Nuclear plant tender to launch by year’s end; winning country to finance project: El-Osery, Daily News Egypt Sara Aggour / July 20, 2014 Egypt is to launch a global tender for its first Dabaa nuclear plant by the end of 2014, said Ibrahim El-Osery, the Ministry of Electricity’s adviser for nuclear energy
Speaking to the Daily News Egypt, El-Osery said the plant will be located in the Matruh governorate, with Egypt paying for the implementation expenses after operations start.
Kaiseiazan-park in Koriyama is the most popular park in the city.
Masa in Koriyama visited the park with a radiation counter and made a short film about the visit.
Three and a half years have passed since the nuclear disaster and the park has been decontaminated and a monitor at the park now shows less than 0.3 μSv.
However, Masa’s own counter showed higher values in various spots in the park, and seriously high values were found in the sludge accumulated on the ground. These “micro hotspots” are everywhere in the park.
“…I do not like the idea of taking a walk in a place where I can measure more than 1μSv/h. This is a dose rate where I literally should be running away from.
So on May 11th I was irradiated. These days, every time I go out to the countryside I get irradiated. I am starting to have the feeling that I cannot live near Tokyo any more….”
On May 11th in the afternoon, I went for a walk for some exercise. This time I just took my Air Counter with me and left my heavy survey meter at home.
At around 2.30 pm, my reading went up to 1.15μSv/h in the middle of a vegetable field. It is more or less the same as the 1.1μSv/h measured at the Okumamachi Fureai Park (only 4 km away from The Fukushima Daiichi plant) on the same day! Now this was a shock.
The following is the record on the dosimeter. I had started to measure the air dose rate from about 1 pm and at 2 pm had measured around 0.3μSv/h.
(時刻 time)
1.15μSv/h is the highest reading that I had had during the 1 1/2 years of use of this dosimeter.
As you can see it was just for a short while that I measured such a high dose rate. As I moved about I still had high readings. I presume that there was an air current that carried radioactive substances near the ground. 1.15μSv/h is the equivalent of 300.000 Bq/m2 of cesium in the soil.
According to the following map the spot was at altitude 25.5m, in an area with mostly vegetable patches where urbanization is restricted.
松戸駅 Matsudo station
測定地点 location of measurement
船橋駅 Funabashi station
江戸川河口 mouth of Edogawa river
They were burning something in a home-use incineration unit nearby but the wind wasn’t coming from there. The wind was coming from the south and wasn’t strong.
The following spot was quite far away from the previous one. The altitude is about 14m lower. The readings are not much different.
Where do the radioactive substances come from? It could be radon but would it rise so much on a plateau? There are incineration plants and waste recycling centres of Funabashi city in Sanbanse near the mouth of the Edogawa River. They are 8 km south of where I measured. If the chimneys of these plants are high then I guess the emission could travel quite far. It wouldn’t be unnatural to think that the emissions would have an impact on the surrounding environment in a radius of 8-10 km. I shudder to think that there are plants that release radioactive gas of 1μSv/h everywhere though.
I do not like the idea of taking a walk in a place where I can measure more than 1μSv/h. This is a dose rate where I literally should be running away from.
So on May 11th I was irradiated. These days, every time I go out to the countryside I get irradiated. I am starting to have the feeling that I cannot live near Tokyo any more.
Under the new policy, however, the government will determine decontamination needs by using radiation exposure data collected from individual dosimeters, which tend to be lower than the estimated dose, thus reducing the areas subject to government-mandated decontamination.
[…]
“Many residents of Fukushima have deliberately stayed indoors since the nuclear disaster. If they start to go out like they used to before the quake, the individual radiation doses might go up and will not necessarily fall below the 1 millisievert threshold,” Ishii said. “As such, we should aim for continued use of aerial figures for decontamination.”
Confusion is spreading among towns and cities tasked with radiation cleanup in the face of a new decontamination policy to be released by the Environment Ministry as early as this month.
The government has been decontaminating areas whose aerial radiation reading is 0.23 microsievert per hour or more, based on its policy of keeping annual radiation exposure for individuals at 1 millisievert or less. It arrived at the estimated dose of 0.23 microsievert per hour by assuming that an individual spends eight hours outdoors and 16 hours indoors.
Under the new policy, however, the government will determine decontamination needs by using radiation exposure data collected from individual dosimeters, which tend to be lower than the estimated dose, thus reducing the areas subject to government-mandated decontamination.
While some municipalities welcome the move, saying it will allow them to scale down decontamination efforts in areas where radiation levels are unlikely to go down significantly, others are worried that residents will be confused.
The Environment Ministry unveiled its plan to use the individual dosimeter data last month at its meetings with officials from the cities of Fukushima, Koriyama, Soma and Date. According to Date officials, the city measured the radiation exposure of its 52,000 citizens wearing dosimeters from July 2012 through June 2013. The results showed that per-year exposure levels for nearly 70 percent of residents, even in areas where aerial radiation levels exceeded 0.23 microsievert per hour, was less than 1 millisievert in total.
“We should break the spell of aerial radiation soon,” said a Date official, pinning hopes on the ministry plan.
An official of the city of Tamura, on the other hand, expressed shock, saying the city has been cleaning up contaminated areas based on aerial readings, and if the cleanup projects are scaled back as a result of a policy change, it would cause anxiety among residents. Tamura, therefore, will not change its decontamination plan, the official said.
Experts are similarly divided. Junichiro Tada, a member of the board of directors at nonprofit organization Radiation Safety Forum, said he agrees with the ministry. “We should change the way radiation doses are managed from an aerial radiation basis to an individual exposure basis,” he said. “That way, we will do away with ineffective decontamination work.”
But Keizo Ishii, director of the Research Center for Remediation Engineering of Living Environments Contaminated with Radioisotopes at Tohoku University, remains cautious.
“Many residents of Fukushima have deliberately stayed indoors since the nuclear disaster. If they start to go out like they used to before the quake, the individual radiation doses might go up and will not necessarily fall below the 1 millisievert threshold,” Ishii said. “As such, we should aim for continued use of aerial figures for decontamination.”
Sanae Sato, a 54-year-old homemaker from the city of Fukushima, said she wants standards that are easy to understand. “I hope the national, prefectural, municipal governments, as well as experts, will come to a consensus and create the same standards,” she said.
This section, appearing every third Monday, focuses on topics and issues covered by the Fukushima Minpo, the largest newspaper in Fukushima Prefecture. The original article was published on June 22.
WIPP ACCIDENT – Don Hancock, Director of Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, NM, brings us up to date again about the February 14 underground explosion and radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) site in Carlsbad, NM.LINK TO WIPP TOWN HALL MEETING LIVESTREAM: http://new.livestream.com/rrv/Thursday, July 24 from 5:30 to 6:30 Mountain Time
First and third Thursdays of the month. WIPP TOWN HALL MEETING ARCHIVES: http://www.wipp.energy.gov/wipprecovery/photo_video.html
VOICES FROM JAPAN – Filmmaker Yumiko Hayakawa on TEPCO’s subtle censorship of her film about Fukushima refugee and anti-nuclear activist Setsuko Kida, “A Woman from Fukushima.” The film was recently a selection at the Uranium Film Festival in Rio De Janiero.
SOARCA – State of the Art Reactor Consequence Analyses – the NRC’s flawed computer program for calculating the risks of nuclear accidents, explained by Scott Portzline of Three Mile Island Alert. LINK: http://www.efmr.org/files/2012/SOARCA-2-22-2012.pdf
NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK:
Party, anyone? The pro-nuclear International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plighted the troth of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 50 years ago and they want everyone to know! They work together on issues of food safety, animal production and insect pest control. If you can’t see what’s wrong with this picture, check out Fukushima’s radioactive rice, the Pacific’s marine animals in species collapse, and, oh well, what’s wrong with nuking mosquitos? And we wonder why the world’s in such a mess…
Host Kate Zickel talks with Aileen Mioko Smith about the current state of affairs in Japan regarding the Fukushima clean up.
Two years after the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown, the disaster is still causing problems, and the Japanese government is looking at new ways to address the issue. Fukushima may be eclipsing Chernobyl as the greatest nuclear disaster in history. Public sentiment appears to be against the continuing reliance on nuclear power in Japan, but the government has been slow to move in that direction.
USA – Radiation Safety Standards The Environment Protection Austhority (EPA) is calling for comments on its planned update of “Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Nuclear Power Operations.” The nuclear lobby is of course very keen to weaken those standards. Sophiticated and disingenuous arguments are being pushed towards that aim. This is acomplcated and difficult matter. I would hope that the EPA is concerned first for the public, and second for the nuclear industry, but I doubt this.
Fukushima. Now available first hand witness: The Yoshida Testimony. The Fukushima Nuclear accident as told by plant manager Masao Yoshida The ice wall plan to stop leakage of radioactive water is not working
EPA Wants My Opinion? Well, Here It Is, Enformable JoieauWebsite Joy Thompson 18 July 14,
The Environmental Protection Agency – the overseers of the suspiciously on-again/off-again RadNet monitoring system in the wake of the 2011 mass meltdown/blow-outs at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power station – has helpfully extended the public comment period on its proposed “update” to 40CFR.190, “Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Nuclear Power Operations.”
Citizens now have until August 4th to submit their comments on exposure limits, dose calculations, new fuel cycle technologies and related topics.
The EPA is seeking public comment and information that they may or may not use for planned updates to the old rules for Environmental Radiation Protection issued in 1977, ostensibly to make them easier to understand and implement. Given how often the public is treated to professions of ignorance from the nuclear industry (such as, “we don’t know how to measure beta radiation levels!” when caught disseminating blatantly false data), this could be a good thing. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC] is responsible for implementing and enforcing the standards established by the EPA, and we have watched with some jaded dismay as NRC has steadily abdicated its responsibilities, entrusting them to the utilities it’s supposed to be regulating. Utilities now enjoy little to no oversight or auditing of their monitoring or records, and requirements for public notification and protection (like evacuation of nearby residents if releases reach certain levels) have been demonstrated pointless because they are routinely ignoredPerhaps if EPA can tweak its rules so that even the NRC can understand them, we could expect much better compliance all around……..
To help interested people who may be confused by the technical gobbledygook that frames the issues in the EPA’s documents, I am listing the issues here, offering an abbreviated look at EPA reasoning in presenting these issues for comment, and supplying my own responses to the questions EPA is posing to the public………
Issue 1: Consideration of a Risk Limit to protect individuals. Should the Agency express its limits for the purpose of this regulation in terms of radiation risk or radiation dose?
EPA limitations on most cancer causing substances are expressed in terms of risk to the exposed public of developing cancer over time. This risk is a statistical exercise – averages divvied across populations – and easy to ‘fudge’ simply by adding more people to the risk pool……….
Because this sleight of mind has actually occurred for the purpose of covering up real harm to real people during the worst civilian nuclear accident this nation has experienced, we have no legitimate reason to expect that making this statistical trickery into official EPA “radiation protection” policy is intended to protect anybody from radiation harm during any future oops the industry suffers. We must remember that the EPA’s job is to protect the public from the nuclear industry, not to protect the nuclear industry from itself. And we must insist stridently that it do that job properly. Radioactive contamination moves in plumes. We know this from bomb testing back in the 1950s and ’60s. We know this from TMI2, we know this from Chernobyl, and we know this from Daiichi.
My Response to Issue 1:
Because both national and international radiation protection guidelines developed by non-governmental radiation experts such as the ICRP and the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements recommend that radiation exposure standards be established in terms of dose to members of the public, the EPA should continue to base its limits on effective dose to members of the public.
Issue 2: Updated Dose Methodology (dosimetry). How should the Agency update the radiation dosimetry methodology incorporated in the standard?
EPA wants to go with the ICRP’s “effective dose” methodology that weighs damage factors so that doses to the public can be expressed without additional qualifications. This makes the statistical exercise of basing dose limits on a risk model easier. It also makes it easy for the people doing the radiation monitoring and dose calculations to cheat, but no rule or regulatory detail is ever going to prevent that in an industry born and bred in insular semi-secrecy and avoidance of responsibilities.
Current limits on exposures to the public during normal operation are 25mr [millirems] whole body, 75mr to the thyroid, and 25mr to any other organ, over a year’s time. There are no effective limits on accident releases, and anyone who followed the disaster at Fukushima in 2011 will understand why. If releases during an accident/event are calculated to deliver a set level of exposure [dose] to any member of the public over the duration of the event, the requirement for evacuation kicks in.
In the end, and given the past record of deception by the industry and its regulators concerning public exposures to radiation, it probably doesn’t matter which methodology is used to calculate and/or estimate doses to the public during a serious accident, so long as requirements for evacuation of the public when a certain set dose level is reached remain in place. That dose level should remain equivalent to the one(s) now in place.
My Response to Issue 2:
If using a more sophisticated method of calculating and estimating doses/harm to the public will make the task of radiation protection easier, there is no reason not to do so. If EPA decides to go to ICRP’s more recent methodology it should use the ICRP methodology that exists at present [60] and not the one ICRP might eventually quantify. Utilities should not be exempted from requirements for evacuation plans and notifications, nor should the allowable doses to the public be raised.
Issue 3: Radionuclide Release Limits. The Agency has established individual limits for release of specific radionuclides of concern. Based on a concept known as collective dose, these standards limit the total discharge of these radionuclides to the environment. The Agency is seeking input on: Should the Agency retain the radionuclide release limits in an updated rule and, if so, what should the Agency use as the basis for any release limits?
The original EPA release limits (Final Environmental Statement, 1976) were based on the assumption that spent fuel reprocessing would be the one area of the total fuel cycle that would release the most radionuclides to the environment. In 2014 we know from long experience with serious accidents, meltdowns and exploding reactor plants that the generation facilities themselves have proven to be the worst offenders. We do not reprocess commercial spent fuel in this country, and haven’t done so since the 1970s. The government reprocessing facilities that do exist are notoriously filthy, as are fabrication facilities working with plutonium to make MOX fuels. Still, in overall environmental contamination, power plants suffering nasty oopses are right up there for consideration. And power plants suffering nasty oopses are not subject to radionuclide release limits because there is no way to stop those releases.
Now, however, we are looking at decommissioning aged and aging nuclear facilities, doing something with the accumulated tonnage of spent fuel waste, and applying release limitations to any/all new technologies that will come with future nuclear energy development (if that happens). Nuclear pollution from these activities must also be considered.
My Response to Issue 3:
EPA should continue to use the existing standards of limiting environmental burden as a guide, calculate and apply equivalent radionuclide standards for individual facilities at any stage of the nuclear fuel cycle. This need not be based on estimated doses to the wider public or to individual members of the public. It does need to be recalculated as necessary whenever weapon/accident releases occur to release very large amounts of radionuclides to the biosphere, with an eye to maintaining a biosphere-wide environmental burden limit for all dangerous long-lived isotopes.
If such an effort ends up reducing the allowable radionuclide releases from any type of nuclear facility at any point along the fuel cycle to a level that cannot be reasonably applied, then those facilities should be closed and decommissioned. Humanity should not be asked to tolerate the nuclear pollution of our planet to the point where everyone’s health and longevity are materially compromised. If that means the end of the nuclear industry itself, then that’s what it means.
Civilization can survive that just fine.
Issue 4: Water Resource Protection. How should a revised rule protect water resources?
Ground and surface water are necessary resources for organic life forms and entire ecosystems. EPA says it wishes to prevent water contamination rather than have to clean it up after it’s polluted. This is great. Existing standards don’t impose water-specific standards because nuclear plants do not release what they consider to be significant radionuclides to water sources during normal operation, and any such releases have had far less impact on public health than airborne releases. There are some fluid effluent limits for specific radionuclides.
As the industry’s facilities have aged, however, water pollution issues have come to the fore. Tritium contamination of groundwater, aquifers, rivers and lakes has become more problematic. Unfortunately, there are no technologies in existence that can effectively remove tritium from water. EPA wishes to establish off-site water standards commensurate with the Clean Water Act, which has specific limitations on concentration of carcinogens.
My Response to Issue 4:
The basis of any new EPA ground and/or surface water standards should be the limits specified in the Clean Water Act, diminished by the concentration of pollutants that may already be present in the water source. The dirtier the ground/surface water already is, the less any nuclear facility will be allowed to release. If the allowance goes to zero, the facility must be closed and decommissioned.
Issue 5: Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste Storage. How, if at all, should a revised rule explicitly address storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste?……..
. The failure over the past 40 years to develop medium and long term spent fuel storage has turned operating nuclear plants into de facto storage facilities they were never designed to be. Government/industry agencies, commissions, industry think tanks and international bodies can recommend the development of medium and long term storage facilities all they like. Fact is if nobody’s building them, they flat don’t exist and recommendations accomplish exactly zip.
If it ever looks like such facilities may at long last come to be, then the EPA may have a regulatory role in limiting the amount of radioactive substances those facilities can be allowed to release in any form to the environment. …….
My Response to Issue 5:
The same limitations on releases to air and water from nuclear operations should be applied to on-site storage of spent fuel. There should also be a limitation on how much spent fuel can be stored in a single pool, as well as a time limit on how long it can stay there before being dry-casked. The industry should be forced to dry-cask all spent fuel in their pools that has been stored for 2 years or more. Any dry cask storage facilities on-site should have an area radiation limit to protect workers, and should not contribute at all to off-site radiation levels.
Issue 6: New Nuclear Technologies – What new technologies and practices have developed since 40CFR.190 was issued, and how should any revised rule address these advances and changes?……
It is highly unlikely that nuclear technologies will play much of a role in America’s energy future.
My Response to Issue 6:
Reality is that there is no pressing need for the EPA to develop separate or differing limits for possible future nuclear technologies that are entirely unlikely to be deployed. If any of them ever are deployed, the existing (or revised) standards should be applicable to any new nuclear technologies. All applications involving nuclear fission should have to abide by the EPA protective regulations throughout the fuel cycle to limit harm to the general public, nuclear workers and the environment.
EPA should definitely develop and apply specific rules for MOX fuels as those are fabricated and used in power reactors. Plutonium is a dangerous radionuclide, as are other high energy alpha and beta emitters that occur during production, enrichment and fuel fabrication. Limits on levels and releases of these elements should be strict, and dutifully enforced.
I hope that concerned people will go through the ANPR and fact sheets for themselves and draft their own replies to EPA. Remember that these must be submitted by August 4th.
Comments should be identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0689. Comments may be submitted in the following ways:
• www.regulations.gov: follow the on-line instructions.
• Email: a-and-r-docket@epa.gov
• Fax: (202) 566-9744
• Mail: EPA Docket Center, Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Nuclear Power Operations – Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Docket, Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0689, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW., Washington, DC 20460. Please include two copies.
• Hand Delivery: In person or by courier, deliver to: EPA Docket Center, EPA West, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave. NW., Washington, DC 20004. During Docket’s normal hours of operation. Please include two copies. http://enformable.com/2014/07/epa-wants-opinion-well/
Japan Doctor: “Tokyo should no longer be inhabited” — Everyone here is a victim of Fukushima — People truly suffering — Bleeding under skin, urinary hemorrhaging — Children’s blood tests started changing last year — Time running short… up to physicians to save our citizens and future generationshttp://enenews.com/japan-doctor-tokyo-longer-be-inhabited-everyone-living-victim-fukushima-disaster-began-notice-childrens-blood-test-results-around-mid-2013-time-running-short-physicians-save-citizens-future-g?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
Dr. Shigeru Mita’s essay published in the newsletter of Association of Doctors in Kodaira (Tokyo), translated by WNSCR, July 16, 2014: Why did I leave Tokyo? To my fellow doctors, I closed the clinic in March 2014, which had served the community of Kodaira for more than 50 years, since my father’s generation, and I have started a new Mita clinic in Okayama-city on April 21. […] It is clear that Eastern Japan and Metropolitan Tokyo have been contaminated with radiation […] contamination in the east part [of Tokyo] is 1000-4000 Bq/kg and the west part is 300-1000 Bq/kg. […] 0.5-1.5 Bq/kg before 2011. […] Tokyo should no longer be inhabited […] Contamination in Tokyo is progressing, and further worsened by urban radiation concentration […] radiation levels on the riverbeds […] in Tokyo have increased drastically in the last 1-2 years. […] Ever since 3.11, everybody living in Eastern Japan including Tokyo is a victim, and everybody is involved. […] The keyword here is “long-term low-level internal irradiation.” This differs greatly from medical irradiation or simple external exposure to radiation. […] People are truly suffering from this utter lack of support. […] If the power to save our citizens and future generations exists somewhere, it [is] in the hands of individual clinical doctors ourselves. […] Residents of Tokyo are unfortunately not in the position to pity the affected regions of Tohoku because they are victims themselves. Time is running short. […]
Dr. Mita on patient symptoms since 2011: White blood cells, especially neutrophils, are decreasing among children […] Patients report nosebleed, hair loss, lack of energy, subcutaneous bleeding, visible urinary hemorrhage, skin inflammations […] we began to notice changes in children’s blood test results around mid-2013 […] Other concerns I have include symptoms reported by general patients, such as persistent asthma and sinusitis […] high occurrences of rheumatic polymyalgia […] Changes are also noticeable in the manifestation of contagious diseases such as influenza, hand-foot-and-mouth disease and shingles. […]
Fukushima ‘ice wall’ can’t get cold enough to stop radioactive water flowDr Leonard Coldwell Jul 09, 2014A Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) project to freeze radioactive water to prevent it from further contaminating surrounding areas and the Pacific Ocean has hit a major snag: the water won’t freeze. ……. Not freezing, and behind schedule
Recently, TEPCO launched two related programs to contain existing contamination and limit the flow of new water into the contaminated area. Both consist of digging trenches for pipes, then filling the pipes with an aqueous solution of calcium chloride cooled to -30°C (-22°F). The goal of the first, smaller project is to freeze 11,000 metric tons of radioactive water that has pooled beneath two of the failed reactors.
This project is widely seen as a pilot project for the much larger, more ambitious plan to use pipes to actually freeze the soil and create a 1.4 km (0.9 mile) “ice wall” to prevent more groundwater from infiltrating down into the underground reactors and becoming radioactive.
But on June 17, TEPCO announced that even the smaller project was having difficulties.
“We have yet to form an ice plug because we can’t get the temperature low enough to freeze the water,” a company spokesperson said.
The company also said that fluctuating water levels were making it difficult for the water to actually freeze.
“We are behind schedule, but have already taken additional measures, including putting in more pipes, so that we can remove contaminated water from the trench starting next month,” the spokesperson said.
LONG-TERM employment is hard to find these days, but one career that can be guaranteed to last a lifetime is dealing with nuclear waste.
The problem and how to solve it is becoming critical. Dozens of nuclear power stations in the U.S., Russia, Japan, and across Europe and Central Asia are nearing the end of their lives.
And when these stations close, the spent fuel has to be taken out, safely stored or disposed of, and then the pressure vessels and the mountains of concrete that make up the reactors have to be dismantled. This can take between 30 and 100 years, depending on the policies adopted.
In the rush to build stations in the last century, little thought was given to how to take them apart 40 years later. It was an age of optimism that science would always find a solution when one was needed, but the reality is that little effort was put into dealing with the waste problem. It is now coming back to haunt the industry.
Profitable business
Not that everyone sees it as a problem. A lot of companies view nuclear waste as a welcome and highly profitable business opportunity.
Either way, because of the dangers of radioactivity, it is not a problem that can be ignored. The sums of money that governments will have to find to deal with keeping the old stations safe are eye-wateringly large. They will run into many billions of dollars — an assured income for companies in the nuclear waste business, stretching to the end of this century and beyond.
The U.S. is a prime example of a country where the nuclear waste issue is becoming rapidly more urgent.
The problem has been brought to the fore in the U.S. because five stations have closed in the last two years. The Crystal River plant in Florida and San Onofre 1 and 2 in California have closed down because they were judged too costly to bring up to modern standards. Two more – Kewaunee in Wisconsin and the Vermont Yankee plant – could no longer compete on cost with the current price of natural gas and increased subsidies for renewables.
Nuclear Energy Insider, which keeps a forensic watch on the industry, predicts that several other nuclear power stations in the U.S. will also succumb to premature closure because they can no longer compete.
The dilemma for the industry is that the U.S. government has not solved the problem of what to do with the spent fuel and the highly radioactive nuclear waste that these stations have generated over the last 40 years. They have collected a levy – kept in a separate fund that now amounts to $31 billion – to pay for solving the problem, but still have not come up with a plan.
Legal action
Since it costs an estimated $10 million dollars a year to keep spent fuel safe at closed stations, electricity utilities saddled with these losses, and without any form of income, are taking legal action against the government.
The U.S. government has voted another $205 million to continue exploring the idea of sending the waste to the remote Yucca Mountain in Nevada — an idea fought over since 1987 and still no nearer solution. Even if this plan went through, the facility would not be built and accepting waste until 2048.
The big problem for the U.S., the utility companies and the consumers who will ultimately pay the bill is what to do in the meantime with the old stations, the spent fuel, and the sites. Much of the fuel will be moved from wet storage to easier-to-manage dry storage, but it will still be a costly process. What happens after that, and who will pay for it, is anyone’s guess.
But America is not alone. The U.K. has already closed a dozen reactors. Most of the rest are due to be retired by 2024, but it is likely that the French company EDF, which owns the plants, will try to keep them open longer.
The bill for dealing with existing nuclear waste in Britain is constantly rising and currently stands at £74 billion, even without any other reactors being decommissioned.
The government is already spending £2 billion each year trying to clear up the legacy of past nuclear activities, but has as yet found no solution to dealing with the thousands of fuel rods still in permanent store at power stations.
As with the U.S., even if a solution is found, it would be at least 2050 before a facility to deal with this highly dangerous waste could be found. By that time, billions of pounds will have been expended just to keep the used fuel from igniting and causing a nuclear meltdown.
It is hard to know how the industry’s finances could stand such a drain on its resources without going bankrupt.
Similar problems are faced by Germany, which is already closing its industry permanently in favour of renewables, and France, with more than 50 ageing reactors.
Japan, still dealing with the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in 2011, is composed of crowded islands where few people will welcome a nuclear waste depository.
Many countries in the former Soviet bloc with ageing reactors look to Russia – which provided them – to solve their problems. But this may be a false hope, as Russia has an enormous unsolved waste problem of its own.
Dramatic rise
In all these countries, the issue of nuclear waste and what to do with it is a problem that has been put off – both by the industry and politicians – as an issue to be dealt with sometime in the future. But the problem is becoming more urgent as the costs and the volume of waste rises dramatically.
Unlike any other form of generation, even dirty coal plants, getting rid of nuclear stations is no simple matter. To cleanse a nuclear site so that it can be used for another industrial use is difficult. Radioactivity lasts for centuries, and all contamination has to be physically removed.
For many critics of the industry, the nuclear waste issue has always been a moral issue – as well as a financial one – that should not be left to future generations to solve. The industry itself has always relied on its continuous expansion, and developing science, to deal what it calls “back end costs” at some time in the distant future.
But as more stations close, and fewer new ones are planned to raise revenue, putting off the problem no longer seems an option, either for the industry or for the governments that ultimately will have to pick up the bill.
Iran, six powers agree to four-month extension of nuclear talks: envoys BY PARISA HAFEZI AND FREDRIK DAHLVIENNA Fri Jul 18, 2014 (Reuters) – Iran and six world powers on Friday agreed to a four-month extension of negotiations on a long-term nuclear deal that would gradually end sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme, diplomats close to the talks said.
Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia andChina had set a July 20 deadline to complete a long-term agreement that would resolve the decade-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. But diplomats said they were unable to overcome significant differences on major sticking points.
“We have reached an agreement to extend the talks,” a senior Iranian diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Several Western diplomats echoed his remarks.
When uranium is ingested it is deposited in the kidneys, lungs, brain and bone marrow. The alpha particles – which contain massive doses of energy – sit in these parts and damage the tissue around them. Because it is an endocrine disrupter, it increases the risk of fertility problems and reproductive cancer. Large doses are fatal, but the constant exposure to low levels has intergenerational effects that are still not fully understood
One man’s home is another man’s uranium dump, Mail & Guardian, Africa 18 JUL 2014 SIPHO KINGS With nowhere else to live, many seek refuge in the radiation wastelands in Gauteng, unaware of the deadly dangers the abandoned mining areas present……..Faded photographs in the town museum show people sunbathing and swimming in the lake in the 1980s. There were bars, a jetty and a miniature putting course. Now only the foundations remain after it was closed because of the increasing concentration of uranium in Robinson Lake.
In the past it was a place for the residents of Randfontein – 50km west of Johannesburg – to relax on the weekend and forget their jobs in the mining industry. But in the late 1990s the underground mines started closing because the falling price of gold and uranium made them unprofitable. The mines were abandoned and the water levels inside started rising. Acid mine drainage began seeping into the dam, increasing the level of uranium to levels 220 times higher than the safe limit. The resort closed.
Deep into winter a chill breeze blows across the lake, creating ripples in the clear water. The surface is a stark blue reflection of the sky, with the bottom tainted red from the heavy metals in the water. No alga grow here, no fish swim, no underwater life ripples the surface.
The periphery of the lake is a wide ring of cracked yellow earth. The soil beyond is brown. There are 20m-high blue gum trees. There are yellow signs with “Radiation area – Supervised area” wired to the fence around the area and nailed to the trees.
Gold seam
The Witwatersrand gold seam runs for about 100km, from Randfontein in the west of Johannesburg to Springs in the east. A century of mining drove a mining boom, thanks to this being the world’s largest concentration of the precious metal.
Mine shafts up to 3km deep were sunk. The waste was dumped above ground in over 400 mine dumps or tailings dams that now dot the province. These contain a mixture of heavy metals, and an estimated 600 000 tonnes of uranium.
The Cancer Association of South Africa (Cansa) says this is the only place in the world where large numbers of people live next to dumps full of uranium. Continue reading →
Hot cooling canals threaten shutdown of Turkey Point nuclear power plants BY JENNY STALETOVICH JSTALETOVICH@MIAMIHERALD.COM 18 July 14, Rising water temperatures and severe algae blooms in cooling canals have threatened to force the shutdown of two nuclear reactors at Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point plant over the last few weeks.
The utility and federal regulators say there isn’t a public safety risk but the canal temperatures, climbing to 94 to 99 degrees, have come within one degree of a federal limit that would mandate an expensive shutdown at a time when power demands are soaring. The hot water has also stoked the spread of algae through the 168-mile long canal system, which has helped keep temperatures high and reignited concerns about the power plant’s impact on water quality in Biscayne Bay………
Mining companies just west of Turkey Point have also argued that saltier water from the sprawling canal system, which is heavier than freshwater, has sunk deep within the aquifer and migrated west, threatening their business as well as drinking water wells.
“When they were originally conceived and designed in the late 60s and early 70s, they were supposed to theoretically operate in a way that the salinity in the canals was going to mimic what’s in the bay,” said Ed Swakon, president of EAS Engineering and a consultant for Atlantic Civil, which operates a large mine just west of the canals. But over the years, salt built up, he said, making the water heavier and forcing it deeper underground.
At some 70 feet below the surface, he said, “it begins to spread like an inverted mushroom.”………
on Wednesday, Scott Burns, a chief environmental scientist with the water management district, said tests conducted in recent years indicate underground water is creeping west. And in a letter last month, Justin Green, chief of DEP’s office that permits power plants, said FPL has been “put on notice” about the creeping plume. DEP and the water management district, he said, are drafting an order to deal with it, which will include pumping water from the Floridan Aquifer, deep below the Biscayne.
“When we increase pumping, that will reduce salt seepage and stabilize the system,” Burns said.
But Phil Stoddard, mayor of South Miami and a longtime critic of Turkey Point’s nuclear operations, worries drawing more water from the lower aquifer will make things worse.
“All the crap we’ve thrown into the Floridan is going to end up in the Biscayne Aquifer heading toward the drinking water,” he said. “The green slime is absorbing heat and heating up the water. The problem for FPL is hot water doesn’t do such a good job of cooling the pipes.” http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/16/4239899/hot-weather-threatens-cooling.html
12 Mainstream American Corporations Want More Renewable Energy Clean Technica, uly 17th, 2014 by Jake RichardsonJust a couple of weeks ago, we reported that a number of mainstream American companies are saving about $1.1 billion a year by using renewable energy. Now, 12 prominent and very large corporations have combined their voices to say they want more renewables. Renewable energy might seem like a marginal part of American society, even something for ‘hippies,’ but if you believe that take a look at some of the companies that want more of it.
General Motors
Walmart
Johnson & Johnson
Proctor and Gamble
Sprint
Intel
Hewlett-Packard
Bloomberg
Mars
Novelis
REI
Facebook…….
No one would say any of these companies are ‘radical,’ so it seems that renewable energy, like solar and wind are definitely mainstream now. In other words, it’s not for ‘kooks,’ ‘granolas,’ ‘socialists,’ ‘treehuggers,’ or ‘vegans’.The twelve companies listed above are brands recognizable to almost any American. They are thoroughly mainstream and some are even part of American history. Take Johnson and Johnson, for example. This huge corporation was founded in 1886. Similarly, General Motors was founded in 1908. These two companies are part of American culture and have been around for over one hundred years……..http://cleantechnica.com/2014/07/17/12-mainstream-american-corporations-want-renewable-energy/
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