Just weeks after Russia’s nuclear energy corporation said radiation levels were normal, the country’s meteorological service said it had registered extreme levels of radiation in the Urals two months ago.
European radiation monitors detected a cloud of radioactive material originating in Russia’s southern Urals over two dozen European countries in late September and early October. The material could have come from “a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing or the production of radioactive sources.
Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom said the release of the radioactive material, Ruthenium 106 or Ru-106, was in line with natural background radiation, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency reported at the time.
On Monday, Russia’s Federal Meteorological Service said it had registered extreme levels of Ru-106 across several locations in late September. The highest levels of the radioisotope — 986 times the norm — were located in Chelyabinsk region, the site of the Mayak nuclear facility.
Mayak makes components for nuclear weapons and processes spent nuclear fuel. One of its storage facilities exploded in 1957 — a fact that went unreported until three decades later.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Mayak said it was not the source of the excess Ru-106 concentration.
Greenpeace in Russia said it planned to ask prosecutors to launch an inquiry into whether officials concealed a nuclear incident.
“Even taking into account that the observed concentration over Europe is small, tens of millions of people were impacted, and some of them will no doubt have health problems,” it said in a statement Monday.
Meanwhile, Chelyabinsk officials played down the dangers of excess radiation, saying they would have been ordered to evacuate if the levels were dangerous.
“The sources of this damaging information are in France, where there’s a nuclear waste processing facility that competes with our Mayak,” Yevgeny Savchenko, the region’s public security minister, told the regional news website Ura.news on Tuesday.
Originally published November 21, 2017 MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities have confirmed reports of a spike in radioactivity in the air over the Ural Mountains.
France’s nuclear safety agency earlier this month recorded radioactivity in the area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains from a suspected accident involving nuclear fuel or the production of radioactive material. It said the release of the isotope Ruthenium-106 posed no health or environmental risks to European countries.
The Russian Meteorological Service said in a statement Tuesday that it recorded the release of Ruthenium-106 in the southern Urals in late September and classified it as “extremely high contamination.”
After the first reports, Russia’s state-controlled Rosatom corporation said in a statement last month that it hadn’t come from its facilities.
An unfinished $16.8 billion complex to treat chemical and radioactive waste at the Hanford site in Central Washington continues to have problems that risk explosions and radioactive releases from unintended nuclear reactions, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report.
The board’s findings are at odds with a much more optimistic assessment offered by the U.S. Energy Department of the efforts to treat the toxic leftovers of decades of atomic weapons production. In a written statement last February, the Energy Department said major problems previously identified by the safety board had been “resolved,” and found that design work could resume on what the department calls a critical pre-treatment plant needed to process highly radioactive waste.
The latest report is more sobering news for a project conceived more than two decades ago whose costs have increased significantly and has had repeated delays because of safety concerns.
The report’s release comes at a difficult time for the board. The Trump administration is considering a proposal to downsize or abolish the board, which for nearly 30 years has provided independent oversight of defense nuclear sites across the country. The board’s backers say this report — challenging Energy Department assumptions — is more evidence of its vital review role.
“They don’t want to hear what the board has to say, but they absolutely need to,” said Dirk Dunning, a retired Oregon Department of Energy engineer who worked on Hanford issues for more than 20 years.
The board has been deeply involved in keeping watch over the development of Hanford’s waste-treatment complex, the largest of its kind in the world, on which ground was broken in 2002 on 65 acres of the nuclear reservation. The goal is to transform 56 million gallons of chemical and radioactive waste into glass rods that can be safely put into long-term storage. The process requires a hugely complex engineering effort because in part to the wide range of waste materials stored in 177 underground tanks, more than a third of which have leaked over the years.
But safety concerns, including those cited in the latest board report, have plagued the pre-treatment facility for years even as billions of dollars have been budgeted for engineering, labor, equipment and other costs.
“There are all the same issues and they still haven’t been addressed,” said Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, a public interest group that has advocated for whistleblowers, workers and accountability during the cleanup.
An Energy Department spokeswoman at Hanford’s Office of River Protection said the board’s analysis will be taken into consideration when design work resumes. But it still is unclear when that may happen.
The spokeswoman, Yvonne Levardi, said that when the Energy Department determines that a plant problem has been resolved, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is fixed but that enough progress has been made to resume design work.
During World War II, Hanford was claimed by the federal government as a secret site for producing plutonium that was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Nine reactors would eventually operate at Hanford, with the last one shut down in 1987.
The pre-treatment plant has long been designated as a key part of the cleanup. It will concentrate, and then filter out solid high-level radioactive waste that is some of the most challenging material stored in the tanks.
When completed, the pre-treatment plant is designed to contain more than 100 miles of piping and four huge stainless-steel tanks — each able to hold 375,000 gallons of waste — that will sit behind steel-laced concrete walls that workers cannot access.
The project is being run by Bechtel National, the lead contractor. By 2010, whistleblowers and the federal safety board had raised concerns over the risks of explosions from the buildup of hydrogen gas in the pipes and the potential for radioactive releases from unintended nuclear chain reactions, known as criticality hazards.
The design challenges have prompted a workaround to process what’s known as low-activity waste — material containing small concentrations of radionuclides requiring less protection for public health than highly radioactive waste. That work is expected to begin by 2022. But the deadline to open the pre-treatment facility has been pushed until 2036. It is intended to handle all waste, including highly radioactive material, such as spent fuel from nuclear reactors.
Some skeptics question whether the pre-treatment plant will eventually be abandoned in favor of alternative technologies.
“It is a massive project, and a lot of very serious issues have to be worked out before it can operate,” said Rick Schapira, a former deputy general counsel for the board. “If they can’t be addressed, you have to look to other ways to treat the waste.”
But the Energy Department statement released in February called resolution of the pre-treatment plant issues “critically important” to the overall mission. It said that the department had confirmed design, process changes and safety controls to address the potential for criticality and hydrogen buildups in pipes and vessels that posed an explosion risk.
“I could not be prouder of our … technical and nuclear safety teams for their focus and commitment to resolve these technical issues,” Bill Hamel, the assistant project manager for Hanford’s waste treatment plant, said in the statement.
The board’s review of that work was completed in June, and delivered Oct. 12 to James Owendoff, an acting assistant energy secretary. It is unclear why the board waited more than three months to formally deliver the report. A board spokeswoman did not return a reporter’s phone calls seeking comment for this story.
The board report cites 14 remaining problems. They range from a mixing system that may not operate reliably to a “lack of sufficient technical rigor” in safety assumptions required to handle heavy plutonium particles that pose a risk of criticality.
Washington state’s Department of Ecology also monitors Hanford.
Dan McDonald, a state project manager, had not seen the latest report until a reporter sent it to him. He did not dispute the board’s findings but said that he feels that significant progress has been made toward resolving the problems at the pre-treatment plant.
“Nothing in this report is new business for me,” McDonald said.
The Hanford report is the kind of tough-edged review that has long characterized the board’s work. But the board now faces critics, some from within its own ranks, who call for an end to these independent reviews.
In a June 29 letter to the Office of Management and Budget, safety board chairman Sean Sullivan called the board “a relic of the Cold War-era defense establishment” that is no longer needed by an Energy Department that has developed its own internal regulation. News of the letter was first reported last month by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative organization based in Washington, D.C.
Sullivan is one of five board members who serve five-year terms. They are backed by a professional staff of more than 100 able to dive into the formidable challenges of the federal nuclear-weapons sites.
The board members are appointed by the president, with no more than three members of any one party able to serve at the same time. President Barack Obama named Sullivan — a Republican attorney and retired Navy submarine officer — to the board in 2012. President Donald Trump appointed him chairman in January.
The board has no regulatory powers to require the Energy Department to take action. But its reports are made public and the Energy Department is required to respond to the panel’s formal recommendations.
The board also has provided an important forum for whistleblowers when they found that Energy Department and contractors ignored their concerns.
In 2011, the board — in response to whistleblower allegations — released a harsh assessment of a “failed safety culture” at the Hanford waste-treatment complex. The board found that technical objections were “discouraged, if not opposed or rejected without review.” This had a “substantial probability” of jeopardizing the project mission, the report found.
Schapira, the former board deputy general counsel, participated in the Hanford whistleblower investigation. He said that report was an important document that led to a broader review of the Energy Department’s safety culture at other nuclear sites.
Schapira, who retired from the board in 2013, said it also triggered a “buzz saw of opposition” from contractors who have pushed Congress to revise the board statutes. Those critics now appear to have an ally in Sullivan who, in keeping with Trump’s goal of downsizing the executive branch, suggested that the board be shut down, folded into the Energy Department or reduced in size.
“It’s a pretty shocking letter,” Schapira said, referring to the June letter. “One could construe from it that he was appointed to undo the board.”
The board also is facing pressure from the Energy Department to change how it does business.
In an Oct. 13 meeting with board members, Energy Department Undersecretary Frank Klotz recommended ending public disclosure of weekly and monthly accounts of safety issues at federal facilities, according to a report by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The center reported that board members briefly circulated a proposal to accommodate Klotz’s request, and then dropped it from consideration.
Schapira, who stays in touch with former colleagues, said professional staff members are frustrated by what they view as the politicalization of the board and the increasing difficulty of addressing technical problems that some board members don’t want to hear about.
“A number of them are very demoralized,” Schapira said.
Earlier this year, remotely piloted robots transmitted what officials believe was a direct view of melted radioactive fuel inside Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s destroyed reactors—a major discovery, but one that took a long and painful six years to achieve. In the meantime, the program to clean up the destroyed reactors has seen numerous setbacks and concerns, including delays on Japanese electrical utility Tepco’s timetable to begin removing the highly radioactive fuel and continued leakage of small amounts of radioactive substances.
Japanese officials are now hoping that they can convince a skeptical public that the worst of the disaster is over, the New York Times reported, but it’s not clear whether it’s too late despite the deployment of 7,000 workers and massive resources to return the region to something approaching normal. Per the Times, officials admit the recovery plan—involving the complete destruction of the plant, rather than simply building a concrete sarcophagus around it as the Russians did in Chernobyl—will take decades and tens of billions of dollars. Currently, Tepco plans to begin removing waste from one of the three contaminated reactors at the plant by 2021, “though they have yet to choose which one.”
“Until now, we didn’t know exactly where the fuel was, or what it looked like,” Tepco manager Takahiro Kimoto told the Times. “Now that we have seen it, we can make plans to retrieve it.”
“They are being very methodical—too slow, some would say—in making a careful effort to avoid any missteps or nasty surprises,” Union of Concerned Scientists nuclear safety director David Lochbaum added. “They want to regain trust. They have learned that trust can be lost much quicker than it can be recovered.”
Currently, radiation levels are so high in the ruined facility that it fries robots sent in within a matter of hours, which will necessitate developing a new generation of droids with even higher radiation tolerances. Authorities have built a crane on the roof of one melted-down reactor, unit No. 3, to remove fuel, Phys.org reported, though it will not actually be in use until at least April 2018. Disposal of low level waste such as “rice straw, sludge and ash from waste incineration” has only just begun, the Japan Times wrote. The eventual disposal of more dangerous waste will be much more difficult.
At the same time, criticism of the government’s approach is also mounting with concerns it is pressuring residents to return to an area where radiation exposure remains many times the international standard.
Japanese property owners and businesses near the Fukushima nuclear plant that melted down after a devastating 2011 tsunami filed a $500 million class-action lawsuit against General Electric for negligently designing the doomed plant.
The lawsuit, filed yesterday in federal court in Boston, claims the explosions and release of radioactive material at the Fukushima reactors — likely the most costly industrial accident in history at $200 billion — were caused by GE’s unsafe design of the reactors and further efforts to cut costs that also undercut safety during the construction of the plant.
As a result, the area around Fukushima, according to the lawsuit, became a “ghost town.”
“There are no people. Roads are guarded by men in hazmat suits. And no one will ever live there again,” the lawsuit said.
GE said in a statement it became aware of the lawsuit today and is “thoroughly reviewing the matter.”
The company pushed into the nuclear industry in the 1960s and offered a “cheap reactor … with a significantly smaller, but less safe containment than industry standard” that safety experts repeatedly raised concerns about, the lawsuit said.
GE designed all six reactors at Fukushima — building two on site and advising on the construction of the rest. Original designs for the power plant called for it to be built near a bluff 115 feet above sea level. But GE — to save money — lowered the bluff to 80 feet, court papers say, “dramatically increasing the flood risk.”
Backup systems in the event of a problem at the nuclear plant were also woefully lacking, causing the cooling system to fail, the suit states.
All this was done in an earthquake-prone region, the Japanese residents and business owners say. Fukushima was built on a 13-foot bluff with a plan to handle 101⁄2-foot waves, the lawsuit said.
The March 2011 earthquake that crippled the power plant unleashed a 45-foot tsunami.
The lawsuit follows the conclusion of two others this year in Japan against the power plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the government, resulting in payouts of $335,000 and $4.4 million for residents who were forced from their homes.
Most media were satisfied with reassuring information on the situation in Europe, which unfortunately in their silence.
All lessons must be learned from these dysfunctions both at European and international level so that opacity and indifference do not preside over the management of the next nuclear disaster.
“At the European level, to our knowledge, no instructions have been given to mobilize the networks of measurements and analytical laboratories; no official information has been released; no warning has addressed to European nationals traveling or residing in regions potentially at risk.” CRIIRAD
“All lessons must be learned from these dysfunctions both at European and international level so that opacity and indifference do not preside over the management of the next nuclear disaster.”
The rapid notification system for nuclear accidents set up after the Chernobyl disaster is in total failure. We still do not know which facility is causing the contamination. We do not know how many workers, how many inhabitants, how many children were exposed to radiation; how many were contaminated; what doses of radiation they were able to receive … But all is well, since in Europe ruthenium levels 106 remained very low!
The recommendation also said Japan should abolish or suspend the death penalty, reflecting calls from European Union countries, and continue to provide support to those affected by the Fukushima nuclear crisis caused by the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In particular, a directive to address health issues faced by pregnant mothers and children was noted.
A U.N. body has called on Japan to take steps to better protect press freedoms as concerns about the country’s laws aimed at curtailing leaks of state secrets could hinder the work of journalists.
In another of the 218 non-legally binding recommendations on Japan’s human rights record released by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s working group, Tokyo was urged to apologize and pay compensation to “comfort women” forced to work in Japan’s World War II military brothels.
The recommendations reflected the views of some 105 countries. Of the issues raised, the U.N. council will adopt those that have been accepted by the country in question at a plenary session around March 2018.
In relation to freedom of the press in Japan, the recommendation called on the country to amend Article 4 of the broadcasting law that gives the government authority to suspend broadcasting licenses of TV stations not considered…
A brand-new theory of the opening moments during the Chernobyl disaster, the most severe nuclear accident in history, based on additional analysis is presented for the first time in the journal Nuclear Technology, an official journal of the American Nuclear Society.
The new theory suggests the first of the two explosions reported by eyewitnesses was a nuclear and not a steam explosion, as is currently widely thought and is presented by researchers from the Swedish Defence Research Agency, Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, and Stockholm University.
They hypothesize that the first explosive event was a jet of debris ejected to very high altitudes by a series of nuclear explosions within the reactor. This was followed, within three seconds, by a steam explosion which ruptured the reactor and sent further debris into the atmosphere at lower altitudes.
The theory is based on new analysis of xenon isotopes detected by scientists from the V.G. Khlopin Radium Institute in the Leningrad, four days after the accident, at Cherepovets, a city north of Moscow far from the major track of Chernobyl debris.
These isotopes were the product of recent nuclear fission, suggesting they could be the result of a recent nuclear explosion. In contrast, the main Chernobyl debris which tracked northwest to Scandinavia contained equilibrium xenon isotopes from the reactor’s core.
By assessing the weather conditions across the region at the time, the authors also established that the fresh xenon isotopes at Cherepovets were the result of debris injected into far higher altitudes than the debris from the reactor rupture which drifted towards Scandinavia.
Observations of the destroyed reactor tank indicated that the first explosion caused temperatures high enough to melt a two-meter thick bottom plate in part of the core. Such damage is consistent with a nuclear explosion.
In the rest of the core, the bottom plate was relatively intact, though it had dropped by nearly four meters. This suggests a steam explosion which did not create temperatures high enough to melt the plate but generated sufficient pressure to push it down.
Lead author and retired nuclear physicist from the Swedish Defence Research Agency, Lars-Erik De Geer commented, “We believe that thermal neutron mediated nuclear explosions at the bottom of a number of fuel channels in the reactor caused a jet of debris to shoot upwards through the refuelling tubes.
“This jet then rammed the tubes’ 350kg plugs, continued through the roof and travelled into the atmosphere to altitudes of 2.5-3km where the weather conditions provided a route to Cherepovets. The steam explosion which ruptured the reactor vessel occurred some 2.7 seconds later.”
Seismic measurements and an eye-witness report of a blue flash above the reactor a few seconds after the first explosion also support the new hypothesis of a nuclear explosion followed by a steam explosion. This new analysis brings insight into the disaster, and may potentially prove useful in preventing future similar incidents from occurring.
“At the European level, to our knowledge, no instructions have been given to mobilize the networks of measurements and analytical laboratories; no official information has been released; no warning has addressed to European nationals traveling or residing in regions potentially at risk.” CRIIRAD
“All lessons must be learned from these dysfunctions both at European and international level so that opacity and indifference do not preside over the management of the next nuclear disaster.”
The rapid notification system for nuclear accidents set up after the Chernobyl disaster is in total failure. We still do not know which facility is causing the contamination. We do not know how many workers, how many inhabitants, how many children were exposed to radiation; how many were contaminated; what doses of radiation they were able to receive … But all is well, since in Europe ruthenium levels 106 remained very low!
The World Health Organization (WHO) continues to be silent: no warning, no warning, no request investigation was launched by the WHO Office for Europe, whose expertise extends from Greenland to Siberia, including the States singled out by official simulations, including the Russian Federation.
In blue the area is under the WHO Office for Europe. The International Atomic Energy Agency turns away the eye and attention: no position taken despite its responsibilities under the International Convention on Early Notification of Nuclear Accidents! No call for investigation. On the contrary: the publication of a document “for authorities’ use only” which focuses on the absence of any risk in Europe, deliberately obscuring the situation in the rejection! And what about the tables of results produced in the appendix? Clearly erroneous data and other which contradict the simulations of the IRSN without anyone worrying! Can not check anything because the results of analyzes, yet paid by the taxpayers of the countries concerned, are not free to access!
CRIIRAD challenges the World Health Organization Read the mail of 17/11/2017 CRIIRAD wrote this day to Mrs JAKAD, Director of the WHO European Office, to ask for explanations of the total silence of this body in a file likely to pose significant health problems. according to the IRSN rating of 9/11/2017, experts from several countries agree on the importance of radioactive release 1. He would have/may require:
1 / the implementation of protective measures such as confinement or evacuation in a radius of 5 km around the site of emission and
2 / the control of the contamination of the food up to 40 km of distance.
Recall that the authorities have set particularly high dose levels for triggering these emergency measures. If official estimates are correct, areas requiring protective measures extend well beyond these perimeters. How has WHO been able to remain silent and can it remain so today? Why did not she alerted to the need to act very quickly in case of atmospheric contamination? Why did not she explain that exposure levels in the discharge zone have nothing to do with what can be measured at 1,000 or 2,000 km from distance? Why has it not reminded the States likely to be at the origin of the rejection that everything must be put in to identify the facility in question and limit exposures? Does not its constitution stipulate that governments have responsibility for the health of their peoples? 1 According to IRSN calculations, the ruthenium 106 release would be between 100 and 300 TBq. This radionuclide is necessarily in equilibrium with its short-lived descendant Rhodium 106, also radioactive, and could be accompanied by ruthenium 103 (radio- nuclide detected at very low levels in Sweden). The absence of any other radionuclide remains to be demonstrated, in particular (but not only) in the rejection sector.
We can only note, once again, the total erasure of this agency when the nuclear power is in cause. One can only wonder again about the consequences of the agreement which binds WHO to the IAEA, forces it to to deal with the statutory mission of the latter, which is to ensure the development of civilian nuclear energy. It was necessary to intervene without delay because the exposures are major in the first days and the first weeks but there is still time to act. CRIIRAD calls on WHO to make every effort to determine what is happened and to provide the victims with all the help they need.
CRIIRAD challenges the International Atomic Energy Agency Read the mail of 17/11/2017 CRIIRAD is surprised by the absence of any public position taken by the IAEA while the provisions of the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident 2 are clearly violated. She asked that the IAEA carry out, or cause to be carried out, all the investigations necessary to identify the origin of the contamination.
CRIIRAD also denounces the content of the documents that the IAEA has written“for the exclusive use of the authorities”: the “Status of Measurements of Ru-106 in Europe” press release and its technical annex presenting the measures transmitted to the IAEA until 13/10/2017. The IAEA totally obscures the question of the origin of the contamination and the risks incurred on the spot!
Moreover, the agency’s assessments of the situation in Europe leave no room for no worry: according to her, the implementation of protective measures would be justified only after one dose 100 mSv in 7 days! Gold:
1 / the value of 100 mSv corresponds to the upper limit of the range of 20 to 100 mSv recommended by the ICRP, and chosen by the European Union, for the management of nuclear accidents;
2 / the application of values above 20 mSv would only be justified in the event of a major nuclear accident in Europe. For the impact of a long-range accident, populations must demand that the level of radiological risk exceeds that defined for normal situations, which is already high enough, ie 1 mSv / year. In addition, the 11 pages of results published in the appendix contain clearly erroneous statements. For some results, there is confusion between the date of air sampling and the date of publication of the results. By elsewhere, the table shows that contamination reached Budapest on 25 September at the latest. But there is more 2,500 km between central Hungary and the area that the IRSN simulation designates with the strongest probability (60 to 80%) as the source of the release. It is highly unlikely that the contamination could cross such a distance in 24 hours. A delay of 3 or 4 days would be more logical but it puts in question the modelizations who place the date of rejection in the last week of September. The IAEA must also specify the arguments on which it relies to remove the runway from a powered satellite by a source of ruthenium 106. The official models are based on the assumption that this origin is excluded on the basis of IAEA declarations but no supporting text has been published.
Europe: carelessness, cowardice or concealment? At the European level, to our knowledge, no instructions have been given to mobilize the networks of measurements and analytical laboratories; no official information has been released; no warning has addressed to European nationals traveling or residing in regions potentially at risk. Can we imagine that no investigation has been launched, despite the means available, to go back to source of contamination, at least to validate or invalidate certain assumptions?
Can we believe that embassies have not been solicited? That no sample was taken? Is it possible that measurements were made of aircraft that flew over suspicious installations such as those Mayak?
That could have been done 30 years ago, for Chernobyl, and even earlier for the control of fallout nuclear tests! Are European states guilty of inaction? Did they prefer not to know? Or do they hold this information they prefer to keep secret?
Most media were satisfied with reassuring information on the situation in Europe, which unfortunately in their silence. All lessons must be learned from these dysfunctions both at European and international level so that opacity and indifference do not preside over the management of the next nuclear disaster. 2 Read the text of the Convention, which entered into force in October 1986; see the list of signatory states as of March 3, 2017
After many months of waiting to hear if Mordechai Vanunu will be released from captivity (He is under house arrest still after many years of incarceration), we find the courts in Israel have once again denied him the right to be with his wife in Norway.
Response from Human Rights organisations is non existent as is the response from the worlds media.
Israel: Mordechai Vanunu sentence clear violation of human rights
“Nov’ 6 2017. in the Israel supreme court they come back repeating the same BS, they did not review any thing, they didn’t change any thing. They repeat the same mantra to their supreme court judges and blaming me for not following their stupid, barbaric order after 32 years.
I am not yet free to leave this country, to go to join my wife in Oslo. They love to see me suffering here. But they must end this case, soon or later. The ISRAEL ATOMIC SECRETS has gone for ever. This is Irreversible, for ever, NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO ME. Freedom must come.!,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Nov’ 14. The court decided to reject my appeal ;no justice in israel.”
Some recent reports mentioning Mordechai Vanunu;
“Israel is believed to be the sole possessor of a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East with more than 200 undeclared nuclear warheads.
Tel Aviv has rejected global calls to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not allow international inspectors to observe its controversial nuclear program.
The clandestine nuclear activities were uncovered when whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu, originally a technician at the Dimona nuclear facility, handed overwhelming evidence of Israel’s nuclear program to Britain’s Sunday Times in 1986.
It is believed that the nuclear site is home to Israel’s nuclear weapons. “
Japan Atomic Power Co. has diverted so much of its decommissioning funds to build new reactors that it now lacks enough cash to scrap its aging units or even resume operations of existing ones.
The problem-plagued company is banking on a decision by the Nuclear Regulation Authority, but even that might not be sufficient to save it financially.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry requires nuclear power plant operators to accumulate decommissioning funds every year based on their estimated costs to scrap reactors.
The ministry’s guidelines, however, do not prohibit the companies from temporarily using the accumulated money for other purposes.
According to calculations, Japan Atomic Power should have saved around 180 billion yen ($1.6 billion) to decommission its four nuclear reactors.
The company declined to give details about how much of decommissioning fund was used for other purposes.
However, a person familiar with the situation said the operator “diverted the majority.”
That leaves Japan Atomic Power without the necessary funds to carry out its plans to decommission its one-reactor Tokai nuclear plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the No. 1 reactor at its Tsuruga nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture.
The company’s two other reactors–the reactor at the Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant and the No. 2 reactor at the Tsuruga plant–are off-line.
To survive the financial crunch, Japan Atomic Power will soon apply to the NRA to extend the operating life of the idled Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant reactor.
That reactor will reach its 40th year of operation in November 2018.
Even if the NRA approves the 20-year extension, the company does not have the 174 billion yen needed to improve safety measures at the reactor to bring it online.
An active geological fault line was found running directly beneath the No. 2 reactor building at the Tsuruga nuclear plant, meaning a resumption of reactor operations there is nowhere in sight.
Japan Atomic Power decided to use decommissioning funds to cover costs to build the Tsuruga No. 3 and No. 4 reactors in a bid to curb borrowing from financial institutions, according to several sources.
However, that decision was made before disaster struck at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.
After the triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant, all reactors in the nation, including those of Japan Atomic Power, were suspended.
With its reactors offline and its revenue drying up, Japan Atomic Power continued diverting money from the decommissioning fund to cover its losses.
A Japan Atomic Power official told The Asahi Shimbun that the diversion of funds was not a problem because the operator “used the money appropriately in light of various circumstances and future forecasts.”
However, the company’s plight has officials in the economy ministry considering imposing limits on diverting decommissioning funds. With deregulations in the electric power industry moving forward, the risk of a sudden collapse of an electric power utility has increased.
With all of its reactors off-line, Japan Atomic Power would find it difficult to obtain loans from financial institutions.
In addition, residents around its nuclear facilities could oppose any restarts in light of the company’s inability to prepare sufficient safety expenses.
Japan Atomic Power had only 18.7 billion yen on hand at the end of March for immediate use in an emergency.
If the company is forced to decommission its Tokai No. 2 nuclear power plant, the finances of other major electric companies would be affected.
To provide financing for Japan Atomic Power, financial institutes set certain loan conditions, one of which requires the company to be guaranteed by a major utility.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., which hold shares in Japan Atomic Power, has come under fire over the disaster at its Fukushima No. 1 plant. Public criticism would certainly erupt if TEPCO, which is funded by the government, were to support a bailout of Japan Atomic Power.
A source with TEPCO described Japan Atomic Power’s situation as: “Stuck between a rock and a hard place.”
A U.N. body has called on Japan to take steps to better protect press freedoms as concerns about the country’s laws aimed at curtailing leaks of state secrets could hinder the work of journalists.
In another of the 218 non-legally binding recommendations on Japan’s human rights record released by the U.N. Human Rights Council’s working group, Tokyo was urged to apologize and pay compensation to “comfort women” forced to work in Japan’s World War II military brothels.
The recommendations reflected the views of some 105 countries. Of the issues raised, the U.N. council will adopt those that have been accepted by the country in question at a plenary session around March 2018.
In relation to freedom of the press in Japan, the recommendation called on the country to amend Article 4 of the broadcasting law that gives the government authority to suspend broadcasting licenses of TV stations not considered “politically fair.”
Japan had already attracted criticism, in particular from David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, over its law called the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets, which came into force in 2014.
Under the law, civil servants or others who leak designated secrets could face up to 10 years in prison, and those who instigate leaks, including journalists, could be subject to prison terms of up to five years.
In his report, Kaye noted that the law may be arbitrarily enforced as subcategories under which information may be designated as secret are “overly broad.”
On the issue of “comfort women,” raised at the request of South Korea and China, the recommendation urged Japan to promote fair and accurate historical education, including the women’s stories, and to apologize and compensate victims.
The recommendation also said Japan should abolish or suspend the death penalty, reflecting calls from European Union countries, and continue to provide support to those affected by the Fukushima nuclear crisis caused by the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami. In particular, a directive to address health issues faced by pregnant mothers and children was noted.
The U.N. Rights Council is mandated to “undertake a universal periodic review” of whether countries are meeting their human rights obligations and commitments.
The examination is conducted on all 193 members of the United Nations in periodic cycles of a few years. The latest review was the third for Japan.
While representatives from nearly 200 nations have gathered here in Bonn, Germany, they’re not the only ones flocking to the city for this year’s U.N. climate summit. A number of fossil fuel companies and corporate sponsors have also descended on Bonn, where they are pushing their own agenda behind the scenes. On Tuesday, activists disrupted a presentation at an annual corporate conference held alongside the climate summit here in Bonn.
They were protesting the European Investment Bank for funding the construction of the Trans Adriatic gas pipeline, known as TAP. This comes as a new report by the Corporate Europe Observatory reveals how the gas industry spent more than 100 million euros and deployed over 1,000 lobbyists to push gas as an energy solution to lawmakers in Brussels and across the European Union in 2016. We speak with Pascoe Sabido, researcher and campaigner for the Corporate Europe Observatory, and Jesse Bragg, the media director for Corporate Accountability.
They also discuss Ukraine’s dirty coal and the fact that the EU Climate change minister is ex fossil fuel. Please check back later for full transcript.
Meanwhile in an off shore tax dodging account owned by TEPCO we find hardly any information about this except for a brief sentence in the off shore tax dodge report from the paradise papers in recent weeks. Why do I mention this you may ask? Because of the minuscule compensation payouts to the victims of the nuclear disaster, but I digress.
People who evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture have not only been exposed to radiation, but to prejudice and misunderstanding regarding compensation that they may or may not have received. The truth about Fukushima nuclear disaster compensation March 2017 https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170326/p2a/00m/0na/003000c
Posted to nuclear-news.net
posted by Shaun McGee
14 November 2017
During the COP23 meetings I noticed some strong emotive arguments being used against the anti nuclear groups campaigning for renewable energy solutions in Europe. The nuclear lobby strategy is to equate anti nuclear with pro fossil fuel is a regular feature in the argument for nuclear power.
However activists have long since realised there is a swing door policy between the management positions of these energy giants. A good example is TEPCO whose business crashed in 2011, soon after the nuclear disaster in the Fukushima prefecture.
TEPCO and other utilities have holdings in both nuclear AND gas, so no rush for renewables…
One of the co-owners of a nuclear construction debacle in South Carolina is planning to discuss its decision to abandon the multi-billion dollar project.
CAYCE, S.C. – One of the co-owners of a nuclear construction debacle in South Carolina is planning to discuss its decision to abandon the multi-billion dollar project.
South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. officials say President Keller Kissam is holding a news conference Thursday at the company’s headquarters in Cayce.
SCE&G and state-owned utility Santee Cooper stopped construction July 31 on two nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station. They have blamed the failure in large part on the bankruptcy of Westinghouse, the chief contractor.
The utilities had already spent more than $9 billion. Much of that came from ratepayers, who are still being billed for the project.
State, federal and financial entities are investigating the failure. Lawmakers are advancing legislation that would halt charges for ratepayers.
nuclear-news 