safety « nuclear-news

Continuing USA debate on nuclear waste- Yucca Mt is central to the issue

Long-Running Yucca Mountain Debate Still Center of Nuclear Waste Fight, Wyoming Public Media, By NOAH GLICK • MAY 24, 2019 It’s been more than thirty years since Yucca Mountain in Nevada was picked as the nation’s nuclear waste site, and the state has been fighting the project ever since. Under President Obama, it got its wish.Fast forward to the Trump administration, and that long-running debate is back on the table……

The Western Shoshone Nation says the land is sacred and should not be poisoned. And Nevada Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen has several concerns.

“It’s hard to imagine that shipping over 5,000 truck casks of high-level nuclear waste over a span of 50 years won’t result in at least one radiological release,” she says.

Not to mention, she says that Yucca Mountain is next to the nation’s largest Air Force live munitions testing area.

“So does it really make sense to transport and store our nation’s nuclear waste right next to a military bombing range?” she asks.

There’s also a big elephant in the room: trust–or lack of it. Abby Johnson works with neighboring Eureka County, which is neutral on the project.

“With above and underground nuclear weapons testing, people in Nevada had already experienced being lied to by the federal government, and had had their families poisoned by fallout from the atomic bombs,” she says.

Some Nevadans are willing to move past that distrust. Darrell Lacy is the director of the Nuclear Waste Repository Project Office in Nye County. He says the site offers a chance to get federal dollars for key services.

“Transportation issues are something we talk a lot about, improved highways,” he says. “Let the federal government pay for it as part of the Yucca Mountain project.”,…..

In a 27-25 vote, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee decided against re-funding the Yucca Mountain project. But the Senate is still considering it, and supporters and opponents both say the fight isn’t over yet.

Nuclear Waste Transportation: How Does it Work? (in photos – on original)

Spent nuclear fuel comes in small, solid pellets. These pellets are then stacked on top of each other and stored in metal tubes. The nuclear waste is stacked and stored in large, long, metal tubes. The metal tubes are then placed into large transportation casks, with layers of lead and concrete to contain the nuclear material. The transportation casks are then placed on trucks and rail lines, with shock absorbers and additional layers of concrete to keep nuclear waste still. https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/long-running-yucca-mountain-debate-still-center-nuclear-waste-fight#stream/0

May 27, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Radiation in UW building: 200 employees being moved, cleanup could take at least six more weeks

Radiation in UW building: 200 employees being moved, cleanup could take at least six more weeks, Seattle Times, By Ryan Blethen ,Seattle Times staff reporter,26 May19

UW Medicine employees might have to wait at least six more weeks to return to work at a First Hill building where a radioactive substance was spilled three weeks ago.

The UW Medicine Harborview Medical Center Research & Training Building houses 35 labs for research on infectious diseases and other global-health issues. Over the next seven to 10 days, about 200 researchers and staff are moving into other UW Medicine and University of Washington facilities and will remain there until the building reopens.

Meanwhile, the public is not in danger, said UW Medicine spokesperson Susan Gregg, who could give no firm date for how long the cleanup will take.

On the evening of May 2, a device called an irradiator, containing the radioactive material cesium-137, was being moved to a safe disposal site when the substance spilled. Radiation was detected on the loading dock of the building, which is at Ninth Avenue and Alder Street.

Thirteen people were exposed, 10 of whom were admitted to Harborview’s emergency room and discharged the next day……

An investigation of the spill by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration is expected to take several months, said Kate Lynch, a spokesperson with Washington state Department of Health, which is working with the federal agency and UW on the cleanup.

Contractors hired by the Department of Energy are doing “survey and decontamination work on certain floors of the building” while other parts of the remediation plan are still being worked out, Gregg said.

The costs of remediation and of the building closure aren’t yet known. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/radiation-in-uw-building-200-employees-being-moved-cleanup-could-take-at-least-six-more-weeks/

May 27, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

A high risk operation removing spent nuclear fuel from Russian ship “Lepse”

Work on removing nuclear waste from 85-years old ship has started in Russia’s north https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2019/05/work-removing-nuclear-waste-85-years-old-ship-has-started-russias-north

By Thomas Nilsen,

May 23, 2019

It is a milestone for nuclear safety clean-up on the Kola Peninsula. Though, the removal of the spent nuclear fuel elements from the storage compartment from «Lepse» will take time. The work is, to say it mildly, a high risk operation involving uranium fuel so radioactive it could cause lethal dose to workers if something goes wrong.

«Preparatory work for this stage of the disposal of «Lepse» has been underway for the last two years,» Chief Engineer Georgy Neyman of the Nerpa shipyard told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

«A protective shelter is built,» Neyman said.

Phase one of the work, which started last week, is removing the 620 fuel elements believed not to be damaged. The elements will be loaded over to special casks for shipping to Atomflot service base in Murmansk. From there, a special train will take the casks to Mayak reprocessing plant in the Chelyabinsk region in the South-Urals.

The work ahead is the most demanding. Cutting out the radioactive elements is done by using robotics. Inside the shelter, humans should spend as little times as possible.

«The time intervals during which a person can be in the presence of ionizing radiation are strictly observed,» Oleg Khalimullin, deputy chief engineer at Nerpa shipyard said in an interview with the news portal of Bellona. The environmental group in Murmansk has for 25 years worked on promoting a safe disposal of «Lepse».

In the early 1990s, the plan was simply to tow the aging storage ship to Novaya Zemlya in the Russian Arctic and dispose it in the permafrost near the shore.

With radionuclides onboard estimated to be some 28,000 TBq (750,000 Curie), or nearly half the release of the Cesium-137 isotope that contaminated half of northern Europe following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the “Lepse” was a ticking threat to people and nature around Murmansk.

«Lepse» was built in 1936, sunken during World War II, lifted afterwards and used as a radiological support vessel for the Soviet Union’s first nuclear powered icebreaker, «Lenin» from 1962. After a coolant accident with one of the three reactors on «Lenin» in 1966 some few hundreds of the spent fuel roads were lifted over to the storage compartment to «Lepse» . Radiation levels were high and “sarcophagus” was built over by filling cement.

Both neighbouring Norway and the European Union have finacially and technically assisted Russia with securing the nuclear waste ship and preparing for the work now started.

Expenses for the shelter and robotics are co-financed by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.

If all go in accordance with schedule, removing the nuclear fuel from the compartment should be ended next year.

May 25, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, wastes | 1 Comment

EDF planning to restart troubled Hunterston and Dungeness B nuclear reactors

Energy Reporters 21st May 2019

The Hunterston B7 reactor is now scheduled to return to service on July 31

and B8 reactor, the least cracked at the site, on June 24. Centrica has a
20-per-cent interest in eight nuclear plants, mostly built in the 1960s and
1970s, which are controlled by EDF. Centrica said it was selling its stake
in February last year.

But since then, Hunterston and Dungeness B in Kent
have been put out of action. EDF, which is also looking to sell some of its
interest in the nuclear hubs, said Dungeness B would “continue to produce
low-carbon electricity safely and reliably for many years to come”.

The reactor in Kent on the southern English coast was shut down late last
summer for regular inspections, which identified the need for repairs on
steam pipes. EDF said it was carrying out “additional inspections and
repairs [to] put the plant in a state to deliver best-ever performance
later this year”. The restart of the twin reactors was due for September
and October, according to the French firm.

https://www.energy-reporters.com/production/edf-extends-nuclear-plant-outages/

May 25, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | 1 Comment

Risky incident at South Korean nuclear reactor

Hankyoreh 21st May 2019 According to South Korea’s nuclear power regulator, a nuclear reactor whose thermal output exceeded safety limits was kept running for nearly 12
hours when it should have been shut down manually at once.

Furthermore, the regulator said, an individual who wasn’t licensed to operate the reactor
was holding the control rods, which regulate the reactor’s output, at the
time. A continuing increase in output could have led to a thermal runaway,
potentially causing the reactor to explode.

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, South Korea | Leave a comment

A nuclear accident in one of Switzerland’s old reactors would be devastating to the health of other European countries.

What a Swiss nuclear disaster could do to Europe, Swissinfo.ch , By Susan Misicka, MAY 21, 2019 – If there were to be a serious accident at one of Switzerland’s nuclear reactors, many of the radiation victims would be residents of other countries.

A Swiss-led study has calculated the potential effect of nuclear meltdowns on the health of people living nearby. Its focus is on how meteorology and geography would influence the movement of a radioactive cloud.

For example, this clip [on original] illustrates how the weather conditions on January 19, 2017 would have shaped the aftermath of an accident at the Gösgen reactor between Bern and Zurich.

The study was led by Frédéric-Paul Piguet at Institut Biosphèreexternal link, an interdisciplinary research institute in Geneva. Piguet and his team examined the accident risk at Switzerland’s five nuclear power plants, which fall between Fukushima and Chernobyl in terms of size. This includes 50-year-old Beznau I in northern Switzerland, the oldest nuclear reactor in the world.

The research team used the weather conditions throughout 2017 to calculate the fallout of disasters at the Swiss reactors and concluded that 16-24 million Europeans would be affected by a nuclear meltdown in Switzerland, which itself has a population of 8.5 million. They reckoned that 12,500-31,100 people would die on account of cancer and heart problems caused by the radiation. On top of that, there would be additional health problems, including genetic maladies and sterility.

According to the study, wet weather would nearly double the number of severe radiation-related illnesses. In 2017, there were 36 such “bad weather” days. The study is being presented in detail on Tuesday in Bern………. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/worst-case-scenarios_what-a-swiss-nuclear-disaster-could-do-to-europe/44977606

May 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Switzerland | Leave a comment

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman now sees nuclear power as harmful

Washington Post 17th May 2019 , Gregory Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009, and as its chairman from 2009 to 2012. Nuclear power was supposed to save the planet. The plants that used this technology could produce enormous amounts of electricity without the pollution caused by burning coal, oil or natural gas, which would help slow the catastrophic changes humans have forced on the Earth’s climate.

As a physicist who studied esoteric properties of subatomic particles, I admired the science and the technological innovation behind the industry. And by the time I started working on nuclear issues on Capitol Hill in 1999 as an aide to Democratic lawmakers, the risks from human-caused global warming seemed to outweigh the dangers of nuclear power, which hadn’t had an accident since Chernobyl, 13 years earlier.

By 2005, my views had begun to shift. I’d spent almost four years working on nuclear policy and witnessed the
influence of the industry on the political process. Now I was serving on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where I saw that nuclear power was more complicated than I knew; it was a powerful business as well as an impressive feat of science. In 2009, President Barack Obama named me the agency’s chairman.

Two years into my term, an earthquake and tsunami destroyed four nuclear reactors in Japan. I spent months reassuring the American public that nuclear energy, and the U.S. nuclear industry in particular, was safe. But by then, I was starting to doubt those claims myself. Before the accident, it was easier to accept the industry’s potential risks, because nuclear power plants had kept many coal and gas plants from spewing air pollutants and greenhouse gases into the air.

Afterward, the falling cost of renewable power changed the calculus.Despite working in the industry for more than a decade, I now believe that nuclear power’s benefits are no longer enough to risk the welfare of people living near these plants. I became so convinced that, years after departing office, I’ve now made alternative energy development my new career, leaving nuclear power behind. The current and potential costs — in lives and dollars — are just too high.https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nuclear-power-industry-now-i-think-it-should-be-banned/2019/05/16/a3b8be52-71db-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html

May 21, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | PERSONAL STORIES, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Outages extended at EDF’s Hunterston nuclear plant

EDF Energy extends outages at Hunterston nuclear plant https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/20/edf-energy-extends-outages-at-hunterston-nuclear-plant

By Reuters• last updated: 20/05/2019 LONDON (Reuters) – EDF Energy, owned by France’s EDF, has extended outages at the two reactors at its Hunterston plant in Scotland, regulatory data on the company’s website showed.

The reactors have been offline since last year after routine inspections found cracks in its graphite core and have suffered several restart delays.

The Hunterston B7 reactor is now scheduled to return to service on July 31 from the previous date of June 30.

The Hunterston B8 reactor is scheduled to return on June 24 from a previous date of May 30.

(Reporting by Susanna Twidale; Editing by David Goodman)

May 21, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s present nuclear reactors – “time bombs” – at risk of another Chernobyl

Chernobyl (2019) S01 | Episode 01 | 1:23:45 | Opening Scene Suicide

One of the main risks stems from the use of ill-fitting US-made fuel rods. Some Ukrainian power plants are fueled by fuel rods produced by the US nuclear contractor Westinghouse. They are shaped differently than those produced in Russia, and incompatibilities have caused problems before.

“Westinghouse fuel was first used in Ukrainian nuclear power plants in 2012, and even before the first fuel cycle was over it became evident they were not compatible, and the fuel assemblies had to be extracted,”

As Chernobyl nuclear disaster feeds TV drama, is Ukraine looking at a real-life re-run? Rt.com 19 May, 2019 This month, HBO has launched its new historical drama ‘Chernobyl’, looking back at one of the worst nuclear disasters in history – but for Ukrainians, it’s also a chilling reminder that history could repeat itself.

US cable giant HBO is reviving the 33-year-old memory of one of the worst – and the most infamous – nuclear incidents in the world. It overlays history with personal drama and intrigue in its fresh mini-series – but what the general viewer might not realize is that it’s too early for Ukraine to consign nuclear problems to history and fiction. The name ‘Chernobyl’ is being brought up again in reference to the woes plaguing Ukrainian atomic energy today.

Ukrainian nuclear power plants have become a “time bomb,” Rada member Sergey Shakhov recently said. Reactors – some of them near densely populated cities – are aging without proper oversight or funding, contracts with Russia are broken, and homegrown nuclear experts are fleeing to find better opportunities abroad.

Emergencies have plagued at least two major Ukrainian nuclear power plants, causing a series of stoppages in operations in the past three years. Some reactors at the Khmelnitsky power plant (located in a city with almost 40,000 inhabitants) had to be halted at least three times since July 2016. A main pump malfunction at the Zaporozhye power plant (close to the regional center and its 750,000+ inhabitants) forced one of its six reactors to stop in September 2018, triggering a local panic. Soon after that, two more reactors were consecutively stopped for planned repairs. They still remain halted, though one of them was supposed to be restarted early in 2019.

Those are just the instances which received attention in the media, revealed either by MPs or by nuclear plant operators.

The situation is an ecological disaster in the making, Shakhov warned in an interview to the TV channel NewsOne. Ukrainian nuclear power plants, he says, have become a “mini-Chernobyl.”

But how did a country that relies on nuclear power for 60 percent of its electricity allow its power plants to degrade so far?

Russia could help, but Kiev doesn’t want it

Ukrainian nuclear facilities were built in the Soviet Union, and for the past decades were maintained in collaboration with Russia. But after the 2014 coup, new Kiev authorities have made every effort to break up links with Moscow, including severing the nuclear cooperation agreement in 2017.

That deprived Ukraine of Russian expertise, something the aging reactors desperately need, says Stanislav Mitrakhovich, an expert on energy policy in the National Energy Security Fund (NESF) and in the Financial University under the government of the Russian Federation.

“Many power blocks are already quite old, their resources were already prolonged according to a special procedure, but this extension cannot be done infinitely. And it is not too easy to do without the help of the Russian specialist who were previously responsible for these tasks.”

Ukraine could come have up with a solution by itself, but “it should have started 10 years ago,” says Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Pogrebinsky, the director of the Kiev Center of Political Research and Conflict Studies.

“Of course Kiev doesn’t have the money to repair and upgrade the reactors, but there are still ways to solve this. One of the most efficient ones lies in Moscow, in the Kurchatov nuclear research institute. But considering the relations, Ukraine won’t go there for help.”

The problem has fallen victim to Kiev’s politics. “Ukrainian authorities have been doing everything with political gain in mind, and that is one of the reasons things have been malfunctioning and additional risks were created for the reactors… Equipment has to be checked and maintained, and that, again, means cooperating with Russia,” says another Ukrainian political scientist, Aleksandr Dudchak.

The immediate danger

Despite the apocalyptic buzz, predicting a new Chernobyl is taking things too far, Ukrainian experts believe. The danger is no less real, however, even if it’s less dramatic in scale. The reactors might not be about to melt down and send a massive radioactive cloud billowing into the atmosphere, like Chernobyl did – instead, they will simply stop working, plunging large parts of Ukraine into a blackout.

The immediate danger

“There is no money, there are no contracts, the contract with [Russian nuclear energy giant] Rosatom has been broken – this is a dead-end situation that Ukrainian authorities will have to solve, and solve without delay, because under certain conditions we could have energy shortages, within five to seven to 10 years.”

International financial institutions have been supporting Ukraine with funds, but amid the more pressing day-to-day needs and the rampant corruption of the Poroshenko presidency, their effect on the restoration of dilapidated power plants is yet to be seen.

Basic incompatibilities

Westinghouse fuel deliveries were restarted in 2015, and it’s unclear whether it’s been made more compatible with the Soviet-built equipment. If they were not, the fuel is “fully capable of halting the work of the nuclear power plants,” even though it won’t cause any mass hazardous incident.

Ukraine’s ailing economy, apart from directly depriving power plants of necessary maintenance and upgrade funds, has caused a ‘brain drain’ as collateral damage.

“Experts working at Ukrainian nuclear power plants are leaving. The situation in the country is unstable, and it’s been getting worse for five years… a lot of experts have moved out of the country, including to Russia and China, as well as other countries. Soon there’ll be no-one left to maintain the power plants,” Dudchak warns.

Irresponsible waste storage

Back when Ukraine was cooperating with Russia, Rosatom was contracted to take back and recycle spent fuel rods. Westinghouse doesn’t do that, so Kiev partnered with another US-based company – Holtec International – to build a shelter for the waste in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, effectively turning it into a radioactive dump……Westinghouse fuel deliveries were restarted in 2015, and it’s unclear whether it’s been made more compatible with the Soviet-built equipment. If they were not, the fuel is “fully capable of halting the work of the nuclear power plants,” even though it won’t cause any mass hazardous incident.

Ukraine’s ailing economy, apart from directly depriving power plants of necessary maintenance and upgrade funds, has caused a ‘brain drain’ as collateral damage.

May 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Flamanville nuclear reactor – EDF must repair welds or reinforce new reactor – ASN.

Montel News 17th May 2019 EDF must repair welds or reinforce new reactor – ASN. French utility EDF
must repair faulty welds on its new generation European pressurised reactor
(EPR) Flamanville or reinforce the under construction plant, the ASN
nuclear safety authority said.

These were the “two options currently on
the table”, said ASN president Bernard Doroszczuk during a presentation
of the watchdog’s annual safety report to parliamentarians on Thursday.
The ASN would announce a final decision on which course to take next month,
he added, with Montel having reported earlier this week that this would
happen once its group of experts had met on 6 June.

While repairing the
welds was “quite feasible”, reinforcing the 1.6 GW plant could be a
“complex operation” for which the unit was not necessarily conceived,
said Doroszczuk. However, the “French nuclear industry is currently
facing a skills shortage”, which could complicate things, he added.

Repairing the welds could push back the planned start-up of the reactor
early next year by two years to 2022, sources told Montel last month. Last
July, EDF delayed the 1.6 GW EPR launch by yet another year due to the
defective welds. It also raised the total estimated cost of construction by
EUR 400m to EUR 10.9bn.

May 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, safety | 1 Comment

Nuclear Power Is Not Safe

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/13/nuclear-power-is-not-safe/ May 13th, 2019 by George Harvey Should we subsidize uncompetitive old nuclear plants? Should we build (uncompetitive) new ones?

One nuclear industry safety assessment figure claims risks are only one-tenth as great as the historic record shows they are. If the people in the industry know it, they are not admitting to a serious safety problem. If they don’t know it, they are simply ignorant of their industry’s record. Either way, I think it is clear that nuclear industry safety analyses should be regarded as untrustworthy.

To deal with the nuclear power industry, we have to understand that some numbers it produces are nearly always accurate, and some are nearly never so. The accurate numbers include the power rating of a plant, the amount of energy produced by the fission of an atom of a given isotope, the approximate percentages of specific isotopes among products of fission, and the amount of time it takes to refuel a plant, if everything goes normally.

There are other numbers that seem usually to be off by a factor of two. When the industry supplies the cost to build a new reactor and the amount of time it will take it, it is probably best to take those figures and double them. If a plant is projected to cost $6 billion and take six years to build, experience tells us that a safer estimate would be $12 billion and twelve years.

The really big problem, however, comes with statements about safety.

Whenever I think about this question, I recall an email I got from a nuclear power advocate, in which he appeared to gloat about how safe the industry is. Compared with the deaths associated with coal, he claimed, nuclear power produced almost none. He “proved” this by citing the explosion at Chernobyl, which he said killed 31 people. He compared this with the hundreds of thousands killed by the coal industry each year.

Most pro-nuclear advocates admit that in addition to those 31, who were mostly killed by concussion or flying debris, at least several dozen people died of radiation poisoning from the Chernobyl accident. One source at the United Nations put the number of additional cancer-related deaths in 2008 at 64 and rising. This is a far cry from the estimate in the Chernobyl Forum, also from the UN, which is that something like 4,000 early deaths could ultimately result. Greenpeace puts the number at many times that. Radical anti-nuclear activists and some European governments put the number at well over 100,000 and possibly as high as 200,000. While the numbers related to safety, they seem to be matters of opinion, rather than fact. The high numbers are well over a thousand times as great as the low numbers. (Wikipedia: Chernobyl Disaster: Deaths Due to Radiation)

Fortunately, safety can be assessed from other points of view, with specific, comparable safety-related numbers, and at least one of these is pretty much indisputable. Based on them, we can learn something about the accuracy of the nuclear industry’s other safety statements in general. I will focus on one number, which relates to the likelihood that a nuclear plant will suffer a “core damage event.” (Note that “core damage event” (CDE) is the term used for what people call “meltdown.” It includes events involving melted or deformed fuel, ranging from “partial meltdowns” to Chernobyl-scale events or worse, regardless of the amount of damage.)

Early on, when our oldest reactors were new, probabilistic risk assessments for nuclear plants indicated that a core damage frequency of one event in 10,000 reactor years could be expected. This means that in any given year, any given reactor has a one in 10,000 chance of melting down. More recently, that number was increased to one event in 20,000 reactor years, because newer reactors are thought to be safer. With some newer reactors, the numbers are said to be more like one event in 50,000 reactor years, and, in the case of the proposed small modular reactors, the claim is that some reactors cannot melt down at all.

he World Nuclear Association, in an article updated in February of 2019, says civil nuclear plants have run through approximately 17,000 reactor years, worldwide. According to the earliest risk analysis, which was valid for only the earliest reactors, that could have been expected to produce 1.7 CDEs. With most reactors having been built with designs that had much reduced risk of one in 20,000 years or more, we really should have expected one CDE, or possibly none.

There is another way to look at these figures. If the core damage frequency is one in 10,000, that means that for a reactor with a 40-year life span, the likelihood of the reactor melting down during its lifetime is forty in 10,000, one in 250, or 0.4%. If the reactor is designed to a core damage frequency of one in 20,000, then the likelihood of meltdown over its lifetime is one in 500, or 0.2%.

These numbers do not reflect what has happened in the real world. Having gone through 17,000 reactor years at civil reactors, we have experienced three meltdowns in Japan, all at Fukushima Daiichi; at least one meltdown in the Soviet Union, at Chernobyl (though given the Soviet inclination to cover things up, there might have been others); one in Scotland, at Chapelcross; two in France, both at Saint-Laurent, but on different occasions; one in Czechoslovakia, at Jaslovské Bohunice; and three meltdowns in the United States, one each at Three Mile Island (Pennsylvania), Fermi (Michigan), and SRE (California).

In other words, instead of the projected number of CDEs, which we might have expected to be one or fewer, there were at least eleven in the real world. Instead of having a frequency of one in 20,000 reactor years, or more, or even of one in 10,000 for the oldest plants in the world, the number was about one in 1,550. And we can calculate that the likelihood of a CDE in the lifetime of a given plant is certainly not 0.2% or even 0.4%. In the real world, it has proven to be about 2% for the time the reactors have served, which is, on average, about three-quarters of their service lives. To calculate for the full service life, divide that figure by three-quarters, and you get 2.66%. So based on experience, the likelihood that any randomly chosen nuclear plant will have melted down when its time is up is 2.66%, or one in about 37.6.

If you went before a group of citizens and told them, “The reactor we want to build here is really safe, there is only a one-in-forty chance that it will ever melt down,” how do you think you would be received?

This miscalculation can be attributed to a specific problem in the math used in risk analysis, and in my opinion it is serous enough to reduce its value of the risk analysis for nuclear plants to zero. In every case of a CDE, the event was beyond the design basis, meaning that there was no way to include it properly in the calculations. The causes of the events were not assessed properly in the calculations because they are unpredictable. The Three Mile Island meltdown happened because of human error. The Chernobyl disaster happened because of human error. How do you predict human error?

Actually, I believe all of the others depended on human error, as well. For example, I will claim that the Fukushima Disaster was due to human error. It was certainly beyond design basis, but in this case the industry seems to have exclaimed, “How could anyone have known?” Their excuse was that the event was unprecedented, that a tsunami of the magnitude that ruined the plant was unpredictable, arising from a record-breaking earthquake, also unpredictable.

But was it unpredictable? The Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 caused a 5.7 meter (18.7 feet) seawall at Fukushima to be overwhelmed by a tsunami whose waves were locally 14.5 meters (47.5 feet). While that is impressive, I would argue that it was not unpredictable. Along the coast in 2011, the highest wave was 40.5 meters (133 feet), enough to submerge a 10-story building easily. But on the same northeast coast of Japan, the Sanriku Earthquake of 1933 produced a tsunami with a maximum wave of 28.7 meters, and the Sanriku Earthquake of 1896 produced a tsunami of 38.2 meters.

When I think of these data, my mind goes to a meeting I can imagine between design engineers for the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant and their management. Someone asks how tall the seawall needs to be, and someone else answers with the question, “How tall can you make it within the budget?” Such is my imagination. I think the sea walls should have been at least six or eight meters higher, the Fukushima Disaster can be attributed to bad planning (possibly due to greed), and that can be correctly called “human error.”

The point is that the nuclear industry safety problems in question, serious safety problems that caused CDEs, developed more than an order of magnitude more often than they were expected. The simple reason is that certain problems are not correctly calculated in probabilistic risk assessments. These problems, of which human error is one, are not correctly calculated for a simple reason: they are impossible to predict, and so their probability cannot be used accurately in a calculation.

It seems clear that the greatest cause of the most destructive nuclear accidents is human error. The risk should not have been stated in the form of “one in 20,000.” It should have been stated as “one in 20,000, unless someone does something stupid.”

Question: What is the chance of someone doing something stupid?

Answer: Approximately 100%; given the current US administration, it is precisely 100%.

The relevant question here is not whether a stupid thing will happen, because it will, but whether it will cause a meltdown. Whatever the cause of failure is, the nuclear industry has to face the fact that until it addresses the failure of its risk analysis, its safety calculations are utterly without value.

May 16, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, safety | Leave a comment

Chernobyl nuclear accident: how it happened, and the aftermath

In the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl, a total of 31 firemen and plant workers died. Some of their bodies were so radioactive, they had to be buried in lead coffins. A report by the World Health Organization estimated that 600,000 people within the Soviet Union were exposed to high levels of radiation, and of those, 4,000 would die. Those who lived near the Chernobyl site have reported increased instances of thyroid cancer, and they have an increased risk of developing leukemia.

700 Million Years

The Chernobyl accident is one of only two nuclear energy accidents that is classified as a “Level 7 Event,” the highest classification. The other is 2011’s Fukushima disaster in Japan. At the lowest level of Reactor 4 lies the famous “elephant’s foot”, a several-meter wide mass of corium that is still giving off lethal amounts of radiation. The half-life of radioactive elements is defined as the amount of time it takes for the radioactivity to fall to half its original value. The half life of U-235 is 700 million years.

Chernobyl – A Timeline of The Worst Nuclear Accident in History [the original of this article gives details on how the accident happened. ]

33 years ago, a series of missteps caused the worst nuclear accident in history, and its effects are still being felt to this day. Interesting Engineering, 11 May By Marcia Wendorf Located 65 miles north of Kiev, Ukraine, the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station at Chernobyl was a model of Soviet engineering. Its four RBMK nuclear reactors produced enough electricity for 30 million homes and businesses.The RBMK reactor is a class of graphite-moderated nuclear power reactor that was designed and built by the Soviet Union. Certain aspects of the design contributed to the Chernobyl disaster, and there were calls for the reactors to be decommissioned. However, the reactors were redesigned, and as of 2019, ten are still in operation.

1,600 Radioactive U-235 Fuel RodsIn 1986, Chernobyl had four working reactors, with two new ones under construction. The newest of the four, Reactor No. 4, contained 1,600 radioactive uranium-235 fuel rods. Because U-235 is unstable, its atoms spontaneously release neutrons, which hit other U-235 nuclei, causing them to release neutrons. This is what is called a chain reaction.

……… This night involved the continuation of a test that was begun twelve hours earlier.

……..“The odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years.” — Vitali Sklyarov, Minister of Power and Electrification of Ukraine Continue reading →

May 13, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, Ukraine, wastes | Leave a comment

U.S. federal board rejects objections to proposed New Mexico nuclear dump

Federal panel rejects all objections to proposed New Mexico nuclear dump https://www.krwg.org/post/federal-panel-rejects-all-objections-proposed-new-mexico-nuclear-dump?fbclid=IwAR1ROpcdsAWDegwnW0vib6ICXXy3q2lzDVTrrOuEbKN4ZbM90Q169XCM6Cc

By SIERRA CLUB • MAY 7, 2019 On Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that its Atomic Safety and Licensing Board had rejected every objection made by intervenors challenging Holtec International’s application to build a storage facility for high-level nuclear waste in southeast New Mexico.

Among the requests the panel refused to consider was the objection raised by Sierra Club that U.S. law clearly prohibits nuclear waste being moved to interim facilities before a permanent storage site has been identified. No such permanent sites exist in the U.S.

“This ‘interim’ storage facility could well become a permanent repository without the protections of a permanent repository,” Sierra Club attorney Wally Taylor said in response to Tuesday’s ruling. “Now it is up to the people and public officials in New Mexico to protect New Mexicans from this boondoggle.”

“New Mexico citizens should be very concerned about this project,” Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter Nuclear-Waste Co-Chair John Buchser said. “Energy Secretary Rick Perry has indicated he is OK with the storage-site proposal in Texas, just across the New Mexico border, becoming a permanent facility. The Sierra Club is very concerned about possible radioactive releases from containers designed for short-term storage. The transport of this highly radioactive waste is even more risky, and the nation’s rail system is not safe enough to transport this waste.”

Taylor, representing the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, and attorneys for Beyond Nuclear, Fasken, AFES and transportation intervenors raised nearly 50 different contentions before the three-judge board during oral arguments in January in Albuquerque.

The panel, charged with ruling on petitioners’ standing and the admissibility of their contentions under NRC regulations, agreed that some of the six petitioners, including the Sierra Club, had standing, but ruled that not not a single one of nearly 50 contentions raised were admissible for even an evidentiary hearing.

“The board won’t even consider transportation risk,” Buchser said.

“This decision is a perfect example and a lesson for the citizens of New Mexico and the United States of how the NRC process is shamelessly designed to prevent the public from participating,” Taylor said.

“It’s clear from the hearings across the state that the people of New Mexico don’t want this. They need to join forces and make that clear to New Mexico officials,” Taylor said. “State officials can pass and enforce laws that would require permits or other protections from the dangers posed by the transport of high-level radioactive waste to southeast New Mexico.”

The next step for Sierra Club is to appeal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

May 13, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | legal, safety, USA | Leave a comment

The vulnerability of nuclear weapons systems to cyber threats

Apocalypse now? Cyber threats and nuclear weapons systems, European Leadership Network Julia Berghofer |Policy Fellow and Project Manager for the YGLN, 10 May 19, It is accepted that all states are vulnerable to cyber threats. Yet, a majority of states have yet to develop coherent cyber strategies or implement sufficient preventive measures. Despite the increase in severe cyber incidents directed at national power plants, companies and nuclear-related military equipment, the threat of cyber interference in national nuclear weapons systems is not being properly tackled. With multinational nuclear supply chains and nuclear command and control systems at risk of being compromised, this must be urgently addressed.

The more complex, the more vulnerable

Governments and legislators are struggling to keep pace with the rapid development of cyber capabilities. As military systems become more technically complex it would be easy to assume that they are more secure. The opposite is true. Increased automation and connectivity increases vulnerabilities to cyber attacks. Measures such as air-gapping a system (ie. de-connecting it from the internet) can fall short. A recent US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report assessed the cyber security of US weapons systems and found “mission critical cyber vulnerabilities in nearly all weapons systems […] under development.“ While the report does not make reference to any specific system type, one can reasonably assume that nuclear weapons systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Possible kinds of cyber attacks

Cyber attacks can take many forms. Activities range from cyber espionage, data theft, infiltration of nuclear command, control and communications (NC3), denial of service/distributed denial of service (DoS/DDoS) attacks, false alarms (jamming and spoofing), sabotage and physical damage. When directed against nuclear weapons systems, in the worst possible case this may escalate to a deliberate or inadvertent exchange of nuclear weapons.

Another area of concern is the supply chain, comprised of any hardware and software components belonging to the nuclear weapons system, including NC3, platforms, delivery systems and warheads. The supply chain usually includes a string of companies and providers located in different countries with varying cyber security standards, which means there is room for manipulation and sabotage. Take, for instance, a computer chip produced in country A. If a vulnerability were inserted at the production stage it could then be remotely activated at a later point when the chip is integrated into the military system of country B. If the attacker happened to be an “insider“ with unlimited access to a military site, compromising military equipment could be easier. This could be done for instance through an infected USB drive when security standards in a military facility happen to be low, leaving the victim of the attack unaware of the manipulation up until it is too late.

Limited awareness of cyber risks to nuclear systems

There is a lack of awareness within the expert community and among decision-makers and a reluctance by states to implement measures such as common cyber security standards and the sharing of information on vulnerabilities. Among the nuclear weapons states, only in the United States have high-ranking officials, such as Gen. Robert Kehler (ret.) and Air Force Gen. John Hyten (STRATCOM), in two Senate Armed Service Committee hearings in 2013 and 2017 expressed their concerns about a potential cyber attack affecting the U.S. nuclear deterrent. One reason why decision-makers and governments are unwilling to take these steps could be that it seems too unrealistic or improbable a threat, merely belonging to the worlds of science fiction and doomsday scenarios. But there is no reason to assume that the warnings of the GAO, the U.S. 2017 Task Force on Cyber Deterrence or the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) are exaggerated.

Certainly, there has not yet been a major cyber attack on a state-run nuclear weapons programme – at least none we have publicly heard of. But there are a string of examples of cyber interference in nuclear installations or parts of the supply chain related to them. These include: the Stuxnet attack in 2010 affecting over 15 Iranian nuclear facilities which slowed down the development of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme; a massive cyber attack on Lockheed Martin in 2009 during which thousands of confidential files on the U.S. F35 Lightning II fighter aircraft were compromised by hackers (they were also able to see information such as the location of military aircraft in flight); the 2017 hacking of the THAAD missile defence system in South Korea; the 2009 Conficker Worm attack on the French Marine Nationale; a 2011 cyber espionage campaign on the French nuclear company Areva; and deep worries over the WannaCry virus possibly targeting parts of the UK Trident system in 2017.

What should decision-makers and policy-makers do?

Governments need to grapple with how to handle rapidly developing cyber capabilities. A critical first step is develop a better understanding of the threat…….. https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/understanding-and-addressing-cyber-threats-to-nuclear-weapons-systems/

May 11, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, safety, secrets,lies and civil liberties, technology, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Increased tension as U.S. has seized a North Korean ship for sanctions violations

In Middle of Nuclear Standoff, U.S. Seizes North Korean Cargo Ship Illicitly Exporting Coal, Slate, By ELLIOT HANNON, 9 May 19

The U.S. has seized a North Korean cargo ship that it alleges has been used to illicitly export coal from the country in violation of international sanctions, the Department of Justice announced Thursday. The move, though many months in the making, is sure to stir resentment in Pyongyang as the two countries try to negotiate denuclearization.

This is the first time the U.S. has seized a North Korean ship for sanctions violations and U.S. officials say it is part of a broader push to increase pressure on Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear program. The coal sector is key to the North Korean economy and its nuclear weapons program. The ship, named Wise Honest, was also importing heavy machinery…….

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/u-s-seizes-north-korean-cargo-ship-illicitly-exporting-coal-sanctions-violation.html.

May 11, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, North Korea, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries Next Entries »

1 This Month

of the week – THE ONENESS of HUMANITY

26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration

1st July – Webinar Waste of Space: The Environmental Harm of Military and Civil Space Activity st July, 7 pm

Report Launch Online: We are seeing an increasing exploitation of space for military and commercial purposes. This must change.

Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511

Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State

PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”

To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com

Archives
- June 2026 (251)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
Categories
- 1
  - Arclight's Vision
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
  - business and costs
    - employment
    - marketing
  - climate change
  - culture and arts
  - ENERGY
    - renewable
      - decentralised
      - energy storage
  - environment
    - oceans
    - water
  - health
    - children
    - psychology – mental health
    - radiation
    - social effects
    - women
  - history
  - indigenous issues
  - Legal
    - deaths by radiation
    - legal
  - marketing of nuclear
  - media
    - investigative journalism
    - Wikileaks
  - opposition to nuclear
  - PERSONAL STORIES
  - politics
    - psychology and culture
      - Trump – personality
    - public opinion
    - USA election 2024
    - USA elections 2016
  - politics international
  - Religion and ethics
  - safety
    - incidents
  - secrets,lies and civil liberties
    - civil liberties
  - spinbuster
    - Education
  - technology
    - reprocessing
    - Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
    - space travel
  - Uranium
  - wastes
    - – plutonium
    - decommission reactor
  - weapons and war
    - Atrocities
    - depleted uranium
  - Women
- 2 WORLD
  - ANTARCTICA
  - ARCTIC
  - ASIA
    - Burma
    - China
    - India
    - Indonesia
    - Japan
    - Malaysia
    - Mongolia
    - North Korea
    - Pakistan
    - South Korea
    - Taiwan
    - Turkey
    - Vietnam
  - EUROPE
    - Belarus
    - Bulgaria
    - Denmark
    - Finland
    - France
    - Germany
    - Greece
    - Ireland
    - Italy
    - Kazakhstan
    - Kyrgyzstan
    - Russia
    - Spain
    - Sweden
    - Switzerland
    - UK
    - Ukraine
  - MIDDLE EAST
    - Afghanistan
    - Egypt
    - Gaza
    - Iran
    - Iraq
    - Israel
    - Jordan
    - Libya
    - Saudi Arabia
    - Syria
    - Turkey
    - United Arab Emirates
  - NORTH AMERICA
    - Canada
    - USA
      - election USA 2020
  - OCEANIA
    - New Zealand
    - Philippines
  - SOUTH AMERICA
    - Brazil
- ACTION
- AFRICA
  - Kenya
  - Malawi
  - Mali
  - Namibia
  - Niger
  - Nigeria
  - Somalia
  - South Africa
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
  - thorium
- Reference
  - Reference archives
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Continuing USA debate on nuclear waste- Yucca Mt is central to the issue

Radiation in UW building: 200 employees being moved, cleanup could take at least six more weeks

A high risk operation removing spent nuclear fuel from Russian ship “Lepse”

EDF planning to restart troubled Hunterston and Dungeness B nuclear reactors

Risky incident at South Korean nuclear reactor

A nuclear accident in one of Switzerland’s old reactors would be devastating to the health of other European countries.

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman now sees nuclear power as harmful

Outages extended at EDF’s Hunterston nuclear plant

By Reuters• last updated: 20/05/2019 LONDON (Reuters) – EDF Energy, owned by France’s EDF, has extended outages at the two reactors at its Hunterston plant in Scotland, regulatory data on the company’s website showed.

Ukraine’s present nuclear reactors – “time bombs” – at risk of another Chernobyl

Russia could help, but Kiev doesn’t want it

The immediate danger

The immediate danger

Basic incompatibilities

Irresponsible waste storage

Flamanville nuclear reactor – EDF must repair welds or reinforce new reactor – ASN.

Nuclear Power Is Not Safe

Chernobyl nuclear accident: how it happened, and the aftermath

700 Million Years

U.S. federal board rejects objections to proposed New Mexico nuclear dump

The vulnerability of nuclear weapons systems to cyber threats

Increased tension as U.S. has seized a North Korean ship for sanctions violations

1 This Month

Categories

Pages

Archives

Categories

RSS

Site info