nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors in reality are far from safe

safety-symbol1nuClear News August 14, “…..Safety of SMRs
:…….The safety of the proposed compact designs is unproven—for instance, most of the designs call
for weaker containment structures. And the arguments in favour of lower overall costs for SMRs
Small-modular-reactor-duddepend on convincing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to relax existing safety
regulations. The Fukushima accident has resulted in new safety requirements for existing and
new reactors around the world. So the challenge is to lower the cost of nuclear reactor systems
while increasing their levels of safety and security. (9)
Proponents also point out that smaller reactors are inherently less dangerous than larger ones.
While this is true, it is misleading, because small reactors generate less power than large ones,
and therefore more of them are required to meet the same energy needs. Multiple SMRs may
actually present a higher risk than a single large reactor, especially if plant owners try to cut
costs by reducing support staff or safety equipment per reactor.
Because of SMRs’ alleged safety advantages, proponents have called for shrinking the size of the
emergency planning zone (EPZ) surrounding an SMR plant from the current standard of 10
miles (in the USA) to as little as 1000 feet, making it easier to site the plants near population
centres and in convenient locations such as former coal plants and military bases. However, the
lessons of Fukushima, in which radiation levels high enough to trigger evacuation or long-term
settlement were measured at as much as 20 to 30 miles from the accident, suggest that these
proposals, which are based on assumptions and models that have yet to be tested in practice,
may be overoptimistic.
Union of Concerned Scientists  argues that promoting the idea that SMRs do not require 10-mile emergency planning
zones and encouraging the NRC to weaken other safety requirements just to facilitate SMR
licensing and deployment is not the way forward. (10)…….. http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo65.pdf

August 7, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, safety, technology | Leave a comment

Callaway Nuclear Reactor – Radioactive Tritium, Cobalt 60 Found in Monitoring Well

Radioactive Tritium, Cobalt 60 Found in Monitoring Well Near Callaway Nuclear Reactor CBS St Louis, 
Kevin Killeen August 4, 2014 ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – Ameren Missouri claims there is no threat to drinking water in the area after it found radioactive Tritium and Cobalt 60 in a monitoring well near the Callaway nuclear reactor it owns and operates……..Ed Smith, of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, says the contaminents were found at levels above what is considered safe for drinking water, and anyone with a groundwater well in the area should have it tested right away.

“Groundwater doesn’t know boundaries,” Smith says. “So if the contamination happened on Ameren’s property, it could very well move off site.”…..http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2014/08/04/radioactive-tritium-cobalt-60-found-in-monitoring-well-near-nuclear-reactor/

August 7, 2014 Posted by | incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Fire risk at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

exclamation-SmLab Director: Expect radiation spikes coming from US nuclear facility — Gov’t pays for more air monitors to see impact on populated areas — DOE warns of ‘ignitability’ of 368 containers at site; “Significant fire risk” — Top Official: Material at WIPP “just disintegrated… got very hot, very quickly” (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/lab-director-radiation-spikes-expected-nuclear-facility-govt-pays-air-monitors-impact-populated-areas-doe-ignitability-368-containers-wipp-underground-significant-fire-risk-top-official-mater

Dept. of Energy – Carlsbad, NM Field Office (pdf), July 30, 2014: The purpose of this letter is to provide you [New Mexico Environmental Dept.] written notice that the Department of Energy [is] provisionally applying EPA Hazardous Waste Number (code) D001** for the characteristic of ignitability to some nitrate salt bearing waste containers that have been disposed at the WIPP facility. […] This affects up to 368 containers […] in the underground WIPP facility […] The Permittees plan to implement the [plan] to expedite closure of Panel 6 and Panel 7, Room 7 so that a potential release […] will not pose a threat to human health or the environment.

** “Significant fire risk due either to their low flash point, ability to self-combust and burn, or are able to combust or support combustion” –EPA hazardous waste specialist Daniel Stoehr

Reuters, July 26, 2014: A team of government investigators has turned its attention to Los Alamos in recent days […] to determine whether additional barrels are affected, said [New Mexico Senator Peter Wirth]. “We’re making progress in determining what happened. Now we are much more focused on the scope,” he said.

Minutes of the New Mexico Legislature (pdf), published June 26, 2014: In further explaining what occurred [at WIPP, NMED Secretary Ryan] Flynn said that the material holding the bags of magnesium oxide together that had been on top of the drums just disintegrated. By all indications, he added, the area got very hot very quickly […]

Carlsbad, NM Town Hall, July 24, 2014:

  • 37:30 in – Question: Is Dr. Hardy saying that radiation from contaminated ventilation system will continue to be released to the environment periodically? Russell Hardy, director of the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center: That is Dr. Hardy’s assumption… we will probably see spikes at Station B, as contamination… makes its way out of the repository.
  • 52:30 in – Hardy: We did receive additional funding from DOE to expand our ambient air sampling sites… very soon we will be deploying 3 additional ambient air sampling towers… one will be here in Carlsbad… we think those 3 additions will give us much better coverage in the future with respect to how this release — or the potential for future releases — may impact the area.

Watch the WIPP Town Hall here

August 4, 2014 Posted by | safety, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

It’s easy to find the world’s nuclear targets for terrorism

To Find America’s Nuclear Missiles, Try Google Maps NPR by GEOFF BRUMFIEL July 31, 2014 “……in truth, the location of these weapons is no secret.

map-terrorism
The missiles and their command bunkers have been in the same place “for decades,” Air Force Capt. Edith Sakura of the 90th Missile Wing Office of Public Affairs wrote in an email. “They are near county and state roads that are public access to people. You need security clearances to access the sites; however, it would be hard to ‘hide’ such facilities.”

Moreover, as other commenters noted, the sites are already visited by foreign militaries. Russian officers regularly inspect U.S. missile silos to make sure America is adhering to international arms-control treaties. (And the U.S. sends its own observers to Russia.)……http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/07/31/336847318/to-find-america-s-nukes-try-google-maps

August 1, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, safety | Leave a comment

Ukraine Parliament considering Bill to renew nuclear ambitions

terrorism-targets-2flag-UkraineBill reviving Ukraine’s nuclear power ambitions goes to parliament  July 31, 20:20 UTC+4 KIEV, July 31. /ITAR-TASS/. A bill restoring Ukraine’s nuclear power status was registered in the national parliament on Thursday amid the ongoing military conflict in the south-eastern regions and strained relations with Russia.

The bill, reviving Ukraine’s nuclear ambitions, was forwarded to the parliament’s security and budget committees………

Nikolai Filatov, head of the all-Ukraine Union of Strategic Missile Forces Veterans, said the restoration of the nuclear power status would take much effort and cost at least one or two annual national budgets but “maintaining [strategic missile forces] in combat readiness would be much less expensive,”

He said that Ukraine was able to create land-based mobile missile systems, “which will pose a threat to a potential enemy”……

Ukraine, which had the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after the breakup of the USSR, abandoned nuclear weapons under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in exchange for security guarantees from the United States, Russia and Britain.http://en.itar-tass.com/world/743128

August 1, 2014 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Nuclear industry must face up to chance of freaky disasters

any-fool-would-know
it is definitely time to shut down this industry

Fukushima Study: Think About Unthinkable Disasters, SciTech Today,
July 28, 2014

According to a National Academy of Sciences report, the U.S. nuclear industry must think about earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, solar storms, multiple failures and situations that seem freakishly unusual. The 2011 Japanese Fukushima accident, caused by an earthquake and tsunami, should not have been a surprise, the report says. A U.S. science advisory report says Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident offers a key lesson to the nation’s nuclear industry: Focus more on the highly unlikely but worst case scenarios.

That means thinking about earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, solar storms, multiple failures and situations that seem freakishly unusual, according to Thursday’s National Academy of Sciences report. Those kinds of things triggered the world’s three major nuclear accidents.

“We need to do a soul searching when it comes to the assumptions” of how to deal with worst case events, said University of Southern California engineering professor Najmedin Meshkati, the panel’s technical adviser. Engineers should “think about something that could happen once every, perhaps 1,000 years” but that’s not really part of their training or nature, he said.

You have to totally change your mode of thinking because complacency and hubris is the worst enemy to nuclear safety,” Meshkati said in an interview……..

David Lochbaum of the activist group Union of Concerned Scientists said the problem is that federal law financially protects the U.S. nuclear industry from accidents gives utilities little incentive to spend money on low-probability, high-consequence problems.……

Another issue the report raised was about how far radiation may go in a worst case accident.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission orders plants to have emergency plans for a zone of 10 miles around a nuclear plant. But the academy study said Fukushima showed that “may prove inadequate” if a similar accident happened in the U.S. People nearly 19 miles away in Japan needed protectionfrom radiation. But the committee would not say what would be a good emergency zone. http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=130007CN9W8O

July 30, 2014 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Time that Nuclear Regulatory Commission paid more attention to external nuclear safety threats

safety-symbol1Flag-USANuclear Plants Should Focus on Risks Posed by External Events, Study Says NYT. By  JULY 24, 2014 Engineers at American nuclear plants have been much better at calculating the risk of an internal problem that would lead to an accident than they have at figuring the probability and consequences of accidents caused by events outside a plant, a report released Thursday by the National Academy of Science said.

Accidents that American reactors are designed to withstand, like a major pipe break, are “stylized” and do not reflect the bigger source of risk, which is external, according to the study. That conclusion is one of the major lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan in 2011, which began after an earthquake at sea caused a tsunami.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission calculates which problems are most likely and most troublesome, and aims to find components or systems that should be improved. B. John Garrick, a nuclear engineering consultant and vice chairman of the two-year study, said that engineers had more experience calculating the probability of failure in a valve or a pipe than in predicting earthquakes or floods. Better predictions of such events were possible, he said.

The study, ordered by Congress after the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi’s reactors, said that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the American nuclear industry should focus on the main sources of risk: accidents set off by “extreme external events,” like earthquakes or floods; multiple human or equipment failures; and “violations of operational protocols.”……….

In addition, the study said that safety officials should take into account the reduced capacity and maneuverability of outsiders to help a nuclear plant in trouble after a major earthquake or flood.

The United States should study costs not currently accounted for in making cost-benefit analyses about safety, like the expense of decontaminating areas distant from the plant, which the authors said was another lesson of Fukushima.

Psychological and social costs of evacuation or “sheltering in place,” meaning the confinement of people to homes, should also be considered, the study said, and so should decision-making about resettling people who had been evacuated because of the release of radioactive material.

And if two reactors at the same site had an accident at the same time, the study said that staffing might be inadequate for an event of long duration.

Congress also asked the academy to study the safety of spent-fuel storage,an area of concern since the Japanese accident. In the Fukushima accident, American officials became convinced — mistakenly — that water had drained or boiled from a pool of spent fuel and they urged Americans in Japan to stay 50 miles away. But the academy has not finished that part of its study.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/25/us/nuclear-plants-should-focus-on-risks-posed-by-external-events-study-says.html?_r=0

July 26, 2014 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Belarus’ new nuclear reactors bypass regulations and international conventions

safety-symbol-SmBelarus anti-nuclear activist fears for ‘another Chernobyl’ on her doorstep  theguardian.com, Friday 25 July 2014 Tatyana Novikova says new Russian-funded nuclear power plant bypassed official planning regulations and violates international conventions

In 2009, Tatyana Novikova bought a wooden house near the border between Belarus and Lithuania. She chose the area carefully, she says. It’s next to a lake, untouched by industry and – crucially for the mathematician who worked on contamination models in the aftermath of Chernobyl – unaffected by the fallout from the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986.

But six months after she bought her dream home, Belarus announced that a new nuclear power station, financed by Russia, would be built nearby in Ostrovets.

“I’m completely devastated,” says Novikova, who says the government bypassed official planning regulations, ignored safety concerns and failed to carry out an adequate environmental impact assessment for the plant.

Her experience with Chernobyl, when radioactive contamination forced around 350,000 people to leave their homes and led to an unknown number of deaths, have left her cautious about nuclear power and distrustful of government safety promises.

“Another Chernobyl cannot happen,” she says.

Novikova has appealed to international environmental authorities to try to stop the NPP project, without any success. In the meantime authorities have already started work on construction.

“The problem is that [Belarusian president Alexander] Lukashenko does not give his citizens a voice,” she says.

In a country which does not tolerate activism or public protest – the annual Chernobyl anniversary marches she organises often end in arrests – Novikova has taken her opposition abroad.

She is in London to raise awareness about the issue and hopes to spur the EU to put pressure on Belarus, as the plant would be 60km from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

text-Please-NoteA group of Belarusian activists, including the theatre company Belarus Free Theatre, have launched a petition against the power station – and have won support from some high-profile figures:

sign-thisAnother Chernobyl?! No thanks! Join me – sign petition to block dodgy new nuclear plant in Belarus http://chn.ge/1pNrmGO 

The petition cites several problems with the plant:

  • Construction was started before design plans were in place, and before a license had been issued
  • The design is experimental and has not been properly tested
  • An assessment by more that 50 independent experts found gaping holes in the government’s environmental impact assessment

Novikova says the plans flaunt international regulations; Belarus is a signatory of the Espoo and Aarhus conventions, which specify environmental protections and monitor requirements such as public consultations over construction projects.

She approached the Aarhus committee in Maastricht in June, asking them to prevent the power plant because Belarus had violated the convention by not obtaining official planning permission. The committee came back to her with bad news; they would only issue what she calls a “caution of a caution” to Belarus, believing the government wouldn’t listen anyway. …….http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/25/belarus-anti-nuclear-chernobyl-on-her-doorstep

July 26, 2014 Posted by | ACTION, Belarus, safety | Leave a comment

USA Senate report: nuclear materials vulnerable to theft

CriminalFlag-USAU.S. Nuclear Material Vulnerable to Theft, Panel Fears http://blogs.rollcall.com/five-by-five/u-s-nuclear-material-vulnerable-to-theft-panel-fears/?dcz= By Tim Starks  July 25, 2014 The Senate Appropriations Committee is perturbed at a whole host of things contributing to large quantities of nuclear and radiological materials — including in the United States — being “still unsecure and vulnerable to theft.”

That’s the word from John M. Donnelly, writing for CQ.com subscribers. He details how the panel, in its fiscal 2015 Energy-Water bill committee report, restores nuclear non-proliferation funding and chides the administration for abandoning a 2025 goal of securing 2,900 buildings, such at medical facilities and universities, where there is “little or no security.”

Also from the committee report, by this author for the Energy Xtra blog, is another nuclear-related buildings issue: the fact that the National Nuclear Security Administration is sitting on 450 unused facilities, and has a maintenance backlog that has made some of the buildings still being used dangerous.

July 26, 2014 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s nuclear power plants not prepared for big accidents

safety-symbol-SmFlag-USANuclear plants ill-prepared for worst-case scenarios, report says, LA Times,  By MAYA SRIKRISHNAN, 25 JULY 14  THe current approaches for regulating nuclear plant safety in the U.S. are “clearly inadequate” for preventing meltdowns and “mitigating their consequences,” according to a report released Thursday.

U.S. safety regulations traditionally ensure that plants are designed to withstand ordinary equipment failures, power losses and the loss of ability to cool the reactor core — the part of a plant where the nuclear reactions take place. But this is not enough, according to the report by the National Academy of Sciences.

“To what extent are they proactive versus reactive?” said Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at USC who worked on the report. “Complacency and hubris are the worst enemies to nuclear safety.”

The U.S. nuclear industry should prepare for unlikely, worst-case scenarios when designing, building and regulating plants, the report recommends.

That is the big lesson the industry should take away from the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan, the report says. Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, solar storms and situations that seem rare are precisely the events that triggered the world’s three major nuclear disasters: Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The report said the accident at Fukushima — caused by an earthquake, which knocked out power, and a tsunami, which inundated the plant — should not have come as a surprise………..

Officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said they were reviewing the report and would provide detailed comments later. http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nuclear-safety-20140724-story.html

July 26, 2014 Posted by | safety, USA | 1 Comment

Fukushima nuclear reactor No.5 plagued by radioactive leaks

Japan Newspaper: Leaks plaguing Fukushima No. 5 reactor — Experts: Indicates “deterioration in the system” — Report: Water contains up to 3,000 Bq/liter of Cobalt-60, had been used to cool spent fuel (PHOTOS) http://enenews.com/japan-newspaper-leaks-are-plaguing-fukushima-no-5-reactor-experts-this-indicates-deterioration-in-the-system-report-water-contains-up-to-3000-bqliter-of-cobalt-60-was-used-to-cool-spe?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29

Asahi Shimbun, July 20, 2014: Water leaks continue to plague No. 5 reactor at Fukushima plant— A leak of radioactive water was found in the piping of water used to cool the spent fuel pool […] a sign of possible deterioration in the system. [TEPCO] said water from the cooling pond leaked […] TEPCO employee found a pool of water in each of two boxes–75 centimeters by 50 cm–that house a control valve in the cooling water piping system on the fifth floor […] The water had collected to a depth of 9 cm in one box and 18 cm in the other. The water contained 2-3 becquerels of cobalt 60 per cubic centimeter [2,000 to 3,000 Bq/liter], according to the utility. This particular piping section has been unused since July 6, when a similar leak was discovered at another section. Experts say the continuing leaks indicate that valves are deteriorating, and that the utility’s inspections are inadequate. […] the pumping of cooling water was temporarily halted after a leak in a similar piping system [inside the No. 6 reactor building] was detected on July 11.

See also: Cobalt-60 detected in Unit 4 fuel pool during first month of disaster

TEPCO official: “We are aware that our approach proved to be lax as we were unable to detect the problem until the leak occurred. We are reviewing the way checks should be conducted.”

Similar incident at Unit 5 on July 6 — Fukushima Daiichi NPS Prompt Report, Jul 8, 2014: The cooling of the spent fuel pool of Unit 5 […] was stopped due to seawater leak found at a pipe resumed cooling by another system at 15:40 today […] A system that cools the spent fuel pool at Unit 5 has been stopped on July 6 2014, after seawater was found leaking from a pipe […] the cooling of 994 fuel assemblies inside the spent fuel pool will be continued through another system […]

View today’s press release from TEPCO here

July 23, 2014 Posted by | Fukushima 2014, Japan, safety | Leave a comment

Some points of agreement on Fukushima between global physicians and UNSCEAR

highly-recommendedFukushima: Bad and Getting Worse – Global Physicians Issue Scathing Critique of UN Report on Fukushima  CounterPunch, by JOHN LaFORGE, 20 July 14 “……..Points of agreement: Fukushima is worse than reported and worsening still

Before detailing the multiple inaccuracies in the UNSCEAR report, the doctors list four major points of agreement. First, UNSCEAR improved on the World Health Organization’s health assessment of the disaster’s on-going radioactive contamination. UNSCEAR also professionally “rejects the use of a threshold for radiation effects of 100 mSv [millisieverts], used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in the past.” Like most health physicists, both groups agree that there is no radiation dose so small that it can’t cause negative health effects. There are exposures allowed by governments, but none of them are safe.

Second, the UN and the physicians agree that  areas of Japan that were not evacuated were seriously contaminated with iodine-132, iodine-131 and tellurium-132, the worst reported instance being Iwaki City which had 52 times the annual absorbed dose to infants’ thyroid than from natural background radiation. UNSCEAR also admitted that “people all over Japan” were affected by radioactive fallout (not just in Fukushima Prefecture) through contact with airborne or ingested radioactive materials. And while the UNSCEAR acknowledged that “contaminated rice, beef, seafood, milk, milk powder, green tea, vegetables, fruits and tap water were found all over mainland Japan”, it neglected “estimating doses for Tokyo …  which also received a significant fallout both on March 15 and 21, 2011.”

Third, UNSCEAR agrees that the nuclear industry’s and the government’s estimates of the total radioactive contamination of the Pacific Ocean are “far too low.” Still, the IPPNW reports shows, UNSCEAR’s use of totally unreliable assumptions results in a grossly understated final estimate. For example, the UN report ignores all radioactive discharges to the ocean after April 30, 2011, even though roughly 300 tons of highly contaminated water has been pouring into the Pacific every day for 3-and-1/2 years, about 346,500 tons in the first 38 months.

Fourth, the Fukushima catastrophe is understood by both groups as an ongoing disaster, not the singular event portrayed by industry and commercial media. UNSCEAR even warns that ongoing radioactive pollution of the Pacific “may warrant further follow-up of exposures in the coming years,” and “further releases could not be excluded in the future,” from forests and fields during rainy and typhoon seasons –when winds spread long-lived radioactive particles – a and from waste management plans that now include incineration.

As the global doctors say, in their unhappy agreement with UNSCAR, “In the long run, this may lead to an increase in internal exposure in the general population through radioactive isotopes from ground water supplies and the food chain.”……”  http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/07/18/fukushima-bad-and-getting-worse/

 

July 23, 2014 Posted by | Fukushima 2014, incidents, Japan, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Turkey Point nuclear power plants could shut down , due to hot cooling canals

Hot cooling canals threaten shutdown of Turkey Point nuclear power plants  BY JENNY STALETOVICH JSTALETOVICH@MIAMIHERALD.COM 18 July 14,   Rising water temperatures and severe algae blooms in cooling canals have threatened to force the shutdown of two nuclear reactors at Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point plant over the last few weeks.

The utility and federal regulators say there isn’t a public safety risk but the canal temperatures, climbing to 94 to 99 degrees, have come within one degree of a federal limit that would mandate an expensive shutdown at a time when power demands are soaring. The hot water has also stoked the spread of algae through the 168-mile long canal system, which has helped keep temperatures high and reignited concerns about the power plant’s impact on water quality in Biscayne Bay………

Mining companies just west of Turkey Point have also argued that saltier water from the sprawling canal system, which is heavier than freshwater, has sunk deep within the aquifer and migrated west, threatening their business as well as drinking water wells.

“When they were originally conceived and designed in the late 60s and early 70s, they were supposed to theoretically operate in a way that the salinity in the canals was going to mimic what’s in the bay,” said Ed Swakon, president of EAS Engineering and a consultant for Atlantic Civil, which operates a large mine just west of the canals. But over the years, salt built up, he said, making the water heavier and forcing it deeper underground.

At some 70 feet below the surface, he said, “it begins to spread like an inverted mushroom.”………

on Wednesday, Scott Burns, a chief environmental scientist with the water management district, said tests conducted in recent years indicate underground water is creeping west. And in a letter last month, Justin Green, chief of DEP’s office that permits power plants, said FPL has been “put on notice” about the creeping plume. DEP and the water management district, he said, are drafting an order to deal with it, which will include pumping water from the Floridan Aquifer, deep below the Biscayne.

“When we increase pumping, that will reduce salt seepage and stabilize the system,” Burns said.

But Phil Stoddard, mayor of South Miami and a longtime critic of Turkey Point’s nuclear operations, worries drawing more water from the lower aquifer will make things worse.

“All the crap we’ve thrown into the Floridan is going to end up in the Biscayne Aquifer heading toward the drinking water,” he said. “The green slime is absorbing heat and heating up the water. The problem for FPL is hot water doesn’t do such a good job of cooling the pipes.” http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/16/4239899/hot-weather-threatens-cooling.html

 

 

 

July 19, 2014 Posted by | incidents | Leave a comment

Nuclear Regulatory Commission to investigate crack in Oconee Nuclear Station weld

safety-symbol-SmRegulators to look at Oconee Nuclear Station weld crack BY STAFF REPORTS Greenville News July 18, 2014 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has scheduled a regulatory conference with officials of Duke Energy for July 31 to discuss an apparent violation of NRC requirements.

The apparent violation involved a crack in a weld on the Unit 1 high pressure injection system at the Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca about 30 miles west of Greenville, according to the NRC.

GreenvilleOnline.com first reported in November the shutdown of Unit 1 after a leak was discovered in what Duke Energy described as the reactor’s containment building.

“On Nov. 11, 2013, the licensee (Duke Energy) determined that a leak in the 1B2 high pressure injection line was pressure boundary leakage. Unit 1 was subsequently shutdown as required … ,” according to an NRC document.

“Your measures failed to identify and correct a significant condition adverse to quality involving a crack in a weld located in the Unit 1 High Pressure Injection (HPI) system,” according to the document addressed to Duke Energy.

NRC and Duke Energy officials will discuss the safety significance of the apparent violation related to an undetected crack in a weld that led to reactor coolant system pressure boundary leakage and a forced shutdown of Unit 1, NRC officials said……..http://www.thestate.com/2014/07/18/3570369/regulators-to-look-at-oconee-nuclear.html?sp=/99/101/

July 19, 2014 Posted by | incidents | Leave a comment

Nuclear Forensics plans to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism

DHS Nuclear Forensics Efforts to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism Featured at IAEA Conference, Homeland Security, July 15, 2014 Huban Gowadia Director, Domestic Nuclear Detection Office:Last week, the Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) joined the Departments of State and Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and 335 international experts and officials from 88 member states to participate in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Conference on Advances in Nuclear Forensics, Countering the Evolving Threat of Nuclear and Other Radioactive Material out of Regulatory Control in Vienna, Austria.

Conference participants were provided an overview of IAEA guidance on how nuclear forensics can be used to help ensure successful investigation of a nuclear security event. This guidance, which DNDO helped develop, promotes international cooperation in capability development as well as during investigations.

DNDO presented our National Nuclear Forensics Expertise Development program, which can serve as a model for other IAEA member nations. Established in 2008, the program is a comprehensive U.S. Government effort to grow and sustain the qualified technical expertise required to execute the nation’s nuclear forensics mission……..http://www.dhs.gov/blog/2014/07/15/dhs-nuclear-forensics-efforts-prevent-nuclear-terrorism-featured-iaea-conference

July 17, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, safety | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »