BOISE, Idaho — A proposal from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission exempting emergency planning for new nuclear plant designs is raising alarms.
The NRC proposal would allow facilities to end emergency preparedness zones at their boundaries.
That zone is currently set at a 10-mile radius around plants and a 50-mile ingestion zone to protect against contaminated food and water.
Timothy Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, says emergency zones have been required since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
“Having the emergency evacuation plans and emergency response plans is part of the social contract with nuclear power and has been in the U.S. for over 40 years now,” he points out.
One NRC commissioner says it’s a radical departure from past practices.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has expressed concerns about the proposal to exempt the agency from evaluating evacuation plans.
In support of the proposal, the Nuclear Energy Institute says NRC is modernizing the rules for new nuclear power designs that don’t have the same risks as old designs.
The NuScale small modular reactor project at the Idaho National Laboratory could benefit from these new rules. But Judson says exempting this project from emergency planning regulations exposes why these rules are a bad idea.
“They’re designed to have 12 of these reactors all built in the same building and together, those 12 reactors would be larger than many commercially operating nuclear reactors in the country right now,” he points out.
Judson says the proposal would keep everyone, including utility companies to nearby communities, in the dark on nuclear safety plans.
“Whether you support nuclear power or don’t support nuclear power, everyone supports nuclear safety,” he stresses.
The NRC is accepting public comment on the proposal through July 27.
It’s been more than 41 years, but Stephen Mohr still remembers how he knew something went wrong at the nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island.
“I knew something happened because I went out to get the newspaper and I could smell it,” said Mohr, a lifelong resident of Conoy Township — only yards south of the Dauphin County island.
“The smell was a combination of rotting eggs, diesel fuel and a smoldering fire pit,” he said.
The plant’s Unit 2 reactor had partially melted down about 4 a.m. March 28, 1979, and as Mohr remembers it, locals panicked, fearing for their safety. Some fled, others hid inside.
“I can remember this like it was yesterday,” said Mohr, who has been a longtime township supervisor. “There was definitely an air of uncertainty. People were confused.”
Four decades later, confusion and concern have returned near the now-inactive power plant as officials at Utah-based EnergySolutions plan to dismantle the historic reactor.
It’s a plan that has state environmental officials and local nuclear watchdogs ringing proverbial alarm bells, pointing to concerns that money set aside for the decommissioning could run out before the work is finished.
That’s in addition to fears about the potential for indefinite radioactive contamination on the island, which sits just upstream from Lancaster County on the Susquehanna River.
Old concerns resurface
To Arthur Morris, Lancaster city’s mayor from 1980 to 1990, some of those worries are familiar. They existed in the years after the 1979 accident, when Morris sat on a state advisory board that focused on radioactive decontamination of Unit 2.
Back then — and now — the Susquehanna River served as the primary source for several downstream Lancaster County drinking water systems, including in Lancaster city.
As mayor, Morris said one of his priorities on the panel was to make sure radiation wasn’t carried downstream and piped through Lancaster residents’ faucets — a priority that led to regular testing near the plant that persists today.
Last week, Morris said he isn’t surprised that some of those old concerns have resurfaced with Unit 2 coming back under scrutiny.
“Those things don’t go away until the island is cleaned up,” Morris said.
‘Worst-case scenario’
However, it’s a cleanup plan that has nuclear watchdog Eric Epstein speaking out on signs of pending danger.
“It’s the worst-case scenario,” said Epstein, a leader of the Harrisburg-based group Three Mile Island Alert.
Last fall, Unit 2’s owners at Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. announced that they planned to transfer all related licenses and assets to TMI-2 Solutions LLC, an EnergySolutions subsidiary.
The transfer would mean that EnergySolutions also would take over the responsibility of eventually dismantling the Unit 2 reactor.
And that eventuality had already been planned for by the time the proposed transfer was announced in October. Then, EnergySolutions revealed plans to contract decommissioning work out to New Jersey-based construction company Jingoli, which has had past success with nuclear projects in the United States and Canada.
Despite a track record, state Department of Environmental Protection officials warned that planning for and beginning decommissioning work too early could put the island and surrounding areas at risk.
After all, DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell noted, Unit 2 is the site of the worst commercial nuclear accident in United States history — an accident that released radioactive gases and grossly contaminated the reactor and its surrounding buildings.
“Because of this, we understand there are very high radiation areas within TMI Unit 2 that present a grave risk to personnel that enter,” a letter signed by McDonnell reads.
That high radiation has prevented all but minor exploration of the Unit 2 area, meaning the radiological conditions inside large portions of the plant remain a mystery, according to the letter.
“I firmly believe TMI Unit 2 is the most radiologically contaminated facility in our nation outside of the Department of Energy’s weapons complex,” it reads.
Postponing the cleanup for “several decades” could allow for a decrease in radioactive potency, possibly lessening the chance of further environmental contamination, McDonnell wrote.
All of that is in addition to raising questions about how radioactive waste will be disposed, transported and stored. That includes concerns about whether any of that waste will be stored on the island — a site that Epstein believes could remain indefinitely radioactive.
Both McDonnell’s writings and Epstein’s concerns were submitted this spring to officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must approve the FirstEnergy-to-EnergySolutions transfer request.
Commission officials have been reviewing the request since November, and similar reviews have been completed in a year or less, according to spokeswoman Diane Screnci.
Financial concerns
But it’s not only environmental issues that will be weighed as part of that review, with Epstein and state officials also raising serious financial concerns.
Specifically, they’ve drawn attention to a largely ratepayer-funded $901 million trust set aside to cover the cost of decommissioning, which has been estimated at upward of $1.2 billion.
Further complicating the issue, according to McDonnell’s letter, is the fact that trust fund dollars are tied to the stock market, which has seen large fluctuations due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
“Given the obvious uncertainties and complexities associated with cleaning up the remains … the demonstration of adequate funding to complete the decommissioning of TMI-2 and restoration of the site, is a significant concern of the department and the citizens of Pennsylvania,” McDonnell wrote.
Beyond sharing McDonnell’s letters, DEP officials said they could not further discuss the proposed decommissioning, citing litigation. Nondisclosure agreements stipulated by EnergySolutions also prevent DEP and Epstein from sharing some details.
EnergySolutions spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment, though they indicated they are aware of concerns about their work.
Jennifer Young, a FirstEnergy spokeswoman, said company officials have faith the job will be completed on budget despite the existing disparity between the trust fund and estimated cost.
Cost estimates show there are sufficient funds given the project schedule for decommissioning,” she said. “Keep in mind that those funds will continue to accumulate value throughout the decommissioning process, which takes place over many years. Not all the money will be required or spent at one time.”
Epstein said it’s important to point out that the Unit 2 trust is full of ratepayer money, which will be under the full control of EnergySolutions’s TMI-2 Solutions LLC, a private company, with little public scrutiny.
Right company for the job
Despite those concerns, Young said FirstEnergy officials believe EnergySolutions is the right company to dismantle Unit 2. In fact, EnergySolutions decommissioning proposal was selected over offers from two other companies, she said. The unsolicited EnergySolutions proposal was made in 2018, Young said.
By Nuclear Regulatory Commission decree, the plant must be decommissioned within 60 years of halting operation, and Three Mile Island’s functioning Unit 1 was taken offline by its owner, Exelon, in 2019.
“We were faced with a decision to decommission the unit now or wait to start in the 2030s,” Young said.
“Waiting would not guarantee there would be companies available to start the dismantlement in time to comply with the 60-year requirement due to the large number of nuclear plant licenses that will expire in the 2030s,” he said.
Still, Epstein said he’d like a Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision on the transfer to remain delayed until his and DEP’s concerns can be worked through.
Like a big gravestone
Back in Conoy Township, Mohr said his full faith is in the commission to make the right decision — an opinion steeped in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 partial meltdown.
It was a commission official, Harold Denton, who shared the first details with locals, offering assurances that everything would be alright, he said.
“When he was done speaking, it was like the world calmed down,” Mohr said of the commission official. “He put it into a perspective that even we understood.”
For decades since, the plant has meant local jobs and local money, but since the 2019 shutdown, much of that has fallen by the wayside, he said. And it’s mostly for that reason that Mohr said he’s indifferent to the island’s fate.
“It’s almost to the point now that it was never there. If we drive north, we see it,” he said. “It reminds me of the biggest gravestone that I ever saw.”
Spent Nuclear Reactor Passes On Its Way To Disposal, JULY 8, 2020 BY VROBISONBy CHARLENE PAUL, The Progress
A huge convoy carrying a low-level nuclear reactor is making its way through Nevada. Last week it passed through the Coyote Springs Valley via U.S. Highway 93. PHOTO BY CHARLENE PAUL/The Progress.
A nuclear reactor vessel from southern California’s decommissioned San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station slowly made it’s way through the Coyote Springs Valley on Monday, June 29………
The vessel’s trip to Utah began on May 24, 2020, when the 770-ton low-level reactor vessel left southern California on the world’s largest rail car, a 40-year-old, 36-axle Schnabel car weighing 2.2 million pounds. (It is believed that this was the rail car’s last load.)
Once the load arrived at Apex, it took a couple of weeks for cranes to lift the reactor from the train car and put it on a 45-axle, 180-tire trailer for the trip to northern Utah.
Experts with the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) worked long and hard to ensure that the state’s roads wouldn’t be damaged as the load passes through.
Two railway tunnels east of Caliente along with rock outcroppings that are too tight to allow the reactor to be shipped by rail to Salt Lake City and then on to Clive, made travel on the highway a necessity.
“It would be, by far, the biggest object ever moved on a road in [Nevada],” said NDOT spokesman Tony Illia. “Our people have been scratching their heads for months to figure out a route that could work. It won’t move until the transportation department issues a permit 24 hours before hitting the highway.”
“The record-sized move over state highways marks the culmination of over a year of planning and coordination across three states,” Illia said. “At 2.4 million total pounds, it’s the heaviest load to ever cross Nevada roadways.”
Making such a massive shipment in summer months is a much bigger issue than it would be in colder months. Asphalt or other road surfaces could easily buckle under the over 1.5-million-pound reactor plus a shipping skid that adds seven tons to the total weight. For the load to be transported safely, drainage structures along the way needed to be reinforced.
“The structures would get crushed like a soda can because the load is so heavy,” said Illia. “Heavy equipment operators with Emmert International [among the world’s biggest movers of heavy equipment] plan to use heavy-duty hydraulic jacks to support culverts when the vehicle hauling the reactor passes over.”
To keep the load off Interstate 15 and Interstate 80, the travel route will follow U.S. Highway 93 and State Route 318 before crossing into Utah.
Interestingly, the route passes by the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. The mountain was to be the nation’s nuclear waste repository, but the plan was terminated in 2008 amid a political battle over its safety. When the San Onofre plant is completely dismantled, all of its low-level waste will be buried in Utah.
The extreme weight of the super-load is dispersed across 460 total tires to prevent damage to state roads and bridges. Pilot cars and Nevada Highway Patrol (NHP) vehicles are escorting the rig. The full convoy is almost two miles long, including extra trucks, mechanics, and project managers. Because of the weight, travel averages four to six miles per hour, and the 400-mile trip is estimated to take eight days.
On the first day of the trip, the convoy stopped at the Coyote Springs turn-off on Highway 93. On July 1, the convoy stopped just south of Alamo, Nevada, and did not travel from July 2 through July 5 to minimize impacts on travel over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
Firefighters said they had managed to put out the smaller of two forest fires that began at the weekend, apparently after someone began a grass fire, and had deployed more than 100 firefighters backed by planes and helicopters to extinguish the remaining blaze.
The fire had caused radiation fears in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, which is located about 60 miles south of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Government specialists on Monday sent to monitor the situation reported that there was no rise in radiation levels in Kyiv or the city suburbs.
“You don’t have to be afraid of opening your windows and airing out your home during the quarantine,” wrote Yegor Firsov, head of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service, in a Facebook post about the results of the radiation tests.
As of Monday afternoon, the country’s emergency ministry said that the remaining fire in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone covered about 20 hectares and was still being extinguished. Footage released by the ministry showed firefighters dousing flames on the forest floor, and clouds of smoke rising.
Police have arrested a suspect believed to have caused the blaze, a 27-year-old man from the area who reportedly told police he had set grass and rubbish on fire in three places “for fun”. After he had lit the fires, he said, the wind had picked up and he had been unable to extinguish them.
An earlier post by Firsov had warned about heightened radiation levels at the site of the fire, which he said had been caused by the “barbaric” practice of local grass fires often started in the spring and autumn. “There is bad news – radiation is above normal in the fire’s center,” Firsov wrote on Sunday.
The post included a video with a Geiger counter showing radiation at 16 times above normal. The fire had spread to about 100 hectares of forest, Firsov wrote.
The country’s emergency ministry put out a warning for Kyiv on Monday about poor air quality but said it was related to meteorological conditions, and not to the fire.
The service had said on Saturday that increased radiation in some areas had led to “difficulties” in fighting the fire while stressing that people living nearby were not in danger. On Monday, it said that gamma radiation levels had not risen near the fire.
Chernobyl polluted a large area of Europe when its fourth reactor exploded in April 1986, with the region immediately around the power plant the worst affected. People are not allowed to live within 30km of the power station.
The three other reactors at Chernobyl continued to generate electricity until the power station finally closed in 2000. A giant protective dome was put in place over the fourth reactor in 2016.
Fires are common in the forests near the disused power plant.
Iran says world ‘must respond’ to Israel after blast at nuclear site, Times of Israel,
Government spokesman calls for ‘limits to these dangerous actions by the Zionist regime’; Mideast official says explosion at Natanz was meant as a ‘wake-up call’ to Tehran
By TOI STAFF7 July 2020, Iran on Tuesday called for action against Israel, following a recent blast at the Natanz nuclear facility that has been blamed on the Jewish state.
“This method Israel is using is dangerous, and it could spread to anywhere in the world,” government spokesman Ali Rabiei said during a press conference, according to a translation of his remarks by Israel’s Channel 12 news. He added: “The international community must respond and set limits to these dangerous actions by the Zionist regime.”
His comments came as Iran appeared to publicly acknowledge on Tuesday that last week’s fire at Natanz, which badly damaged a building used for producing centrifuges, was not an accident. Israeli TV reports, without naming sources, have said the blast destroyed the laboratory in which Iran developed faster centrifuges and set back the Iranian nuclear program by one or two years.
Nour News, seen as a mouthpiece of Iran’s Supreme Council of National Security, claimed that the blast at the Natanz facility, which came amid a series of mysterious disasters that struck sensitive Iranian sites in recent days, bore similarity to other strikes against the country’s security infrastructure.
While asserting that “an airstrike on the Natanz plant is almost impossible” due to its strong air defenses, an article on the site said that “the combination of intelligence, logistics, action and the volume of destruction” prove that the incident was deliberate.
The Washington Post and New York Times quoted Middle Eastern officials earlier this week as saying the blast at Natanz was caused by a large bomb planted by Israeli operatives……..
A member of the Revolutionary Guard confirmed to the Times on Sunday that an explosive was used, but didn’t specify who was responsible. …..
The building at Natanz was constructed in 2013 for the development of advanced centrifuges, though work was halted there in 2015 under the nuclear deal with world powers, Iran’s atomic agency spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi said earlier this week. When the United States withdrew from the nuclear deal, work there was renewed, Kamalvandi said.
He claimed the fire had damaged “precision and measuring instruments,” and that the center had not been operating at full capacity due to restrictions imposed by the nuclear deal. Iran began experimenting with advanced centrifuge models in the wake of the US unilaterally withdrawing from the deal two years ago…….. https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-says-world-must-respond-to-israel-after-blast-at-nuclear-site/
Inside the luxury nuclear bunker protecting the mega-rich from the apocalypse
A volcanic-ash scrubber, a decontamination room, a waterslide — when it comes to surviving a nuclear apocalypse, the Survival Condo has everything you could need, at a price. CNet.com, Claire Reilly, July 6, 2020 ……. after visiting my first real nuclear bunker, my apocalypse plan has been upgraded. Now my list of needs includes “underground swimming pool” and “postapocalyptic rock-climbing wall.” I’ve become fussy about how I’ll spend time during the planet’s dying breaths. My bug-out bag has gotten bougie. I’ve seen the world’s most high-tech bunker, and I want in.
Welcome to the Survival Condo. This former Atlas Missile silo turned luxury condominium complex offers the world’s rich and powerful a chance to buy into the ultimate life insurance: an apocalypse bunker that promises the perfect combination of shelter and style.
……. The starting cost for a unit in this complex is $1 million, plus an extra $2,500 per month in dues to cover your living expenses: electricity, water, internet, all the tinned eggs you could dream of.
For the ultra-rich and paranoid, though, you can’t put a price on safety…
The end of the world as we know it
Nuclear winter isn’t like spending Christmas upstate. It’s a global nightmare realm, where Ice Age-like temperatures last for years, populations perish and life as we know it becomes the stuff of sci-fi nightmares.
At least that’s according to Brian Toon, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado and world-renowned expert on the global effects of nuclear war. ……
Toon says a nuclear explosion is like “bringing a piece of the sun down to the Earth,” and the aftermath of that kind of explosion causes huge fires — think citywide infernos. Those fires push huge amounts of smoke up into the stratosphere. And because it never rains in the stratosphere, sunlight can’t reach Earth. Welcome to nuclear winter.
“The temperatures become colder than the last Ice Age,” says Toon. “So we have sub-Ice Age temperatures over the whole planet for about 10 years.”
That’s exactly why the Survival Condo exists — to protect the mega-rich from the devastation of global nuclear war, and to make sure the world’s most powerful people can survive in comfort, rather than shivering in the wasteland, waiting to have their billionaire brains eaten by hungry hordes. ……..
I’m at the very top of a bunker that descends 15 floors and 200 feet underground. On this upper level, a wide dome set into the hill houses the main entry and communal recreation facilities. That’s where you’ll find the pet park, climbing wall and swimming pool (complete with a water slide).
Beneath the dome, the cylindrical silo houses a further 14 floors — the top three floors are where you’ll find the mechanical rooms, medical facilities and a food store (complete with a full hydroponics and aquaculture setup), followed beneath by seven levels of residential condos. At the bottom, the final four floors house the classroom and library, a cinema and bar, and a workout room (with a sauna). ……..
what if there’s radiation because of a dirty bomb? You would have to go in this room, which is a decontamination scrub room. The chemicals in here can take care of everything. We have iodine pills to treat you for radiation, we have Geiger counters that detect radiation, and we have special chemicals to scrub both biological and radioactive contaminants from you. But you would lose your clothes. You’d be naked and afraid.”
As we wind our way through the Survival Condo, it’s like I’m in an episode of Cribz, set in a dark, alternate reality. This is where we keep the camo gear! This is the gun range! Here’s how we scrub the volcanic ash out of the air in the event of a supervolcano! …….
As a bonus, if the world is really ending, these windows display a real-time view of the carnage outside, thanks to the Survival Condo’s external surveillance cameras. Everyone come to the kitchen! The surface-dwellers are hunting in packs now!….
I guess there’s a grim irony in the idea that even when the nukes drop and the very fabric of society has disintegrated beyond recognition, the rich and powerful will still have it better off than the rest of us.
Times 5th July 2020, A high-stakes game of chance is being played at Hunterston B nuclear power
station on the west coast of Scotland. Engineers from the French giant EDF and safety experts from the Office for Nuclear Regulation are trying to work out if and when the plant’s two reactors can be restarted.
Forty-four years of hard use have not been kind to the plant’s graphite core — a vast chunk of carbon riddled with cracks that weighs the same as 110 double-decker buses. While the regulator and EDF insist that, with careful supervision, a cracked graphite core is nothing to worry about, it
is a symptom of its advancing years.
Hunterston, like the rest of EDF’s nuclear power stations around the UK, is on borrowed time. Seven nuclear stations capable of supplying about a sixth of the UK’s power needs will shut during the next decade. Unless ministers leap into action, the country that opened the first industrial-scale nuclear power station in 1956 at Calder Hall, Cumbria, will be left with just one replacement plant, Hinkley Point C on the Somerset coast, which is under construction.
The government faces difficult decisions: what next in its race to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050? A boom in renewable power has offered the beguiling prospect that wind and solar, combined with storage such as big batteries and hydrogen, could fill the void. A report from the National Infrastructure Commission has suggested that commercially unproven technologies, such as hydrogen generation, could negate the need for more nuclear power and be “substantially cheaper”.
With half an eye on this utopian future, successive governments have tried to persuade European
power giants such as Germany’s RWE and Eon, and Japan’s Toshiba and Hitachi, to pump cash into new reactors. However, one by one, those companies have dropped out, leaving just a handful of options remaining.
EDF and China General Nuclear (CGN) — both backed by their governments — are building the £22bn Hinkley plant. Without a state support package, EDF will struggle to build the planned Sizewell C in Suffolk. That would leave CGN as the only developer capable of going it alone without UK taxpayer support. ……
Iran nuclear: ‘Incident’ at Natanz uranium enrichment facility, BBC, 2 July 2020
A fire has reportedly damaged a building at a nuclear facility in Iran.
Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) spokesman Behruz Kamalvandi said there was an incident in “one of the industrial sheds under construction” at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
There were no fatalities or concerns about contamination, he added.
Meanwhile, in a statement sent to BBC Persian journalists before the AEOI’s announcement, an unknown group calling itself “Cheetahs of the Homeland” claimed it had attacked the building. The group said its members were part of “underground opposition with Iran’s security apparatus”.
The claim could not immediately be verified by the BBC.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors Iran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal struck with world powers, said it was aware of the reports from Natanz and currently anticipated no impact on its verification activities.
The incident comes six days after an explosion near the Parchin military complex.
Nuclear waste regulations put Canadians at risk https://www.trailtimes.ca/opinion/cannings-nuclear-waste-regulations-put-canadians-at-risk/Richard Cannings is in his second term as MP for the South Okanagan-West Kootenay riding, Jul. 2, 2020 The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) should not approve a suite of regulatory documents on radioactive waste at its meeting June 18, 2020 and instead live up to the Liberal government’s commitment to openness and transparency for regulatory development.
Some of these regulations developed by commission staff are at best vague guidelines that leave nuclear waste policy decisions in the hands of private industry, instead of actually prescribing actions that are in the public interest.
These regulatory changes would pave the way for several controversial nuclear waste disposal projects, including a giant mound at Chalk River, Ontario, two entombments of shut-down reactors, and a proposed deep geological repository for the burial of high-level nuclear fuel waste.
This proposal does not meet Canada’s commitment to meeting or surpassing international standards for the handling of nuclear waste.
For example, the entombment of nuclear reactors is designated as “in-situ decommissioning”, a practice that the International Atomic Energy Agency says should only be used as a last option for facilities damaged in accidents.
Of further concern is the lack of clarity in the proposed regulations.
In many cases the licensee is directed to develop safety requirements with no explicit directions as to what those safety requirements are.
The giant mound at Chalk River is meant to contain up to 1 million cubic metres of low- to intermediate-activity nuclear waste but these activity levels are not defined and the private owner of the facility would get to decide what materials are stored in that mound of nuclear waste.
The Minister of Natural Resources has committed to consulting Canadians on a policy framework and strategy for radioactive waste. Instead we have this backdoor process with limited public input and no parliamentary oversight.
The minister should be conducting a public process to develop a Canadian framework for radioactive waste management that meets or exceeds international best practices, a framework that does not allow the nuclear industry to police itself.
Richard Cannings is NDP Natural Resources Critic and MP for South Okanagan-West Kootenay
Largs & Millport News 1st July 2020, A CALL has been made to shut down Hunterston B with immediate effect. West Kilbride councillor Todd Ferguson says that Hunterston should not be a
‘guinea pig’ for the UK nuclear industry testing long far power stations can last. Cracks have been appearing in all of the EDF advanced cooling reactors fleet around the United Kingdom – and the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) are currently examining the safety case presented by EDF to switching the reactors back on but the matter has been delayed several times this year.
Councillor Ferguson said: “The cracks at Hunterston keep making news and EDF acknowledge that the cracks have been accelerating quicker than expected. “There comes a time when the reactors should remain offline for good. The North Ayrshire Conservative Group believe the time to look at this is now. …….
I believe that the time is right for the Office of Nuclear Regulation not to grant permissionto restart the reactors at Hunterston B. I’m concerned that Hunterston B is being used as some sort of guinea pig, with the purpose being to supply data on how far you can push EDF’s ageing AGR reactor fleet. The station has exceeded its life cycle and the time is right to start winding down operations safely. The safety of the workforce and local communities are paramount.
…….ONR have a
big decision to make in relation to the safety case which has been presented by EDF.” At the recent Hunterston Site Stakeholders Group meeting, EDF were asked when it became economically prohibitive to re-start the reactors and the response was that the data coming from the testing of
the reactors was important information for the rest of the fleet of reactors around the UK.Councillor Ferguson said: “Hunterston is by far the most heavily cracked. When does it get to the points where the risks outweigh everything else? “I don’t want it to get into a position of a race of what is going to fail first – the graphite or the boilers.”………https://www.largsandmillportnews.com/news/18533657.dont-turn-hunterston-guinea-pig—call-shut-reactors-now/
Swarm of insects cause nuclear reactor to lose power in Michigan, Fox 23, July 2, 2020 NEWPORT, Mich. — The Enrico Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant in Newport lost offsite power Wednesday in what has been described as a “mayfly accumulation.”
In a report released by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the outage was “caused by mayfly accumulation” around the facility’s switchyard. Diesel generators started automatically as a backup power supply.
As the nuclear power crisis has unfolded in recent months ‒ engulfing major nuclear companies and utilities in the US, Japan and France ‒ South Korea’s nuclear industry has been held up as a model for others to follow. US nuclear lobbyist Michael Shellenberger, for example, explains ‘why Korea won’: “Korea is winning the global competition to build new nuclear plants against China and Russia despite being a fraction of the size, at just 50 million people, and energy-poor. It has done so through focus: standard design, standard construction of plants, standard operation and standard regulation.”1
But South Korea’s nuclear industry is scandal-plagued, it hasn’t won any bids to build reactors overseas since 2009, and it is more than a stretch to describe it as “world class” as nuclear advocate Rod Adams would have you believe.2 Public and political support has been in freefall over the past five years because of the Fukushima disaster and a domestic nuclear corruption scandal (see the following article in this issue of the NuclearMonitor). In the coming years, nuclear power’s contribution to domestic electricity supply is likely to decline and there is little likelihood that an export industry will flourish. Moreover, with public support for the nuclear industry in freefall, the government has little hope of achieving its aim of securing a site for a high-level nuclear waste repository by 2028.
Korea Times noted on April 21 that every major candidate in South Korea’s presidential election promised to stop building new nuclear reactors and to close down older ones.3 The winner of the May 9 presidential election, Moon Jae-in, who stood as the candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, is a former human rights lawyer. World Nuclear News reported that Moon was one of seven presidential candidates who signed an agreement in March for a “common policy” to phase out nuclear power.4 During the election campaign, Moon said he would scrap plans for new reactors ‒ including Shin Kori units 5 and 6 ‒ while immediately closing the Wolsong-1 reactor.4 (In February 2017, the Seoul Administrative Court ordered the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission to cancel its decision to extend the lifespan of Wolsong-1 because legal procedures had not been followed in the decision-making process.) Moon also said he would block lifespan extensions for the older reactors at the Kori plant5 ‒ the four Kori reactors were grid-connected between 1977 and 1985. Continue reading →
A group of organizations from around the country filed an appeal in federal court calling for a review of federal regulators’ denial of multiple contentions made against a temporary nuclear waste storage facility proposed to be built near Carlsbad and Hobbs.
The appeal was filed on Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit against a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) order in April that denied the standing and relevance of contentions against the facility’s license application submitted to the NRC by Holtec International.
Holtec proposed building and operating a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) to hold high-level spent nuclear fuel rods at the surface in a remote location near the Eddy-Lea county line on a temporary basis while a permanent repository was developed.
In total, the proposed facility could hold up to 173,00 metric tons of waste.
A permanent repository does not exist nor is one in development as a proposal for such a facility in Yucca Mountain, Nevada was de-funded in 2011 under the administration of former-President Barrack Obama.
Opponents of the Holtec facility warned that the repository could become permanent and posed a risk to public safety not only near the site but along the rail transport routes that would bring the waste to New Mexico from generator sites throughout the nation.
The shipments, up to 10,000 carrying the waste, could travel through up to 45 states before being placed into storage at Holtec, records show.
Supporters, mostly in the local communities closest to the proposed site, touted the economic benefits Holtec could bring to the area in diversifying its economy away from its sole reliance on the oil and gas industry.
Led by non-profit Don’t Waste Michigan, the coalition of groups appealing the NRC’s order spanned seven states including New Mexico which was represented by the Nuclear Issues Studies Group based in Albuquerque.
The group appealed seven contentions previously made in federal court but denied by the NRC including an alleged lack of consideration for historic and cultural properties near the proposed site, an insufficient assurance of financing by Holtec for the project including bonding in case of an emergency and the application’s “underestimation” of the volume of waste that would be stored.
It also called for the NRC to hold at least 24 meetings on the project in states across the country that could be impacted by the project.
Other contentions accused the NRC of an inadequate review of the transportation routes, a lack of a “significant risk assessment” as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and charged that the proposal does not include adequate safety oversight during development and operations of the CISF.
Molly Johnson, board member of San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace of California said the proposal would send nuclear waste unfairly to a low-income and minority community.
She advocated for storing the waste at or nearby generator sites until a permanent repository was made available.
“The proposal to transport high-level radioactive waste to a poor community of color in southeast New Mexico as a ‘temporary’ storage solution is dangerous and irrational,” Johnson said. “San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace advocates for storing waste at or as close as possible to the site of generation until a science-based permanent solution can be determined.”
Barbara Warren, executive director of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition of New York said the NRC had not adequately studied the safety issues she alleged would arise during the waste’s transportation.
“Multiple New York activists share serious concerns with our friends in New Mexico about the deficient environmental review for the long-term storage of nuclear waste that will be hazardous for millions of years,” Warren said. “NRC has not required controls adequate to handle both short-term and long-term hazards for this dangerously radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel.”
New Mexico activists also voiced their concerns as Leona Morgan with the Nuclear Issues Study Group said the proposal could lead to her state unduly taking on the burden of the nation’s nuclear waste.
She said the issue was of national concern beyond the opinions of local government in the proposed area of the site.
“The proposal to make New Mexico a national sacrifice zone includes tens of thousands of rail shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel and may be one of the most dramatic long-term transport efforts in the history of the United States,” Morgan said.
“We’re joining six other organizations in a total of five states to challenge the federal government demanding that the 200 million people living within 50 miles of rail corridors have a say in this decision to allow deadly radioactive waste to come through their communities.”
John Heaton, chairman of the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, a consortium including the local governments of the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs and Eddy and Lea counties that worked on developing the project and supporting the licensing project, pointed the NRC’s recent environmental impact statement (EIS) that found the project would have minimal environmental impact.
“They didn’t see any rational reason to not go forward and license the project,” he said. “If there is something significant, we’d like to hear it.”
He said the project was safe and could help protect southeast New Mexico from the economic volatility created by its reliance on extraction.
“We’ve always seen the ups and downs in the oil and gas industry,” Heaton said. “That is one of the main reasons we were looking at a safe nuclear project. This is about as benign a project as you could think of.”
Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.
New nuclear disaster plans sent to thousands of homes in Plymouth
More than 19,000 homes in the area are set to receive an updated information leaflet this week, Plymouth Herald, Plymouth Live UK 28June 20 New nuclear safety advice is being issued to residents living in the proximity of Devonport Dockyard.Plymouth City Council is sending out updated information of important advice to all the homes and businesses which fall within the detailed emergency planning zone.
Devonport dockyard is full of toxic material, substances and machinery and so there is in theory a chance – albeit a very, very small one – of a major malfunction leading to deadly radioactive fallout……
New Zealand established its credentials as an independent small nation after the fatal bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, says an author and academic who spent weeks on the vessel shortly before it was attacked.
On 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was sunk at an Auckland wharf by two bombs planted on the hull of the ship by French secret agents.
The event is often referred to as the first act of terrorism in New Zealand.
Two French agents planted two explosives on the ship while it was berthed at Marsden wharf, the second explosion killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
Dr David Robie, who is an AUT professor of journalism and communication studies, as well as the director of the university’s Pacific Media Centre, had spent more than 10 weeks on the ship as a journalist covering its nuclear rescue mission in the Pacific.
He wrote about his experience in Eyes of Fire, a book about the last voyage of the first Rainbow Warrior – two other Rainbow Warrior shipshave followed.
In 1985, Rongelap atoll villagers in the Marshall Islands asked Greenpeace to help them relocate to a new home at Mejato atoll. Their island had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from US atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Environmental journalism
“At the time I was very involved in environmental issues around the Pacific and in those days Greenpeace was very small, a fledgling organisation,” he tells Jesse Mulligan.
“They had a little office in downtown Auckland and Elaine Shaw was the coordinator and she was quite worried that this was going to be a threshold voyage.
“It was probably the first campaign by Greenpeace that was humanitarian, it wasn’t just environmental – to rescue basically the people who had been suffering from nuclear radiation.” ……….
Moruroa protest planned
The US had carried out 67 nuclear tests at the Marshall Islands. France was also carrying out 193 tests in the Pacific and Greenpeace had planned on confronting that situation at Moruroa Atoll after its Marshall Islands rescue effort.
New Zealand had already voiced disapproval of the testing in the region, with then Prime Minister David Lange in 1984 rebuking the French for “arrogantly” continuing the programme in the country’s backyard.
Dr Robie left the ship when it docked in Auckland after the Marshall Islands stage of the mission. Three days after the ship had docked, a birthday celebration was held for Greenpeace campaign organiser Steve Sawyer onboard. The attack happened after the party.
Just before midnight on the evening of 10 July 1985, two explosions ripped through the hull as the ship.
Portuguese crew member Fernando Pereira was killed after returning on board after the first explosion……..
Thirteen foreign agents were involved, operating in three teams. The first team brought in the explosives, the second team would plant these and the third was on stand-by in case anything went wrong with the first two teams.
“A commanding officer kept an overview of the whole operation. I think there was an element of arrogance, the same arrogance as with the testing itself. There was a huge amount of arrogance about taking on an operation like this in a peaceful country – we were allies of France at the time – and it is extraordinary that they assumed they could get away with this outrageous act.”
Two of the spies were caught. Two General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) officers, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were arrested on July 24. Both were charged with murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Repression of independence movements
“You have to see it within the context of the period of the time,” Dr Robie says.
He says that the French policy of repression against independence movements in New Caledonia and Tahiti, with assassinations of Kanak leaders like Eloi Machoro, needed to be understood to put the Rainbow Warrior attack in perspective. France was bitterly defending its nuclear force de frappe.
“New Zealand was unpopular with the major nuclear powers and there was certainly no sympathy for New Zealand’s position about nuclear testing. So, there wasn’t really any co-operation, even from our closest neighbour, Australia……..
The case was a source of considerable embarrassment to the French government.
“They did pay compensation after arbitration that went on with the New Zealand government and Greenpeace. But justice was never really served… the 10 years were never served, both Prieur and Mafart were part of the negotiations with French government.
NZ was held ‘over a barrel’
“Basically, France had New Zealand over a barrel over trade and the European Union, so compromises were reached and Prieur and Mafart were handed over to France for three years. Essentially house arrest at Hao atoll, the rear base of the French nuclear operations in Polynesia.”
Dr Robie said the rear base was widely regarded as a military “Club Med”.
He says they didn’t even spend three years there, but left for France within the time period.
While the attack was on an international organisation rather than New Zealand itself, most New Zealanders saw it as an attack on the sovereignty of the nation
Dr Robie says it left a long-lasting impression on New Zealanders.
“It was a baptism of fire. It was a loss of innocence when that happened. And in that context, we had stood up as a small nation on being nuclear-free. Something we should have been absolutely proud of, which we were, with all those who campaigned for that at the time. I think that really established our independence, if you like, as a small nation.
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