Donor countries agree to fund an additional study on how to extract the damaged spent nuclear fuel from Tank 3A. By Thomas Nilsen, December 08, 2017
Take a closer look at this photo and you will understand the scoop of the most challenging and risky work to be done at the Cold War storage site for submarine nuclear fuel on Russia’s Kola Peninsula. For 35 years, highly radioactive fuel assemblies have been stored in these rusty, partly destroyed steel pipes where concrete of poor quality was filled in the space between. Some of the fuel assemblies are stuck in the canisters, while some of the canisters are stuck in the cells.
Message is clear: Do not try to lift any of the assemblies before you are sure nothing falls out.
The experts all agree it is necessary to conduct a whole range of work to prepare Tank 3A for unloading. Additional €100,000 was granted for the study. Another €675,000 was granted to study another messy challenge in Andreeva Bay; the smashed spent fuel assembles on the floor of the former water-pool storage in Building No. 5, the information portal Russian Atomic Community reports.
Unloading work at Tank 2A and 2B will go on until 2023 before possible work on unloading the dangerous mess at Tank 3A can start.
Andrey Zolotkov, a nuclear expert with the environmental group Bellona says YES with capitalized letters when asked by the Barents Observer via Skype whether Tank 3A poses the biggest risk in the cleanup work.
Equal to Chernobyl
The British nuclear engineering company Nuvia has calculated the total radionuclide inventory in the three tanks to be equal to the remains of Reactor No. 4 inside the Chernobyl sarcophagus. Some 22,000 spent fuel assemblies are stored in the tanks, coming from 90-100 reactor cores powering the Soviet Navy’s Cold War submarines sailing out from the Kola Peninsula from the late 1950s till 1982. Nuvia says it is some six tonnes of fissile uranium-235 in the fuel, about two times the amount of fissile material inside the exploded Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine.
Tank 3A does also pose the highest risk for radiation doses to working personell and ways to do the job with robotics has to be developed. Nobody want people to stay too long near the destroyed assemblies and get exposed.
Another deemed challenging job ahead is to locate and secure the six damaged spent fuel elements on the floor of Building No. 5 in Andreeva Bay. The building served as a storage-pool for the spent fuel assemblies before 1982, but due to a water-leak and rusty wires, many fuel assemblies fell to the floor. That was the reason why the assemblies were hastily moved over to the tanks 2A, 2B and 3A. In that process, however, six damaged fuel assemblies and some uranium powder from others were left on the floor. Today, they pose a serious radiation hazard risk.
Funding from Europe and Canada
The nuclear cleanup work in Andreeva Bay on the Barents Sea coast is financed by the so-called Northern Window of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP), a cooperative program with Russia’s State Nuclear Corporation Rosatom.
Norway has over the last two decades financed infrastructure improvements in Andreeva Bay making the removal of spent nuclear fuel possible.
The NDEP’s funded work started in 2003. Additional to the European Union, nuclear legacy cleanup work in North-West Russia is funded by Sweden, Finland, Belgium, France, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy and the United Kingdom.
Andreeva Bay is located about 55 kilometers from Russia’s border to Norway in the north.
Official: WIPP deficiencies stem from lack of funds, By Rebecca Moss | The New Mexican, 7 Dec 17
More than three years after a radiation leak forced the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant to shut down, managers are still dealing with the issues of storing waste and undertaking construction in a partly contaminated mine.
A nearly $300 million new ventilation system isn’t expected to be complete by 2022, the salt-rock ceiling of one room is expected to collapse soon, and the facility is facing problems with fire-suppression systems and other infrastructure.
But at a forum Wednesday evening in Carlsbad, officials expressed enthusiasm about the work underway at WIPP.
At least 118 shipments of transuranic waste — equipment, tools, soil and gloves contaminated by plutonium and other highly radioactive materials — have been taken into the facility, at a rate of three to five shipments per week, since WIPP reopened in January, they said. This is a far slower pace than before the shutdown. The facility has averaged 800 shipments a year, or more than 15 per week, in the 15 years that it has accepted nuclear waste for long-term storage…..
Officials have prioritized a long list of infrastructure needs, Shrader said, and are asking Nuclear Waste Partnership to find ways to save money to better fund crucial projects. They also are working with New Mexico’s congressional delegation to secure more federal funding for WIPP, he said.
In July, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent adviser to the U.S. energy secretary, wrote in a monthly report on WIPP that inspectors had found deficiencies in tornado doors, fire-suppression systems that went without water for months and a number of unstable areas in the mine that workers could not access.
Nuclear industry wants power to self-assess plants, Cape Cod Times Christine Legere Dec 4, 2017 The federal agency in charge of overseeing the nation’s 99 commercial nuclear reactors is looking at ways to make its engineering inspection program more efficient, and one suggestion being entertained would allow plant operators to inspect, or “self-assess,” their own operations.
Nuclear watchdogs are speaking out against the proposal, arguing that inspection of plant systems should remain in the hands of an independent organization like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to protect safety and ensure public confidence…….
charge of overseeing the nation’s 99 commercial nuclear reactors is looking at ways to make its engineering inspection program more efficient, and one suggestion being entertained would allow plant operators to inspect, or “self-assess,” their own operations.
Nuclear watchdogs are speaking out against the proposal, arguing that inspection of plant systems should remain in the hands of an independent organization like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to protect safety and ensure public confidence.
A Duxbury citizens group called Pilgrim Watch also pushed for keeping the plant inspections in the hands of the NRC.
“Pilgrim provides the perfect example why NRC nuclear safety inspections are necessary and why industry self assessments would be dangerous,” stated Pilgrim Watch in its letter to the working group.
Pilgrim is one of three plants in the country classified in Column 4, a category established by the NRC for the worst performers. The plant is expected to be permanently shut down by May 31, 2019.
Referencing Pilgrim’s current classification, Yarmouth Port resident James Garb wrote that the plant’s decline is the result of lack of attention to safety matters and failure to perform safety procedures properly.
“How could you possibly expect a nuclear plant to conduct honest, effective safety inspections?” Garb wrote. “We certainly couldn’t.”……
Congressman William Keating, D-Mass., will oppose efforts toward self-assessment.
“We are currently reaching out to the NRC for any information on a potential self-policing proposal, which I would vehemently oppose,” said Keating in a statement provided by his office.
David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said his organization expects that self-assessments will be one of the options the work group presents to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission once their study is complete.
Nuclear Russia Scares The World (Again), Lobe Log, DECEMBER 5, 2017, by Tatyana IvanovaAn international scandal involving ruthenium-106 (Ru-106) contamination of the atmosphere in most European countries has revealed fundamental problems with the Russian nuclear industry. The Russian State Corporation (Rosatom) has denied the massive leak at its Ural reprocessing facility. Instead, it has withheld data and spread propaganda in the best Soviet tradition.
During the last two months, Western European countries have been trying to identify the source of the Ru-106 cloud, which according to the French IRSN drifted over a majority of European countries. Several European networks involved in the monitoring of atmospheric radioactive contamination detected Ru-106 in late September. Then, German and French nuclear regulators found traces in the atmosphere at low but not dangerous levels. Later, 36 countries reported their measurements of Ru-106 to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The countries were puzzled by the source of contamination. Such a large-scale spread of a man-made radionuclide—not routinely detected in the atmosphere—could indicate a serious accident at a nuclear facility. The IAEA’s Incident and Emergency Centre (IEC) therefore asked European member states to share information about “any recent events associated with an atmospheric release of Ru-106.” Member states reported their own measurements of Ru-106, but none of the countries (including Russia) reported an incident. The agency said that the contamination did not pose a danger, because of the low concentrations of Ru-106.
The agency nevertheless detailed the kinds of situations that do not cause such a leak. The lack of other fission products accompanying the Ru-106 precludes the possibility of an accident at a nuclear reactor or spent nuclear fuel storage. The IEC also said that relatively small amounts of Ru-106 used in cancer treatment are unlikely to cause the reported air concentration. Also, Ru-106 can be used in a satellite as a source for a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG). However such usage is not common, and no satellite containing Ru-106 has fallen back to earth during this period.
There are not many options left. Experts say that one of two kinds of events could cause such contamination. IRSN concluded that the origin of the mysterious Ru-106 is to be found either in nuclear fuel cycle facilities or in radioactive source production. There are very few such facilities in the world.
Since the IAEA didn’t find the source of contamination, the French IRSN and later the Ukrainian nuclear regulator carried out their own investigations.
Russian Traces
The results of independent modeling carried out by the IRSN and the Ukrainian regulator—based on the aggregated Ru-106 pollution data and meteorological conditions—indicate that the release zone lies “between the Volga and the Urals.” IRSN also calculated its total activity, which was considerable – between 100 and 300 TBq.
The Russian meteorological agency (Roshydromet), which monitors radioactive environmental pollution, then corroborated these findings. It also revealed measurements of “extremely high levels” of Ru-106 air contamination at two Russian villages in the Urals: Argayash and Novogorny. The levels were about 400 and 900 times higher then usual.
In this region of the Southern Urals, about 30 kilometers from these two polluted sites, there is only one potential large-scale polluter: the “Mayak” nuclear waste reprocessing plant. Accordingly, suspicion has fallen on it. Mayak is part of the Russian Rosatom State Corporation and is located at the closed secret town of Ozersk, in the Chelyabinsk district.
The source of the Ru-106 release could be facility number 235, which vitrifies highly radioactive waste. The same accident, according to the IAEA, occurred in 2001 in a similar nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague in northern France. A new vitrification furnace—the SverdNIIkhimmash EP-500/5—was put into operation in plant number 235 at Mayak at the end of December 2016.
According to Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the vitrification process oxidizes high-level waste solutions before they’re added to the glass melter. This tends to convert ruthenium into the tetroxide state, which is volatile. Reducing agents are added to prevent tetroxide formation. Lyman hypothesizes that an insufficient quantity of reducing agent added to a particular batch could result in the accidental production of ruthenium tetroxide, which would exceed the capacity of the off-gas filters. “Gaseous ruthenium tetroxide would then condense into small aerosol particles that could be transported large distances,” he concludes.
Rashid Alimov, from Greenpeace Russia, points out that the Russian furnace EP-500/5 has a special ruthenium tetroxide filter, which could fail. He notes that, according Rosatom’s 2015 annual report, Mayak routinely emits ruthenium tetroxide, but the recent release was significantly larger and exceeded the annual limit.
If such a large scale release had happened in France, IRSN reports, inhabitants within a radius of several kilometers would have been evacuated and local food produced within tens of kilometers would have been declared unsafe for human consumption.
Greenpeace Russia has already appealed to the Russian prosecutor’s office to investigate this accident. But “to date, everything points to Mayak,” says Alimov. Nadezhda Kutepova, a Russian human rights defender from Ozersk who is now a political refugee in France, added that an accident with the vitrification furnace is probable because of a number of problems that occurred during its installation and testing…………https://lobelog.com/nuclear-russia-scares-the-world-again/
Environmentalists point the finger of blame at Mayak, the plant to process Kola’s Cold War legacy,ByThomas Nilsen, – Barents Observer 30th Nov 2017
A mysterious cloud of radioactive ruthenium-106 blowing over Europe earlier
this autumn triggered many speculations about Russia trying to
‘cover-up’ a leak from the country’s largest nuclear waste treatment
facility.
Nadezhda Kutepova a local environmentalists from the closed city
of Ozyorsk near Mayak who was forced to flee Russia in 2015, now reveals
more inside information. Kutepova says Mayak was testing new equipment on September 25 and 26 at the reprocessing plant and that something abnormal
may have happened.«Emission of ruthenium may come from the reprocessing
plant 235 or RT-1 in Mayak where the vitrification plant for very
high-level nuclear waste is located,» Kutepova tells.
She points to the new vitrification furnace which started operation last December and
experienced problems during construction and testing. «My idea is that the
furnace was built with a lot of problems that emerge in the operation and I
think this is the cause of the ruthenium-106 leak we saw in September,»
she explains.
Mayak has loads of high-level liquid radioactive waste that
needs to be stabilized and made safer and starting the new plant was,
according to Kutepova, rather urgent. She calls the equipment bought for
the electric furnace «low-quality» https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/node/3260
Le Monde 30th Nov 2017, [Machine translation] Nuclear: appeal filed against the agreement given to
the commissioning of the tank of the Flamanville plant. Several NGOs
believe that the Nuclear Safety Authority should have vetoed the use of the
tank of the future EPR, which has anomalies.
The state of the tank of the European pressurized reactor (EPR) Flamanville (Channel) continues to
generate strong reservations and concerns. On Thursday, November 30th,
several NGOs, including Réseau sortie du nucléaire and Greenpeace, who
denounce anomalies in the construction of this tank, said they filed an
appeal before the State Council asking for the cancellation of the
agreement recently given by the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN).
Bastamag 1st Dec 2017 [Machine translation]A new accident reveals serious dysfunctions in terms
of nuclear safety in France. In March 2016, during a replacement operation,
a 465-ton steam generator fell in the heart of the Paluel nuclear power
plant in Normandy. A serious and unprecedented accident, which miraculously
does not cause serious injury or radioactive contamination. Since then,
experts have investigated the causes of the accident.
Consulted by Bastamag, their report, the conclusions of which will be summarized to
employees this 1st of December, reveals major dysfunctions in the
preparation and supervision of the site, largely related to the massive use
of subcontracting. Disturbing faults, while the renovation projects of the
power stations will multiply. https://www.bastamag.net/Un-accident-inedit-revele-de-graves-dysfonctionnements-en-matiere-de-surete
We call it the tomb,” says Christina Aningi, the head teacher of Enewetak’s only school.
“The children understand that we have a poison in our island.” It’s “Manit Day” on Enewetak Atoll, a celebration of Marshall Islands culture when the Pacific nation’s troubled past seems a distant memory. Schoolchildren sit cross-legged on the coral sands as they sing of the islands and atolls, the sunshine and the breeze; “flowers and moonlight, swaying palm trees”.
They were born decades after the last nuclear explosion ripped through the warm Pacific air with a thunderous roar. But it’s hard to escape the long echo of the bombs.
“Gone are the days when we live in fear, fear of the bombs, guns and nuclear,” they sing.
“This is the time … this is my country, this is my land.”
But those old fears, thought to be long buried, are threatening to reawaken in their island paradise.
In the late 1970s, Runit Island, on the remote Enewetak Atoll, was the scene of the largest nuclear clean-up in United States history. Highly contaminated debris left over from dozens of atomic weapons tests was dumped into a 100-metre wide bomb crater on the tip of the uninhabited island. US Army engineers sealed it up with a half-metre thick concrete cap almost the size of an Australian football ground, then left the island.
Now with sea levels rising, water has begun to penetrate the dome.
A report commissioned by the US Department of Energy in 2013 found that radioactive materials were leeching out, threatening the already tenuous existence of Enewetak locals.
“That dome is the connection between the nuclear age and the climate change age,” says Marshall Islands climate change activist Alson Kelen.
“It’ll be a very devastating event if it really leaks. We’re not just talking the Marshall Islands, we’re talking the whole Pacific.”
The United States detonated 43 atomic bombs around the island chain in the 1940s and 50s.
Four of Enewetak’s 40 islands were completely vaporised by the tests, with one thermonuclear blast leaving a two-kilometre-wide crater where an island had been just moments before.
Enewetak’s population had been re-located to another island in the Marshalls ahead of the tests. Residents would only be allowed to return home more than three decades later — some on the island today can still recall returning to Enewetak as children.
As part of the clean-up process, Washington set aside funds to build the dome as a temporary storage facility, and initial plans included lining the porous bottom of its crater with concrete.
But in the end, that was deemed too expensive.
“The bottom of the dome is just what was left behind by the nuclear weapons explosion,” says Michael Gerrard, the chair of Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York.
“It’s permeable soil. There was no effort to line it. And therefore, the seawater is inside the dome.” ocals rarely set foot on Runit Island. They’re fearful of the lingering radiation from the dome and because it’s been ruled off-limits.
To this day, only three islands along Enewetak Atoll’s slender rim are considered safe enough for human habitation. “[The other islands were] too hot, too radioactive to worry about,” says Giff Johnson, publisher of the Marshall Islands Journal, the country’s only newspaper.
“There was no point [cleaning them up].”
After the fall-out from the atomic testing, life for the people of Enewetak went from a traditional existence of fishing and subsistence living to one where the waters that once supported their livelihoods were now polluted.
On the main island, where most of the atoll’s few hundred people now live, concerns about the radioactive contamination of the food chain has seen a shift away from a traditional diet of fish and coconut.
The US Department of Energy has even banned exports of fish and copra from Enewetak because of the ongoing contamination.
The vast bulk of foodstuffs are now brought into the island by barge, and that means islanders are reliant on imported canned and processed goods like Spam that have triggered health problems such as diabetes. The shelves of Enewetak’s only store are largely filled with American brand chocolate bars, lollies and potato chips.
Locals sometimes visit Runit to scavenge from scrap copper left behind by the Americans, selling it for a few dollars to a Chinese merchant.
For 30 years, Jack Niedenthal has helped the people of neighbouring Bikini Atoll fight for compensation for the 23 atomic tests conducted there. “To me, it’s like this big monument to America’s giant f–k up,” says Niedenthal. “This could cause some really big problems for the rest of mankind if all that goes underwater, because it’s plutonium and cement.”
Some of the debris buried beneath the dome includes plutonium-239, a fissile isotope used in nuclear warheads which is one of the most toxic substances on earth.
It has a radioactive half-life of 24,100 years.
Cracks are visible in the dome’s surface and brackish liquid pools around its rim.“Already the sea sometimes washes over [the dome] in a large storm,” says Columbia University’s Michael Gerrard. “The United States Government has acknowledged that a major typhoon could break it apart and cause all of the radiation in it to disperse.”
While Professor Gerrard would like the US to reinforce the dome, a 2014 US Government report says a catastrophic failure of the structure would not necessarily lead to a change in the contamination levels in the waters surrounding it.
“I’m persuaded that the radiation outside the dome is as bad as the radiation inside the dome,” says Professor Gerrard.“And therefore, it is a tragic irony that the US Government may be right, that if this material were to be released that the already bad state of the environment around there wouldn’t get that much worse.”
But that is cold comfort to the people of Enewetak, who fear they may have to be relocated once again if the dome collapses or crumbles.
“If it does [crack] open most of the people here will be no more,” says Ms Aningi.
“This is like a graveyard for us, waiting for it to happen.”
North Korean test caused 6.3 magnitude earthquake injuring up to 150 children Explosion triggered aftershocks in North Hamgyong Province within minutes State defectors South and North Development revealed the fatalities today Devastation hit farms, destroyed home and gave soldiers radiation sickness Regime accused of not warning locals of the imminent nuclear missile tests Pupils injured in the earthquake were in class as usual when it hit their school
By Sebastian Murphy-bates For Mailonline 27 November 2017 Dozens were killed when North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s most powerful nuclear missile test yet caused buildings to collapse.
Houses and a school near his nuclear base at Punggye-ri were brought down when his tests caused a 6.3 magnitude earthquake injuring up to 150 pupils in North Hamgyong Province.
This explosion triggered aftershocks within eight minutes, hitting structures in a nearby village.
The huge reactors—California’s last—sit on a bluff above the Pacific, west of San Luis Obispo, among a dozen earthquake faults. They operate just 45 miles from the San Andreas. That’s half the distance from the fault that destroyed four reactors in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Diablo’s wind-blown emissions could irradiate the Los Angeles megalopolis in less than six hours if an earthquake destroyed the plant.
The death toll could be in the millions, the property damage in the trillions of dollars. The owner of the plant, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), would not be legally liable.
Last year, a deal to shut down Diablo’s two reactors in 2024 and 2025 was struck by the state, PG&E, surrounding communities and some environmental groups. Diablo’s federal licenses expire in those years, and PG&E agreed not to seek renewals. The power, it said, could be replaced with wind turbines and solar panels.
But the $1.7 billion in rate hikes stipulated in the deal still must be approved by California’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC). A proposed decision by administrative law Judge Peter Allen would limit them to less than $200 million.
The PUC must now factor Allen’s decision into how much it allows PG&E to charge. If it honors Allen’s opinion, the company must then decide whether it will continue to operate the reactors, which increasingly look like money losers.
The company’s standing is not exactly sterling. Massive fires that swept through Northern California in October killed at least 43 people, turning some 5,700 structures and whole forests, rural communities and parts of Santa Rosa into smoldering ash (the Trump administration has just omitted from its latest budget any federal aid to the region).
The San Jose Mercury News has speculated that PG&E may have been responsible for the conflagration by failing to maintain power lines that were blown over in a windstorm. Local fire departments were already complaining that trees and underbrush were being sparked by poles and wires PG&E had failed to maintain, though maintenance is required by law.
PG&E now faces a firestorm of lawsuits that could soar well into the billions. Criminal prosecution is also possible.
In 2010, a fire killed eight people and torched an upscale San Bruno neighborhood. The cause was badly maintained gas lines—for which PG&E had been cited repeatedly. Fines exceeded $1.4 billion, but criminal prosecution remains unresolved.
Other costly lapses have plagued PG&E through the years. Some involve Diablo itself, which opened in the mid-1980s amid America’s biggest “No Nukes” civil disobedience campaign, involving thousands of arrests.
Linda Seeley of San Luis Obispo’s Mothers for Peace says the company faces impossible hurdles in dealing with its thousands of tons of radioactive waste. In addition, she notes, “Many very expensive components in the two reactors must be replaced far before the proposed 2024-5 shutdown dates. Our concern is that PG&E may try to sneak through without paying to maintain the reactors even at basic safety levels.”
Michael Peck, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission in-house inspector at Diablo, has warned that the reactors cannot survive a major earthquake and should close immediately. He has since been transferred to Chattanooga, Tenn.
“Diablo may no longer be profitable,” Seeley has said on my “California Solartopia” show on radio station KPFK. “The cost of wind and solar has dropped so fast it may not pay PG&E to run those plants anymore, even without doing the basic maintenance.”
Because much of Diablo’s aging workforce is retiring or looking elsewhere for job security, PG&E wants subsidies to retain skilled staff to run the place. Judge Allen specifically rejected much of the rate hike designed to meet that crisis.
California’s State Lands Commission is being sued by the World Business Academy, a Santa Barbara think tank, over key leases granted in the 1970s. The commission granted PG&E a waiver on conducting legally required environmental impact statements (gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom was among those who voted in favor). Should the business academy win its suit, or should the PUC honor Allen’s decision, and PG&E alter its timetable, those leases might be revisited. Without them, Diablo would almost certainly be forced to shut.
Challenges have also been raised over approval by the California Coastal Commission of Diablo’s cooling system.
Seeley and other activists have asked the public to pressure the PUC, state agencies and politicians like Newsom to shut Diablo sooner rather than later.
“Until they can specify the exact date and time the San Andreas and those other faults will go off,” Seeley said in a recent phone interview, “nobody should feel safe.”
Authorities finally admit that Argayash was at the centre of a radiation cloud. Henry Foy in Argayash , 24 Nov 17
Argayash is a cynical, mistrustful town. Decades of being lied to by the government about being down the road from a leaking nuclear plant does that to a place. So too does watching generations of people dying of radiation-related ailments while officials assure them nothing is amiss.
A small, two-road settlement where homes roofed with corrugated iron and Soviet-era Lada cars nod to its poverty, Argayash is one of a handful of towns surrounding the Mayak Production Facility in southern Russia, one of the world’s biggest radiation emitters where a litany of tragic accidents has made it a byword for the dangers of the atomic industry.
This week, 76 years after radiation first began seeping from Mayak into the surrounding rivers, lakes and atmosphere, Russian authorities admitted that Argayash was at the centre of a radiation cloud containing “exceptionally high” levels of radioactive isotope ruthenium-106, which spread so far west that it reached France. The radiation was detected by Russia’s meteoological agency in late September, but only revealed on Monday, after local politicians had spent weeks denying rumours of a leak and rubbishing reports from EU agencies that had tracked the cloud’s movement.
The levels of the isotope in Argayash were almost 1,000 times the normal level. Officials say it is not harmful to public health. “Nobody tells us anything. They keep it secret,” says Lilia Galimzhanova, a cook at a café in the town. “We are afraid. We are afraid for our children and grandchildren.” “But we know that the air, the environment is very bad here,” she says. Her 80-year-old mother suffers from radiation poisoning from Mayak. “We are not protected by anyone here . . . We are survivors.”
The source of the leaked isotope, which does not occur naturally and is produced during the processing of nuclear fuel, has not been confirmed. Rosatom, which operates the Mayak facility, has repeatedly denied it is to blame. “[Mayak] is not a source of increased content of ruthenium-106 in the atmosphere,” Rosatom said in a statement. On Thursday, the company published a message poking fun at journalists on its Facebook page, inviting them to tour the plant, which it sarcastically dubbed “the cradle of ruthenium”. The local region’s chief oncology specialist has told concerned residents to stop worrying, advising them to instead “watch football and drink beer”.
But local residents see little to laugh about. Many scoff at official denials, having heard similar for decades, even as they watched family and friends die from radiation-related ailments. “We are not told anything about Mayak,” says Nadia, an 18-year-old medical student living in the town, 1,700km east of Moscow. “The government should not keep things secret when people suffer.” “People in the west know more about this than we do here,” she adds.
Ms Galimzhanova only heard of the radiation that had enveloped her town when a friend in Germany read about it in a western newspaper. Before the authorities admitted its existence, text messages had been sent to residents saying that high levels of pollution from nearby industrial factories meant people should stay indoors. Regardless of the potential health risks, many here say the government’s initial silence, denial and obfuscation has dredged up painful memories of a past that refuses to stay buried. Secretly constructed in the 1940s, Mayak was at the forefront of the USSR’s scramble to catch up with the US nuclear programme. As it raced to produce weapons-grade plutonium, a vast amount of nuclear waste was discharged into nearby lakes and the Techa river. Then, in 1957, nuclear waste storage tanks at the site exploded, raining fallout over hundreds of towns — and releasing more radiation than any other nuclear accident except Chernobyl and Fukushima. Ten years later, an adjacent reservoir used for waste disposal dried out, and powdered radioactive dust was blown over the area.
Not that local people were evacuated, or even warned: Mayak’s very existence was only acknowledged in the late 1980s, as information began to circulate about the long-term contamination. An estimated 450,000 were exposed to radiation from the accidents and the discharging of waste into the water supply, Russian authorities said in 1993, making Mayak one of the world’s biggest sources of harmful radiation. But anti-nuclear campaigners say safety breaches continued: a 2005 court case revealed nuclear waste was still being dumped into rivers as late as 2004, while Rosatom only sealed off the radioactive lake that caused the 1967 disaster in 2015.
An estimated 450,000 were exposed to radiation from the accidents and the discharging of waste into the water supply, Russian authorities said in 1993, making Mayak one of the world’s biggest sources of harmful radiation. But anti-nuclear campaigners say safety breaches continued: a 2005 court case revealed nuclear waste was still being dumped into rivers as late as 2004, while Rosatom only sealed off the radioactive lake that caused the 1967 disaster in 2015.
“Previous experience has taught us that they lie and suppress information,” said Andrey Talevlin, co-chairman of the Russian Social-Ecological Union NGO. “We can’t trust what they say, whether they mislead the population on purpose or not.”
Mr Talevlin, an academic and environmental activist who this week was branded a “foreign agent” by Russian state TV after he called for an investigation into the ruthenium leak, says that suppression of anti-nuclear groups in Russia has rapidly increased over the past two decades. A fellow activist, Nadezhda Kutepova, fled to France in 2015 seeking political asylum after a similar media campaign accused her of “industrial espionage”. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said this week that the Kremlin has “no information” regarding any possible causes of the radiation. And some in Argayash say it is little more than an occupational hazard of living in one of Russia’s most industrialised regions.
The authorities say they do not know anything about it. And we must trust them,” says Jamshed, who runs a greengrocer on the town’s main Lenin Street. “Nobody has proven anything. And even if something is proved, I am sure our government will immediately take measures,” he says, looking over his locally-grown vegetables.
Aging Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant should be decommissioned http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201711240017.html November 24, 2017 Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tokai No. 2 nuclear power plant in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, seems doomed to be decommissioned given the strong doubts and practical difficulties surrounding the company’s plan to restart the reactor at the plant.
Japan Atomic Power plans to apply to the Nuclear Regulation Authority to extend the operating life of the idled reactor at the plant beyond the legal life span of 40 years in principle.
The currently offline reactor will reach the end of its legal life span in one year. The operator is seeking to persuade the NRA to make an exception of the reactor for bringing it back on line.
It has been estimated that the required safety measures will cost the company at least 170 billion yen ($1.52 billion). In an unusual move, the nuclear safety watchdog has told Japan Atomic Power, which is on a fragile financial footing, to come up with a workable plan to raise the funds to finance the measures.
With the local communities and governments around the plant struggling to develop required plans for emergency evacuations, there is strong skepticism about the feasibility of the company’s plan to restart the reactor.
Since there is little chance of the company’s other reactors being restarted, the fate of Japan Atomic Power hinges on whether the Tokai No. 2 plant will be allowed to come on stream again.
But that doesn’t justify taking it as a given that the company will get the green light for restarting the reactor. Japan Atomic Power, the major electric utilities with major stakes in the company and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which regulates the power industry, should carefully reassess the future of the company without assuming that the reactor will start running again.
The 40-year legal life for nuclear reactors is an important rule to reduce the risk of accidents involving aging reactors. It was introduced following the disastrous accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011.
The operational life can be extended by up to 20 years if approved by the NRA.
When the law was revised, however, the government said such extensions would be highly exceptional cases.
But Kansai Electric Power Co.’s applications for life extensions for its three aging reactors have all been approved.
If the Tokai No. 2 plant is added to the list, the rule will move closer to becoming a dead letter.
There are no special reasons for restarting the old reactor, such as a serious risk of a power shortage.
Japan Atomic Power’s plan should not be given a go-ahead simply to help the embattled company.
The Tokai No. 2 plant is located at the northern tip of the Tokyo metropolitan area. Some 960,000 people live within 30 kilometers from the plant, more than in any other 30-km radius of a nuclear plant. Local governments located within the zone are required to develop evacuation plans.
It is obviously difficult to secure safe evacuation routes, facilities to accept evacuees and the means to transport them for the entire 30-km zone around the plant.
None of the 14 municipalities that are subject to the requirement has worked out an evacuation plan.
The outlook for local government support for the plan is also dismal.
The government of Ibaraki Prefecture and the mayor of Tokai intend to base their decisions on local public opinion as to whether to give their consent to the plan.
Recent Asahi Shimbun surveys of local voters found that opponents to the plan far outnumbered supporters.
Five other cities around the plant are demanding the consent rights similar to those given to Tokai in order to take part in the decision-making process.
Japan Atomic Power and the major utilities that own the firm should confront these realities.
The utilities that are under contract to buy electricity from Japan Atomic Power continue paying more than 100 billion yen of basic fees in total every year even though the company currently generates no power to sell with all its reactors out of operation.
It should not be forgotten that the money comes from the electricity bills paid by consumers.
It has been proposed that Japan Atomic Power should serve as a vehicle for the consolidation of the power industry driven by the decommissioning of aged nuclear reactors.
Instead of simply shelving the problem, the parties involved should accelerate their efforts to map out a viable future for the company.
Problems persist a decade after discovery of chronic radioactive leaks Chicago Sun Times, 11/19/2017, Brett Chase and Madison Hopkins | Better Government Association More than a decade after the discovery of chronic leaks led to national outrage, a $1.2 million government settlement and a company vow to guard against future accidents, an investigation by a government watchdog group found.
Since 2007, there have been at least 35 reported leaks, spills or other accidental releases in Illinois of water contaminated with radioactive tritium, a byproduct of nuclear power production and a carcinogen at high levels, a Better Government Association review of federal and state records shows.
No fines were issued for the accidents, all of which were reported by the company.
The most recent leak of 35,000 gallons occurred over two weeks in May and June at Exelon’s Braidwood plant, southwest of Chicago. The same facility was the focus of a community panic in the mid-2000s after a series of accidents stirred debate over the safety of aging nuclear plants.
A 2014 incident at Exelon’s Dresden facility in Grundy County involved the release of about 500,000 gallons of highly radioactive water. Contamination was later found in the plant’s sewer lines and miles away in the Morris, Ill., sewage treatment plant……..
Industry watchdogs and government whistleblowers contend oversight is compromised by a cozy relationship between companies and the NRC.
Government regulators concede they must balance the safety needs of aging plants, which require more maintenance, versus ordering cost-prohibitive upgrades at facilities that inherently are just a slip-up away from catastrophe.
No player in the nuclear industry is bigger than Exelon, the Chicago-based energy company that last year reported $31 billion in revenue and operates 14 nuclear plants in Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Five of the six Illinois plants reported leaks over the last decade, records show. Clinton, in DeWitt County, had no leaks and Byron, in Ogle County, reported only one that contained low levels of radioactivity…….
At least seven of the 35 documented accidents since 2007 involved contamination of groundwater. Other contamination was found in sewers and other water systems where it isn’t supposed to be………
The BGA investigation also found:
Of the 35 documented incidents, 27 occurred at Dresden. Following the big 2014 leak, which emanated from an aboveground storage tank, Exelon asked a state inspector whether the public would have access to the incident report under open records laws, a state report showed.
An NRC report on the 2007 Quad Cities leak noted radiation levels went “well beyond that seen anywhere else in the industry” and that plant staff estimated the leak had been active for years before it was discovered.
In 2010, Exelon’s Marseilles generating plant in LaSalle County reported a spill from a storage tank, initially estimated at more than 150 gallons but later classified as “unknown.” Groundwater tritium tests later showed levels 59 times the EPA’s drinking water limit. Exelon said no tritium left the plant’s boundaries, but records show plant workers continued to monitor a body of highly contaminated groundwater sitting on plant property at least five years after the accident.
In 2009, Dresden reported another hole in a storage tank led to a leak of as much as 272,000 gallons of radioactive water. Onsite groundwater testing showed levels of tritium 160 times higher than allowed under federal standards for drinking water.
