|
Grand Gulf nuclear power plant troubles ‘happening far too often,’ Mississippi official says, Clarion Ledger
Operators took the southwest Mississippi plant offline last week, citing problems with a turbine bypass valve. Last Wednesday’s outage came to light Tuesday when the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced a special inspection. “The reactor was safely shut down but some equipment issues occurred that the agency wants to better understand,” the agency said in a statement. It’s at least the sixth unplanned decrease in output at the plant in the last 15 months, according to NRC documents. The plant has been running at reduced or zero power output for much of the time since 2016, according to an analysis published earlier this month by E&E News ……. The plant’s troubles come as President Donald Trump continues to support plans to subsidize nuclear power generation for reliability purposes. ……. Beyond questions of safety, the absence of Grand Gulf’s 1,443-megawatt capacity can stress power supplies and may cause higher prices across Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and southeastern Texas, a region that includes not only New Orleans-based Entergy’s utilities, but cooperatives and private utility Cleco of Pineville, Louisiana……. Entergy spent hundreds of millions to increase the plant’s generating capacity in 2012, setting it up to be a cornerstone of low-cost generation in the region for decades, especially after winning a 20-year extension of the plant’s license from the NRC through 2044. But when it’s down, utilities have to buy power from other plants in the MISO region……..https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2018/12/19/grand-gulf-nuclear-power-plant-outage-safety-reliability-ms-entergy/2361876002/ |
|
Explosive Accidents: The Lost Nuclear Arsenal at the Bottom of the Sea https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/09/03/nuclear-arsenal/?fbclid=IwAR1dPU13kVGGrYK–PFmFciWyMO28xaa1nU7OFMlC7UfuQwjMFh4
Sep 3, 2018 Ian Harvey In July of 2018, Andrew Thaler wrote for Southern Fried Science that there were at least two nuclear capsules, four unarmed weapons, and one armed nuclear weapon sitting on the ocean floor, that he was aware of.
His information was based on declassified U.S. Department of Defense narrative summaries of accidents involving U.S. nuclear weapons.
He noted that the documents he had access to only covered the period of time between 1950 and 1980. Any more recent data would still be classified. There is reason to believe that his estimated numbers for nuclear material in the oceans are far too low.
Business Insider in 2013 wrote that since 1950 there have been 32 nuclear weapon accidents, known as Broken Arrows, where an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons resulted in the firing, launching, theft, or loss of said weapon.
BI reported in this piece that there were six nuclear weapons that have been lost and never recovered. The time frames for the BI list continued into the 2000’s, but this is also a lowball number.
According to a 1989 article in the New York Times, however, there have been at least 50 nuclear warheads and nine reactors scattered on the ocean floors since 1956.
These were the result of various accidents on the part of U.S. and Soviet bombers, ships, and rockets, according to a study of naval accidents that was published by Greenpeace and the Institute for Policy Studies.
The study outlines 1,276 accidents, both nuclear and non-nuclear, on the part of the world’s navies, and has some, more limited, information on another 1,000 accidents. The study points out that the total number of incidents amounts to one major peacetime accident a week
Information for the study was gathered mostly through the Freedom of Information Act, which included American intelligence assessments of Soviet naval accidents.
Eighty days after it fell into the ocean following the January 1966 midair collision between a nuclear-armed B-52G bomber and a KC-135 refueling tanker over Palomares, Spain, this B28RI nuclear bomb was recovered from 2,850 feet (869 meters) of water and lifted aboard the USS Petrel (note the missing tail fins and badly dented “false nose”).
The authors also received information from the governments of other nations. The report said that the worst accident occurred in 1986, when a Soviet submarine sank 600 miles northeast of the Bermuda coast, depositing two nuclear reactors and 32 nuclear warheads on the bottom of the ocean.
That one accident left more nuclear material under the sea than the authors of the first two pieces posited, combined. The study also notes that it doesn’t reflect data on any of the “many hundreds” of Soviet accidents about which little is known, and suggested that the Soviet Navy has far more accidents than those of America.
The accidents are, for the most part, due to human factors, ranging from issues of faulty navigation to outright sabotage.
So far, the U.S. has admitted to knowing of one hydrogen bomb that is leaking radioactive material. That bomb was accidentally dropped into the sea south of Japan in 1965 by an aircraft carrier.
Read another story from us: The Missing Nuclear Weapons Lost Off The Coast Of Bermuda
There is some likelihood that other bombs may have also begun to leak radiation into the water, and are just unknown as yet. Even if it hasn’t happened yet, the chances of such leaks will increase over time as the weapons degrade, having the potential to cause untold harm to the oceans and our planet as a whole.
Sortir du Nucleaire 6th Dec 2018 , An explosion followed by a major fire took place on 6 December 2018 at the
Advanced Nuclear Fuels plant in Lingen (Lower Saxony). This plant, located
near the Emsland nuclear reactor in northwestern Germany, is owned by
Framatome. Nuclear fuel elements are manufactured and sent to several
countries, including France. As a spokesman for the plant later confirmed
to the media Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the fire broke out in the laboratory
of a manufacturing workshop , where the quality of the uranium is tested
before shipment. This laboratory is located in the nuclear part of the
facility. Although quickly controlled, the fire required the intervention
of 150 firefighters from the area. The staff was evacuated. Since then, the
plant has been idling.
https://www.sortirdunucleaire.org/Allemagne-Lingen-Explosion-et-incendie-dans-l-usine-Framatome-de-fabrication-de-combustible-nucleaire1
The Parliament Magazine 11th Dec 2018 , Leading Greens MEP Rebecca Harms has called for the decommissioning of a Belgian nuclear reactor as it no longer meets international safety|
America’s Nuclear Battle Plan if Russia Went to War: Massive Bunkers Under U.S. Cities, National Interest, |
Nuclear safety groups criticize DOE order https://www.abqjournal.com/author/mhayden, BY MADDY HAYDEN / JOURNAL STAFF WRITER, , December 8th, 2018 SANTA FE, N.M. — Nuclear safety watchdog groups around the country are calling on the Department of Energy to rescind an order they fear will limit the board tasked with overseeing operations at some of the nation’s nuclear facilities and ultimately negatively affect safety at such facilities.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has itself raised concerns over Order 140.1, “Interface with the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board,” put into place by the DOE in April.
The board held a second public hearing on the order in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 28.
The DNFSB was created by Congress in 1988 to provide oversight and provide information to the public on safety issues at some DOE nuclear facilities.
“We are deeply concerned that Order 140.1 constrains crucial oversight activities of the DNFSB and thereby endangers public health and worker safety,” said Kathy Crandall Robinson of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability during the late-November hearing.
Chief among the concerns with the order, which the DOE says is aimed at “clarifying” the roles of the department and DNFSB, is language that limits formal DNFSB oversight to issues of public safety as those beyond facility boundaries.
The order, Robinson said, “threatens to send us on a glide path back to a careless era as if this were a time when safety concerns and dangers at nuclear weapons facilities are shrinking.”
“They are not,” she added, citing plans to ramp up plutonium pit production at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Lydia Dennett of the non-partisan Project on Government Oversight expressed concerns over the reasoning behind the order’s implementation, namely that the decision was possibly driven by government contractors.
“This policy makes it easier for contractors to hide any information they don’t want to come to light,” she said.
The order stipulates the DNFSB may not talk to contractor employees without getting authorization from management and DOE, according to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability.
The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability represents more than 30 organizations located near DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration sites around the country, including the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research Information Center.
Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center pointed out in a news release sent by the alliance a 2011 DNFSB report that identified fire hazards at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southeast New Mexico.
Three years later, an underground fire caused the temporary closure of the facility.
December 2018 Global Defense Security army news industryPOSTED, 08 DECEMBER 2018 A battery of Tor-M2 SAM (Surface-To-Air defense missile system) produced by Concern Almaz-Antey will enter in service with the 1146th Guards surface-to-air missile regiment deployed near a Belarusian nuclear power plant, which is under construction, Major General Igor Golub, the commander of the Air and Air Defense Forces of the Belarusian Armed Forces, said.
“Russia will supply another battery of Tor-M2 surface-to-air missile systems soon. They will come in service with the 1146th Guards surface-to-air missile regiment,” the commander quoted by the Belorusskaya Voennaya Gazeta military newspaper said.
Previous reports said that Concern Almaz-Antey had handed over a shipment of Tor-M2 surface-to-air missiles to the Belarusian Defense Ministry ahead of time. They had been assembled a month ahead of schedule. Belarus has received the fifth SAM shipment.
The 1146th surface-to-air regiment was revived in Belarus in 2017. The four-battery regiment is armed with Tor-M2 surface-to-air missiles. It protects the Belarusian airspace in the northwest covering the Belarusian nuclear power station.
The Tor-M2 is an upgraded version of the Tor-M1 short-range air defense missile system. The TOR-M2/M2E is designed by the Russian Defense Company Almaz-Antey. The TOR-M2 / M2E is designed to destroy aircraft, helicopters, aerodynamic UAVs, guided missiles and other components of high precision weapons flying at medium, low and extremely low altitudes in adverse air and jamming environment. The Tor-M2 missile system can be mounted on wheeled or tracked chassis.
The Tor-M2 can simultaneously engage up to 48 processed targets and ten tracked targets.The TOR-M2 can engage a target at the range from 1,000 to 12,000 m and to an altitude from 10 to 10,000 m.
ENDS Report 3rd Dec 2018 , Government confirms it will fund post-Brexit nuclear regime. The nuclear
industry will not have to fund the creation of a new safeguards regime
after Brexit, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
has confirmed.
https://www.endsreport.com/article/61622/government-confirms-it-will-fund-post-brexit-nuclear-regime
David Lowry’s Blog 1st Dec 2018 Imagine the British Foreign Office response if North Korea and Iran said they would comply with their nuclear safeguards and verification inspection obligations, but would conduct the inspections themselves!
But this week, this is just what the British Government has said to the world about its own new ‘mark-its-own-homework’ safeguards arrangements it has developed as part of Brexatom, the UK exit from the EU’s nuclear watchdog
body, Euratom.
http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2018/12/nuclear-safeguards-hypocrisy-black-hole.html
Ardrossan Herald 28th Nov 2018 THE chairman of Hunterston site stakeholders group has called upon the\ power station’s Reactor 3 to remain closed as a result of the increased number of cracks found in graphite bricks. It has been revealed that over 350 cracks have now been found, with concerns being raised as to the future operation of the plant.
However, owners EDF Energy closed reactor 3 earlier this year to carry out a more in-depth investigation, and have given
assurances that the cracks are ‘much narrower’ than set out than the safety parameters set which considerably lessens any danger.
Rita Holmes, chair of the Hunterston Site Stakeholder Group, said “If safety were indeed EDF’s number one priority, then reactor three would remain shut down. “As it is EDF is seeking permission to restart an aged reactor, which despite huge efforts and high cost, failed to back up its current safety case. The Hunterston keyway root cracking was not predicted to be so progressed. “There’s a lot at stake if the experts are wrong again.”
An EDF Energy spokesperson said: “The cracking only poses a potential challenge to the entry of the control rod in an extreme and highly unlikely (1 in 10,000 year) earthquake scenario and even then we have back-up systems which include super articulated control rods (designed to bypass distortions) and nitrogen plant which could be injected within
seconds to shut-down the unit.
During the most recent inspection of Reactor 3 we examined around a quarter of the core. As expected we identified a
number of new cracks. This number exceeded the operational limit of the existing safety case but was significantly mitigated by the cracks being much narrower than modelled in the safety case; something which was reported to the local site stakeholder group in June of this year. We have also carried out similar inspections on Reactor 4 and the case for return to service for that unit is currently with the ONR for review.” The return to service dates for the units which are cur rently on the REMIT website: Reactor 3 – 21 Feb 2019 and Reactor 4 – 14 Jan 2019.
https://www.ardrossanherald.com/news/17261490.350-cracks-found-in-hunterston-reactor/
ACRO 15th Nov 2018 In the event of a serious nuclear accident, France is not ready. This is
the conclusion of a study of ACRO carried out for the ANCCLI (National
Association of Committees and Local Information Commissions). Indeed, the
lessons of the Chernobyl disaster were ignored, because it was an accident
described as “Soviet”, so impossible in France. Those of the Fukushima
disaster are slow to be taken into account.
https://www.acro.eu.org/plans-durgence-nucleaire-en-france-forces-et-faiblesses/
San Onofre Safety 11/29/2018: NRC admits San Onofre Holtec nuclear waste canisters are all damaged, November 29, 2018
Oceanside: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) admits in their November 28, 2018 NRC Inspection Report and Notice of Violation, ML18332A357 (page 8 and 9) every Holtec canister downloaded into the storage holes is damaged due to inadequate clearance between the canister and the divider shell in the storage hole (vault). The NRC states canister walls are already “worn”. This results in cracks. Once cracks start, they continue to grow through the wall.
The NRC stated Southern California Edison (and Holtec) knew about this since January 2018, but continued to load 29 canisters anyway. Edison’s August 24, 2018 press release states they plan to finish loading mid 2019.
The NRC states Edison must stop loading canisters until this issue is resolved. However, there is no method to inspect or repair cracking canisters and the NRC knows this.
Instead, the NRC should admit the Holtec system is a lemon — a significant defective engineering design — and revoke both San Onofre and Holtec dry storage system licenses.
The NRC should require all San Onofre thin-wall canisters be replaced with thick-wall transportable storage casks. These are the only proven dry storage systems that can be inspected, maintained, repaired and monitored in a manner to prevent major radiological releases and explosions.
California state agencies should revoke San Onofre permits and withhold Decommissioning Trust Funds until these issues are resolved.
The Navy should consider revoking the San Onofre Camp Pendleton lease until Edison agrees to replace thin-wall canisters with proven thick-wall transportable storage casks. This is a national security issue. If the NRC cannot do their job, maybe it’s time to bring in the Marines. The Navy has nuclear experts.
Sign petition to recall and replace San Onofre defective thin-wall canisters with proven thick-wall casks https://sanonofresafety.org/2018/11/29/11-29-2018-nrc-admits-san-onofre-holtec-nuclear-waste-canisters-are-all-damaged/
Watchdog groups call for Congress to protect nuclear weapons communities, Huntington News, Wednesday, November 28, 2018 Watchdog groups from across the country are insisting the Department of Energy withdraw DOE Order 140.1, a controversial order that would compromise safety at dozens of facilities in the US nuclear weapons complex, and are asking key Congressional committees to annul the revised order and preserve the critically important prerogatives of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
The order, first announced by DOE in April, 2018, has drawn scrutiny from members of Congressional committees with oversight over the Energy Department. DOE Order 140.1 seeks to limit access to information and personnel by the Safety Board .
Kathy Crandall Robinson will speak at a November 28 hearing in Washington, DC, at which DNFSB is soliciting comments from Department officials and members of the public. “Order 140.1, with its degradation of DNFSB’s role and authority, threatens to send us on a glide path back to a careless era as if this were a time when safety concerns and dangers at nuclear weapons facilities are shrinking.
They are not,” Robinson says. “Instead, there are aging facilities, facilities operating where serious safety concerns have been raised, and some facilities where plans for increased production of nuclear weapons components could lead to novel dangers.
For example, the President’s Nuclear Posture Review calls for production of 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030 and plans are being laid for increased pit production at Los Alamos as well as new capabilities at Savannah River Site.”
Members of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a national network of organizations that addresses nuclear weapons production and waste cleanup issues, hail the work of the DNFSB as a critical guard against DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration efforts to cut corners on safety. “The Safety Board works outside of the media spotlight,” said Tom Clements, Director of Savannah River Site Watch in Columbia, South Carolina. “Its value to the public is immeasurable. DNFSB frequently provides information about SRS operations which DOE fails to communicate.
The role of the Safety Board should be expanded, not curtailed.” Marylia Kelley, Executive Director of Tri-Valley CAREs in Livermore, California, said, “The DNFSB is absolutely vital to worker and public safety. I have spent 35 years monitoring Livermore Lab. I can tell you that workers and community members rely on the Safety Board to do its job every day!”
DOE has been unresponsive to public concerns……..http://www.huntingtonnews.net/160792
There has been great concern about extensive and extremely toxic and radioactive waste at the SSFL for years.
According to Daniel Hirsch, who recently retired as director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, SSFL is “one of the most contaminated sites in the country
There are multiple human health impacts that have been known to stem from the site well before the Woolsey Fire began.
A study prepared by Professor Hal Morgenstern for the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry studied the community surrounding SSFL and found a greater than 60 percent increase in incidence of key cancers associated with proximity to the site.
“DTSC is a classically captured regulatory agency, captured by the polluters it is supposed to regulate,”
California Wildfire Likely Spread Nuclear Contamination From Toxic Site https://truthout.org/articles/california-wildfire-likely-spread-nuclear-contamination-from-toxic-site/, Dahr Jamail,, November 26, 2018The incredibly destructive Woolsey Fire in southern California has burned nearly 100,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, killed three people, destroyed more than 400 structures, and at the time of this writing, was finally nearly completely contained.
The fire may also have released large amounts of radiation and toxins into the air after burning through a former rocket engine testing site where a partial nuclear meltdown took place nearly six decades ago.
“The Woolsey Fire has most likely released and spread both radiological and chemical contamination that was in the Santa Susana Field Laboratory’s soil and vegetation via smoke and ash,” Dr. Bob Dodge, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles (PSR-LA), told Truthout.
The fire has been widely reported to have started “near” the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site (SSFL), but according to PSR-LA, it appears to have started at the site itself.
The contaminated site — a 2,849-acre former rocket engine test site and nuclear research facility — is located just 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
A press release issued by PSR-LA on November 12 stated: Continue reading
of the week- – THE ONENESS of HUMANITY
We the Nuclear Free North
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
nuclear-news 