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Ahead of Olympic Games, Fukushima nuclear power plant gets an extreme makeover

Extreme makeover: Fukushima nuclear plant tries image overhaul, Channel News Asia, 3 August 18, 

FUKUSHIMA: Call it an extreme makeover: In Japan’s Fukushima, officials are attempting what might seem impossible, an image overhaul at the site of the worst nuclear meltdown in decades.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, there’s a flashy new administrative building, debris has been moved and covered, and officials tout the “light” radioactive security measures now possible.

“You see people moving around on foot, just in their uniforms. Before that was banned,” an official from the plant’s operator TEPCO says.

“These cherry blossoms bloom in the spring,” he adds, gesturing to nearby foliage.

If it sounds like a hard sell, that might be because the task of rehabilitating the plant’s reputation is justifiably Herculean.

………TEPCO officials have been gradually trying to rebrand the plant, bringing in school groups, diplomats and other visitors, and touting a plan to attract 20,000 people a year by 2020, when Tokyo hosts the Summer Olympics.

Officials point out that protective gear is no longer needed in most of the plant, except for a small area, where some 3,000 to 4,000 workers are still decontaminating the facility.

Since May, visitors have been able to move around near the reactors on foot, rather than only in vehicles, and they can wear “very light equipment,” insists TEPCO spokesman Kenji Abe.

That ensemble includes trousers, long sleeves, a disposable face mask, glasses, gloves, special shoes and two pairs of socks, with the top pair pulled up over the trouser hem to seal the legs underneath.

And of course there’s a geiger counter.

The charm offensive extends beyond the plant, with TEPCO in July resuming television and billboard adverts for the first time since 2011, featuring a rabbit mascot with electrical bolt whiskers called “Tepcon”.

But the upbeat messaging belies the enormity of the task TEPCO faces to decommission the plant.

It has installed an “icewall” that extends deep into the ground around the plant in a bid to prevent groundwater seeping in and becoming decontaminated, or radioactive water from inside flowing out to the sea.

But about 100,000 litres of water still seeps into the plant each day, some of which is used for cooling. It requires extensive treatment to reduce its radioactivity.

Once treated, the water is stored in tanks, which have multiplied around the plant as officials wrangle over what to do with the contaminated liquid.

There are already nearly 900 tanks containing a million cubic metres of water – equal to about 400 Olympic swimming pools.

And the last stage of decommissioning involves the unprecedented task of extracting molten nuclear fuel from the reactors…….https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/extreme-makeover–fukushima-nuclear-plant-tries-image-overhaul-10586540

August 4, 2018 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Secret transport of nuclear wastes from Illinois to Port Huron?

Group: Nuclear waste could be trucked from Illinois to Port Huron, Bob Gross, Port Huron Times Herald, 3 Aug 18  

A coalition of environmental groups claims a letter from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicates that nuclear waste from power plants in Illinois will be trucked to Port Huron and shipped from there to an unknown destination.

“A spill, release or fire here or near waterways that flow into the St. Clair River could potentially ruin one of the largest fresh water deltas in the world – the St. Clair Flats – and potentially poison forever drinking water and freshwater ecosystems for up to 40-plus million people of the Great Lakes, including residents of Canada, the U.S., U.S. Tribes, First Nations and other indigenous peoples,” said Kay Cumbow of the Great Lakes Environmental Alliance in Port Huron, in a news release.

According to the news release from Don’t Waste Michigan, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, a letter dated July 13, from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to “Secured Transportation Services,” cites an application under 45-day review by the NRC for a highway transport route for high level radioactive waste from the LaSalle nuclear reactors in Illinois to the “Port Huron, Michigan Port of Exit.”

The letter was found July 23 among 467 documents on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s online ADAMS library, according to the news release. The number of transports is not given.

Secured Transportation Services, which is based in Buford, Georgia, is identified on the company’s website as the “leading transportation coordinator for spent nuclear fuel in North America.”

The letter only refers to shipping from central Illinois to Port Huron by a land route, according to the news release. It does not show where or how the waste would move from the city.

In a follow-up interview, Cumbow said the groups have more questions than answers about possible spent fuel shipments coming to Port Huron from Illinois………..

Cumbow said the letter only references highway route approval.

“Once it gets to Port Huron, we don’t know where it goes,” she said.

She said the waste is highly radioactive.

“It’s lethal when you are exposed to it,” Cumbow said. “Shielded, you’re fine. Any accident with this stuff, if there was a serious incident with this stuff, there is a likelihood people will be killed.

“The other thing is we don’t know what’s approved in Canada,” she said. “We don’t know where it is going. It might be going to Canada or it might be going through Canada to somewhere else.”

She said safety issues posed by the state’s crumbling road and bridge infrastructure are other concerns.

 “There might be a little bit of this going across the border, or there might be a whole lot of it going across the border,” Cumbow said. “We just don’t know. I think as a society we should be looking at ways to stop poisoning our land and water.”

According to the news release, NRC spokesman Alex Sapountzis is quoted in an email to an NRC librarian as stating that “details of all spent nuclear fuel routes are designated as Safeguards Information/sensitive information and therefore will not be placed in ADAMS. All a member of the public will see in ADAMS is that in a letter we state we accepted for review a route (it has all the information we need to conduct our review) and then an approval letter (based on the information the applicant submitted, we accept the route and for transport by road it’s good for 5 years or by rail for 7 years).”

Contact Bob Gross at (810) 989-6263 or rgross@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobertGross477.  https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/news/local/port-huron/2018/08/03/group-nuclear-waste-could-trucked-illinois-port-huron/899259002/

August 4, 2018 Posted by | Canada, safety, USA | Leave a comment

£10bn Moorside nuclear power plant plunged into further doubt

Moorside nuclear bidder stripped of preferred status, Construction News, 3 AUGUST, 2018BY BINYAMIN ALI 

The £10bn Moorside nuclear power plant has been plunged into further doubt after Korean energy firm Kepco lost its preferred bidder status to develop the scheme.

The plant’s current developer Toshiba is now looking at alternative options for the future of the site after negotiations with Kepco failed to reach a conclusion.

Kepco looked to have saved the embattled project when it swooped in December last year and was named preferred bidder ahead of China’s CGN.

Toshiba said this week that a sale to Kepco was still on the table and it was in “consultation with stakeholders including the UK government” to find a solution.

The protracted negotiations have also forced NuGen, Toshiba’s Moorside development body, to restructure its business………

the National Infrastructure Commission last month called on government to withhold financial support for all but one of the planned new nuclear projects until at least 2025.

The commission said the government should focus on investing in renewable energy projects instead, some of which are now being built with no government subsidies. https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/markets/sectors/nuclear/moorside-nuclear-bidder-stripped-of-preferred-status/10033902.article

August 4, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, politics, South Korea, UK | Leave a comment

U.S. Navy’s $1 Billion Plan for Breaking Down Old Nuclear-Powered Carrier

US Navy Considered $1 Billion Plan for Breaking Down Old Nuclear-Powered Carrier https://sputniknews.com/military/201808031066935225-US-Navy-Considered-1-Billion-Plan-Breaking-Down-Nuclear-Powered-Carrier/
MILITARY & INTELLIGENCE 03.08.2018 

The US Navy has yet to choose a way forward for dismantling the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier. The delay has been motivated in part by the fact that disposing of the nuclear-powered craft could cost more than $1 billion ‒ a pill the Navy is loathe to swallow.

The Government Accountability Office published a report Thursday indicating that in 2013 “the Navy’s cost estimate for the shipyard” in Puget Sound, Washington, “to perform all [USS Enterprise] dismantlement and disposal activities increased — from a range of $500 million to $750 million — to well over $1 billion.”

As a result of this rather significant expense — about 25 percent of what it cost to build the ship in 1958 in inflation-adjusted terms — the Navy decided to ditch the plans. As the ship, built between 1958 and 1961, was the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the government wants to take special care in dismantling it and must comply with stringent guidelines set in place by nuclear regulation bodies separate from the Navy.

There is also a policy precedent to be set by how the carrier is deconstructed, in terms of “the processes, costs and oversight that may be used to dismantle and dispose of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the future.” Specifically, the manner in which the Enterprise is disposed of will set an example for how to do the same thing with the US Navy’s aging fleet of Nimitz-class carriers.

One of the thornier issues when it comes to disposal of the carrier is what to do with the nuclear waste produced by its propulsion generators. In 2016, the Navy thought it would have commercial contractors bid for contracts to break down the non-nuclear parts of the ship — everything except what’s referred to as the propulsion space section.

As GAO conducted its study, the Navy decided to ditch this plan. Instead, the Navy is now considering two options for the USS Enterprise, the watchdog noted. One route would be to do most of the deconstruction in Puget Sound, and then dump the nuclear waste at the US Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state. The other route is for commercial contractors to do all the dismantling. There is no estimate provided in GAO’s report for how much each of these routes would cost the US Navy, and by extension US taxpayers.

Under the 100 percent commercial dismantling route, the US Navy needs to coordinate with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has regulatory jurisdiction over the private nuclear industry, the GAO said. The Pentagon agreed with this recommendation, Stars and Stripes reported Friday.

August 4, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

University of Alberta’s Medical Isotope Cyclotron Facility – medical radioisotopes without nuclear reactor

University’s cyclotron facility could fully supply province’s demand for medical isotopes HINA ALAM, Edmonton Journal : May 15, 2018  

For an Albertan who needs it, the journey of a radioactive isotope that has the ability to detect a potential heart or a bone cancer could begin at the University of Alberta’s Medical Isotope Cyclotron Facility…….

Although tests conducted over the past few months have shown that the U of A facility is capable of meeting the province’s need for 1,000 diagnostic procedures a day, there are still hurdles to overcome and its future use for producing technetium is still unclear…..

But research lead and university oncology department chairman Sandy McEwan sees a silver lining….

There are three isotopes that are commonly used — technetium-99m, a radioactive molecule of fluorine used in PET (positron emission tomography) scanning, and isotopes of iodine, used to detect and treat thyroid cancers.

Technetium-99m is the most common of these, and has a half-life of six hours, meaning that only half of it remains after that time. This is advantageous because the imaging scan is quick and the technetium doesn’t linger around in the body. This also means that the isotope must be produced quickly.

In the cyclotron, McEwan said it takes about six hours to make enough technetium-99m for the province each day.

……… ……The U of A technology shows that the isotope can be made locally and the science replicated across the country.

As it stands now, a dose of technetium-99m produced by the cyclotron at U of A is about 10 per cent more expensive compared to a dose of technetium-99m produced by traditional reactors.

“But that includes costing everything,” McEwan said. “It includes costing the cyclotron, the building, the research, the operations — everything.”

McEwan said the technetium-99m produced by the cyclotron is of a slightly higher purity profile than what you get from a reactor.

Also, most of the reactors are extremely old, said John Wilson, manager of the facility……

“Nuclear reactors are the highest capacity source for technetium-99m but are very, very expensive and create nuclear waste,” he said. “No one wants a reactor built close to where they live.” Jan Andersson, a researcher at the facility said as the supply stands now, reactors produce molybdenum-99, which has a half-life of 66 days and decays into technetium-99m, which is used in patients. This allows isotope to be supplied from far away but only if the reactors are running.

McEwan believes that technetium PET imaging will soon fade to give way to newer technologies, and the cyclotron is well-positioned to handle that.

“The cyclotron is Canadian,” he said. “We have a made-in-Canada solution.”

August 4, 2018 Posted by | Canada, health | Leave a comment

TEPCO considers scrapping some reactors – at request of municipalities

NHK 2nd Aug 2018 The president of Tokyo Electric Power Company says the utility is
considering scrapping some of the reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant,
at the request of one of the 2 municipalities that host the nuclear
facility. TEPCO President Tomoaki Kobayakawa revealed for first time the
request is under consideration during a meeting with Kashiwazaki Mayor
Masahiro Sakurai. The pair met in the Niigata Prefecture city located on
the Japan Sea coast on Thursday.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180802_36/

August 4, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, Japan, politics | Leave a comment

Japan’s NRA plans nuclear wastes burial at least 70 meters deep for about 100,000 years

Mainichi 2nd Aug 2018 , The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) plans to require that highly
radioactive waste generated when nuclear reactors are decommissioned be
buried underground at least 70 meters deep for about 100,000 years until
the waste becomes no longer hazardous.

Moreover, disposal sites for such waste should not be built in areas that could be affected by active faults
or volcanoes. The plan is part of the proposed regulatory standards on
disposal sites for radioactive waste from dismantled nuclear reactors,
which the NRA approved on Aug. 1. The NRA will hear opinions from power
companies operating nuclear plants and other entities before finalizing the
regulatory standards.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180802/p2a/00m/0na/008000c

August 4, 2018 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

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