Safety over speed reflects the thinking behind the revised road map for decommissioning the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Officials of the central government and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. had wanted in the past to move quickly in decommissioning the reactors in part because that would also speed up the rebuilding process in Fukushima Prefecture.
However, because of the unprecedented scale and nature of the decommissioning project resulting from the triple meltdown triggered by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, the rush to move on resulted in only more problems that had to be addressed.
The revised road map that got the official go-ahead June 12 delays the removal of nuclear fuel from the three reactors by as much as three years. The new schedule was needed because of the numerous problems that arose in the preliminary stages of work to prepare for the most difficult work of removing nuclear fuel assemblies from the spent fuel storage pools. An even more dangerous process that comes with its own larger set of unknown factors is removing the melted fuel in the reactor cores of the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors.
One of the biggest problems has been removing debris at the plant site caused by the explosions at the reactors, along with decontaminating work areas with high levels of radiation, stopping leaks of radiation-contaminated water and dealing with radioactive materials that are still gushing.
The hurried pace of past work may have been a factor behind a spike in work-related accidents at the plant site.
New targets have been established for dealing with the continuing problem of contaminated water.
One goal is to reduce the flow of groundwater into the reactor buildings by the end of fiscal 2016 to less than 100 tons a day from the current daily level of about 300 tons.
However, achieving that goal will require successful operation of two separate projects. One is the construction of an underground frozen wall of soil to divert groundwater, while the other involves processing pumped up groundwater before releasing it into the ocean.
Even if the contaminated water problem is dealt with, there are other issues that have to be addressed before removal of the nuclear fuel from the reactors can begin.
The overall goal of completing the decommissioning within a period of 30 to 40 years has not changed. The road map also maintains the objective of starting the removal of melted fuel at one of the three reactors in 2021. To achieve that goal, the method for removing that fuel will have to be finalized in early fiscal 2018.
However, a major problem is the uncertainty about just where that melted fuel is located within the reactor containment vessel.
Remote-controlled robots will be used within the vessels to assess conditions there.
Hajimu Yamana, deputy head of the Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corp. who is in charge of providing technological advice, said, “By using investigative robots to gather information, we will have a pretty good idea of the state of the melted fuel within two years. We should have all the information we would need by then in deciding how to remove the fuel.”
But some experts still seem to think the authorities are rushing things.
Shigeaki Tsunoyama, former president of the University of Aizu in Fukushima Prefecture who serves as an adviser to the Fukushima prefectural government on nuclear issues, cast doubt on whether fuel removal could begin within three years of deciding the removal method.
He cited the problem of developing specialized equipment, training the workers to use it and screening by the Nuclear Regulation Authority as being time-consuming issues that would have a bearing on the outcome
With the decommissioning of Fukushima No. 1 proving harder than expected, planners have pushed back plans to remove spent nuclear fuel from the cooling pools perched above the damaged reactors by a few years.
The decision was made Friday by the government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the tsunami-hit complex.
The spent fuel rod assemblies must be removed from the pools above reactor Nos. 1, 2 and 3 before any attempt can be made to extract the fuel that melted inside the reactors themselves.
But the delay will not impact the overall cleanup timeline for the plant, which spans 30 to 40 years, the government and Tepco said.
The first revision to the decommissioning road map in two years was made after it was decided that too much priority had been placed on speed. This would have heaped excessive pressure on workers tasked with operating in a highly radioactive environment. The road map was first crafted in December 2011.
According to the revised road map, the removal of fuel assemblies from the No. 3 cooling pool will be delayed until fiscal 2017, as it is already behind schedule. The work was expected to be finished in the first half of fiscal 2015, which ends next March.
Work to extract fuel assemblies from the pools on units 1 and 2 is now expected to begin in fiscal 2020, instead of fiscal 2017.
The subsequent extraction of the melted fuel — the most challenging part of the process — is expected to start in 2021, but the government and Tepco have not yet figured out how to do it. They are aiming to settle on a single approach in fiscal 2018.
The revised road map also aims to reduce the amount of groundwater seeping into the structurally damaged plant to less than 100 tons per day in fiscal 2016, instead of 300 tons. The influx of groundwater has become its own crisis by mingling with the highly radioactive water generated in the daily process of cooling the leaking reactors. And all of it must be stored on site until it can be cleaned.
The most important progress made at the plant so far has been the removal of all the fuel assemblies that had been stored in the cooling pool above the No. 4 reactor, which suffered a hydrogen explosion but avoided meltdown.
The revision also said the government and Tepco will begin discussions in the first half of 2016 on how to dispose of water tainted with tritium. The filters currently available can remove all radioactive isotopes from large volumes of water with the exception of tritium, a common byproduct at nuclear plants.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Regulation Authority have suggested such water be dumped into the ocean rather than be kept in tanks, to reduce the risk of accidents, but Tepco remains undecided on this given strong local opposition to the proposal, especially by fishermen.
Nuclear fusion: US Congress debating this a wasteful boondoggle?
Nuclear propaganda. Especially on social media, nuclear and thorium power trolls are ramping up their attacks on critics of nuclear power.
FRANCE: As the world’s poster child for nuclear power,this country is suffering great embarrassment as its government struggles to save the almost bankrupt nuclear giant AREVA. Just saved, for the moment, AREVA is broken up in a messy merger with EDF – which is also struggling financially. Risk of nuclear meltdown due to faulty valves in AREVA’s new-generation EPR reactor.
UK: I loved this news item – definitely my favourite for the week! – Desperate for public support, UK govt plans to make nuclear reactors look pretty!. High levels of breast cancer near UK nuclear power stations.
SOUTH KOREA: Government advisory panel recommends shutdown of South Korea’s oldest nuclear reactor. South Korea running out of space for spent nuclear fuel.
AUSTRALIA: South Australia’s Nuclear Fool Chain Royal Commission sure picked the wrong time to be seen in bed with AREVA.
French nuclear watchdog urges quick resolution of Areva rescue plan, Reuters, PARIS | BY MICHEL ROSE AND BENJAMIN MALLET 12 June 15 Areva’s (AREVA.PA) financial situation is worrying, the head of France’s ASN nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, urging the loss-making nuclear company and utility EDF (EDF.PA) to wrap up a rescue plan for Areva as soon as possible.
The French government last week approved EDF’s plan to take a majority stake in Areva’s nuclear reactor business and gave the two state-owned companies a month to do a deal.
“Areva’s current financial situation, it could get better, (it) can be considered as preoccupying in terms of safety,” ASN Director Pierre-Franck Chevet told Reuters in an interview.
“That’s why we have formally asked to hear them … to ask what kind of organisation they are putting in place to fulfils the commitments they have made in terms of safety for the incoming period,” he added, noting a meeting was scheduled by the end of June.
An EDF spokeswoman declined to comment, while an Areva spokeswoman pointed to comments made by Areva Chairman Philippe Varin on Wednesday, that safety remained an absolute priority.
ASN, an independent regulatory authority, last year imposed on Areva a requirement to recondition radioactive waste stored at its La Hague facility in northern France, which could cost several billion euros and which must be provisioned for, Chevet said.
the US has a policy still to fight and win a nuclear war against Russia. And when they do that launch first and land 200 hydrogen bombs on each of your missile silos and kill your missiles. The fact that billions of people will die is called by the Pentagon ‘collateral damage’. I don’t know what the Russian military strategy is about this, but the whole thing is extremely dangerous and the news media is not talking about it on the whole
US and Russia ‘playing nuclear chicken with each other’ Rt.com Dr Helen Caldicott is one of the most articulate and passionate advocates of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises. June 11, 2015 Current US and Russian war games at a time of serious international tension are very dangerous and someone’s mistake or a computer error could push the world over the brink into a nuclear war, claimed Dr. Helen Caldicott to RT.
UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond claims the UK could deploy US nuclear missiles as a response to increased “levels of activity both by Russian forces and by Russian-controlled separatist forces” in Ukraine. Hammond added Russia needs to get “a clear signal” that “we will not allow them to transgress our red lines.” Nevertheless, the UK hosting US nuclear missiles still remains a distant prospect.
For more on this RT asked pediatrician Dr. Helen Caldicott, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and president of the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear Free Future. Continue reading →
Pro Nuke Trolls Are Now Out In Force, Theirs Tactics Are Adapting and Becoming More Deceitful and Intolerant We have been running a troll study. The results will be interesting ……….
Also, I put the list of 15 Tactics at the bottom, and a summary here
1) Start a partisian divide and conquer. Get people fighting, rile everyone up, play the race or religion cards or both. Trying to create defensive posture, especially whilst confusing with odd sentence structure or just discordant comments.
2) Pretend that it is hopeless. You will be crushed by the corporate juggernaut, you will never get past “whining to the choir”, your efforts have been worthless.
3) Demand complete fool proof, guaranteed solution and citation, all from peer reviewed science.
4) Suggest extreme over the top “solutions”, discredit the community by being too far “out there”
5) Pretend that alternative media is automatically wrong out of the gate. Discredit any blog as a “personal website”, pretend they are doing it for pay, or just for “clicks”
6) “Shout Down” reasonable comments, an avalanche of comments and attacks.
7) Use an Army of sock puppets. Troll will drop an attack, get a response, and then a different troll will respond, thus not giving credibility to the response of the person attacked.
8) Censor Social Media so the hardest hitting information is buried. Multiple rapid fire responses, capping, or front running with a blast of drivel or a very long post.
9) When the consipracy becomes true, pretend that it could never have been foreseen, it was not a credible probably that’s why it wasn’t considered.
10) Protect the corporate goal by labeling detractors as conspiracy theorists, or nuts, or hippies
11) Become incredulously, indignant, or throw a hissy fit. This is exactly what sociopaths do when you start to back them into a corner.
12) Use a Straw Man, a false position that can easily be knocked down. Have a team troll post up a seemingly genuine argument with weaknesses easy to attack.
13) Hit and Run. Make a brief attack and then don’t respond, better yet, show up as another sock and make a complementary attack.
14) Question motives. Twist words and then imply bias or profit motive, put them on the defensive.
15) Associate opponent charges with “old news”, pretend the issue is already settled….http://nukeprofessional.blogspot.com.au/
Shares in Rio Tinto’s Australian uranium unit halve, Ft.com , 12 June 15 Jamie Smyth in SydneyRio Tinto has withdrawn its support for the expansion of one of the world’s biggest uranium mines, causing shares in its separately listed subsidiary Energy Resources of Australia to almost halve in value.
The decision by the Anglo-Australian miner underscores the difficulties in the nuclear industry following the Fukushima meltdown in 2011, which prompted Japan to mothball its 43 operable reactors.
Since soaring to a record high of US$137 per pound in 2007, uranium prices have fallen to US$35 per pound — a level at which many miners are losing money and new investment does not make economic sense.
“After careful consideration, Rio Tinto has determined that it does not support any further study or the future development” of ERA’s proposed underground uranium mine “due to the project’s economic challenges,” the miner said.
Shares in ERA were down 46 per cent at A$0.70 in mid-afternoon trading in Sydney on Friday.
Up until 2008, the Ranger mine in Australia’s Northern Territory was producing almost 10 per cent of the global supply of uranium. But the open cut mine is now exhausted and ERA was conducting feasibility studies on developing an underground mine, Ranger 3 Deeps.
I would like to think that Kevin Scarce’s Royal Commission was fully investigating nuclear industry issues — not just the geewhiz technology that they would be shown in France by AREVA, which is all too cosy with South Australian pro-nuclear politicians and businessmen.
SA’s Nuclear Royal Commission: All too cosy with failed French nuclear giant AREVA?Just how independent is the SA nuclear review and are opponents being side-lined? Independent Australia 12 June 15, Noel Wauchope looks at just who the Royal Commission met on its recent visit to France.
AT ITS South Australian community forums, South Australia’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission head, Kevin Scarce, made a point of the Commission’s independence. He stressed that the Commission would be meeting overseas proponents, and also opponents, of the nuclear industry.
On the Commission’s website, they list the destinations for the Commission’s overseas tour, now about to wind up. I was struck by the amount of time allocated to conferring with the French nuclear energy corporation, AREVA. I had to wonder — in their discussions with AREVA, it would hardly be necessary to talk with nuclear opponents. I wondered how much AREVA would be going to come clean about what really is going on, in France’s nuclear industry.
The AREVA connection with Australia is important. AREVA has an office in Wayville, in Adelaide, and has hosted South Australian parliamentary tours of their nuclear industrial facilities in France. AREVA acquired the Northern Territory Koongarra uranium deposit in 1995, but subsequently, in a David and Goliath battle with Aboriginal traditional owner, Jeffrey Lee, lost this opportunity, as Lee donated his land to Kakadu National Park.
AREVA is in a joint venture with Toro Energy, in uranium exploration in the Northern Territory. The corporation had been exploring for uranium in Queensland’s Karumba and Carpentaria basins since about 2012, but recently pulled out altogether. AREVA will probably be making a submission to the Royal Commission. However, the Commission, in publishing submissions, will not be publishing ones that are deemed “commercially sensitive“.
Without doubt, AREVA has a keen commercial interest in Australia. France’s nuclear industry is somewhat embattled, as its fleet of reactors near the end of their shelf life, and the government is pledged to cut down on nuclear power, and develop renewables. The French nuclear industry (like USA’s) depends for its survival, on selling nuclear technology overseas.
But what of the fortunes of AREVA itself? As the Royal Commission seeks to learn about the commercial viability of the nuclear industry, AREVA is hardly the most reliable authority on that question.
Iranian Professor: The Costs of Enriching Uranium Have Hurt Iran http://www.thetower.org/2156-iranian-professor-the-costs-of-enriching-uranium-have-hurt-iran/by TheTower.org Staff | 06.12.15In a public debate last month against an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollahi Ali Khamenei, Prof. Sadegh Zibakalam of Tehran University, who is associated with the reformist movement in Iran, argued that Iran’s enrichment program has been expensive for the country with little benefit. His remarks were translated Tuesday by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
“Do we even know how much money has been wasted on the nuclear [program]? What was our aim at Fordo, Natanz, and Arak? Why did we act this way when we had no intention of developing a bomb [but only of developing] agriculture andnuclear medicine and enriching uranium to 3% for the Bushehr reactor? Now the question is: How much does every kilogram [of enriched uranium] cost us? What is its cost to agriculture? How much will it cost [in the long run]?
“Take for example the joint Iran-Qatar South Pars [natural gas field]. [The two countries] are supposed to benefit from it equally, but because of the sanctions, we have not been able to produce all [the gas] we are entitled to produce from it. In 2013, we produced only 50 billion cubic meters, [while] Qatar produced 150 [billion] and a bit more. The 100 billion [cubic meters more that Qatar produced] is because Qatar faces no sanctions, and the cost of this [to Iran] is$40 billion…
“I’m not saying that the nuclear [program] is bad; it’s good. But at what cost? Now they will say ‘Zibakalam said we don’t need a nuclear [program]’… The political, partisan, and factional conduct on this [nuclear] issue must be resolved. Does the nuclear [program] exist for the sake of the state, or does the state exist for it? Must Iran be sacrificed for the sake of the nuclear [program], or should we sacrifice the nuclear [program] for the sake of Iran?”Zibakalam argued that enriching uranium has huge direct operating costs, but the penalties for having an illicit enrichment program has hurt Iran even more. Zibakalam suggested that Iran would have been better off buying enriched uranium and incurring neither cost.
Zibakalam, who was sentenced to prison last year for questioning Iran’s nuclear program, made several references during the debate to not being allowed to express an opinion about the nuclear program. In a different forum last year, Zibakalam said that Iran’s threats against Israel were the reason Iran’s nuclear program is viewed with suspicion.
In return for investment in Somerset’s Hinkley Point the Chinese want to take over the decommissioned nuclear station in Bradwell, Essex Britain is risking a nuclear crisis by letting China build an atomic reactor here, the GMB union has claimed.
National Secretary Gary Smith said the Chinese want to use their own parts, which a top expert has criticised, to replace Essex’s Bradwell plant.
The government has also been accused of holding up the “white flag” and surrendering Britain’s role as a serious player in the nuclear industry.
The stark warning to Energy Secretary Amber Rudd come in a letter from Britain’s third biggest union, raising serious concerns about national security.
The Chinese National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) is involved in a multi-billion deal to fund Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset and Bradwell in Essex. Continue reading →
Under the existing deals with this parallel legal system for foreign corporations, a Swedish company has sued Germany because the German government decided to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster,
Rep. John Conyers:Why the TPP Is a Terrible Deal for Most Americans, Conyers in the House, 12 June 15 Trade agreements boost economic growth, while destroying lives and livelihoods. By John Conyers, Jr. “…………. Economic growth—our raw output of goods and services—is a questionable measure of our success or well-being as a nation. Growth, in some cases, runs counter to priorities that matter deeply to our people. As a short-term measure of national production, GDP often tends to increase as rates of crime, pollution, and household debt rise. Both Hurricane Sandy and the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster arguably boosted economic growth because of the activity associated with cleanup and rebuilding.
As the House considers whether to “fast track” the TPP and other coming trade deals, I hope my colleagues will consider a broader set of questions than the one that Jeb Bush presented during his visit to Detroit. Instead of asking about implications for economic growth, I hope my colleagues ask: “Is this policy good for living standards? For the health of the planet? For creating jobs with dignity, promoting peace, and ensuring an educated populace?”
It’s hard to imagine the TPP passing muster when we consider values other than economic growth.
Start with jobs and living standards. What Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson wrote in 1955 rings true today: under a system of free trade, “national product would go up, but the relative and absolute share of labor might go down.” It’s a polite way of saying that free trade means more opportunity for big industry and investors, but that workers will face new threats to their jobs and wages. …………
As for health and the environment, both the TPP and the forthcoming Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership present a series of unforeseen risks that cannot be easily quantified in economic terms. Consider how a key element of the trade deals known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism would allow foreign corporations to challenge US health, safety, and environmental protections. Continue reading →
Institutional Investor Appetite For Renewable Energy, Forbes.com, Christopher P Skroupa, 12 June 15 “…..Richard Rankin: Most people do not know how substantial renewable energy is or that, in a global context, renewable energy is competitive with and can replace conventional energy entirely.
In the Great Plains and Southwest USA, several companies have signed contracts, known
as power purchase agreements, for solar and wind energy at prices lower than that of natural gas. Renewable energy can be a cheaper alternative to fossil fuels because of the ability to harness sources of energy that are prevalent to certain locations. It is a young industry with room for growth and improvement.
However, globally, it is already as big as the apparel and fashion industry worldwide and four times the size of the semi-conductor industry. Navigant Research, in their Advanced Energy Now 2015 Market report, observed that in the US, the market for advanced energy is bigger than the airline industry, equal to pharmaceuticals and four times the size of the semi-conductor industry.
With newly available forms of financing such as YieldCos which lower the cost of capital, and policies in place that would put the industry on par with traditional carbon energy producers, there appears to be no limit to renewable energy. Demand is strengthening for renewables at a faster pace than ever before and I cannot wait to see where it takes us.
Skroupa: What sector of renewable energy is the most promising?
Rankin: Electricity generation from solar looks to me to be one of the most promising segments. Continue reading →
EDF Nuclear Power Struggles to Compete With Falling Market Price, Bloomberg Business, by Tara Patel June 10, 2015 Electricite de France SA’s sale of atomic power to competitors for the second half of the year has sunk to a fraction of what it was in 2014, signaling nuclear energy may be losing competitiveness.
The state-controlled utility sold a quarter of the volume, or 4 terawatt-hours, to rivals, according to energy regulator Commission de Regulation de l’Energie. The 12.3 terawatt-hours sold for the first half was also less than half the 34.6 terawatt-hours for the second half of 2014.
The drop signals obstacles ahead for Chief Executive Officer Jean-Bernard Levy, who is pushing for higher power prices to help pay for tens of billions of euros of maintenance and safety upgrades on EDF’s aging fleet of French nuclear reactors, which account for three-quarters of the country’s electricity production.
The utility, the world’s biggest nuclear operator, is required to offer about a quarter of its annual French atomic output to rivals under a regulated system known as Arenh that’s aimed at increasing competition on the domestic market. They can buy it at the current price of 42 euros ($47.44) a megawatt-hour or turn to the market where prices are lower.
“There is an imbalance between nuclear generation costs and wholesale power market prices,” said Louis Boujard, a utilities analyst at Oddo Securities in Paris. “Nuclear energy is less competitive than it was in the past.”Market Price
French electricity is bought and sold in the market on a year-ahead basis for 38.15 euros, or 9.2 percent below the Arenh price, according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg. The contract has dropped 4.6 percent since January and is trading at its lowest level for the time of year since at least 2007 when Bloomberg began tracking the data.
nuclear-news 