SERCO nuclear weapons and waste company hitting the rocks
SERCO is in financial trouble.
A little Background info.
SERCO runs the support services for the MOD, such as the Atomic Weapons
Establishment at Aldermaston, and operates four vessels transporting spent
nuclear fuel around the globe for reprocessing.
See:
https://www.serco.com/uk/sector-expertise/defence/marine-services
https://www.serco.com/uk/sector-expertise/defence
You can find out more about what else it does at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serco
Now comes the sad news.
Serco profit fell 14% in 2016
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/serco-profit-falls-14-in-2016-sticks-to-guidance-2017-02-22
Today their share price has just dropped to 116 pence.
That is from a high point of 545 pence in 2013.
https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SRP:LN
I’m thinking that this is a company which is worth keeping an eye on during
the next couple of weeks.
Report from Martyn Lowe at;
Toshiba considers bankruptcy of its nuclear branch in the United States
Toshiba considers bankruptcy of its nuclear branch in the United States
Jueves, Febrero 23, 2017
Japan’s technology giant Toshiba is considering bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric, its nuclear energy arm in the US. UU. Whose multi-million dollar devaluation will result in heavy losses for the company.
The Japanese conglomerate shuffles this move as one of its options in the framework of reviewing the operations of the atomic unit, the source of its financial problems, according to company sources.
The information triggered the price of Toshiba shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where they rose 12% after the fall of more than 4% experienced on Thursday.
The company’s shares had lost more than half its value since it announced at the end of last December a multi million-dollar deterioration of its nuclear assets in the US. Which has led to the reduction of these operations and the resignation of its president, Shigenori Shiga.
The company, which expects a net loss of 390 billion yen (3,232 million euros) for the entire fiscal year 2016, maintains a dispute with Chicago Bridge & Iron, former owner of Westinghouse, on account of its valuations of assets and business Of the constructor.
The devaluation of Toshiba’s nuclear energy arm is due to the increase in labor costs and the construction of projects to build new nuclear plants in the United States.
Collaboration EFE
Finding new clues for nuclear waste cleanup
Technetium-99 is a byproduct of plutonium weapons production and is considered a major U.S. challenge for environmental cleanup. At the Hanford Site nuclear complex in Washington state, there are about 2,000 pounds of the element dispersed within approximately 56 million gallons of nuclear waste in 177 storage tanks. The U.S. Department of Energy is in the process of building a waste treatment plant at Hanford to immobilize hazardous nuclear waste in glass. But researchers have been stymied because not all the technetium-99 is incorporated into the glass and volatilized gas must be recycled back into the melter system.
A Washington State University study of the chemistry of technetium-99 has improved understanding of the challenging nuclear waste and could lead to better cleanup methods.
The work is reported in the journal Inorganic Chemistry. It was led by John McCloy, associate professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, and chemistry graduate student Jamie Weaver. Researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the Office of River Protection and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory collaborated.
Technetium-99 is a byproduct of plutonium weapons production and is considered a major U.S. challenge for environmental cleanup. At the Hanford Site nuclear complex in Washington state, there are about 2,000 pounds of the element dispersed within approximately 56 million gallons of nuclear waste in 177 storage tanks.
WSU notes that the U.S. Department of Energy is in the process of building a waste treatment plant at Hanford to immobilize hazardous nuclear waste in glass. But researchers have been stymied because not all the technetium-99 is incorporated into the glass and volatilized gas must be recycled back into the melter system.
The element can be very soluble in water and moves easily through the environment when in certain forms, so it is considered a significant environmental hazard.
Because technetium compounds are challenging to work with, earlier research has used less volatile substitutes to try to understand the material’s behavior. Some of the compounds themselves have not been studied for 50 years, said McCloy.
“The logistics are very challenging,” he said.
The WSU work was done in PNNL’s highly specialized Radiochemical Processing Laboratory and the radiological annex of its Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.
The researchers conducted fundamental chemistry tests to better understand technetium-99 and its unique challenges for storage. They determined that the sodium forms of the element behave much differently than other alkalis, which possibly is related to its volatility and to why it may be so reactive with water.
“The structure and spectral signatures of these compounds will aid in refining the understanding of technetium incorporation into nuclear waste glasses,” said McCloy.
The researchers also hope the work will contribute to the study of other poorly understood chemical compounds.
— Read more in Jamie Weaver et al., “Chemical Trends in Solid Alkali Pertechnetates,” Inorganic Chemistry (21 February 2017) (DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.6b02694)
Another article on nuclear waste studies here ;
Identifying the right sites for storing radioactive waste
“Radioactive waste containers are safer the deeper they are buried in rock, but that makes the process much more technically challenging too. I had to consider both of these factors in my thesis, while maintaining a very long-term perspective,” says Valentina Favero, a civil engineer and a researcher in EPFL’s Laboratory of Soil Mechanics (LMS) who passed her Ph.D. oral exam on 16 January. Her public defense will take place on 3 March at EPFL.
“Favero’s findings will play a role in selecting radioactive waste storage sites in Switzerland,” says Professor Lyesse Laloui, one of her Ph.D. advisors and head of the LMS. “Her work is sure to have major scientific implications and a significant impact on society.”………….
Desaturation and convergence
“The deeper you go, the more rigid and impermeable the rocks are. And that’s exactly what we want – a solid barrier between us and the radioactive waste. But the technical challenges also increase the further down you go,” says Favero. Even the process of drilling the tunnel that the radioactive waste containers will go through will affect how the surrounding rocks behave.
This led Favero to analyze how the materials will react during the various phases of this process: “Rocks located at the upper end of the tunnel will be exposed to air,” she explains. “That will lead to desaturation, in which some of the water held in the rocks evaporates. As they dry out, the materials could crack, which would make them more permeable. Yet we need impermeable rocks to achieve an effective seal.”
EPFL says that the researcher carefully studied this phenomenon and the related risks. Leaving no stone unturned, Favero also looked at the redistribution of forces when the tunnel is dug. This is called convergence, and it refers to the tunnel’s tendency to collapse on itself. The deeper the tunnel, the greater the convergence.
Favero’s exhaustive research was instrumental for the NAGRA in selecting the best two sites for storing radioactive waste in Switzerland and determining the safest and most technically feasible depth at which to place the steel canisters.
END SNIP
Feature: Almost six years on, Fukushima nuclear disaster still ongoing nightmare
TOKYO, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) — When Hua Yi, a journalist from Xinhua, on Thursday reached an area about five kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, a radiation detector he brought with him would not stop vibrating and sounding alarms.
The machine showed the radiation level there was between 5 and 10 microsieverts per hour, which is more than 100 times that of Tokyo.
Invited by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO), Hua, along with some other foreign journalists, paid a visit to the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
As the car he took approached the power plant, the radiation level rose quickly. Being 24 km away from the nuclear plant, the reading was about 0.114 microsieverts per hour, twice the amount of Tokyo, whereas being 15 km from the plant, the reading was 20 times higher.
Inside the power plant and close to one of the crippled reactors, the machine showed that the radiation level there was as high as 150 microsieverts per hour.
Dozens of workers wearing protection suits were spotted working by the No. 2 reactor, and according to a guide from TEPCO, the radiation level there was as high as 1,000 microsieverts per hour. Currently, some 6,000 staff are working in the Daiichi nuclear power plant.
A magnitude-9.0 earthquake in 2011 triggered a massive tsunami which destroyed the emergency power and then the cooling system of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, and caused a serious nuclear disaster, forcing some 300,000 people to evacuate.
Almost six years later, the nuclear nightmare still continues in that part of Japan.
Inside the power plant, only the No. 2 reactor looked almost intact, while other reactors which suffered from hydrogen explosions were unrecognizable.
The operator of the crippled power plant said earlier this month that levels of radiation as high as 650 sieverts per hour were detected inside the No. 2 reactor, much to the consternation of Japan’s nuclear watchdog and the local and international public.
The level was much higher than an earlier reading of 73 sieverts per hour in 2012, with the amount of radiation enough to kill a person, even after being exposed for just a brief period of time.
Even robots sent to gather information from the damaged reactor suffered malfunctions and failures, possibly due to extremely high levels of radiation.
For a long time, a number of TEPCO’s gaffes and communication blunders regarding the nuclear disaster have attracted massive criticism from the public.
Members of a media tour group look at the Unit 1 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima, Japan, February 23, 2017. (Xinhua/Hua Yi)
A report from the International Atomic Energy Agency shows that the potential damage of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to the health of the people and the environment in the area was hard to estimate due to a lack of information.
Meanwhile, messages from the Japanese government have always been “positive,” stating that the nuclear disaster caused limited damage and the aftermath is being dealt with, despite some data made public by different bodies of the government being contradictory to each other.
The area around the crippled nuclear plant is like a ghost city with abandoned houses, bags of contaminated soil piled up along a railway and in the fields, weeds growing wildly and madly.
After the nuclear disaster, the government designated an area 20 km around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as a restricted area.
At a place called Narahamachi, the restriction has been lifted, and residents are allowed to go back home since Sept. 2015. However, according to Yuuichi Okamura, a manager from TEPCO, by now only 10 percent of the residents have come back home.
After the accident happened, TEPCO claimed that the reactor’s core was damaged, but did not admit that the core had melted until two months later, though according to TEPCO’s own standards, when 5 percent of a core is damaged, it means the core has melted.
A report from a third-party investigation committee showed that TEPCO’s then-President Masataka Shimizu instructed officials not to use the specific description under alleged pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office, though then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano both strongly denied it.
TEPCO’s President Naomi Hirose apologized for keeping the fact from the public in June, 2016. “I would say it was a cover-up,” he told a news conference. “It’s extremely regrettable.”
According to Yuuichi Okamura, the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 reactors all had melted cores, and TEPCO still has no way to take out the melted nuclear fuel rods from the reactors. The over 1,500 nuclear fuel rods in No. 4 reactor have been successfully taken out and transferred to a safe place.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster ranked seven, the highest level on the international nuclear events scale, and was the most serious disaster since the former Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
Six years on, the crisis has yet to be fully brought under control, with no precise timeline for the full decommissioning of the plant, or a precise blueprint for the technological processes necessary for it to take place.
For TEPCO, the difficult tasks of dealing with the unprecedented problems such as processing contaminated water, cooling the reactors, and removing nuclear fuels, all continue to pose serious challenges.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-02/24/c_136082198.htm
NGOs try to stall Eskom nuclear programme in South Africa
Friday 24 February 2017
CAPE TOWN – While Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan seemingly avoided talking about the nuclear build programme in his Budget speech, Eskom’s procurement process continued to the chagrin of different stakeholders.
Non-governmental organisations are trying to use the courts to delay the process, to allocate more time to adequately review and comment.
Makoma Lekalakala of Earthlife Africa said, “It’s embarrassing for our democracy for us to be able to get information that was supposed to be in the public domain, through the courts. What we expect from this court hearing is to hold those in the decision making processes to be accountable.”
Their legal team is arguing the constitutionality and legality of the entire process, and have used the recent ICC ruling to bolster their argument.
Ideally, the hope is to slow down the project which will cost an estimated R1-trillion.
Activists say this issue is bigger than just the costs.
Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute spokesperson, Siphokazi Pangalele said, “There’s waste that is going to be handled and they have no idea as to what they are going to do with that, so health wise that’s an implication. It’s not a South African deal, it involves another country that will be bringing their own resources so we doubt very much they will rely on us and our expertise.”
In a statement, the energy department says procurements haven’t been made as yet, but they would be constitutionally sound once it did.
The NGO’s argue renewable alternatives haven’t been explored and remain the best energy option.
The national energy regulator of South Africa says it supports government’s nuclear build programme.
The organisation believes the country would benefit from the energy mix.
NERSA managing director, Knox Msebenzi stated, “The challenges at this point are political, perhaps propaganda. There seems to be forces saying nuclear is bad or dangerous for the country.
Whoever is propagating that is misinformed. There’s some agenda that is anti-nuclear.
We, on the other hand, we believe in government’s approach. If you live in the remote parts of the North West, surely for the next 20 years we don’t see any possibility of transmission line going there.
For purposes of economic development, job creation, and manufacture and mining, here in SA we have a population similar to South Korea, and they have doubled the amount of electricity.
We need to go to that direction. Let’s talk about energy consumption, we are best at 85% electricity penetration, there are 15 citizens without electricity.
How dare we say the money for electricity has come down?”
http://www.enca.com/south-africa/ngos-try-to-stall-eskom-nuclear-programme
Trump aims to expand US nuclear arsenal, make it ‘top of the pack’
Donald Trump wants to expand US nuclear arsenal, make it ‘top of the pack’ http://www.smh.com.au/world/donald-trump-wants-to-expand-us-nuclear-arsenal-make-it-top-of-the-pack-20170223-guk6ms.htm, Steve Holland, 23 Feb 17
Washington: President Donald Trump has said he wants to build up the US nuclear arsenal to ensure it is at the “top of the pack,” saying the United States has fallen behind in its atomic weapons capacity.
In a Reuters interview, Trump also said China could solve the national security challenge posed by North Korea “very easily if they want to,” ratcheting up pressure on Beijing to exert more influence to rein in Pyongyang’s increasingly bellicose actions.
n his first comments about the US nuclear arsenal since taking office on January 20, Mr Trump said the United States has “fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity.”
“… We’re never going to fall behind any country even if it’s a friendly country, we’re never going to fall behind on nuclear power.
“It would be wonderful, a dream would be that no country would have nukes, but if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack,” Mr Trump said.
The new strategic arms limitation treaty, known as New START, between the US and Russia requires that by February 5, 2018, both countries must limit their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons to equal levels for 10 years.
The treaty permits both countries to have no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed land-based intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missile launchers and heavy bombers equipped to carry nuclear weapons, and contains equal limits on other nuclear weapons.
Analysts have questioned whether Mr Trump wants to abrogate New START or would begin deploying other warheads.
In the interview, Mr Trump called New START “a one-sided deal”.
“Just another bad deal that the country made, whether it’s START, whether it’s the Iran deal … We’re going to start making good deals,” he said.
The United States is in the midst of a $US1 trillion ($1.3 trillion), 30-year modernisation of its aging ballistic missile submarines, bombers and land-based missiles, a price tag that most experts say the country cannot afford.
Mr Trump also complained that the Russian deployment of a ground-based cruise missile is in violation of a 1987 treaty that bans land-based American and Russian intermediate-range missiles.
“To me it’s a big deal,” he said.
Asked if he would raise the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Mr Trump said he would do so “if and when we meet.” He said he had no meetings scheduled as of yet with Mr Putin.
Speaking from behind his desk in the Oval Office, Mr Trump declared that “we’re very angry” at North Korea’s ballistic missile tests and said accelerating a missile defense system for US allies Japan and South Korea was among many options available.
“There’s talks of a lot more than that,” Mr Trump said, when asked about the missile defense system. “We’ll see what happens. But it’s a very dangerous situation, and China can end it very quickly in my opinion.”
Nuclear station restart at Oi, Japan, approved – but local consent is needed
Local consent needed despite OK to restart Oi nuclear plant, Asahi Shimbun February 23, 2017 The Nuclear Regulation Authority on Feb. 22 published a draft safety inspection report saying measures taken at the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors of Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture meet the new stricter anti-disaster standards.
In 2014, however, the Fukui District Court ordered the operator to keep the two reactors offline, raising serious questions about their safety.
Some 160,000 people in Fukui, Kyoto and Shiga prefectures reside within 30 kilometers from the plant. It is also questionable whether local residents can be evacuated quickly and smoothly if a serious accident occurs at the plant.
In a recent Asahi Shimbun survey, 57 percent of the respondents expressed their opposition to the restart of offline nuclear reactors, nearly double the number of those who supported the idea.
Come next month, six years will have passed since the catastrophic accident broke out at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Many Japanese remain unconvinced of the safety of nuclear reactors.
Kansai Electric Power is hoping to bring the two reactors back on line as early as this summer. But we find it difficult to support the plan.
There are multiple faults around the Oi plant. The biggest worry cited in the district court ruling was the possibility that a stronger earthquake than assumed could seriously damage the reactors or the spent fuel pool.
The electric utility has since appealed the ruling. But the company has also raised the estimated maximum ground acceleration that could occur in an earthquake at the location.
The utility will spend 122 billion yen ($1.07 billion) on measures to enhance the safety of the plant.
But Kunihiko Shimazaki, a seismologist and former acting chairman of the NRA, has warned against the plan. Using observation data about the powerful earthquakes that hit areas around Kumamoto Prefecture in April last year, he has argued that the utility’s calculation method may have underestimated the biggest potential shaking of a quake at the location.
After reviewing the data, the NRA dismissed Shimazaki’s argument, with Chairman Shunichi Tanaka calling it “groundless.”
But the scientist’s warning has deepened anxiety among local residents.
The spent fuel pools at Kansai Electric Power’s three nuclear power plants including Oi are almost filled to the brim.
The utility says it will build an interim storage facility outside Fukui Prefecture around 2030 so that used fuel rods can be removed from the pools.
But the company has yet to map out a specific and workable plan to build such a facility…….http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201702230032.html
Archbishop in South Africa calls for scrapping of nuclear energy, expansion of renewables
S. African bishop says government should scrap nuclear power; expand renewable energy sources, Ecumenical News, 23 Feb 17 The Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba, has appealed to the South African government to scrap plans for developing nuclear energy and instead spend the money on education, training and other development initiatives.The archbishop said in a statement issued from the church’s Synod of Bishops Feb. 22 coming at a time that faith and environmental groups are issuing a court challenge to a secret nuclear deal the government has struck up with Russia.
“The Synod of Bishops has revisited the resolution adopted by the church’s Provincial Synod last September, in which the church expressed its opposition to the expansion of nuclear energy and urged the government to pursue the path of renewable energy initiatives……
“We are deeply concerned that an expanded nuclear energy program will become an albatross around the necks of our children. And we cannot leave to the generations to come the task of disposing of our nuclear waste.”
Makgoba said the bishops believe South Africa has the potential of becoming a renewable energy hub for Africa, with huge potential for investment in manufacturing and associated employment.
“We note that overseas investors are queuing up to invest in our renewable energy program and since the design of the program is such that they provide the finance, this does not burden our people.”
ENVIRONMENT JUSTICE GROUPS
Environmental justice groups have renewed a challenge to the government’s planned expansion of nuclear energy in a court hearing in currently Cape Town.
In November the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute said a closed meeting on a nuclear build plan reinforces the perception that government has something to hide……http://www.ecumenicalnews.com/article/s-african-archbishop-says-government-should-scrap-nuclear-power-expand-renewable-energy-sources/59172.htm
Pics from Fukushima robots not enough to devise fuel-removal plan for reactor 2: Tepco
Members of the media take in the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant in Fukushima Prefecture on Thursday.
OKUMA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. – While a recent investigation found what may be melted nuclear fuel rods in reactor No. 2 containment vessel at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, that information isn’t nearly enough to devise an effective method for removing it, the chief of the plant told reporters during a media tour Thursday.
“We put in cameras and robots and obtained valuable images, though they were partial . . . but it’s still unclear what is really going on there,” said Shunji Uchida, who became chief of the crippled plant last July. “We first need to know the situation of the debris.”
Last month, the utility inserted a 10.5-meter rod with a camera on its tip into a hole in the No. 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel and discovered black lumps sticking to the grating directly underneath the suspended pressure vessel, which holds the core.
Tepco claims it is still unsure whether the lumps are really melted fuel that burned through the bottom of the pressure vessel. Although it is still years away from actually trying to remove the fuel, Tepco, the government and related parties are planning to decide on a basic strategy this summer and go into more detail next year.
Uchida described last month’s surveillance operation as “just peeking.”
Engineers are playing with the idea of refilling the primary containment vessel with water during debris cleanup operations to reduce the intensity of the radiation, but since the PCV was probably damaged during the meltdown crisis in March 2011, the water that’s being pumped in 24/7 to keep the fuel cool is just leaking back out.
According to past analyses, some of the melted fuel rods penetrated the pressure vessel and fell into the containment vessel surrounding it after the March 11 quake and tsunami caused a station blackout at the plant, crippling all cooling functions.
Smoke emerges at TEPCO’s Niigata nuclear plant
NIIGATA, Japan (Kyodo) — Smoke emerged at a service building of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture on Thursday but it quickly halted after a firefighting effort by workers, its operator said.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. said there was no radiation leak in the incident. The utility has not identified the cause of the incident.
The plant operator confirmed smoke coming out around 3:25 p.m. from a locker room inside the service building, located near the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at the plant. The building is not a radiation controlled area, according to the company.
The two reactors on the Sea of Japan coast are being screened by the Nuclear Regulation Authority as TEPCO is seeking to resume their operation after they were halted following the 2011 nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, also operated by TEPCO.
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170223/p2g/00m/0dm/083000c
Governor likely to OK Sendai plant operation
The governor of Kagoshima in western Japan is expected to approve the continued operation of a nuclear plant in the prefecture. Experts have found no irregularities at the facility following last year’s strong earthquakes.
Governor Satoshi Mitazono had called for the operation of the Sendai nuclear plant to be suspended after a series of earthquakes centered in nearby Kumamoto Prefecture.
He noted public concern and also asked for an inspection of the plant.
Kyushu Electric Power Company officials rejected his call to halt operations, but they carried out a special inspection. They say they found the quakes caused no abnormalities.
Last Thursday, an expert panel set up by the prefecture also reported that the quakes left no effects on the plant.
Mitazono said on Wednesday that there is currently no need for strong measures against the plant. He said he will remain vigilant if troubles arise.
There were mixed reactions to Mitazono’s decision.
A man in his 70s says the governor may have found that he cannot prevail over the central government in his anti-nuclear battle. He says there was no other choice but to continue operating the plant.
A woman in her 30s says she wanted the governor to stick to the anti-nuclear policy he pledged in the campaign.
She says she wants him to ensure that Kagoshima is a place where children will be able to live safely, now and in the future.
113 Major Active Faults across Japan
Japan is located in the seismically active zone and that is where more than 10% of all earthquakes in the world. The ideal place to build many nuclear plants if you have a death wish!!!
16 locations in Kanto, Chugoku, Kyushu added to list of ‘major active faults’
The government’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion held a task-force meeting on Feb. 21 and decided to add 16 locations in the Kanto, Chugoku, and Kyushu regions to the list of “major active faults” that could cause heavy damage.
The decision is expected to help with regional disaster prevention efforts as the newly listed active faults will be subject to priority research to be conducted by the government and other relevant entities. The latest addition has brought the total number of locations listed as “major active faults” across the country to 113.
Detailed research had been conducted in the three regions ahead of other areas since 2013 to check the possibility of earthquakes occurring in each of the three regions. The number of major active faults could increase further as the headquarters is also planning to conduct similar research in other regions.
The newly added major active faults include: the Minobu fault straddling Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures; the Okubo fault in Gunma and Tochigi prefectures; the Shikano-Yoshioka fault in Tottori Prefecture; the Saga plain northern fault zone; and the Midorikawa fault zone in Kumamoto Prefecture. The Shinji fault, that stretches from east to west about 2 kilometers south of Chugoku Electric Power Co.’s Shimane Nuclear Power Plant in Matsue, was also added to the list.
Since the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, the headquarters had designated active faults with high seismicity stretching at least 20 kilometers that could cause earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 or higher as major active faults.
However, in response to a series of major tremors such as the 2004 Chuetsu earthquakes caused by faults that had not been listed as major active faults, the headquarters has conducted survey research on active faults including non-listed faults. As a result, even some of those faults that were considered to fall short of meeting the criteria for being called major active faults have been added to the list.
Kojin Wada, an official of the Earthquake and Disaster-Reduction Research Division at the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, said, “We expect that the general public’s awareness of regional active faults is going to rise (with the latest addition to the list).”
http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170222/p2a/00m/0na/005000c
February 23 Energy News
World:
¶ For the first time ever, a study by climate research institute Climate Analytics calculated what a cost-effective fossil fuel exit strategy would look like. The study focused on keeping global warming at 1.5° C until the end of this century. All coal-fired power plants in the EU need to be shut down by 2030, but that is just a start. [Deutsche Welle]
The cheapest way to reduce fossil fuel emissions
is to phase out coal and replace it with renewables.
¶ The German city of Stuttgart will have occasional selective bans of diesel cars during periods of high pollution beginning in 2018, state officials in Baden-Württemberg say. The intent of the selective-bans is to limit diesel pollution within the state’s capital city during periods when air pollution levels are already quite high. [CleanTechnica]
¶ A ComRes survey has found 85% of British adults are…
View original post 797 more words
“Population Mixing” and Moorside – No One Wants to Talk! WHY?
#StopMoorside
DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC HEALTH QUIZZED BY TIM FARRON MP ABOUT THE PREDICTED RISE IN CHILDHOOD LEUKAEMIA FOLLOWING CONSTRUCTION OF MOORSIDE
Tim Farron has written on behalf of Radiation Free Lakeland to the Director of Public Health Cumbria County Council Colin Cox, Regarding construction of Moorside and “Population Mixing.”
“Population mixing” is a red herring used to explain the up to 20 times (Maryport) and 10 times (Seascale) acknowledged excess in cancers on the West Coast of Cumbria. IF the government will not take responsibility for radioactive emissions as a cause of excess cancer then it must take responsibility for its belief that “population mixing” is the cause of excess cancers. The public should be warned.
Radiation Free Lakeland has written to all the prospective parliamentary candidates for Copeland on this crucial matter of public health- not one has replied.
Correspondence with Tim Farron MP below
Our Ref: Birk004/52/jag>…
View original post 1,017 more words
February 22 Energy News
Opinion:
¶ “How South Australia can function reliably while moving to 100% renewable power” • Despite the criticism leveled at South Australia over its renewable energy ambitions, the state is aiming to be carbon neutral by mid-century, which will mean moving to 100% renewable electricity over the next 15-20 years. It can do that. [The Conversation AU]
Australian wind farm
World:
¶ Almost every railway station in India will soon be fed with solar power if the plans in India’s new union budget are implemented. The Indian Finance Minister announced that the 7,000 railway stations across the country will be fed with solar power as per the Indian Railways mission to implement 1,000 MW of solar power capacity. [CleanTechnica]
¶ Energy company RWE has cancelled its dividend for the second successive year, after writedowns of €4.3 billion ($4.5 billion) on its power plants and a surprise…
View original post 723 more words
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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