A water leak at Oyster Creek Generating Station has forced the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant to operate at reduced capacity as it nears the final month before closure, federal officials said…….
Oyster Creek is the oldest operating commercial nuclear power plant in the nation, according to the NRC and is slated to completely stop generating electricity Sept. 17.
About a decade ago, New Jersey officials informed Exelon that it would need to add costly cooling towers in order to continue operating for the next 20 years, Sheehan said. The state and the company reached an agreement that the company didn’t have to add the towers if it agreed to close after just 10 years………
Exelon estimated that cost to restore the site to its original state would cost near $1.4 billion.
Holtec International must obtain permission from the NRC before it can take over Exelon’s license for Oyster Creek. The NRC is hosting a public meeting about the license transfer at 11555 Rockville Pike in Rockville, Maryland at 1 p.m. on Aug. 15.
Radioactive liquid discovered in barrels near mobile home park in Bellflower By BRIAN ROKOS | brokos@scng.com | The Press-Enterprise
As Thorium 232 decays, it releases radiation and forms decay products. The decay process continues until a stable, nonradioactive decay product is formed.
Pa. distributing KI tablets to people near nuclear power plants, abc 27 news, By:Myles Snyder Aug 09, 2018 HARRISBURG, Pa.(WHTM) – The state Department of Health is distributing free potassium iodide tablets on Thursday to people who live or work within 10 miles of the state’s five nuclear power plants.
Potassium iodide, or KI tablets help protect the thyroid gland against harmful radioactive iodine and is safe for everyone including pregnant women, those who are breastfeeding, and children and infants, the Health Department said.
People should not take the tablets unless health officials or the governor tell them to do so.
KI tablets can be picked up for family members.
The tablets are also available year-round at county and municipal health departments or state health centers for those who live or work near a nuclear power plant.
The Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition opposes the use of nuclear weapons. Any use would have catastrophic consequences everywhere in the world, destroying large cities, killing millions and leaving large areas of contamination for hundreds of years. In an article dated Jan. 16, 2018, Pope Francis states that he fears we are on the brink of nuclear war.
The current world threat exchanges have increased our fears.
The UN Office of Disarmament Affairs states that nuclear weapons have only been used twice, once in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and again three days later on Aug. 9 in Nagasaki, Japan. 350,000 persons were killed in Hiroshima, and 210,000 were killed in Nagasaki, with at least 200,000 vaporized. More than 250,000 persons died later from radiation poisoning.
Irish politician and journalist Eamonn McCann states that based on detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the surviving Japanese leaders involved, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.
The Union of Concerned Scientists notes there have been many close calls with nuclear weapons. On Nov. 9, 1979, computers at the North American Aerospace Defense headquarters indicated a large scale missile attack was underway. NORAD relayed the info to high-level command posts. Top leaders met to assess the threat. Everyone concerned went on high alert. Bomber crews boarded their planes. Six minutes later satellite data failed to confirm any incoming missiles. It was later discovered that a technician had mistakenly inserted a tape containing a training exercise into an operational NORAD computer simulating a full-scale attack.
On Sept. 26, 1983, a Soviet early-warning satellite indicated one, then two, and then five nuclear missile launches. The Soviet Union had earlier mistakenly downed a South Korean passenger plane. The officer on duty, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, had very little time to respond. However, he deemed the readings a false alarm, thinking that “when people start a war, they don’t start it with only five missiles.” Later investigations mistook sunlight reflecting off the clouds for missile launches. Petrov’s actions earned him the nickname “the man who saved the world.”
On Jan. 25, 1995, a Russian radar detected an unexpected missile launch off the coast of Norway. The missile’s characteristics seemed similar to that of a U.S. submarine-launched missile. This lead radar operators to believe the missile might detonate a nuclear warhead, blinding Russian radars before a larger attack. Russian nuclear forces went on full alert. Retaliation was avoided when Russian early-warning satellites failed to find activity around US missile silos.
Many more have been described. These close calls shouldn’t happen. As long as we have such weapons that are capable of killing millions of persons, along with the rise of authoritarian leaders, there is the possibility of a country’s retaliation or human error allowing a nuclear bomb explosion.
The Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition rejects any new development of nuclear weapons. We reject any testing other than that needed to determine the safety of existing warheads currently in stock until they can be dismantled. We hope that President Donald Trump and our U.S. diplomats will successively negotiate especially with North Korea and Iran to achieve the peaceful and total disarmament of those countries.
It is dangerous and hypocritical for the U.S. to maintain a nuclear weapons stockpile while insisting that the rest of the world disarm. We demand that the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, stop refurbishing our nuclear warheads and resume dismantling them. We and our government must accept responsibility for its serious contamination of the earth and water by cleaning up all waste from nuclear weapons development facilities.
Nuclear weapons should not even be a consideration in the world we live in. Our country could be destroyed as well as any other country. We should lead the world in nuclear disarmament. As we approach the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we ask the community to remember all the dead of World War II by joining us Monday in our weekly vigil on the corner of Main and Jefferson streets in South Bend from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Wanda L. Mangus is a member of the Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition.
An asteroid has exploded in a ‘fireball’ near an American early warning radar base, prompting a top scientist to reflect on how a similar ‘freak’ incident could cause nuclear war. The meteor was only detected after it detonated close to Thule Airbase, Greenland, on July 25. A prominent nuclear expert later discussed how the US military could have mistaken the explosion for a Russian ‘first strike’ and launched up to 2,000 nukes in retaliation.
Thule is a base in Greenland which incorporates a Ballistic Missile Early Warning Site designed to spot nuclear doomsday weapons flying towards America. Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, tweeted: ‘We’re still here, so they correctly concluded it was not a Russian first strike. ‘There are nearly 2,000 nukes on alert, ready to launch.’ Kristensen told Metro that a ‘freak incident like this could potentially trigger an alert that caused the United States to overreact’, although he stressed such an event was unlikely.
‘The potential risks are about what could happen in a tense crisis where two nuclear powers were at each other’s throats and a conventional shooting war had broken out and part of the command and control system degraded,’ he said. ‘The early warning systems are supposed to be able to differentiate and in most cases probably would be able to do so. ‘But with large number of nuclear weapons on high alert, the concern would be that an overreaction could trigger a series of events that escalated the conflict significantly. ‘There have been cases during the Cold War where atmospheric events caused early warning systems to falsely report nuclear attacks. Fortunately, military officers figured out that they were false alarms.’ He said tensions were low at the moment, making it very unlikely that an asteroid strike would trigger a nuclear war.
‘I don’t think there is any risk that such an event could trigger a nuclear launch under normal circumstances,’ Kristensen continued. ‘There are no other indicators that nuclear adversaries at this point are about to launch nuclear weapons against the United States.’ The asteroid hit on July 25 and exploded with a force of about 2.1 kilotons, Nasa confirmed. This is about an eighth of the 15 kiloton yield of the Little Boy bomb, which was used to destroy Hiroshima in World War II. In 1968, a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed into sea ice near Thule, causing a huge explosion and forcing a massive clean-up operation.
Group: Nuclear waste could be trucked from Illinois to Port Huron, Bob Gross, Port Huron Times Herald, 3 Aug 18
A coalition of environmental groups claims a letter from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicates that nuclear waste from power plants in Illinois will be trucked to Port Huron and shipped from there to an unknown destination.
“A spill, release or fire here or near waterways that flow into the St. Clair River could potentially ruin one of the largest fresh water deltas in the world – the St. Clair Flats – and potentially poison forever drinking water and freshwater ecosystems for up to 40-plus million people of the Great Lakes, including residents of Canada, the U.S., U.S. Tribes, First Nations and other indigenous peoples,” said Kay Cumbow of the Great Lakes Environmental Alliance in Port Huron, in a news release.
According to the news release from Don’t Waste Michigan, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, a letter dated July 13, from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to “Secured Transportation Services,” cites an application under 45-day review by the NRC for a highway transport route for high level radioactive waste from the LaSalle nuclear reactors in Illinois to the “Port Huron, Michigan Port of Exit.”
The letter was found July 23 among 467 documents on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s online ADAMS library, according to the news release. The number of transports is not given.
Secured Transportation Services, which is based in Buford, Georgia, is identified on the company’s website as the “leading transportation coordinator for spent nuclear fuel in North America.”
The letter only refers to shipping from central Illinois to Port Huron by a land route, according to the news release. It does not show where or how the waste would move from the city.
In a follow-up interview, Cumbow said the groups have more questions than answers about possible spent fuel shipments coming to Port Huron from Illinois………..
Cumbow said the letter only references highway route approval.
“Once it gets to Port Huron, we don’t know where it goes,” she said.
She said the waste is highly radioactive.
“It’s lethal when you are exposed to it,” Cumbow said. “Shielded, you’re fine. Any accident with this stuff, if there was a serious incident with this stuff, there is a likelihood people will be killed.
“The other thing is we don’t know what’s approved in Canada,” she said. “We don’t know where it is going. It might be going to Canada or it might be going through Canada to somewhere else.”
She said safety issues posed by the state’s crumbling road and bridge infrastructure are other concerns.
“There might be a little bit of this going across the border, or there might be a whole lot of it going across the border,” Cumbow said. “We just don’t know. I think as a society we should be looking at ways to stop poisoning our land and water.”
According to the news release, NRC spokesman Alex Sapountzis is quoted in an email to an NRC librarian as stating that “details of all spent nuclear fuel routes are designated as Safeguards Information/sensitive information and therefore will not be placed in ADAMS. All a member of the public will see in ADAMS is that in a letter we state we accepted for review a route (it has all the information we need to conduct our review) and then an approval letter (based on the information the applicant submitted, we accept the route and for transport by road it’s good for 5 years or by rail for 7 years).”
A state senator says he wants answers on why uranium leaked through a hole in the floor of a Richland County nuclear plant with a history of troubles and groundwater contamination.
State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, is asking the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to explain what it knows about uranium contamination discovered recently at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel factory on Bluff Road.
At Jackson’s request, DHEC has agreed to hold a public meeting to discuss the leak and other problems. Jackson sent a letter to DHEC on Thursday outlining his concerns………
A state senator says he wants answers on why uranium leaked through a hole in the floor of a Richland County nuclear plant with a history of troubles and groundwater contamination.
State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, is asking the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control to explain what it knows about uranium contamination discovered recently at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel factory on Bluff Road.
At Jackson’s request, DHEC has agreed to hold a public meeting to discuss the leak and other problems. Jackson sent a letter to DHEC on Thursday outlining his concerns.
………The uranium leak is the latest in a series of problems that have plagued the facility for decades. In the early 1980s, regulators discovered the groundwater was contaminated with fluoride and ammonia. Solvents later were found in groundwater. Solvents are particularly toxic to people exposed to them. The agency also found nitrate in the groundwater that dates to the 1980s. Nitrate is toxic to babies who drink formula with contaminated water.
Efforts to clean up the contamination have produced mixed results, with some pollution continuing to show up in the water……..
In addition to those problems, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has fined and cited Westinghouse more than a dozen times dating to at least 1993. Those problems range from buildups of uranium in air-pollution control devices and incinerators to worker accidents.https://www.thestate.com/latest-news/article215543880.html
South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) officials said there was no reason to believe this leak left the the site of the Westinghouse plant or posed a threat to public drinking water, but state senator Darrell Jackson is calling for a public meeting to discuss the leak and other historic issues at the plant, The State further reported Wednesday.
“This is very disturbing,” Jackson said. “This is one of the fears that those of us who grew up in that area, and lived in that area, have always talked about. I’m asking DHEC to get to Westinghouse officials and let’s have a public meeting, not just with elected officials, but we need citizens there also.”
The company informed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the leak July 12, which came through a hole in a part of the plant where acid is used. The hole was three inches and extended six feet into the ground, the NRC told The State.
The NRC found uranium levels in the soil of 4,000 parts per million, more than 1,000 times higher than average for soil.
“That’s a lot, oh yeah,” U.S. Geological Survey scientist Frank Chapelle told The State.
The company has covered the hole with a metal plate and said it would not use the area until it was completely repaired.
The DHEC said they were still testing the groundwater on the site to see if it was contaminated, but said the plant itself was far enough away from public drinking water that it shouldn’t cause a problem.
“Based on existing information, there is no threat to the public from this recent release or from historical groundwater contamination at this secured site as there is no exposure risk to the general public,” DHEC spokesperson Tommy Crosby told The State.
But Jackson was not reassured.
“What we don’t know is what kind of impact that’s going to have 20 years from now on the groundwater, this drip, drip, drip,” Jackson said. “I don’t know of too many people too receptive to living in the area when they know the groundwater is contaminated.”
DHEC spokesperson Cristi Moore said the agency would consider the senator’s request for a meeting.
This isn’t the first time safety concerns have surrounded the Westinghouse plant.
Part of the plant had to shut down two years ago because of uranium found accumulating in an air pollutiondevice, The Associated Press reported. It was also cited by the federal government this year for failing to plan adequately for a potential radiation burst.
Groundwater below the plant has also been found to be contaminated with nitrate since 1984. While clean up efforts were made, the nitrate was not entirely removed, The State reported.
The leak comes as the Trump administration has promised to assist unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. Its most recent plan, reported in June, would require that grid operators buy power from struggling plants for the sake of national security.
Stop Penly 24th July 2018 , Creusot, the scandal continues and concerns a growing number of components.
On July 17, 2018, EDF published a note on the information provided to the safety authority concerning the nuclear equipment manufacturing files carried out at the Creusot plant, now under the control of the state energy
operator.
The verification of all the manufacturing files of these components reveals 1,775 anomalies and 449 non-compliances on the equipment of 46 of its operating nuclear reactors. With 94 anomalies and 19 nonconformities for 34 parts manufactured at Le Creusot, reactor 3 Bugey (Ain) seems to be the most affected. http://stopeprpenly.org/?p=1161
FT 25th July 2018 , French power utility EDF has said there will be further delays and cost overruns at its flagship Flamanville nuclear site. In April, the company said that problems with the weldings at its Flamanville site might have an
impact on the costs and the schedule for starting the long-delayed nuclear reactor.
On Wednesday, the company said that out of the 148 inspected welds, 33 had quality deficiencies and would be repaired. As a result it had “adjusted the Flamanville EPR schedule and construction costs . . . The loading of nuclear fuel is now scheduled for the fourth quarter in 2019 and the target construction costs have been revised from €10.5bn to €10.9bn.”
The plant was already seven years late and €7bn over budget. The Flamanville plant in France is one of three being
built in Europe using the next-generation European Pressurized Reactor technology. The other two projects are the Olkiluoto project in Finland, which is more than a decade late, and the UK’s Hinkley Point, which is mired in controversy over the high cost of the project. http://www.ft.com/content/1b2473c8-8fdd-11e8-b639-7680cedcc421
Leaked video of post-Fukushima flooding risk at American nuclear power plant
Flooding at a Florida Nuclear Plant, UCS, DAVE LOCHBAUM, DIRECTOR, NUCLEAR SAFETY PROJECT | JULY 26, 2018, Role of Regulation in Nuclear Plant Safety #5
St. Lucie Unit 1 began operating in 1976. From the beginning, it was required by federal regulations to be protected against flooding from external hazards. After flooding in 2011 led to the meltdown of three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan, the NRC ordered owners to walk down their plants in 2012 to verify conformance with flood protection requirements and remedy all shortcomings. The owner of St. Lucie Unit 1 told the NRC that only one minor deficiency had been identified and it was fixed.
But heavy rainfall in January 2014 flooded the Unit 1 reactor auxiliary building with 50,000 gallons through flood barriers that had been missing since at least 1982. Unit 1 became as wet as the owner’s damp assurances and the NRC’s soggy oversight efforts.
Parade of Flood Protection Promises
Operators achieved the first criticality, or sustained nuclear chain reaction, of the Unit 1 reactor core at the St. Lucie nuclear plant located about miles southeast of Ft. Pierce, Florida at 8:30 am on April 22, 1976. Federal regulations adopted more than five years earlier required the plant to be protected against natural phenomena. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), forerunner to today’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), issued guidance in August 1973 that explicitly informed nuclear plant owners and applicants that the natural phenomena to be protected against included heavy local precipitation.
En route to the AEC issuing an operating license for Unit 1 on March 1, 1976, the owner submitted a Preliminary Safety Analysis Report and later a Final Safety Analysis Report, now called the Updated Final Safety Analysis Report (UFSAR), describing the design features and operational procedures that demonstrated conformance with all applicable regulatory requirements such as flood protection. The design bases external flood was a Probable Maximum Hurricane (PMH) while the design bases internal flood was the postulated rupture of a 14-inch diameter low pressure safety injection system pipe. The analyses summarized in the UFSAR reported the flooding rates, flooding depths needed to submerge and disable safety components, alarms alerting workers to the flooding situation, and response actions and associated times for workers to intervene and successfully mitigate a flooding event.
…………The owner reported to the NRC on December 27, 2012, the results of its evaluation of the missing and degraded conduit seals. The NRC was told that the electrical manholes have 4-inch and 1.5-inch diameter drain lines to the storm water system. In the event of site flooding due to a storm, water could flow through these drain lines into the electrical manholes. When the water filled the manholes to a certain depth, water would flow through the missing and degraded conduit seals into the reactor auxiliary building and disable components needed for safe shutdown of the reactor. The owner reported that the conduit seals had been missing since original construction in the 1970s. This potential hazard no longer existed because the missing and degraded conduit seals had been corrected.
The NRC evaluated the missing and degraded conduit seals reported by the owner via its November 27 and December 27 submittals. On April 25, 2013, the NRC issued its report for its evaluation. The NRC noted:
The licensee’s design basis does not allow for any external leakage into safety-related buildings during a PMH. Unit 1 UFSAR section 3.4.4, states in part, that “All external building penetrations are waterproofed and/or flood protected to preclude the failure of safety related system or component due to external flooding.”
Even though the flood protection deficiency existed for over three decades before being found and fixed, the NRC elected to impose no sanction for violating federal safety regulations.
The NRC reported on July 30, 2013, about additional walkdowns its inspectors made of the Unit 1 and 2 reactor auxiliary buildings. The NRC inspectors also reviewed documents in the owner’s corrective action and work order databases for weather-related problems that could result in site flooding. No problems were found.
Raining on the Promise Parade
On January 9, 2014, it rained on St. Lucie. A culvert in the storm water drain system obstructed by debris caused rain water to pool around the reactor auxiliary building instead of being carried away. Rain water leaked into the reactor auxiliary building via two electrical conduits that lacked the proper flood barriers. A video obtained by UCS via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) shows water pouring from an electrical junction box mounted on the inside wall of the Unit 1 reactor auxiliary building. (We don’t have a video of this location before the flood, but we know that it wasn’t nearly as wet and noisy.)
An estimated 50,000 gallons of water flooded Unit 1. Workers periodically manipulated valves to allow flood water to drain into the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) pump room sumps where it was transferred to an outdoor collection tank. Their efforts successfully prevented any safety components from being disabled and Unit 1 continuing operating through the rainfall.
When the dust dried, workers found four other electrical conduits that lacked proper flood barriers. The six conduits passed through the reactor auxiliary building wall below the design bases flood elevation. Consequently, they should have been equipped with flood barriers, but the required barriers had not been provided. These six conduits were not part of the plant’s original design, but had been installed via modifications implemented in 1978 and 1982.
The NRC issued a White finding, the second least serious among its Green, White, Yellow and Red classification scheme, on November 19, 2014, for two violations of regulatory requirements:
……..the owner violated federal regulations in 1978 and 1982 by not providing flood barriers with the installed conduit and re-violated federal regulations in 2012 by not finding the flood barriers missing when commanded by NRC to do so after Fukushima.
UCS Perspective
In the letter transmitting the White finding to the plant’s owner, NRC noted that the severity of the two violations of federal regulations would normally have also resulted in a $70,000 fine, but explained:
Because your facility has not been the subject of escalated enforcement actions within the last two years, the NRC considered whether credit was warranted for Corrective Action in accordance with the civil penalty assessment process in Section 2.3.4 of the Enforcement Policy. … Therefore, to encourage prompt identification and comprehensive correction of violations, and in recognition of the absence of previous escalated enforcement action, I have been authorized, after consultation with the Director, Office of Enforcement, not to propose a civil penalty in this case.
What?
“Because your facility has not been the subject of escalated enforcement actions within the last two years” is largely because the owner violated federal regulations by not finding, fixing, and reporting the missing flood barriers on the six electrical conduits that factored in the January 9, 2014, flooding event. So, the reason the owner has a clean slate over the past two years is because the owner violated federal regulations two years ago that would otherwise have uncleaned that slate. Who says crime doesn’t pay?
……… Is the White finding without the usual (and entirely appropriate) $70,000 fine a slap on the wrist of this owner?I don’t know. But I do know that it is a slap in the face of the many plant owners who took the NRC’s order seriously by doing a thorough job of walking down their plants for flooding and earthquake vulnerabilities and remedying all deficiencies (not just a token one or two).
By “encouraging” owners who perform badly, the NRC is discouraging owners who perform well. ……..
For over 30 years, St. Lucie operated without flood barriers it was required by federal regulations to have. ………
St. Lucie is adequately protected against flooding—unless a flood happens. That flood might reveal still more deficiencies for the NRC to “encourage” the owner to promptly find and comprehensively fix (assuming the reactor still hasn’t melted down.)
Times 26th July 2018 , Doubts about the Hinkley Point nuclear plant being built on time
intensified yesterday when its developer announced fresh delays to a prototype in France caused by defective welding. EDF, the French state-controlled energy company, is building Britain’s first new nuclear plant in a generation in Somerset and aims to start generating electricity from the £20 billion project in 2025.
The company is building the same
reactor type at Flamanville, Normandy, but has repeatedly had to put back
the start-up date, originally 2012, because of construction problems. EDF
said yesterday that first power generation at Flamanville would now slip by
a year to early 2020 because it needed to repair “quality deficiencies”
in the welding in part of the plant that carries steam to the turbines. The
cost of the plant has increased by a further €400 million to €10.9
billion, more than three times its original budget.
City analysts at RBC
Capital Markets said the announcement would “add to concerns about
whether EDF’s other projects . . . can be delivered on time and
budget”. Hinkley Point is due to generate 3.2 gigawatts of power, seven
per cent of Britain’s power needs, and is meant to help keep the lights
on when coal and older nuclear plants close. EDF insists it has learnt the
lessons from the EPRs being built elsewhere, ensuring that the British
project will proceed more smoothly.
However, Britain’s nuclear safety
regulator has raised concerns about substandard quality control checks on
EDF’s supply chain. A source insisted that Hinkley should not suffer the
same problems as Flamanville because the project uses a different
contractor and testing method, both of which had already been deployed
successfully in Finland. Kate Blagojevic, head of energy at Greenpeace UK,
said: “EDF’s nuclear design just doesn’t work very well. The nuclear
power plant in Finland is a decade late and because of yet more technical
problems, the Flamanville plant has gone from late to later. This bodes ill
for Hinkley Point C.” A spokesman for EDF said: “The construction of
Hinkley Point C remains on track. The project has already benefited, and
will continue to learn from the experience of other projects. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/reactor-fault-raises-spectre-of-delays-at-20bn-hinkley-point-xflrcbg2j
David Lowry’s Blog 23rd July 2018 ‘Mark-your-own-homework’ nuclear “safeguards” proposed by UK Government as
part of Brexit plans. A week ago the Government published a near 100-page
report titled ‘The future relationship between the United Kingdom and the
European Union’, which has provoked much public and political discussion.
Congress drops bid to loosen supervision of nuclear agency abc By MATTHEW DALY, ASSOCIATED PRESS, WASHINGTON — Jul 23, 2018,
Congress is abandoning an effort to loosen Cabinet control over an agency responsible for securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
A provision in a defense policy bill would have removed the National Nuclear Security Administration from direct control of the Energy Department, where it’s been housed since its creation in 2000.
The provision was dropped as House and Senate lawmakers negotiated a compromise defense bill, aides said Monday. The defense bill could come up for a vote in the House this week.
The Trump administration and senior lawmakers from both parties opposed the nuclear provision, but it was included in a defense bill passed by the Senate in June.
The measure would have empowered the NNSA to act nearly on its own, freed from what a report by the Senate Armed Services Committee calls a “flawed DOE organizational process” that has led to “weak accountability, … insufficient program and budget expertise and poor contract management.”
That report cites a series of delays and cost overruns at the agency, including a contentious project to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium and uranium into fuel for commercial reactors at a site in South Carolina.
The White House and Energy Secretary Rick Perry oppose the reorganization, saying it would usurp Perry’s authority to set policy in crucial areas. The bill also would make the nuclear agency’s general counsel independent of the Energy Department’s legal division……….
Criticism of the nuclear agency isn’t new.
A congressional commission led by a former Army undersecretary and retired Navy admiral concluded in 2014 that it had failed in its mission and relied too heavily on private contractors that had turned it into a massive jobs program with duplicative functions and a “dysfunctional management and operations relationship.”
The commission, however, did support the current oversight arrangement.
Perry told Congress this year that there have been “historically questionable expenditures of dollars” by the NNSA, including at the South Carolina nuclear project, but he said officials were working to ensure taxpayers “are getting a good return on our investment.”
Japan to deploy large patrol boats to guard nuclear plants (Mainichi Japan)
TOKYO (Kyodo) — The Japan Coast Guard will deploy two large patrol vessels to areas of the Sea of Japan to reinforce protection of nuclear power plants against terrorism, sources familiar with the matter said Saturday.
Two new 1,500-ton vessels with helipads will be deployed between fiscal 2019 and 2020 to the coast guard’s Tsuruga office in Fukui Prefecture where several nuclear plants are located, according to the sources.
Patrol boats of similar size, each costing about 6 billion yen ($54 million), will be introduced in other parts of the country in the future, they said.
The government is moving to strengthen counterterrorism measures in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, in line with an agreement in February with the International Atomic Energy Agency to bolster Japan’s capacity to respond to nuclear terrorism…….
The new ships could also be used to respond to emergency situations at nuclear plants in other areas, and crew will receive special training in dealing with radioactive substances, they said. ……
nuclear-news 