key piece of the power reliability equation in the Northwest and will save ratepayers $1.6 billion if operated until 2043.
Both studies are heavily dependent on underlying assumptions about future natural gas prices and the resource mix that would be used to replace the output of the nuclear plant if it was shuttered. In the meantime, McCullough said he decided to have a closer look at the fuel purchase after a January meeting to discuss his initial findings with BPA Administrator Elliot Mainzer and his lieutenant, Greg Delwiche.
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