Ohi No.4 reactor restarted

Japan’s 8th reactor is back online. Kansai Electric Power Company on Wednesday restarted a reactor at the Ohi plant in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan.

At the plant, workers pulled out the control rods that suppress atomic fission of the No.4 reactor.

The facility is expected to reach criticality early Thursday, begin power generation and transmission on Friday and go into commercial operation in early June.

The reactor had complied with new government regulations put in place following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

Two months earlier, the utility reactivated the No.3 reactor at the plant. Two more reactors are running at its Takahama plant about 13 kilometers west of Ohi.

Although they all passed the government’s new regulations, attention is now focused on the threat of multiple accidents at these plants in the event of an earthquake and tsunami.

This summer, the government plans to hold its first drill based on a scenario that accidents have occurred simultaneously at the Ohi and Takahama plants.

In 2014, the Fukui District Court ruled against putting the No.3 and No.4 reactors at Ohi back online. It said estimated tremors of possible quakes at the plant are too optimistic. The ruling was appealed to a higher court, which has yet to decide the issue.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180509_30/

1.This Month

of the week

Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. http://space4peace.org/

https://www.ecoshock.org/

Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist

October 6 – 13 – INTERNATIONAL WEEK OF PROTEST TO STOP THE MILITARIZATION OF SPACE.”

Earth Climate System: Tipping Points to Hothouse?

Hothouse Earth: Has climate change reached the tipping point? | DW English

The climate change threat to nuclear power

By Natalie Kopytko “…………The final problem is droughts, which climate models predict will become longer and larger. Legal battles have already been fought in the US over scarce water resources in regions with nuclear power plants, including the Catawba river basin in the Carolinas and the Apalachicola/Chattahoochee/Flint river basin in Georgia, Florida and Alabama. These battles show us that adapting our systems – including nuclear power – to a reduced supply of water will not be easy.

The International Atomic Energy Agency advises the nuclear industry to build power plants to last for 100 years. Given that climate models don’t agree on what to expect within this time period, it is not at all clear how this can be achieved.

New reactors could use dry or hybrid systems with lower water requirements, but the costs of running these systems are likely to be prohibitive. Considering nuclear power plants already have problems with construction cost overruns, any additional costs are likely to meet resistance.

What is to be done? Most forms of energy generation are vulnerable in some way to the effects of climate change, and the fact that nuclear power is among them is yet another argument against a wholesale shift towards this source of energy.

The bottom line is that if nuclear power is to be used to mitigate the effects of climate change, it must also be capable of adapting to them. There are serious doubts that it can. more https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028138-200-the-climate-change-threat-to-nuclear-power/

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