British nuclear submarine stricken with technical problems off coast of Iran
Stranded: Ageing British nuclear submarine in top-secret mission is undergoing repairs off the coast of Iran [includes VIDEO] Daily Mail,
- British nuclear submarine spotted at dock in the Emirati dock of Fujairah
- Port is situated less than 100 nautical miles from the coast of Iran
- A 650ft-long metal barrier covers the submarine to avoid detection
- It is believed to be one of Britain’s four Trafalgar Class submarines
By MARK NICOL DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY 27 September 2015 |
A British nuclear submarine has been caught on camera after it apparently became stricken with technical problems while on a top-secret mission in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
Satellite images show the Royal Navy vessel undergoing repairs at a port less than 100 nautical miles from Iran.
The nuclear-powered submarine is pictured docked at Fujairah, one of the United Arab Emirates, in the politically sensitive seaway of the Gulf of Oman……….
In 2013, The Mail on Sunday revealed how the ageing Trafalgar submarines had been issued with ‘Code Red’ safety warnings after inspectors found radioactive leaks. The report by the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator found that cracks in reactors and nuclear discharges were directly attributable to the Trafalgars remaining in service beyond their design date.
The Trafalgars are powered by nuclear reactors and are supposed to stay at sea for up to three months. They are equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles and sonar equipment that can hear enemy vessels sailing more than 50 miles away.
The submarines have a typical complement of 120 to 130 personnel, up to 20 of them officers. The Trafalgars are being replaced by Astute Class nuclear submarines.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: ‘We do not comment on submarine operations.’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3250393/Stranded-Ageing-British-nuclear-submarine-secret-mission-undergoing-repairs-coast-Iran.html#ixzz3myehgajC
Can Nuclear Plants Actually Operate Safely?
Cancer, Coverups and Contamination: The Real Cost of Nuclear Energy 27th September 2015
Andreas Toupadakis Ph.D Contributing Writer for Wake Up World
“…..If we assume that more nuclear power plants are constructed around the world, can anyone guarantee that the nuclear accidents will disappear? No, that is impossible. Not only will the risks not disappear, but logic dictates they will also increase if there are more plants in operation, as will the volume of unmanageable radioactive waste. And let us not forget the unpredictability of earthquakes. Nuclear accidents will always happen just like any other accidents do, which may affect both power plants and waste storage facitilities.
Reliance on nuclear energy not only results in building new nuclear power plants but also relicensing existing ones. The peril of tragic accidents within the industry will inevitably be higher, especially while maintaining plants that are decades old — as we have already witnessed with the ongoing disaster at Fukushima, as well as the overheated reactor at Miami’s Turkey Point facility in 2014. Other nuclear power plant disasters include:
- 1952 Chalk River, near Ottawa, Canada: a partial meltdown of the reactor’s uranium fuel core resulted after the accidental removal of four control rods.
- 1957 Windscale Pile No. 1, north of Liverpool, England: fire in a graphite-cooled reactor spewed radiation over the countryside, contaminating a 200-sq-mile area.
- 1957 South Ural Mountains, Soviet Union: an explosion of radioactive wastes at a Soviet nuclear weapons factory 12 miles from the city of Kyshtym forced the evacuation of over 10,000 people from a contaminated area.
- 1959, Santa Susana, USA: A reactor at the Atomics International field laboratory in the Santa Susana Mountains, California, experienced a power surge and subsequently spewed radioactive gases into the atmosphere. According to a 2009 report from the Los Angeles Times, residents blame the facility for their health issues and say the site remains contaminated.
- 1976, near Greifswald, East Germany: the radioactive core of a reactor in the Lubmin nuclear power plant nearly narrowly avoided meltdown following the failure of safety systems during a fire.
- 1979, Three-Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Following a combination of equipment malfunctions, design-related problems and worker error, one of two reactors lost its coolant which caused overheating and partial meltdown of its uranium core, releasing radioactive water and gases.
- 1986, Chernobyl, near Kiev, Ukraine: an explosion and fire in the graphite core of one of four reactors released radioactive material that spread over parts of the Soviet Union, Europe and Scandinavia.
- 1987, Rocky Flats Plant, near Denver, Colorado, USA: Following insider reports of unsafe conditions, investigation found numerous violations of federal anti-pollution laws, including discharging of pollutants, hazardous materials and radioactive matter into nearby creeks and water supplies. A subsequent grand jury report criticized the Department of Energy and Rocky Flats contractors for “engaging in a continuing campaign of distraction, deception and dishonesty”.
- 1999, Tokaimura, Japan: An uncontrolled chain reaction in a uranium-processing nuclear fuel plant spewed high levels of radioactive gas into the air, exposing 69 people, killing one worker, and seriously injuring two others.
- 2011, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan: The troubled Fukishima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan has experienced a number of ‘incidents’ since its construction in 1971, culminating in total reactor failure when the plant was hit by a tsunami following an earthquake. At the time of the disaster, the plant began releasing substantial amounts of radioactive materials and, more than four years after the incident, the plant is still leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.
The extent of this recent disaster at Fukushima should not be taken lightly. The water leaking from the ailing plant contains plutonium 239 and its release into the world’s ocean system has global repercussions. Explains chemist John A. Jaksich for DecodedScience.com:
“Certain isotopes of radioactive plutonium are known as some of the deadliest poisons on the face of the Earth. A mere microgram (a speck of darkness on a pinhead) of Plutonium-239, if inhaled, can cause death, and if ingested… can be harmful, causing leukemia and other bone cancers.
“In the days following the 2011 earthquake and nuclear plant explosions, seawater meant to cool the nuclear power plants instead carried radioactive elements back to the Pacific ocean. Radioactive Plutonium was one of the elements streamed back to sea.”
As history has shown us, assurances on safety from nuclear operators and regulators are nothing but preposterous. That is something that the public understands — because it is common sense. No matter how much uncaring, financially invested scientists will try to convince the public of the safety of the nuclear industry, the public does not have a salary from working on nuclear business and so, unlike those working on behalf of the industry, can maintain integrity and common sense……….….http://wakeup-world.com/2015/09/27/cancer-coverups-and-contamination-the-real-cost-of-nuclear-energ
Sloppy management of San Onofre’ s nuclear waste
Documents Detail How Nuclear Material Was Handled at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, Expert tells NBC 7 Investigates handling of nuclear material was “sloppy” NBC, By JW August and Lynn Walsh Documents newly obtained by NBC 7 Investigates during secret talks about the condition of the land where the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) sits detail how nuclear material was handled at the plant since the 1980s.
The documents were released to individuals involved with the secret negotiations about the current condition and future handling of the 25-acre property. According to a source familiar with the negotiations, the secret meetings have been going on for about 20 months and involve all the players with a stake in the prime coastal property.
Those players include the U.S. Navy, which owns the property; the U.S. Marines, whose base surrounds the property; and Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), both of which hold the lease to the property.
The current lease was signed on April 2011, and according to the agreement, ends on May 12, 2023.
A source close to the lease negotiations told NBC 7 Investigates that SCE and SDG&E want out of the lease as soon as possible. According to the source, the team representing the utilities has told all involved they want nondisclosure agreements signed so no one can go public with any information disclosed during the negotiations.
So far, one or more of the parties involved in the talks are refusing to sign the nondisclosure agreements. Continue reading
Department of Transportation rules violated in shipment of Y-12 uranium
Y-12 uranium shipment reportedly violated DOT rules, Knoxville News Sentinel, Frank Munger, Sep 22, 2015 OAK RIDGE — A federal spokesman at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant confirmed that a July shipment did not comply with some Department of Transportation regulations for transporting hazardous materials, and he said Y-12 officials have been in contact with DOT and “are cooperating with their findings.”
Steven Wyatt of the National Nuclear Security Administration also confirmed that the “special nuclear material” shipped from Y-12 to a commercial facility was uranium, although he refused to say if it was highly enriched or weapons-grade uranium and would not specify how much uranium was sent to the unnamed facility.
The NNSA, a semi-independent part of the U.S. Department of Energy that oversees the nuclear weapons complex, last week said Y-12 inadvertently shipped more nuclear material than intended to a private facility. After the mistake was discovered, a special team from Y-12 reportedly went to the site and secured the material for return to Oak Ridge…….http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local-news/y12-uranium-shipment-reportedly-violated-dot-rules_22839052
International Atomic Energy’s sobering Report on Fukushima nuclear accident
Japan is not the only nation “rearranging the nuclear deck chairs”
The Titanic was also ill-prepared to evacuate its passengers because it failed to consider the unimaginable and thus mismanaged the risk. It seems the lessons of Fukushima are also being ignored in favor of wishing away risk, and hoping for inspired improvisation. There is thus good reason why citizens across Japan are filing lawsuits to block reactor restarts and some gutsy judges are resisting pressure from the nuclear village and siding with common sense.
Rearranging the deck chairs on the nuclear Titanic BY JEFF KINGSTON JAPAN TIMES 20 Sep 15 The International Atomic Energy Agency’s recently released postmortem on the Fukushima nuclear accident of 2011 makes for grim reading and serves as a timely reminder of why the restart of the Sendai nuclear plant in Kyushu is a bad idea.
When an atomic energy advocacy organization delivers multiple harsh assessments of Japan’s woeful nuclear safety culture and inadequate emergency countermeasures and disaster management protocols, it’s time to wonder how much has really changed in the past five years — and whether restarting any of the nation’s nuclear reactors is a good idea.
In 2012, the government established a new nuclear safety watchdog agency called the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) and it now contends that Japan has the strictest nuclear safety regulations in the world. But is that true? And does it
matter?
David Lochbaum, co-author of last year’s “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster,” the best book on the meltdowns that I’ve read, likens recent reforms to “rearranging the deck chairs on the nuclear Titanic” He’s not buying Japan’s claim of having the world’s strictest guidelines. Continue reading
Sweden tightens rules on drones flying near nuclear stations
Flouting Nuclear Drone Ban in Sweden Will Land You in Jail, Bloomberg, Jesper Starn, 18 Sep 15,
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No-fly zones start Oct. 15 to protect national security
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Swedish police focus on tackling pilots on the ground
The Nordic region’s biggest producer of atomic energy will from Oct. 15 add nuclear plants to a list of sites including airports and hospitals with no-fly zones in an effort to preserve national security. If caught, drone pilots face as long as 6 months behind bars, according to the Swedish police.
Sweden is tightening its rules amid growing international concern about the security threat posed by drones, which have buzzed French nuclear reactors, landed on the White House lawn and even crashed into the stands at this month’s U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York. While France is backing research into tracking and destroying illegal unmanned craft, Sweden is opting to pursue the pilots on the ground……
Greenpeace flew a piloted paraglider over Ringhals in 2013, dropping balloons on the roof of one of the reactor buildings, according to Vattenfall.
While environmental activists have parasailed, hurdled fences and climbed buildings at Swedish nuclear plants in attempts to demonstrate poor security, seaweed and jellyfish have been more effective in cutting output by blocking flows of cooling water.
- Flying a drone over banned areas would void any form of insurance to cover damages caused by the craft, according to Claes Wahlund, the chairman of the Swedish Model Airplane Association.“Flying over a nuclear power plant is not a hobby,” he said by phone on Thursday. “Without insurance, pilots could really be in deep trouble.”Illegal drone flights near Swedish airports forced air traffic to halt at least 10 times this year, Ulf Wallin, spokesman for Swedavia AB, the manager of 10 of the nation’s airports, said Thursday by phone. Two Lithuanian men that flew a drone over a military airport in Lidkoeping, Sweden, in May were fined 2,000 kronor ($240) each, Swedish news service TT reported.
- While Ringhals views any breach of the no-fly zone as a police matter, it’s still assessing ways of detecting drones, Staalnacke said, without being more specific.Under existing law, anyone who destroys a drone, even the police, would be liable to pay the owner to replace it, police spokesman Fuxborg said.Ringhals and Forsmark, another plant owned by Vattenfall on Sweden’s east coast, were granted a temporary flight ban from Sept. 7 until the permanent no-fly zone takes effect Oct. 15. EON SE’s Oskarshamn reactor in the southeast also gets the permanent ban from Oct. 15, Emmy Davidsson, a spokeswoman for the plant, said Tuesday by phone. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/flouting-nuclear-drone-ban-in-sweden-will-soon-land-you-in-jail
Safety problems at Fort Calhoun nuclear plant
The Saturday Night Live Approach to Nuclear Safety: More Cowbell! Dave Lochbaum, director, Nuclear Safety Project, 15 Sep 15 The April 8, 2000, Saturday Night Live broadcast featured a skit with cast members pretending to be the rock group Blue Oyster Cult in the recording studio with a famous music producer, played by actor Christopher Walken. The skit is remembered for Walken’s character stating “I gotta have more cowbell.”
The NRC’s Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) needs more cowbell, too.
The Fort Calhoun nuclear plant shut down in April 2011 for a refueling outage. The outage was planned to last a handful of weeks while workers replaced spent fuel assemblies with new assemblies and performed routine maintenance and testing activities. The plan went awry when the ROP identified safety problems that needed to be corrected before the reactor could be restarted.
The operators restarted Fort Calhoun in December 2013 after a short refueling outage morphed into a 32-month safety restoration outage. On March 30, 2015, the NRCannounced that it was returning Fort Calhoun to normal handling under the ROP. The NRC also reported expending over 60,000 hours since December 2011 on inspection, assessment and licensing tasks at Fort Calhoun.
60,000 hours is a number without context. To help put this value in context, the NRCreported having expended 6,652 hours, 6,612 hours, and 6,782 hours of total oversight effort at the average nuclear plant in 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively. So the average nuclear plant received an average of 6,682 hours of oversight from the NRC annually.
Between 2012 and 2014, Fort Calhoun received an average of 18,462 hours of oversight effort each year from the NRC.
Thus, Fort Calhoun received the equivalent of 2.76 nuclear plants’ worth of regulatory oversight attention from the NRC between 2012 and 2014……
The problems that kept Fort Calhoun shut down for 32 months were not introduced in 2009 and 2010 after the NRC returned Fort Calhoun to Column 1—they existed all along. Yet the NRC’s ROP missed them all. The ROP missed every single one of them, until after the first quarter of 2011. After that time, finding safety problems was like shooting fish in a barrel—NRC inspectors could hardly turn around without finding yet another safety problem that had to be fixed prior to restart.
So how could more cowbell improve nuclear plant safety?
Rather than expending so much time and effort ensuring that the barn door has been closed, safety would be better served by noticing that it’s open sooner. Cowbells should have sounded long before the first quarter of 2011.
UCS’s fact sheet documented many safety problems that existed at Fort Calhoun for years before the ROP’s inception in 2000. Two of the safety problems involved the emergency diesel generators (EDGs).
EDGs are among the most safety significant components at the plant. Consequently, they receive considerable oversight attention by the NRC. Yet that attention failed to identify either of these two problems that had existed since at least 1990.
And it was not just one miss or even two misses by one NRC inspector—it was a lot of misses by a lot of NRC inspectors over a lot of years. A search of ADAMS, the NRC’s online digital library, identified 39 inspections conducted at Fort Calhoun by the NRC between 2000 and 2010 inclusive that included some oversight of the EDGs.
Something is fundamentally wrong with safety inspections of highly safety significant components that fail to notice safety problems. Finding safety problems isn’t one of the reasons for conducting the safety inspections—it’s the only reason for doing them.
And yet many safety problems remained undetected until 2011 when it took an army of workers more than two years to correct them all.
Our Takeaway
Fort Calhoun is not an isolated case. It marked the 52nd time that a U.S. reactor had to remain shut down longer than a year while safety problems were corrected. The majority of these year-plus outages involved a myriad of safety problems that had existed for months and sometimes years before being noticed.
And yet many safety problems remained undetected until 2011 when it took an army of workers more than two years to correct them all…….http://allthingsnuclear.org/the-saturday-night-live-approach-to-nuclear-safety-more-cowbell/
Deal about nuclear accidents signed, between Norway and Russia
Norway, Russia sign deal on nuclear accidents Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority and Rosatom have signed a set of joint notification procedures in case of nuclear incidents, Barents Observer, Trude Pettersen, 16 Sept 15 ……..The notification procedures were signed by Harbitz and Director of Rosatom Sergey Kiriyenko during a meeting at a General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna on Tuesday, NRPA’s website reads.
In recent years the two countries have worked to strengthen the joint notification agreement on nuclear accidents of 1993 through concrete procedures for notification. The procedures that are now ready, have involved several authorities on the Russian side. They should ensure early notification in the event of a nuclear incident, which is crucial for Norway’s emergency preparedness.
Nuclear incidents include both accidents and incidents in peacetime or security crisis and war.
The agreement includes Kola Nuclear Power Plant, Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, ship reactors, storages of fresh and spent fuel, research reactors and other nuclear facilities in the whole of Norway, as well as in the 300-kilometer border area in Russia, websiteadvis.ru writes……..
There have been several blazes at Russian shipyards in recent years whilst nuclear-powered submarines have been under repair.
2011 saw a serious fire occur aboard the Delta-class nuclear submarine the Yekaterinburg while she was dry docked at a shipyard in the northwestern Russia Murmansk Region. NRPA was informed about the fire through media, and better information exchange has since then been on the agenda http://barentsobserver.com/en/energy/2015/09/norway-russia-sign-deal-nuclear-accidents-16-09
Japan ignores post Fukushima nuclear safety guidelines
Who Opens a Reactor Next to a Volcano? Japan’s New Nuclear Gamble, The Daily Beast, 11 Sept 15
Massive earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, and natural disasters galore—Japan would seem a rather precarious perch for nuclear power plants. Flooding from Tropical Storm Etau, which overwhelmed the water pumps at the infamous ruins of Fukushima, washing more radioactive waste into the ocean, ought to serve as yet another reminder of how fragile Japan’s atomic energy program really is.
But is anyone paying attention?
Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency sounded a barely heard alarm. In its final report on the March 2011 triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the UN watchdog blasted Tokyo Electric Power Co. for not taking sufficient disaster precautions. “A major factor that contributed to the accident was the widespread assumption in Japan that its nuclear power plants were so safe,” it noted.
The report should have been taken as a warning. It was mostly ignored.
Among its recommendations: “Pre-accident planning for post-accident recovery is necessary to improve decision-making under pressure in the immediate post-accident situation.”
On Sept. 1, Japan’s National Disaster Prevention Day, The Mainichi newspaper ran a story showing that absolutely nothing had been done in the three years since the government ordered new disaster-response guidelines for 17 nuclear research and storage facilities—including the Rokkasho facility in Aomori, which has enough plutonium to make hundreds of nuclear bombs.
Meanwhile, Japan’s first nuclear reactor to be restarted after the shutdown in 2011, at Sendai, went back online on Aug. 11. Things have not been going smoothly.
On Aug. 20, an alarm at Unit No. 1 went off at 2:19 p.m. after seawater apparently leaked into the reactor’s secondary cooling system. Plans to return to full capacity were delayed. The restart had been delayed again and again—and for good reasons………
human error isn’t Japan’s only matter of serious concern: In addition to Etau’s nearly three feet of rain and an onslaught of other typhoons this year, there’s Mount Sakurajima, a volcano 30 miles from the reactor in southern Kagoshima prefecture that’s showing signs of having a major eruption. On Aug. 15, the national meteorological agency advised people within two miles of the crater to leave the area.
The NRA states that the volcano doesn’t pose a threat to the nuclear power plant.
According to Kyushu Electric Power, there are 14 known active volcanoes within 100 miles of the Sendai reactor. The company says its new equipment is fully prepared to withstand 15 centimeters (or about 6 inches) of volcanic ash. In a country that’s home to 10 percent of the world’s known active volcanoes, not everyone is convinced by those assurances.
Why the rush to put a nuclear plant online in the first place?……..
Japan’s big business association [Keidanren] is also under the strong influence of the nuclear power lobby, and it has long demanded that the government restart the plants as soon as possible,” said Prof. Koichi Nakano, an expert on Japanese politics at Tokyo’s Sophia University. “The ‘nuclear village’ is very well represented among the power elite behind the Abe government, so it has long thought that if this government cannot resume nuclear power generation, no other government can.”
“The problem for them is that the public remains very strongly opposed to nuclear power,” Nakano added. “The Sendai facilities in Kagoshima prefecture are far away from any major city in Japan, so presumably they thought that it is a suitable plant to start with. But given the strength of popular opposition, it won’t be easy to restart so many other plants as if nothing happened.”
But in light of the Fukushima disaster and the frequent seismic activity endemic to its Ring of Fire setting, is Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy a wise choice?…….
The restarts illustrate that the lessons of Fukushima are being ignored and that authorities are still wishing risk away,” says Prof. Jeff Kingston, author ofContemporary Japan. “The evacuation plans are a macabre joke. If there is an accident, it won’t be possible to get people out of harm’s way in an orderly and timely fashion. In the event of a tsunami, landslides, and or volcano eruption, many of the roads could become impassable. There is no Plan B.
“The new, so-called strict guidelines do not meet global standards and focus on hardware, whereas the main lesson of Fukushima is that human error was a major factor contributing to the meltdowns,” Kingston added. “It is clear that these significant risks remain unaddressed in the rush to restart. Yet again corners are being cut and public safety is being risked to help the bottom line.”
In the aftermath of Fukushima, former Prime Minister Kan Naoto, who was in charge during 2011’s triple disaster, acknowledged nuclear’s lethal uncertainties—and then one more. “Nuclear power is a huge risk. Not to mention the possibility of human error. And the Fukushima accident also showed the world how vulnerable nuclear power plants could be to terrorism,” Naoto wrote in his memoirs in 2012. “Terrorists don’t have to bomb them, they just need to get inside and cut the power to potentially unleash great destruction.”
Unarmed guards protect Japan’s nuclear power plants, and background checks are not required for employees. Members of organized crime, the yakuza, staff construction teams and work within the plants. The Japanese government has acknowledged in reports that not only is there a threat from outsiders storming the nuclear plants, but also a high risk from workers already inside—in other words, terrorists might walk through the front doors as employees.
And there is another time bomb ticking here for the Abe administration: Japan’s anti-nuclear activists and the courts……….http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/11/who-opens-a-reactor-next-to-a-volcano-japan-s-new-nuclear-gamble.html
Record rain overwhelming Fukushima’s nuclear station’s drainage pumps
Japan’s torrential downpour overwhelmed Fukushima’s drainage pumps sending hundreds of tonnes of contaminated water flowing into the Pacific! Japanese flooding update, The Big Wobble , 10 Sept 15
Rainfall reached 600 millimetres in the area around Joso, with weather officials expecting at least 200mm more in parts of eastern Japan, including Fukushima, the site of the nuclear reactor crippled in 2011, before the downpour stops on Friday.
Report Says Floods May Pose Threat To Radiation Under Fukushima
The torrential downpour has exacerbated a contaminated water problem at the Fukushima nuclear plant as it overwhelmed the site’s drainage pumps, sending hundreds of tonnes of contaminated water flowing into the ocean, a spokesman for operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said.
The continuous torrent of rain water is complicating the already difficult situation in Fukushima where, according to an operator of the Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the drainage pumps are not able to evacuate all the water that is pouring into the plant, becoming contaminated and damaging the ‘surrounding environment.
Since 2011, the Tempco has been in charge of storing tons of radioactive water used to cool the reactors at the plant, destroyed by the tsunami……..TEPCO is storing huge volumes of water used to cool reactors that were sent into meltdown when a tsunami hit Japan in 2011……..
“This is a scale of downpour that we have not experienced before.
Grave danger could be imminent,” forecaster Takuya Deshimaru told an emergency press conference. Etau, which smashed into Japan on Wednesday, moved out into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) by the end of the day, but a wall of rain continued to lash the country……http://www.thebigwobble.org/2015/09/japans-torrential-downpour-overwhelmed.html
Anxieties in China over the safety of the nation’s nuclear power programme
China resumes nuclear power plant construction after a four-year freeze By Zhang Yu Source:Global Times Published: 2015-6-15“…China recently ended its pause for approvals of nuclear power plants put into place after the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan. This year, as many as eight nuclear power plants may be launched in China. Some experts are warning that this is going too fast with controversial technology…….
Since 2004, China has been approving projects using advanced nuclear power reactors, including US-based Westinghouse’s AP1000 and France-based Areva’s EPR (Evolutionary Power Reactor), many of which are now under construction. Dubbed generation III reactors, they are designed to withstand the crisis that damaged the Japanese nuclear plant.
Construction of these projects has not been smooth. Sanmen Nuclear Power Station in Zhejiang Province was expected to be the first nuclear power plant in the world that uses AP1000 technology. The first of the two reactors was scheduled to finish construction and start operation in November 2013, but construction is now over 18 months behind schedule. The plant won’t start operation until 2016 at the earliest, an official from China’s State Nuclear Power Technology, the company building the power plant, said in January.
The company has struggled to keep its schedule because of constant changes in design and new problems that emerged during tests, previous reports said.
In a statement by the economic planner of Zhejiang Province in 2013, its energy department said the delay has slowed down the province’s nuclear development and affected the power supply plan in Zhejiang. It has also undermined China’s overall plan to make AP1000 its major technology in new nuclear plants……..
She said hydroelectricity and other new energy means should be developed in inland areas. “Nuclear shouldn’t play an important role in China’s energy structure,” she said.
“The rapid speed of China’s nuclear expansion, and the direction it is expanding – to the most populous inland areas – is unprecedented…Besides, China’s nuclear industry has a tendency to exaggerate its achievements to the central government, so as to gain more funding,” He told the Global Times.
He also warns of a nuclear accident when the total number of nuclear power plants reaches 50 – the total number of nuclear plants built and under construction in China.
“According to past experiences, the likelihood of a disaster rises sharply after a country runs over 50 nuclear power plants, as is the case in the US and Japan,” he said……..http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/927146.shtml
Action needed on the threat of nuclear terrorism
Nuclear terrorism a threat without global security co-operation YUKIYA AMANO THE AUSTRALIAN SEPTEMBER 7, 2015
Nuclear terrorism is, in the words of US President Barack Obama, “the gravest danger we face”. But while few would dispute this characterisation, the world has unfinished business in minimising the threat. Ten years after world leaders agreed to amend the landmark 1987 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material to make it harder for terrorists to obtain nuclear material, the new measures have yet to enter into force. The resulting vulnerability needs to be addressed urgently.
In July 2005, signatories to the CPPNM agreed to amend the convention to address the risk of terrorism more effectively. The new measures that were introduced would make it more difficult for terrorists to cause a widespread release of radioactive material by attacking a nuclear power plant or detonating a radioactive dispersal device — commonly known as a dirty bomb.
Before the amendment can enter into force, two-thirds of the 152 signatories to the original convention must ratify it. While significant progress has been made — in July, the US, Italy, and Turkey did so — at least 14 more countries are needed.
The fact that there has never been a major terrorist attack involving nuclear or other radioactive material should not blind us to the severity of the threat. There is evidence that terrorist groups have tried to acquire material to construct a crude nuclear explosive device, or a dirty bomb……….
Since 1995, the IAEA’s member states have reported nearly 2800 incidents involving radioactive material escaping regulatory control. Although only a handful of these incidents involved material that could be used to make a nuclear explosive device, a relatively small amount of radioactive material could be combined with conventional explosives to create a dirty bomb. Such a weapon could be capable of killing many people, contaminating large areas, and sparking mass panic.
The original convention focused only on the international transport of nuclear material, and did not cover the protection of nuclear facilities. The amendment adopted 10 years ago would oblige countries to protect nuclear facilities and any nuclear material used, stored, or transported domestically. It would expand co-operation on locating and recovering stolen or smuggled nuclear material and co-ordinate the response to any attack on a nuclear facility. It would make nuclear trafficking a criminal offence and require signatories to co-operate on national systems of physical protection and minimising the consequences of sabotage…….
Effective international co-operation is crucial. The consequences of a security failure could be a catastrophe that transcends borders. All countries must take the threat of nuclear terrorism seriously. The most effective way to do so would be to ensure that the amendment to the CPPNM enters into force as soon as possible.
Yukiya Amano is director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Japan’s Monju nuclear reprocessing reactor, plagued by safety errors, offline for most of 20 years
Errors found in safety management of Monju reactor http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20150903_28.html Sep. 3, 2015 Japan’s nuclear regulators have found fresh faults with the safety management of the country’s fast-breeder reactor, which is currently offline. They say they have found thousands of errors in safety classifications of the equipment and devices at the Monju reactor.
The operator of the prototype reactor in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan, has been banned from conducting test runs since 2013 following discoveries of a large number of safety inspection oversights.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority says it has recently found at least 3,000 mistakes with safety classifications of equipment and devices at the reactor during its regular inspections which are conducted 4 times a year. Its officials say, equipment and devices with high importance were, in some cases, classified in lower ranks in the 3-level system, which suggest the operator might have failed to carry out necessary inspections for them.
The errors found recently include those going as far back as 2007. The fact suggests that government inspectors have also overlooked the operator’s mistakes. The operator, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, built the Monju fast-breeder reactor in the early 1990s to reuse the spent nuclear fuel MOX, a mixture of plutonium extracted from spent fuel and uranium.
But it has been offline for most of the period after it underwent a fire from a leak of sodium, the reactor’s coolant, in 1995.
The operator aims to conduct the reactor’s test run by next March. But it is uncertain when the ban by the authority will be lifted. The plant’s director, Kazumi Aoto, says he will take the government’s report seriously. An NRA inspector, Yutaka Miyawaki, says the regulators will try to identify the actual effects of the errors.
Pilgrim Nuclear Station on the brink of permanent shutdown
Pilgrim nuclear plant one step from shutdown by regulators, Cape Cod Times Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is now at the bottom of the performance list of the nation’s 99 operating reactors, based on its forced shutdowns and equipment failures, and in a category just one step above mandatory shutdown by federal regulators. By Christine Legereclegere@capecodonline.com Sep 2, 2015 PLYMOUTH –
Only two other plants in the country are currently in that category: Arkansas Nuclear One and Arkansas Nuclear Two. Those two, like Pilgrim, are Entergy-owned.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the downgrade of the Pilgrim plant today. In a letter to Entergy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the downgrade was due to the plant’s failure to adequately address the issues that have caused the plant’s high number of unplanned shutdowns.
A supplemental inspection will focus on the plant’s shortcomings, “including human performance, procedure quality and equipment performance.”
The results of the supplemental inspection will “provide the NRC with additional information to be used in deciding whether the continued operation of the facility is acceptable and whether additional regulatory actions are necessary to arrest the licensee/plant performance,” the NRC said……..U.S. Sen Edward Markey, D-Mass., issued a statement on Pilgrim’s dubious status. “For decades, I have raised concerns about Pilgrim’s operations, security preparedness, the safety of the surrounding communities in the event of a nuclear accident, and the willingness of Entergy to dedicate sufficient resources to run the reactor safely,” Markey wrote.
The senator noted Pilgrim is the same boiling water reactor design as those that suffered meltdowns at Fukushima. http://capecodtimes.com/article/20150902/NEWS11/150909865
Nuclear Regulatory Commission scraps public rulemaking on weak GE containments,
A Fukushima Lesson Unlearned: NRC scraps public rulemaking on weak GE containments, Enformable Paul Gunter 4 Sept 15 The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) typically begins its narrative on the “lessons learned” from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe with Japan’s March 11, 2011 accident. Not surprisingly, the agency has avoided addressing the most critical lesson recognized in the accident’s official investigative report by Japan’s National Diet. In their finding, the unfolding radiological catastrophe is “manmade” and the result of “willful negligence” of government, regulator and industry colluding to protect Tokyo Electric Power Company’s financial interests. Likewise, here in the US, addressing identical reactor vulnerabilities remain subject to a convoluted corporate-government strategy of “keep away” with public safety as the “monkey in the middle” going back more than four decades and, for now, three nuclear meltdowns later.
In the latest development, by a 3-1 vote issued on August 19, 2015, the majority of the four sitting Commissioners with NRC ruled not to proceed with their own proposed rulemaking and bar public comment and independent expert analyses on the installation of “enhanced” hardened containment vents on 30 U.S. reactors. In the event of a severe nuclear accident, roughly one-third of U.S. atomic power plants currently rely upon a flawed radiation protection barrier system at General Electric (GE) Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors that are essentially identical to the destroyed and permanently closed units at Fukushima Daiichi. The nuclear catastrophe has resulted in widespread radioactive contamination, massive population relocation, severe economic dislocation and mounting costs projected into the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Fundamentally at fault, the GE Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactor “pressure suppression containment system” designed for internalizing such a nuclear accident is roughly one-sixth the volumetric size of pressurized water reactor containment designs like Three Mile Island. Under accident conditions, the reactor pressure vessel and the operation of the emergency core cooling system is depressurized into the “drywell” containment component which in turn routes steam, heat, combustible gases and radioactivity into the “wetwell” component where it is supposed to be quenched and scrubbed in a million gallons of water. The GE design was first identified as too small to contain potential accident conditions in 1972 by Atomic Energy Commission memos. The internal communications would eventually be released years later under the Freedom of Information Act after more GE reactors were granted operating licenses. The memos revealed that the undersized containment system is highly vulnerable to catastrophic failure from over-pressurization in the event of a severe accident. This long recognized chink in GE’s “defense-in-depth” armor was graphically confirmed with the global broadcast of the Fukushima explosions.
Fukushima further demonstrated that “voluntary” GE containment modifications requested by NRC in the early 1990’s are not reliable under real accident conditions. Most U.S. Mark I operators voluntarily installed a hardened vent on the “wetwell” or “torus” containment component. The same modification was installed in Japanese reactors including Fukushima Daiichi. The voluntary containment modifications in the U.S. were carried out under a NRC regulation (10 CFR 50.59) that avoids licensee disclosures in the public hearing process, claiming that the design changes did not raise significant safety issues. Other than the paper trail, even the NRC inspectors were not aware of the final as-built containment modifications…………
The Commission’s August 19th majority vote is effectively a gag order on the American public’s opportunity for formal input to fortify the continued operation of GE Mark I and Mark II reactors against the next nuclear catastrophe. Ironically, the international nuclear industry is simultaneously cashing in on the effort to restart Japan’s nuclear power plants where their Nuclear Regulation Authority has ordered state-of-the-art engineered external filters on severe accident capable hardened containment vents as a prerequisite to resume operation. On August 17, 2015, AREVA issued a press release announcing that it had just delivered it fourteenth filtered containment vent system to the Hamaoka Unit 4 reactor operated by Chubu Electric Power Company where 70% of the Japanese public no longer trust the industry and its regulator and remain opposed to any further nuclear power operations. http://enformable.com/2015/09/a-fukushima-lesson-unlearned-nrc-scraps-public-rulemaking-on-weak-ge-containments/
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