It may take 40 years for the site to appear like “a normal reactor at the end of its life.”
A schematic of the Fukushima nuclear power plant hints at the complexity of decontamination and decommissioning operations.
TEPCO workers survey operations at reactor buildings.
Seven years on from the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has come a long way from the state it was reduced to. Once front and center in the global media as a catastrophe on par with Chernobyl, the plant stands today as the site of one of the world’s most complex and expensive engineering projects.
Beyond the earthquake itself, a well understood series of events and external factors contributed to the meltdown of three of Fukushima’s six reactors, an incident that has been characterized by nuclear authorities as the world’s second worst nuclear power accident only after Chernobyl. It’s a label that warrants context, given the scale,
complexity, and expense of the decontamination and decommissioning of the plant.
How does a plant and its engineers move on from such devastation? The recovery initiatives have faced major challenges, constantly being confronted by issues involving radioactive contamination of everything from dust to groundwater. And those smaller issues ultimately complicate the remediation effort’s long-term goal: to locate and remove the nuclear fuel that was in the reactors.
Jonathan Cobb, spokesperson for the World Nuclear Association, spoke with Ars about the scale of Fukushima, explaining that radioactive releases in Japan were much smaller than at Chernobyl, and the accident resulted in no loss of life from radiation: “Of course, this doesn’t take away from the enormous task currently being faced at Fukushima.”
The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) reported in May 2013 that radiation exposure following the Fukushima accident didn’t cause any immediate health effects and that future health effects attributable to the accident among either the general public or the vast majority of workers are unlikely. A 2017 paper from UNSCEAR reports that these conclusions remain valid in light of continued research since the incident.
Even the most at-risk citizens, those living in Fukushima prefecture, are only expected to be exposed to around 10mSv as a result of the accident over their lifetimes. “For reference, the global average natural background radiation tends to be around 2.4mSv/year, but even 20mSv/year isn’t exceptional,” said Cobb.
Still, the accident was rated a 7 on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which is the highest rating possible, and designates it a Major Accident due to high radioactive releases. Estimates vary slightly, but Japan’s Nuclear Safety Commission report puts total releases at 570 petabecquerels (PBq) iodine-131 equivalent. (For comparison, Chernobyl released 5,200PBq iodine-131 equivalent.)
But the severity of the accident is probably most keenly felt in the scale of the cleanup. The incident has necessitated the ongoing cleanup and decommissioning of the plant—something that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s owner and operator, is responsible for. Even though the plant is seven years into the cleanup and has accomplished a great deal, we won’t see a conclusion for decades yet.
Damage to reactor Units 1-4 in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake.
In addition to damage to infrastructure and buildings, a large amount of wreckage was left strewn around the plant complex.
Remotely operated machines were involved in clean-up of the most contaminated areas.
A look inside the Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) of Unit 2.
A composite image of photographs taken inside the Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) of Unit 2.
A look at debris in the spent fuel pool of Unit 3.
Meltdowns and immediate priorities
Remarkably, seismic shocks of the magnitude 9 earthquake didn’t cause any significant damage to the earthquake-proofed reactors; rather, the tsunami knocked out power that precipitated reactor meltdowns in Units 1, 2, and 3. Subsequent explosions caused by hydrogen buildup (from zirconium cladding of fuel assemblies melting and oxidizing) in Units 1, 3, and 4 then expelled radioactive contamination, most of which fell within the confines of the plant.
Cobb explained that in the aftermath of this, the ongoing risk posed by radionuclides (notably, iodine-131 and cesium isotopes 134 and 137) depended on their half-lives. Iodine-131, with a half-life of just eight days, posed virtually no threat at all after just several months. It has been cesium-134, with a two-year half-life, and cesium-137, with a 30-year half-life, that have been the major focus of decontamination efforts. “Radioactive decay means that we’ve seen a reduction in contamination simply through time passing; at the plant, however, my expectation is that the majority of reduction has been due to efforts of TEPCO. Conditions have improved markedly and a sense of normalcy has returned.”
It’s useful to take stock of what TEPCO had to contend with from the outset. Lake Barrett, a veteran of the US nuclear energy industry who spent several years at the helm of decommissioning work at Three Mile Island reactor 2, is currently an independent special advisor to the Japanese Government and TEPCO board of directors. He told Ars, “When everything goes to hell on you, you go back to basics. You’re concerned with accident response and immediate recovery of the situation. Over the longer timeframe, the decontamination & decommissioning (D&D) focus shifts to a more deliberate approach to major technical challenges.”
Barrett explained that reactor stabilization at Fukushima—an imperative of the immediate recovery—has long since been achieved. Temperatures within the Reactor Pressure Vessels (RPVs) and Primary Containment Vessels (PCVs) of Units 1-3 are stable at between 15 to 30ºC, and there have been no significant changes in airborne radioactive materials released from reactor buildings. This qualifies as a ‘comprehensive cold shutdown’ condition.
Barrett explained how the issue of cooling is mostly non-existent at this point: “The three melted reactor cores emit less heat than a small car. Decay heat was a huge issue in the first weeks, but it’s no longer an issue. And while TEPCO still injects water onto the cores, this is more for dust suppression than anything else.”
With the reactors stable, early phases of TEPCO’s work simply involved debris clearing and restorative efforts throughout buildings and across the 3.5 square miles of the plant—both having been ravaged by the earthquake and tsunami. In the most contaminated places, remotely operated machines undertook most of the work. To reduce environmental contamination, they also removed top soils and vegetation, deforested the site, and then applied a polymer resin and concrete across much of the plant complex. This has locked contaminated material in place and limited the flow of groundwater through the site.
Other work has been more substantial. Units 1, 3 and 4 were blown apart and have had to be reinforced and encased, both for safety and to prevent spread of radioactive material. Although Unit 2 retained its roof, TEPCO decided to dismantle the upper building nonetheless, as it will facilitate removal of fuel from the reactor.
At the peak of these operations, some 7,450 persons worked at Fukushima. As operations have evolved, the workforce has declined to a not inconsiderable 5,000 daily personnel. With such levels of permanent staffing, it’s little wonder that a new rest-house, cafeteria, shops, and office building have all been built.
The efforts have, in a practical sense, meant that the majority of the site has transitioned to a stable, relatively risk-free environment. Describing the decommissioning as an “enormous challenge never before undertaken by humanity,” Seto Kohta of TEPCO told Ars: “We have overcome the state of chaos that ensued after the accident and have succeeded in reducing site dose levels to an average of less than 5μSv/h, with the exception of the vicinity of Units 1-4.” (Global background levels are <0.5µSv/h.)
TEPCO reports that the additional effective dose (i.e. additional to natural background radiation) at the plant’s boundary has declined to the target value of less than 1mSv/y.
This is not to say the plant is without signs of past problems—far from it. Felled trees sit waiting for incineration; huge mounds of soil lie under tarps; buildings retain marks of past trauma; and with environmental dosage a perennial concern, close to a hundred dose-rate monitors are positioned around the site.
Kohta also noted that while “95 percent of the site no longer requires the donning of full- or half-face masks or coveralls,” some level of protection is still required for working around the plant according to three levels of contamination. The vast majority of the plant grounds are in what’s termed Zone G, which requires just generic coveralls and disposable medical masks. Zone Y provides a perimeter around the Units 1-4 and necessitates heavier-duty coveralls and either full- or half-face masks. And lastly there is Zone R, closer to and including the reactor buildings, requiring double-layered coveralls and full-face masks.
A steel structure is built around Unit 1 as part of reconstruction works.
An outer shell is constructed around Unit 1.
Reconstruction work at Unit 4.
A labyrinth of subterranean tunnels and access points lie around reactor buildings.
The Little Sunfish submersible used for investigations at Unit 3.
A TEPCO schematic illustrates measures taken to manage groundwater.
An impermeable wall constructed of interlocking columns extends along the seafront to restrict contaminated water reaching the sea.
Above ground apparatus of the frozen wall which descends 30m and surrounds Units 1-4.
A visitor to the plant performs a low-tech check on the frozen wall.
The groundwater bypass pump works to reduce the amount of water leaking into the reactor buildings.
Temporary storage tanks for water pumped up via the groundwater bypass.
Flanged tanks of the sort used for indefinite storage of tritium-laced water arrive at the docks of Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Visitors from IAEA visit the ALPS water treatment facility where radionuclides are removed from contaminated water.
Defueling of the spent fuel pool at Unit 4 was performed in a conventional manner; it won’t be so easy at other Units where radiation and damage is more severe.
The giant fuel handling machine (background) and fuel handling crane (foreground) arrive for installation at Unit 3.
The final segment of the domed containment roof is lifted into place at Unit 3.
While they’re now stable in terms of nuclear activity, Units 1-3 remain highly contaminated. As such, while the structural integrity of these buildings has been restored, relatively little work has been undertaken within them. (One notable exception is removal of contaminated water from condensers, completed last year.)
Over recent years, a variety of remotely operated devices and imaging technologies have performed investigations of these units. The intention has been to gather information on internal physical and radiological conditions of the PCVs—the heavily reinforced bell-shaped structures that host reactors. TEPCO wants, and needs, to understand what has happened inside. Some things are known: once melted, fuel mixed with structural materials including steel and concrete to form something known as corium. But precisely where the corium ended up, how much there is, and whether it’s submerged are just some of the questions in play.
The International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), which was established in April 2013 to guide R&D of technologies required for reactor defueling and decommissioning, is supporting TEPCO in seeking answers. IRID is composed of multiple stakeholders, including Japanese utilities and the major nuclear vendors Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba.
Naoaki Okuzumi, senior manager at IRID, described for Ars the investigative approaches and technologies. Early work utilized Muon tomography, which Okuzumi described as “a kind of standard practice applied to each unit… to locate high density material (fuel) within PCVs.” It yielded low-resolution data on the approximate location of corium. But with pixels representing 25cm-square cross-sections, the information has been useful only in so far as validating computational models and guiding subsequent robotic investigations.
The latter task hasn’t been easy. In addition to the challenge of navigating the dark, cramped labyrinths of tangled wreckage left behind, TEPCO has had to contend with radioactivity—the high levels act something like noise in electronic circuits. The wreckage has made access a challenge, too, although varying points of ingress have been established for each PCV.
The circumstances mean that TEPCO hasn’t been able to simply purchase an off-the-shelf kit for these investigations. ”An adaptive approach is required because the situation of each PCV is different… there is no standard with investigating the PCVs by using robots,” said Okuzumi, describing an approach that has translated into devices being specially developed and built in response to conditions of each PCV.
But they’re making progress. As recently as January 2018, corium was identified for the first time inside Unit 2 using an enhanced 13m-long telescopic probe and a revised approach designed to overcome problems encountered during investigations in 2017. The situation was hardly easier at Unit 3, where the PCV is flooded to a depth of around 6.5m. Here, it took a remotely operated, radiation-shielded submersible called ‘Little Sunfish’ to locate corium in July 2017.
Altogether the investigations—featuring a litany of robotic devices—have revealed that little fuel remains in any of the cores of Units 1-3. In Unit 2, a large amount of corium is present at the bottom of the RPV; in Units 1 and 3, almost all fuel appears to have melted through the RPVs entirely and into the concrete floor of PCVs beneath. The information is crucial, as we’ll come to see, for future deconstruction work at the reactors, but it continues to be extended as investigations continue.
PCV investigations at Unit 2
Pumps, ice-walls, and storage: Water management
One of TEPCO’s major concerns has been groundwater, which runs down from mountains west of the plant and can become contaminated by the low-lying reactors before flowing out to sea. Groundwater management has subsequently become one of TEPCO’s greatest efforts, as well as one of the most challenging of the tasks it has faced.
First off, it ought to be noted that marine environment monitoring for radionuclide concentrations near the plant and as far away as Tokyo indicate that levels are well within WHO standards. “The levels of radioactivity that have been found and can be attributed to Fukushima are absolutely dwarfed by natural levels of radioactivity in the water, or even levels of cesium that came from historic nuclear weapons testing,” noted Cobb.
Still, the effort to limit further contamination—seemingly driven as much by societal-political dynamics as safety considerations—remains paramount. To this end, measures have been deployed along three principles: remove sources of contamination, isolate water from contamination, and prevent leakage of contaminated water.
Some measures have been simple enough in design. Installation of an impermeable, underground wall along the sea front, completed in October 2015, is intended to keep groundwater that passes Units 1-4 from reaching the sea. Waterproofing pavement against rainwater is another widely applied step.
After this, solutions become more sophisticated. A groundwater bypass that intercepts and pumps up water before it reaches the reactors is a key development. This water is inspected for contamination before being discharged into the sea. By November 2017, more than 337,000 cubic meters of water had been released to the ocean in this way; this bypass reduced the amount flowing into the building basements by up to 100 tons per day and successfully reduced groundwater levels around the reactor buildings.
To further limit groundwater flow into reactors buildings, TEPCO actually froze the ground around them, creating a kind of frozen wall down to a depth of about 30 meters. Approximately 1,500 meters long, the wall is kept frozen by pipes filled with an aqueous solution of calcium chloride cooled to -30ºC. Freezing commenced in March 2016 and is now “99 percent complete,” according to Kohta.
On either side of the frozen wall, sub-drains and groundwater drains have been installed; they pump water up to keep it from reactor buildings and reaching the sea, respectively. Pumped water is purified at a purpose-built treatment facility. Barrett commented: “With water released from sub-drains and the bypass, there’s an agreement with the fishing industry that releases must be below 1,500 becquerels per liter. Negotiations took several years to agree that level was ‘clean’.”
All this has come at enormous expense, but according to TEPCO, it has been successful. Before any measures were implemented, inflow was around 400m3/day, Kohta told Ars. “The average amount of water flowing into [Units 1-4] for the period from December 2015 to February 2018, before the closure of the land-side impermeable wall, was 190m3/day, and it has decreased to 90m3/day after the closure for December 2017 to February 2018.”
At face value, it’s a sound outcome. As Kohta noted, the amount of contaminated water now being generated—a mix of groundwater, rainwater and water pumped into reactors for cooling—has decreased from about 520m3/day to about 140m3/day between last December and February. Even so, treating that amount of contaminated water is proving taxing.
Water treatment is happening at large-scale facilities that have been built onsite, including a multi-nuclide removal facility. Here, a so-called Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) reduces concentrations of cesium isotopes, strontium, and other radionuclides to below legal limits for release. But one radionuclide remains: tritium.
Cobb explained: “The difficulty is that tritium is basically an isotope chemically identical to hydrogen, so it’s impractical to remove. Levels of tritium in that water are low, but nevertheless there’s great sensitivity to the suggestion that it be discharged.”
Without a feasible alternative for cleaning up the tritium, the (only) solution for ALPS-treated water has been storage. Well over a thousand tanks, each holding 1,200 cubic meters, now store tritium-laced water at the south end of the plant. Several years ago, these tanks hit the news because several were found to be leaking. Barrett acknowledged it as an unfortunate and avoidable incident resulting from use of flange-tanks. TEPCO has since moved to more sturdy welded-joint water storage tanks.
The ultimate plan for stored water is unknown; tritium has a half life of a dozen years, so physics won’t clean up the water for us. Some kind of controlled, monitored discharge—the likes of which is typical within the nuclear industry—is possible, according to Barrett.
Indeed, the International Atomic Energy Agency has endorsed such a plan, which was proposed by the Atomic Energy Society of Japan in 2013. The plan involved diluting tritiated water with seawater before releasing it at the legal discharge concentration of 0.06MBq/L and monitoring to ensure that normal background tritium levels of 10Bq/L aren’t exceeded.
Discussions at both national and international levels would need to come first. Part of the difficulty here harkens back to societal dynamics surrounding risk and contamination: “In nuclear there is no such thing as absolute zero—sensitivity goes down to the atom. This makes discussion about decontamination or levels of acceptable contamination difficult. There’s tritium in that water that’s traceable to the accident; it’s entirely safe, but for the time being, with the event still in recent memory, it’s not acceptable,” observed Barrett.
Toward permanent solutions
In some sense, much of the restoration of order at Fukushima has been superficial—necessary but concerned with handling consequences more than root causes (see, TEPCO interactive timeline). Ultimately, Fukushima’s reactors must be decommissioned.
Broadly, this work involves three phases: removing used fuel assemblies that are stored within ten-meter-deep spent fuel pools of each reactor building, management of melted-down reactors and removal of corium debris, and deconstruction of reactor buildings and the greater plant.
At Unit 4, spent fuel removal operations took around 13 months and concluded in December 2014. “When we began we didn’t know if fuel assemblies or racks were distorted. It turned out they weren’t, and we were able to remove all fuel conventionally without any issues at all. Actually, it went exceedingly well, concluding ahead of schedule and under cost,” recalled Barrett. In all, 1,533 fuel assemblies were removed and transferred to a common spent fuel pool onsite.
Spent fuel removal at Unit 4 was accomplished with conventional techniques.
Defueling of pools at Units 1 through 3, which suffered meltdowns, isn’t going to be as straightforward. For one, there’s some expectation of debris and circumstances requiring extraordinary removal procedures. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we find some structurally bent fuel assemblies caused by large pieces of concrete or steel,” said Barrett.
Additionally, although radiation in Unit 3 has been reduced sufficiently to allow rotating shifts of workers to install defueling equipment, the already painstaking operations will have to be conducted remotely. The same is likely true for Units 1 and 2.
At Unit 3, the next in line for defueling, preparation is already well underway. In addition to decontamination and installation of shielding plates, TEPCO has removed the original fuel handling crane, which had fallen into the pool seven years ago, and installed a new fuel handling crane and machine. An indication of extraordinary containment methods being used, workers have built a domed containment roof at Unit 3. TEPCO’s Kohta told Ars, “Removal of spent fuel [at Unit 3] is scheduled to begin from around the middle of 2018;” meanwhile, Unit 1 is also in a preparatory stage and Unit 2 will be handled last.
Further down the line still, corium will have to be removed from melted-down reactors. It’s a daunting task, the likes of which has never been undertaken before. The reactors held varying, but known, amounts of uranium oxide fuel, about 150 tonnes each. But how much extra mass the fuel collected as it melted through reactor vessels is uncertain.
“At TMI there was exactly 93 tonnes in the reactor. Once we were done digging out fuel debris, we’d removed 130 tonnes. At Fukushima, I expect maybe a factor of five to ten more mass in core debris. It’s an ugly, ugly mess underneath the PCVs,” suggested Barrett.
High-powered lasers, drills and core boring technologies for cutting, and strong robotic arms for grappling and removing corium are already under development, according to IRID, but precise methodologies remain undecided.
The original plan, Barrett explained, was to flood PCVs and work underwater—a conventional nuclear operations technique that affords protection from contamination. But this requires water-tight PCVs, something that cannot be practically achieved at Fukushima. Discussions also continue over whether a side or top-down entry would be best. “Altogether, we don’t have enough physical data about PCVs to commit to a final decision,” said Barrett, referring back to the need for continued PCV investigations. According to Kohta, fuel debris removal isn’t scheduled to commence before the end of 2021.
Without doubt, the road ahead of TEPCO is a long one, beset with challenges greater than those faced to date. The Mid- and Long-Term Roadmap—the Japanese state-curated document outlining the decommissioning of Fukushima—envisions operations stretching a full 30-40 years into the future. Some have suggested it’s an optimistic target, others say that the plan lacks details on key, long-term issues such as permanent solid-waste storage beyond the onsite repository currently being employed. Certainly it is the case that key decisions remain.
For his part, Barrett concluded: “I believe that the 40-year timeframe is reasonable for a scientifically based decommissioning; that’s to say, to reach a point similar to that of a normal reactor at the end of its life. That’s not reaching the point of a green field where you’d want to put a children’s school. Could it be a brown-field, industrial site, though? Yes it could. That’s a rational, reasonable end point.”
By all accounts, it is hard to gauge the costs for the Fukushima clean-up. Kohta told Ars that works completed to date have cost about 500.2 billion yen, or $4.7 billion—a tremendous sum, to be sure, but fractional compared to the estimate of 8 trillion yen ($74.6 billion) approved by the Japanese state last May for the complete decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi.
May 12, 2018
Posted by dunrenard |
Fukushima 2018 | decommissioning, Fukushima Daiichi, Nuclear Disaster, Remediations |
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“No follow up” from Trump over staying in climate pact-UN by Reuters, 9 May 2018 The rules of the Paris Agreement mean that Trump cannot formally pull out before November 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election
* UN’s Espinosa asked Washington for conditions for staying
* Says still hopes U.S. may stay in Paris pact
* Nearly 200 nations working on ‘rule book’ for 2015 pact
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle BONN, Germany, May 9 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to outline what changes he wants in a 2015 global climate agreement as the price for dropping his plan to quit, the United Nations’ climate chief said on Wednesday.
Patricia Espinosa said she had asked Washington for its demands after Trump announced last June that he planned to quit the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to end the fossil fuel era this century with a shift to cleaner energies.
“There has not been a follow-up” from Washington, she told Reuters during negotiations in Bonn among almost 200 nations on a “rule book” for the 2015 agreement.
Espinosa, a former Mexican foreign minister who leads the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said she had stressed that the pact was flexible, allowing all countries to set their own targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“I would not like to see the U.S. leaving. I certainly hope there is a reconsideration of this decision,” she said of Trump’s plan to pull out.
Trump doubts the view of mainstream science that man-made greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures.
The rules of the Paris Agreement mean that Trump cannot formally pull out before November 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election.
In announcing the U.S. withdrawal, Trump said Paris was a bad deal that would harm the U.S. economy, but added: “We will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”……..
The Bonn meeting, which ends on Thursday, is working on rules for the Paris Agreement due to be in place by the end of the year, such as how to measure and account for greenhouse gas emissions and climate finance for developing nations that is meant to reach $100 billion a year by 2020.
“A good set of rules … should be a way to give comfort and confidence to the concerns they (the United States) could have,” said Espinosa.
Asked if she would be happy for the United States to stay, while watering down deep cuts in emissions promised by former President Barack Obama, Espinosa said: “I think we should not choose between those two scenarios.” (Reporting By Alister Doyle Editing by Gareth Jones) http://news.trust.org/item/20180509154353-w3u79/
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, politics international, USA |
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Zion’s effort to shed lakefront nuclear waste backed by U.S. House vote, Chicago Tribune, Frank Abderholden Contact Reporter, News-Sun , 10 May 18
A bill on nuclear waste policy that would restart the Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada was approved by the the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday, including an amendment introduced by U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider that also calls for a task force to be created to help communities like Zion that have stranded nuclear waste.
The 10th District Democrat said the amendment requires the secretary of energy to assemble a stranded nuclear waste task force that would identify existing resources and funding opportunities throughout the federal government to assist communities in the decommissioning process.
“For too long, communities like Zion have been saddled with housing our nation’s stranded nuclear waste while the federal government has failed to meet its legal obligation to find a permanent repository,” Schneider said in a statement following Thursday morning’s vote on Capitol Hill.
His amendment calls for the Department of Energy to complete the study in 180 days and report back to Congress with its findings.
“The project will be physically completed with (deactivation and decommissioning) in 2018,” Walker said last year. Although the federal government designated decades ago that the waste would go to Yucca Mountain in Nevada for permanent storage, the facility has not yet opened, and Zion is stuck with the waste until a solution can be found.
“I am very pleased this amendment passed the House, appreciate the bipartisan support from my colleagues and urge the Senate to take up this matter urgently,” Schneider said.
H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018, was described by Schneider as “an important step forward,” but he added that more needs to be done for communities forced to store nuclear waste.
“I will continue to work with Mayor Al Hill, the city of Zion and my colleagues in Congress to get communities shouldering this burden the federal help they are owed,” Schneider said.
He added that the spent fuel stored in dry casks along the lakefront — an amount estimated last year at 1,025 metric tons — presents both “an extreme environmental hazard, and a severe burden on the quality of life of the residents of Zion — deterring economic investment, depressing home values and driving up property taxes to fill the local revenue void.”
……… “We just want them to get (the waste) out of here,” Hill said. “We are pleased with any program that will give us an opportunity to get the spent fuel rods out of our community.”
Adding that “we are pushing a large stone up a steep hill,” Hill said he believes “the federal government has not lived up to its contract with the utilities” on having a place to put the spent fuel rods.
“We lived up to our end of the contract,” he said.
While the power plant operated, ratepayers paid into a trust fund set up for the plant’s decommissioning. The $820 million fund was turned over to EnergySolutions when it took over the work in Zion following the plant’s 1998 deactivation. At the end of the project, any remaining funds are designed to be turned back over to Exelon.
According to the Associated Press, the House voted 340-72 Thursday morning to revive the mothballed nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain despite opposition from home-state lawmakers…… http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-lns-zion-nuclear-waste-yucca-mountain-st-0511-story.html
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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House hands off nuclear waste storage bill to Senate, https://www.utilitydive.com/news/house-hands-off-nuclear-waste-storage-bill-to-senate/523291/, Iulia Gheorghiu, 11 May 18
Dive Brief:
- The House of Representatives on Thursday passed 340-72 H.R. 3053, sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., which seeks to restart the process to build a permanent repository for commercial nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
- The bill would also allow the Department of Energy (DOE) to consolidate and store nuclear waste temporarily, as the agency is currently unable to consider interim storage before the development of a permanent repository.
- The legislation has been strongly opposed by the Nevada delegation — Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., once referred to the policy to permanently store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain as the “Screw Nevada bill.” Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., called H.R. 3053 “dead on arrival in the Senate” in a statement last June.
Dive Insight:
Opposition in the House came mainly from states that would be most impacted by the transportation of nuclear waste to the permanent storage site, led by Nevada representatives. Earlier this month, Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., called the bill “Screw Nevada 2.0” when speaking on the House floor.
On Tuesday, the Rules Committee arranged for only one of the amendments from Nevada’s representatives to be considered on the floor, from Titus. Her substitute amendment, which was rejected 80-332, sought to establish a consent-based siting process to determine a permanent repository. Consent-based siting would have placed an almost-insurmountable barrier to selecting Yucca Mountain as a permanent storage site.
The House bill had bipartisan backing and supported the buildout of interim nuclear storage, a policy that the Obama administration had also supported. Legislative efforts to reach a conclusion on permanent storage at Yucca Mountain have been stalled time and time again. But the bill has also gained momentum as more nuclear reactors near retirement and commercial nuclear waste accumulates.
The biggest challenge for the bill will be Sen. Heller’s block, confirmed Matthew Wald, senior communications adviser for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group. Heller is currently blocking consideration of two Nuclear Regulatory Commission nominees who support Yucca Mountain as a permanent waste repository, according to Roll Call.
As it stands, the DOE is on the hook for a solution to permanent nuclear waste storage. The agency was supposed to begin collecting spent nuclear fuel rods in 1998 and remains responsible for storing them. Nuclear companies had been paying the agency through the Nuclear Waste Fund for the development of a permanent storage site, but the legislative stalls regarding Yucca Mountain have immobilized the DOE.
As a result, the agency is an easy legal target for the nuclear waste storing duties it has failed to perform under contract. Taxpayers pay about $800 million in damages to nuclear companies every year the government does not act, according to an estimate of legal judgments done by NEI.
When looking for the smartest, easiest, most productive solutions, there are better answers than what DOE is currently doing with nuclear waste: “babysitting this stuff in more than 100 different locations,” as NEI’s Wald put it.
A preferable alternative, according to NEI, would be centralizing interim storage for the spent nuclear fuel, much of which is housed on-site at retired nuclear plants. Interest exists among corporate groups to reprocess the spent nuclear fuel or store it temporarily.
The NRC issued a license in 2006 to Private Fuel Storage, LLC, a nuclear power utility consortium, to build temporary above-ground storage for spent nuclear fuel rods in Utah. The consortium needed approval from additional agencies and the operation never took off, although the NRC license is valid until 2026. Utah regulations ultimately made it very difficult to get fuel to the interim storage site, Wald told Utility Dive.
NRC has received other similar licensing requests, including a 2017 proposal for temporary storage in New Mexico from Holtec International.
Holtec sees the passage of H.R. 3050 as a good step towards interim and long-term solutions for nuclear waste storage.
“We believe this is a critical step for the future of nuclear power, including for innovative new reactors such as our SMR-160,” Joy Russell, Holtec’s vice president of corporate business development, wrote Utility Dive in an email.
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA, wastes |
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Sacramento CBS local, May 10, 2018
BODEGA BAY (KPIX) — It’s been more than 50 years since a small group of environmentalists fought off PG&E’s plans to build a nuclear plant in the North Bay.
The 70-foot pit the utility dug at Bodega Head still stands as an unofficial monument to the woman who led the charge.
KPIX 5 on Friday returned to the site with geologist and power plant opponent Doris Sloan.
“Come and see this, it’s amazing. Look at how still it is. It’s beautiful.”
There on the edge of Bodega Bay, Sloan took a moment to appreciate her own legacy and an amazing piece of California history.
“You wouldn’t know now — looking at this — that it isn’t natural,” said Sloan.
What is now commonly known as Bodega’s “Hole in the Head” was made back in the 1960s by PG&E…….
Bodega Head was where the company wanted to build the first commercially viable nuclear power plant in the United States.
“Today it seems totally insane,” said Sloan…..
The victory not only saved the land in Bodega, it is widely considered to be the birth of the modern environmental movement.
“Such an honor to meet here today. We, the folks that work out here, think about this a lot, what they did. This is a special place,” said Suzanne Olyarnik, who works with the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory.
On Thursday, Sloan was honored for her role in saving this coastline as we know it. http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2018/05/10/bodega-bay-nuclear-plant/
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
NORTH AMERICA, opposition to nuclear |
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