South Africa’s Proposed Nuclear Power Plant Unsafe: Study VOA News, 25 Nov 16 JOHANNESBURG —
South African power provider Eskom has proposed building a nuclear power station on a site that may be at risk of surge storms and tsunamis, a geological report suggests, but the state-owned utility disputes the findings.
South Africa has the continent’s only nuclear power station and plans to expand nuclear power generation to meet growing electricity demand in Africa’s most industrialized country.
The report by Maarten de Wit, a professor at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and director of the Africa Earth Observatory Network, a research institute, says canyons in the bedrock would need to be secured.
“If you are going to build anything on that, it’s pretty prone to storms, sea level rises and tsunamis,” De Wit told Reuters on Friday.
The site at Thyspunt, near Port Elizabeth in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, is on the Indian Ocean coastline.
The report also showed seismic activity along dormant fault lines near the site that could trigger submarine landslides. Any such activity “is likely to generate a large submarine slump, and a possible significant local tsunami that would affect the coastal region, including Thyspunt,” the report said, warning that a plant at Thyspunt could be at risk of devastation similar that in Fukushima in Japan in 2011……. http://www.voanews.com/a/south-afdrica-s-proposed-nuclear-power-plant-unsafe-report-says/3611738.html
NuClear News No 90 26 Nov 16 Radio Four’s Costing the Earth has been investigating whether it is safe to keep reactors running long past their expected lifespan of about 30 years. Five of Britain’s seven AGRs are already older (Torness and Heysham 2 are only 27 years old). Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B are already 40 years old but EDF energy wants them to continue operating for at least another 7 years.
In 2005 the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (now the Office for Nuclear Regulation -ONR) expressed concern about the structure of the reactor core. The core is made up of 6,000 graphite blocks. Around half of these are 1 metre tall with a bore or channel running through each block. Around 200 of these channels contain rods of nuclear fuel. If anything goes wrong control rods are inserted between the channels to dampen the nuclear reaction and shut down the reactor.
Nuclear Engineering consultant John Large explains that graphite is not elastic, it doesn’t bend, and it is not particularly strong. And now the graphite bricks are cracking. The core is an assembly of several thousand bricks, loosely stacked together and the expectation was that the core would never fail, so there was no facility to replace any individual blocks if they did become damaged. But now there are physical changes occurring in the core, in the individual bricks – cracking and fracturing – that must result in some loss of strength – not only of the individual bricks, but of the core as a whole.
The BBC used a Freedom of Information request to obtain a number of documents. One paper from ONR reveals that one third of the channels inspected at Hinkley B and Hunterston B contain what they describe as significant cracks. EDF says the cracks were anticipated at this stage in the reactors’ life and it is safe to operate for years to come. It says evidence suggests that its predictions about cracking are accurate.
Brian Cowell, director of nuclear operations, says: “in fact we are looking to extend life further (than 2023) if we can.” The analysis suggests that we can have more than 1,000 axial cracked bricks and still operate with massive margins of safety. 1,000 cracked bricks would exceed the current safety limit set by ONR, but the regulator is considering changing that limit.
Mark Foy – Deputy Chief Nuclear Inspector says the percentage of cracked bricks ONR is currently happy to accept is 10%, but they are considering increasing that to 20%. Foy says that the original safety case provided by EDF was on the basis of 10% cracking. As experience is gained and analysis and research is undertaken it allows EDF and ONR to gain a more informed and accurate view of what is acceptable and what isn’t.
EDF has now provided ONR with a safety case for allowing 20% cracking. This is based on the analysis EDF has undertaken; samples they’ve taken and the inspections they’ve undertaken. The focus has been to look at the likelihood of core disruption after an earthquake which could prevent the control rods being inserted. ONR is considering the new safety case.
Keyway Route Cracking
The ONR is also investigating a very specific and more concerning form of cracking. The keyway is a slot that holds each brick to the adjacent brick, the bricks underneath and the bricks on top. These keyways, which are acknowledged to be the limiting factor in the life of these reactors, are beginning to fracture. John Large points out that this will make the graphite blocks a very loose set of bricks.
Prof Paul Bowen of Birmingham University sits on the graphite technical advisory committee for ONR. He says the keyway cracks could potentially prevent the entry of the control rods. If the core distorts too much, it’s easy to see how trying to feed anything in could become very difficult
Seven of the keyways have been discovered to have cracks at Hunterston B. John Large believes the presence of keyway cracks casts doubt on the safety of the reactor in the event of an emergency like an earthquake. We have a cracked and deteriorating core that’s lost its residual strength and we don’t know by how much. Some of the design case accidents will test the core – one of these would be a seismic shake where the whole core is wobbled. If the core becomes misaligned, and the fuel modules get stuck in the core, the fuel temperature will get raised and could undergo a melt. If the radioactivity gets into the gas stream and the reactor is venting because it’s over pressurised then you have a release to the atmosphere and you have dispersion and a contamination problem.
ONR agrees keyway cracks could compromise safety. One of the documents the BBC obtained said the discovery of keyway route cracks at Hunterston invalidates the previous safety case. EDF had to consider what information to present to ONR to satisfy them that the reactor was still safe to operate. EDF brought in articulated control rods and nitrogen injection systems to address the extra risks posed by the keyway route cracking. The new rods are bendy making them easier to insert into a distorted core and an injection of nitrogen could buy several hours of invaluable time in the event of an accident.
However, concern remains because we can’t be certain how many keyway route cracks there are. John Large explains that to examine where the cracks are you have to take the fuel out of the reactor and put a camera down to inspect the inside of the bore, but these keyway cracks are on the outside of the bricks so you can’t actually see them.
It’s very hard to inspect the channels in which the fuel sits. Around 10% are inspected each time the reactor is shutdown. So there may be keyway route cracks that have never been seen at Hunterston and Hinkley. In the absence of a full visual inspection a mathematical model is used to work out the likelihood of cracks in particular parts of the reactor. The trouble is the model has already been shown to be flawed.
Paul Bowen says they haven’t been able to get the exact timing of the cracks right. The industry argued that cracks would appear first in layers 4 and 5, but they actually appeared in level 6. John Large says the model relied upon by ONR is not working, so they can’t predict the strength of the core. More to the point they can’t work out where to put their investigative probes to see where cracking is taking place. So they’re in the dark.
If the ONR gives the go-ahead for an increase in the number of cracked bricks from 10 to 20%, it might be difficult for people living near theses reactors to understand why the definition of “safe” seems to be changing. http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo90.pdf
“I think we expect more of such readjusting plate movements and that has been reasonably predicted, and many volcanic activity and earthquakes have been rampant over the last five years,” said Mr. Kurokawa, an adjunct professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. “So why are we continuing to restart nuclear plants?”
New Quake Tests Resilience, and Faith, in Japan’s Nuclear Plants, NYT, NOV. 22, 2016 TOKYO — There was no avoiding fearful memories of the Japanese nuclear disaster of 2011 on Tuesday morning after a powerful earthquake off the coast of Fukushima caused a cooling system in a nuclear plant to stop, leaving more than 2,500 spent uranium fuel rods at risk of overheating………
Regarding the longer-term situation, nuclear experts expressed concern about the safety of the cleanup operation at the Daiichi plant.
The melted cores of three reactors have yet to be removed as they are still too radioactive for workers to approach. Since the 2011 disaster, groundwater seeps into the reactors daily. The water, contaminated by the melted fuel rods, needs to be treated and stored on site. So far, Tepco has built more than 880 tanks of about 1,000 tons each.
The tanks are inspected four times a day to confirm that they do not leak, said Mr. Okamura of Tepco. And in an effort to halt the flood of groundwater into the damaged buildings, the company has built an underground wall of frozen dirt nearly a mile in length encircling the reactors. The wall is not yet fully frozen, though, and groundwater continues to flow into the reactors.
Critics worry that the sea walls or storage tanks might not withstand a more powerful earthquake or tsunami. And Tuesday’s incident at the Daini reactor showed that quakes can set off problems even at plants that are not operating.
Most of the country’s 54 plants remain closed since the 2011 disaster, but the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to restart most of them.
A majority of the Japanese public is opposed to such a move. Candidates for governor who ran campaigns opposed to the revival have won elections in recent months in two prefectures that host nuclear plants.
According to the Nikkei Shimbun, a Japanese daily, Fumio Sudo, the chairman of Tepco, and Naomi Hirose, the company’s president, were planning to meet on Tuesday with one of those governors, Ryuichi Yoneyama of Niigata, to try to persuade him to support a restart of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant there. Mr. Sudo and Mr. Hirose returned to Tokyo after the earthquake.
Kiyoshi Kurokawa, who oversaw an independent investigation on the Fukushima nuclear accident for the Japanese Parliament, said that building walls and storage tanks failed to solve the underlying problem of an earthquake-prone country relying on nuclear power. Instead, he said, both the government and utility companies should invest in developing alternative sources of power like solar or wind technology.
“I think we expect more of such readjusting plate movements and that has been reasonably predicted, and many volcanic activity and earthquakes have been rampant over the last five years,” said Mr. Kurokawa, an adjunct professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. “So why are we continuing to restart nuclear plants?”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/world/asia/japan-earthquake-tsunami-fukushima.html?_r=0
‘Most dilapidated’ US nuclear power plant to close?, DW, 22 Nov 16 New York state has taken a pivotal step toward shutting down what critics have called the US’ “most dilapidated and dangerous nuclear power plant.” The renewal of one of the permits for Indian Point looks unlikely. The New York Court of Appeal’s latest decision on the Indian Point nuclear facility concerned an application to renew one of the permits required by Entergy to continue operating two pressurized water reactors at the plant. The reactors in question were put into operation in 1974 and 1976 respectively.
Contrary to a lower court’s ruling, the Court of Appeal said the request must be submitted to the State Department of New York State, which looked likely to reject it.
“The Department of State already concluded that the Indian Point relicensing application is inconsistent with New York’s long-standing Coastal Management Program requirements and will continue to use this program to protect New York’s coastline, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.
Good riddance?
“Indian Point is antiquated and does not belong on the Hudson River in close proximity to New York City where it poses a threat not only to the coastal resources and uses of the river, but also to millions of New Yorkers living and working in the surrounding community,” Cuomo added.
The Court of Appeal’s decision was also hailed by the Waterkeeper Alliance. “Indian Point is the oldest, most dilapidated, mismanaged and dangerous nuclear power plant in America,” it said in a statement on Ecowatch.com’s website……http://www.dw.com/en/most-dilapidated-us-nuclear-power-plant-to-close/a-36474986
Nuclear plant temporarily shuts down due to system problem http://www.dailyprogress.com/nuclear-plant-temporarily-shuts-down-due-to-system-problem/article_2d1f2c37-a7a1-5bc8-bb6f-e1421c989e6b.html LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — The nation’s oldest operating nuclear plant has been temporarily shut down due to a fault in the turbine control system.
But officials with the Oyster Creek plant say it won’t have any impact on the electrical service it provides.
Oyster Creek is located about 60 miles east of Philadelphia. It generates enough electricity to power 600,000 homes, or roughly all the homes in Monmouth and Ocean counties combined.
Pilgrim: Baker pressed to name independent nuclear inspector Cape Cod Times, Nov 19, 2016 PLYMOUTH — Critics of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station are frustrated by the silence coming from the governor’s office concerning their request for a state-appointed nuclear engineer to accompany the federal inspection team set to take a sweeping look at the plant’s systems and staff, beginning Nov. 28.
The No. 3 unit at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Mihama plant in Fukui Prefecture is the latest reactor allowed to continue in service beyond the limit following two such units at the utility’s Takahama complex, also in Fukui.
The Mihama No. 3 unit, which began commercial operation in December 1976, went offline in May 2011 for a regular checkup and has not been restarted, undergoing inspections to meet tougher safety requirements introduced after the Fukushima disaster.
Kansai Electric plans to spend about 165 billion yen ($1.5 billion) to upgrade the facilities at the reactor with a capacity of 826,000 kilowatts to meet the new regulations, which reflect the lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster……..
ニュースサイトで読む: http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20161116/p2g/00m/0dm/047000c#csidxb563f34546d48c0a1d99f038e34023d 
Japanese nuclear plant holds tsunami & meltdown drills Rt.com 13 Nov, 2016 A major anti-disaster drill has been held at a nuclear plant in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s main islands. The exercise followed a similar drill in Shikoku, and was based on the scenario of a powerful earthquake and tsunami striking the region.
Hokkaido is the second largest island of Japan which is home to the Tomari Nuclear Power Plant Unit 3 reactor. Due to over a dozen volcanoes it is prone to seismic activity. …… in Hokkaido, local residents joined officials from 40 organizations, including central and local governments to polish their emergency response.
In particular, the training trained people in how to reach safety should the main roads around Tomari be affected by a tsunami.
The drill even rehearsed the erection of an emergency response center some ten kilometers from the power station.
Meanwhile, locals practiced survival mode skills at a local school in case they are faced with a radiation leak situation. A massive evacuation of civilians using buses has also been organized. READ MORE: Volcano near Japanese nuclear plant to see major eruption within 25 years, scientists warn
A similar drill was held at the Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture on Friday, and involved about 23,000 people. There, local residents joined officials from 90 organizations in a massive exercise organized by the Shikoku Electric Power Company. https://www.rt.com/news/366726-japan-nuclear-tsunami-drills/
Watts Bar Unit 2, last old reactor of the 20th century: a cautionary tale, Bulletin of the Atomic ScientistsIronically, Watts Bar 2 comes when the large-scale development of new, truly clean energy sources is a burgeoning reality. Created as an innovative model for the nation in the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley Authority has become an entrenched, top-down bureaucracy wedded to the past by its continuing embrace of nuclear and other polluting energy sources in the 21st century.
Schedule delays and cost increases. Watts Bar Unit 2 has the longest construction history of any reactor in the world. …….
Let us look at some of the reasons for the delays and overruns in turn.
Problematic, antiquated design. …….
Quality control concerns at Watts Bar……..
Post-Fukushima design upgrades postponed…….
Watts Bar and nuclear weapons. …….
A safer, less risky future is possible. Ratepayers, utilities, and regulators should heed this cautionary tale, whose lessons are only reinforced by recent efforts to build ever more costly and delayed new reactors here in the United States, including SCANA’s V.C. Summer reactor in South Carolina, and the Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle reactors in Georgia. (And abroad at Flamanville, France; Olkiluoto, Finland; and Hinkley Point, Great Britain.) New nuclear power generation is turning out to be the failed technology of the 21st century…….. http://thebulletin.org/watts-bar-unit-2-last-old-reactor-20th-century-cautionary-tale8783
The unusual event notice is the lowest of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s four emergency classification levels. The fire was self-extinguished moments after it started and there were no injuries or impact on plant operations, Entergy said.
The cable that experienced the electrical faulty carries electricity between both operating units at the Buchanan plant.
The company is investigating the cause of the fault, according to Entergy.
There’s no safe way to move nuclear waste’: Scottish Politicians slam nuke flight that needed armed cop convoy Daily Record 18 SEP 2016 BY JIM LAWSON
Green MP John Finnie and Caithness MP Paul Monaghan among those to voice concerns about flying nuclear waste to the US. THE first flight believed to be carrying British nuclear waste to America took off from Wick Airport amid tight security yesterday.
Scots politicians and anti-nuclear campaigners have slammed the deal, brokered by David Cameron and Barack Obama, to move the waste.
The airport was closed from early morning as armed police patrolled the perimeter.
Twenty miles away in Thurso, more armed officers escorted a lorry from the Dounreay nuclear plant through the town. It was carrying two heavily reinforced containers……
Dr Richard Dixon, director of Friends of the Earth, said: “There is no truly safe way to move this waste.”
Caithness MP Paul Monaghan said the deal was “morally reprehensible” and Green MP John Finnie said people would be stunned that nuclear waste was being transported by plane.
Nuclear expert John Large said: “The risk in transport by air is the fuel being engulfed in fire, the packages breaking down and the fuel igniting.”
The runways at Wick have been extended at a cost of £18million to take the US planes, and Highland Council have published an order allowing local roads to be closed for five hours at a time until March 2018.
Police refused to comment on yesterday’s operation for security reasons.The first flight believed to
be carrying British nuclear waste to America took off from Wick Airport amid tight security yesterday. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/gun-cop-8859315
NRC inspection finds ‘substantial weaknesses’ in TVA safety culture at new nuclear plant, Times Free Press, November 1st, 2016
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission met with 136 workers in 17 focus groups at Watts Bar this summer after concluding in March that TVA had “a chilled work environment” at the Spring City, Tenn., plant that could discourage employees or contractors from raising safety concerns.
“Focus groups within and outside of the operations department indicated the existence of broader, previously unrecognized challenges to the maintenance of a positive safety culture, which continued to challenge the safety conscious work environment,” Alan Blamey, branch chief of reactor projects in the Atlanta office of the NRC, said in a letter to TVA last week. “The (NRC inspection) team identified substantial weaknesses in various attributes which were found to be pervasive across various work units.”
Blamey said nearly half of those interviewed by the NRC at Watts Bar “believed retaliation was a potential outcome for raising concerns.”
“In addition, most employees did not believe that concerns were promptly reviewed or appropriately resolved, either by their management or via the corrective action program,” Blamey told the TVA………. http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2016/nov/01/nrc-inspectifinds-substantial-weaknesses-tvsa/395354/
Cracks found in Scots nuclear reactor spark fears over core safety , Daily Record, 31 OCT 2016 BY SALLY HIND
OFFICIAL documents revealed the nuclear regulator’s concerns over fractures in the core structure of Hunterston B power station in Ayrshire. CRACKS found in a nuclear reactor have sparked fears that it could not be shut down in an emergency.
Official documents revealed the nuclear regulator’s concerns over fractures in the core structure of Hunterston B power station in Ayrshire.
Operators EDF Energy say the cracks pose no threat to safety at the site.
But paperwork obtained through a freedom of information request shows the Office for Nuclear Regulation have raised concerns over fractures in the brick keyways that lock together the core in reactor three.
It’s feared the same problem could arise at EDF’s sister station – Hinkley B in Somerset. The ONR have agreed the stations can continue operating safely after making changes to the reactor shutdown process of the 70s structures.
But John Large, who helped design the advanced gas-cooled reactors, believes that if the cracks get worse, they could jeopardise a reactor’s stability in the event of a disaster and make it impossible to shut it down…..http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/cracks-found-scots-nuclear-reactor-9167417
Grand Gulf Nuclear Station stays closed as feds inspect Grand Gulf Nuclear Station has been shut down since Sept. 8 as Entergy makes a “thorough review” of the power plant after several maintenance issues, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection after “several recent operational events.”……..
France’s Nuclear Storm: Many Power Plants Down Due to Quality Concerns, Power, 11/01/2016 | Lee Buchsbaum The discovery of widespread carbon segregation problems in critical nuclear plant components has crippled the French power industry—20 of the country’s 58 reactors are currently offline and under heavy scrutiny. France’s nuclear safety chairman said more anomalies “will likely be found,” as the extent of the contagion is still being uncovered.With over half of France’s 58 reactors possibly affected by “carbon segregation,” the nation’s nuclear watchdog, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) has ordered that preventative measures be taken immediately to ensure public safety. As this story goes into production in late October, ASN has confirmed that 20 reactors are currently offline and potentially more will shut down in coming weeks.
The massive outages are draining power from all over Europe. Worse, new questions continue to swirl about both the safety and integrity of Électricité de France SA’s (EDF’s) nuclear fleet, as well as the quality of some French- and Japanese-made components that EDF is using in various high-profile nuclear projects around the world……….
Questionable Materials and Documentation
At the heart of France’s nuclear crisis are two problems. One concerns the carbon content of critical steel parts, steam heat exchangers, and other components manufactured or supplied by AREVA SA, the French state-owned nuclear engineering firm and global producer of nuclear reactors. The second problem concerns forged, falsified, or incomplete quality control reports about the critical components themselves. Continue reading
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
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Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
