Tekniik & Talous 14th May 2018 , [Machine Translation] New problems have arisen in TVO’s hot tests at
Olkiluoto 3. The connection line of the main pipework of the plant, the reactor cooling circuit, vibrates more than allowed. The problem is reported by the supervising authority Stuk in its recent monitoring report.
The problem has emerged in hot tests where the reactor and turbine plant systems are heated by the heat generated by the main circulation pumps to the correct operating temperatures. Heat tests ensure that the facility is safe to charge nuclear fuel. Before that, the body still needs a government license. According to Stuk, the reason for the vibration is still under way. Stuk explains the following. In Stucco’s Executive Director Petteri Tiippana, the problem is not negligible. https://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/tekniikka/energia/olkiluoto-3-n-tarkein-putkisto-varahtelee-liikaa-stukin-mukaan-korjaaminen-on-mittava-tyo-6724597
Radiation Free Lakeland 11th May 2018 The nuclear industry and Cuadrilla have a vested interest in not putting the spotlight on Springfields. They have a vested interest in not highlighting the thousands of lorryloads of for example uranium hexaflouride arriving at and leaving the plant.
The Springfields site is the spinning spider at the centre of the web of the Government’s new nuclear build and continuing nuclear weapons agenda. Adding fracking to this toxic brew is obsene and it does the campaign against fracking no
favours in keeping quiet about it.
Does the Inspector of the Roseacre Wood inquiry have details of the HGV movements to and from Springfields site –
If not why not? Certainly fracking campaigners have been kept in the dark about it. If only Radiation Free Lakeland have raised the issue of nuclear cargo on the same route as fracking lorries then something is wrong . The recent public inquiry into fracking at Roseacre Wood should have had Springfields dangerous nuclear and chemical transports at the centre of the inquiry. https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/transports-of-uranium-hexaflouride-on-the-same-road-as-fracking-lorries-what-could-go-wrong/
Telegraph 11th May 2018 , Closing down North Korea’s nuclear test site at Punggye-ri is going to be
more complicated and fraught with risk than has previously been suggested, with analysts suggesting that acting in haste for short-term political gain might lead to an environmental crisis.
One suggestion is to use explosives to seal the entrances to the three tunnels that have been drilled into the
mountain, although the concern is that further detonations at the already weakened site could lead to a collapse of internal spaces and the release of massive amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere.
Given the danger, the alternative is to bury the entire site in a mixture of lime and sand.
Rosatom, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear giant, has just launched the Akademik Lomonosov, the first of a fleet of floating nuclear power plants that Russia plans to build and sell to other countries such as China, Indonesia and Sudan. It is currently being towed across the Baltic Sea, where it will travel all of Scandinavia to Murmansk, to be supplied and tested, before departing on a 5,000 kilometre trip through the Arctic.
We already know the risks of drilling for oil in such a fragile and wild environment as the Arctic, but a nuclear reactor floating in its waters could aggravate things much more. This is why:
It is a matter of time that a catastrophe occurs
Rosatom has said that the plant “is designed with a large margin of safety that exceeds all possible threats and makes nuclear reactors indestructible in the face of tsunamis and other natural disasters.” Remember what happened the last time they said a boat was “unsinkable”?
Nothing is indestructible. The problem is that this nuclear Titanic has been built without independent experts to verify it. The same lack of supervision that there was in Chernobyl.
The flat bottom hull of this plant makes it especially vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones. A large wave could launch the station to the coast. Also, he can not move alone either. If you release moorings, you can not move away from a threat (such as an iceberg or a strange vessel, for example) increasing the risk of a fatal incident. A collision shock would damage your vital functions, causing a loss of power and damaging your cooling function.
Imagine how difficult it would be to deal with the consequences
There are so many things that could go wrong here: it could flood, sink or run aground. All of these scenarios could lead to the release of radioactive substances into the environment.
In case of a collapse, the ocean water would cool the core. It may seem like a good idea, but when the fuel rods are melted with seawater, there would first be a water explosion and possible explosions of hydrogen that would propagate a large number of radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere.
Damage to the reactor could contaminate much of the marine wildlife that is nearby, which means that fish populations could be contaminated in the coming years. The radioactive Arctic is not the most beautiful scenario. The areas around Fukushima and Chernobyl are already difficult to clean, imagine in the polar night, with sub-zero temperatures and snowstorms.
The terrible trajectory of nuclear ships, icebreakers and Russian submarines
In Russia, there is a very long list of accidents with nuclear submarines and icebreakers.
The first nuclear icebreaker, Lenin, suffered a cooling accident in 1965, which caused a partial melting of the nucleus, which ended up pouring into the Tsivolki Bay near the Novaya Zemyla archipelago in 1967. In 1970, the reactor of a nuclear submarine ( K-320) was launched at the Krasnoye Sormovo pier in Russia, releasing large amounts of radiation and exposing hundreds of people. An accident during the fuel loading of a nuclear submarine reactor in Chazma in 1985 irradiated 290 workers, causing 10 deaths and 49 injured people. And the list goes on …
Rosatom’s plans to build a fleet of floating nuclear power plants pose an increased risk of unprecedented nuclear accidents in the Arctic.
A nuclear dump in the water
We already have enough radioactive waste without knowing what to do with them. We do not need more.
The reactors of this plant are smaller than those found in a nuclear power plant on land and will need to be refuelled every two or three years. The radioactive waste will be stored on board until it returns after the designated 12 years of operation. That means radioactive waste will be left floating in the Arctic for years.
This is not only incredibly dangerous, but there is still no safe place to transport the fuel used once you step on firm ground. No source of energy must generate waste that takes thousands of years to be safe.
Is using nuclear energy to facilitate the extraction of more fossil fuels
If this floating nightmare were not already absurd enough, the reason they are towing it to the Arctic is to help Russia extract more fossil fuels. Its main mission is to provide electricity to the northern oil, gas, coal and mineral extraction industries.
And it is not necessary to repeat the reasons why more fossil fuels are synonymous with more climate change. We only have to protect the Arctic from this potential catastrophe.
Responsible for the anti-nuclear campaign of Greenpeace Spain, Source: El Independiente
Nuclear Inspectors Would Face Monumental Task in N.Korea http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2018/05/08/2018050801221.html By Cho Yi-jun May 08, 2018
The U.S.’ call for a “permanent, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement” of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs would pose a monumental task for international inspectors.
U.S. officials project “the most extensive inspection campaign in the history of nuclear disarmament, one that would have to delve into a program that stretches back more than half a century and now covers square miles of industrial sites and hidden tunnels across the mountainous North,” according to the New York Times on Sunday.
The success of any verification hinges on accurately assessing North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile stockpiles, most of which are hidden away. Already U.S. intelligence agents are going all out to gather data about the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile facilities.
The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency recently launched a project that tracks the movements of all vehicles in and out of North Korean military installations, CNN reported. Washington has also monitored North Korean responses to American fighter planes flying overhead to arrive at an overall assessment of the North’s hidden military bases.
One diplomatic source in Washington said the U.S. “may have assessed North Korea’s secret military installations much more accurately than the North thinks.”
The New York Times cited the RAND Corporation as arriving at no better assessment than that North Korea has 20 to 60 nuclear warheads and around 40 to 100 nuclear facilities, while one nuclear facility has more than 400 buildings.
“While there is no question Iran hid much of its weapons-designing past, North Korea has concealed programs on a far larger scale,” the daily said.
The RAND Corporation predicts that it would take 273,000 U.S. troops just to locate and secure North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, which is more than the number of American soldiers deployed in Iraq at the peak of the U.S. invasion.
It warned that the International Atomic Energy Agency has only 300 inspectors, and 80 of them are already assigned to monitoring activities in Iran. If the North agrees in principle to denuclearize, the IAEA will have a huge task simply finding the personnel.
North Korea could easily conceal highly enriched uranium which could be used to produce a nuclear bomb, and it would be virtually impossible to find if the North fails to cooperate.
Justice Party lawmaker Kim Jong-dae, who recently visited Washington, told reporters that North Korea has “tens of thousands of facilities related to nuclear and missile development, while there are around 10,000 underground tunnels and storage facilities in the Mt. Baekdu area.”
“Realistically, the U.S.-North Korea summit should discuss nuclear arms reduction rather than complete dismantlement,” he added.
Mac Thornberry, head of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, told Fox New that he is “very skeptical” that North Korea will completely dismantle its weapons of mass destruction and advised the U.S. to “prepare for the worst.”
But others warned that North Korea could face a grim future if it attempts to fool the U.S.
Hardline U.S. lawmaker Lindsey Graham said in a radio interview that North Korea played “every president before -– Clinton, Bush, all of them” but warned that Pyongyang would regret it if it tries to dupe the Trump administration since this would mean the “end of the North Korean regime.”
(Mainichi Japan) TOKYO –– Construction plans for an anti-terror and emergency response center for the No. 1 reactor at the Kyushu Electric Power Co.’s Sendai nuclear plant were accepted by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) on May 7.
Formal approval for the emergency center at the plant in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture, is expected soon. Nuclear plant operators are required to build emergency response facilities within a certain timeframe under new safety standards that took effect in 2013. The plans for the Sendai plant are the first to be approved by the NRA.
The NRA reviewed a number of Kyushu Electric construction plans for the response center, including for maintenance equipment, and accepted some of them. Details have not been made available for safety reasons, but the center will be built some distance from the Sendai plant’s reactor buildings. With potential terror attacks in mind, the center will be equipped with water pumps, generators and an emergency control room allowing staff to continue to cool the reactors remotely.
The NRA requires that the emergency response centers be strong enough to withstand being struck by an aircraft, or be located a significant distance from a plant’s reactors, and that they have emergency control rooms.
At first, the NRA had demanded that the response centers be established by July this year. However, with many plants unable to meet the deadline, in November 2015 the agency switched to requiring the centers be set up “within five years of the approval of detailed upgrade plans for the reactors themselves.”
So far, the NRA has green-lit the restarts of seven reactors at five plants, which are now all on the deadline clock to open emergency response centers. The Sendai plant’s No. 1 unit is one of those reactors, and Kyushu Electric has until March 2020 to complete the response center there. If it does not meet the deadline, it will be compelled to shut off the No. 1 reactor until the response center is finished. The deadline for the plant’s No. 2 reactor is in May the same year.
The cost of building the response centers has swelled over time, with those for the Sendai plant’s two reactors set to reach roughly 220 billion yen — five times the initial estimate. Kansai Electric Power Co. is also expected to shell out some 222.7 billion yen for response centers for the four reactors at its Takahama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture.
(Japanese original by Riki Iwama, Science & Environment News Department)
Cracks in nuclear reactor will hit EDF Energy with £120m bill, Guardian, Adam Vaughan , 7 May 18 Problems at Hunterston B in Scotland trigger doubts over six other 1970s and 80s plants
The six month closure of one of Britain’s oldest nuclear reactors will burn a £120m hole in the revenues of owner EDF Energy and has raised questions over the reliability of the country’s ageing nuclear fleet.
EDF said this week that it was taking reactor 3 of Hunterston B in Scotland offline for half a year, after inspections found more cracks than expected in the graphite bricks at the reactor’s core.
Electricity generation to fall by 40% after nuclear plant cracks find, BBC News, 3 May 2018
Electricity output from the Hunterston B nuclear power station could fall by 40% this year after dozens of cracks were discovered in one of the reactors.
The North Ayrshire power plant’s director Colin Weir said it would be necessary to reduce generation.
But he insisted that Hunterston B, which is scheduled to be in operation until 2023, was still safe.
The company running the plant, EDF Energy, expects the damaged reactor to return to service by the end of 2018.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, Mr Weir said the reduction in output comes after the “right and appropriate” decision was taken to put one of the reactors offline after a “slight increase” in the number of defects.
He explained: “Obviously this year we will be reduced in output – it will be around a 40% reduction in our planned output for this year – taking this decision, the right and appropriate safe decision to have the unit off while we do this assessment.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would seek “further assurance” on safety from EDF Energy when she meets its representatives later. ……
In March this year a planned inspection of the graphite bricks that make up the core of Reactor 3 uncovered new “keyway root cracks”.
These were found to be developing at a slightly higher rate than anticipated, operator EDF Energy revealed.
The reactor had been expected to restart a few weeks after it was taken offline, but that has now been delayed.
Operating for longer
Cracks were previously found in one of the reactors at the plant, which was opened in 1976, following routine inspections in 2014.
At the time, the Scottish government said the development was concerning, and asked for reassurances from nuclear regulators.
A team of Greek scientists have called on the government, the European Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency, NATO and other international organizations to take measures that will halt the creation of nuclear power facilities in the seismically active region of Akkuyu in neighboring Turkey.
The 18 scientists made their appeal in a letter against the backdrop of an agreement struck by Moscow and Ankara for the installation of four nuclear reactors in Turkey.
Listing a series of possible consequences, the scientists raised the alarm, saying that “Turkey plans to obtain 10 nuclear reactors by 2030.”
Safety concerns plague key sites proposed for nuclear bomb production, USA Today , Patrick Malone, Center for Public Integrity . ET May 3, 2018
Decision due soon on where plutonium parts for the next generation of nuclear weapons are to be made
The Department of Energy is scheduled to decide within days where plutonium parts for the next generation of nuclear weapons are to be made, but recent internal government reports indicate serious and persistent safety issues plague both of the two candidate sites.
Some experts are worried about the safety records of either choice: Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where plutonium parts have historically been assembled, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where other nuclear materials for America’s bombs have been made since in the 1950s.
An announcement by the Trump administration about the location is expected by May 11 in preparation for the ramped-up production of nuclear warheads called for by the Defense Department’s recent review of America’s nuclear weapons policy.
Recent internal government reports obtained by the Center for Public Integrity have warned that workers at these plants have been handling nuclear materials sloppily or have failed to monitor safety issues aggressively.
……….The continued mistakes at Los Alamos follow a three-year period of stasis in the U.S. plutonium production program forced by the lab’s inability to meet safety standards for plutonium operations. Los Alamos’ plutonium facility shelved all the nation’s high-hazard plutonium work, including the production of nuclear weapons cores or “pits,” in the summer of 2013, and has recently resumed most but not all of the wor
The prolonged shutdown at Los Alamos — the birthplace of the nuclear bomb — provoked National Nuclear Security Administration’s principal assistant deputy administrator for defense, Philip Calbos, to remark during a panel discussion at National Defense University in February that nuclear rivals are noticing America’s missteps.
………..Plutonium pits are the shiny metallic, softball-size orbs that hold the most potent destructive force man has ever harnessed in a weapon. During the Cold War, the Rocky Flats production site in Colorado made as many as 2,000 a year. Decades of poor disposal of nuclear wastes and other dangerous environmental practices culminated in a dramatic FBI raid in 1989 that led to the site’s closure in 1992.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 4th May 2018 , In 1965, the US Atomic Energy Commission made a fateful decision to license
nuclear power plants that, top safety experts believed, had containment structures that were inadequate to contain dangerous releases of
radioactivity in the case of core-melting accidents.
It was a critical turning point in reactor safety. The AEC’s downgrading of the containment’s role opened the door to smaller, cheaper, “dynamic”
containments, which offered significantly less protection in case of a fuel melt accident. Buyers of nearly four dozen large US power reactors opted
for the most vulnerable of such containments, of which 30 remain in
operation.
Because of their inadequate containments, they should all be retired. All but one have exceeded their original 40-year license
durations. New plants shouldn’t be licensed unless they include containments that actually do what they were originally supposed to do –
contain all radioactive material, even in a worst-case melt-down of a nuclear reactor core.
Scotsman 30th April 2018, The Scottish Government will this week face calls to hold a review into
concerns over nuclear weapons “convoys” travelling through towns and cities
in Scotland. The Greens have said the SNP government, which opposes nuclear
weapons, is responsible for community safety and emergency planning and
cannot dismiss the issue as being reserved to Westminster.
MSPs are preparing to debate the issue at Holyrood on Wednesday, where Green MSP
Mark Ruskell will call for a review.
Up to eight times a year, a convoy of heavy trucks containing weapon materials and nuclear warheads travels
between the Aldermaston and Burghfield atomic weapon plants in Berkshire to
the Royal Navy base at Coulport on Loch Long where the UK’s nuclear weapons
are stored. These trucks will often be carrying weapons materials for
maintenance or replacement. But a Freedom of Information request by Green
MSPs last year found that none of the relevant local authorities the trucks
pass through has conducted risk assessments in relation to the convoys. https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/greens-seek-review-of-nuclear-convoy-safety-1-4732236
Amsterdam, Netherlands – The “Akademik Lomonosov”, the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, has this morning left St. Petersburg and will be towed through Estonian, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian waters towards Murmansk, warned Greenpeace.
The floating nuclear power plant was initially supposed to be loaded with nuclear fuel and tested on site in the centre of St. Petersburg. However, due to pressure from the Baltic states and a successful petition organised by Greenpeace Russia, Rosatom, the state-controlled nuclear giant that owns and operates the floating nuclear power plant, decided on 21 July 2017 to move loading and testing to Murmansk.
“To test a nuclear reactor in a densely populated area like the centre of St. Petersburg is irresponsible to say the least. However, moving the testing of this ‘nuclear Titanic’ away from the public eye will not make it less so: Nuclear reactors bobbing around the Arctic Ocean will pose a shockingly obvious threat to a fragile environment which is already under enormous pressure from climate change,” said Jan Haverkamp, nuclear expert for Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe.
Having reached Murmansk, a city of 300,000, the “Akademik Lomonosov” — first in a series of floating nuclear plants planned — will be fuelled, tested and, in 2019, towed 5,000 km through the Northern Sea Route and put to use near Pevek, in the Chukotka Region.
According to Russian media, Rosatom is currently planning a production line, which will be capable of mass producing floating nuclear reactors. Backed by its owner, the Russian State, the company has already been in talks with potential buyers in Africa, Latin America and South East Asia.
“This hazardous venture is not just a threat to the Arctic, but, potentially, to other densely populated or vulnerable natural regions too,” said Jan Haverkamp.
There are indications that 15 countries, including China, Algeria, Indonesia, Malaysia and Argentina, have shown an interest in hiring floating nuclear plants. Among other purposes, the floating nuclear plant is intended to provide power for oil and gas exploration.
“The floating nuclear power plants will typically be put to use near coastlines and shallow water. Contrary to claims regarding safety, the flat-bottomed hull and the floating nuclear power plant’s lack of self-propulsion makes it particularly vulnerable to tsunamis and cyclones,” said Jan Haverkamp.
Homeland Preparedness News 27th April 2018, A new paper from the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) provided
recommendations for mitigating risks related to separated plutonium. As compared to highly enriched uranium (HEU), separated plutonium has not
received enough attention as a security risk, NTI Counselor John Carlson said in the paper, titled “Mitigating Security Risks from Separated Plutonium: Some Near-Term Steps.”
Eight countries currently hold more than 375 metric tons of separated plutonium, which is produced by reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel. The paper recommends minimizing stocks and specific actions in production, storage and use of the material. “Even small quantities [of plutonium] could be of interest to terrorists if they see opportunities for acquiring plutonium in a number of locations or for use in a radiological dispersal device,” Carlson said. https://homelandprepnews.com/stories/28131-nuclear-threat-initiative-highlights-separated-plutonium-security-risks/
RTBF 28trh April 2018, The reactor at the Doel 1 nuclear power plant in Beveren was shut down
earlier this week . The reason given at that time was a ” maintenance at
the level of the cooling circuit ” . Engie Electrabel confirmed to local TV
TV Oost that a leak was detected in the nuclear section during this review.
The reactor will be shut down at least until October 1st. https://www.rtbf.be/info/belgique/detail_
