Closed door meeting between nuclear regulators and — FirstEnergy Corp
FirstEnergy’s nuclear security an issue in an NRC closed-door meeting, Cleveland.com By John Funk, The Plain Dealer August 26, 2013 KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa — FirstEnergy Corp.’s nuclear operating company has asked for a closed-door meeting with top federal regulators about security issues at the company’s nuclear reactor near Pittsburgh.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday that it would meet with company representatives on Sept. 5 at an NRC regional headquarters near Philadelphia.
Security forces at FirstEnergy’s Beaver Valley power plant apparently failed part of a routine “force-on-force” exercise in April. Beaver Valley contains two reactors.
The details of the force-on-force exercise are classified and may never be made public, but the NRC earlier this month warned the company in a public letter that it was considering a citation against the company because the security failure looked significant….. http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2013/08/firstenergys_nuclear_security.html
Businessman caught with plan to sell uranium to Iran
Man caught in ‘uranium for Iran’ sting Sierra Leone man lured to New York with uranium ore hidden in his shoes after US federal agent offered him 1,000-tonne deal Reuters in Miami theguardian.com, Friday 23 August 2013 US prosecutors have charged a man from Sierra Leone with trying to sell undercover agents 1,000 tonnes of yellowcake uranium he thought would be shipped to Iran. He was arrested in New York with a sample of the toxic material hidden in his luggage, authorities said.
Patrick Campbell, 33, of Freetown, was arrested at John F Kennedy airport on Wednesday after he arrived from Sierra Leone with the sample of uranium concealed in the soles of shoes in his luggage, according to a criminal complaint filed in a Florida federal court on Thursday.
He allegedly responded to an ad in May 2012 on the websitealibaba.com seeking to purchase uranium that was placed by an undercover US agent posing as an American broker representing persons in Iran, according to an affidavit by Homeland Security agent Louise Miller.
Campbell agreed to travel to Miami to meet the supposed buyer, who could then analyse the purity of the uranium. Continue reading
Radioactive leak shuts down New Jersey nuclear plant
NJ Nuclear Plant Shutdown After Radioactive Water Leak. (includes video) August 23, 2013 By Mike DeNardo SALEM, N.J. (CBS) – The Salem Unit-One nuclear plant in South Jersey remains shut down, after radioactive water leaked in a containment building Thursday night. Salem’s Unit-One nuclear plant was shut down around 7:30 p.m., when radioactive water started to leak, says Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Diane Screnci:
“They had a valve on one of the systems within the containment. And that valve was leaking, and it reached what are called their technical specification limits, and caused them to begin a shutdown.”
The leak was measured at four gallons a minute — above the one gallon per minute threshold to force a shutdown…. http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/08/23/nj-nuclear-plant-shutdown-after-radioactive-water-leak/
Two UK nuclear reactors shut down for safety reasons
Heysham nuclear reactors shut down for second time http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-23808744 23 Aug 13
EDF said the plant was shut down as a precaution
Nuclear reactors have been shut down for the second time in three months at a plant in Lancashire.
Two reactors at Heysham 1 nuclear power station were shut down after an electrical fault in a gas turbine set off a sprinkler system on Thursday.
Firefighters were called at 22:27 BST and four crews were sent to the scene from Lancaster, Bispham and Fulwood.
EDF Energy, which operates the plant, said it had been shut down as a precaution.
Lancashire Fire Service said 20 firefighters attended the scene but were not needed.
Ian Stewart, Heysham 1 station director, said: “We will be assessing the generators today, and we will then be looking at bringing the two reactors back on line.”
A reactor was shut down in May after smoke was seen coming from a turbine due to smouldering lagging.
Huge and growing area of tanks storing Fukushima’s radioactive water
Radioactive Leaks in Japan Prompt Call for Overseas Help, Bloomberg, By Yuji Okada, Jacob Adelman & Peter Langan – Aug 21, 2013
“……..Toxic Sludge. Tepco was storing 330,000 tons of radioactive water as of Aug. 13 in tanks covering an area equal to 37 football fields, according to the company. The utility is clearing forest to make room for more tanks as it adds to the stored water at a rate of 400 tons a day after pumping it out from under the plant’s reactors, which melted down as a result of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The water is treated to remove some of the cesium particles before it is stored, which has left 480 filters clogged with the radioactive material at the site. Each weigh 15 tons and are warehoused in what the utility calls temporary storage, though it will take hundreds of years for the radiation to decay. Other radioactive contaminants remain in the water even after treatment. That includes strontium, which has been linked to bone cancers.
Besides radiated water, the site north of Tokyo has more than 73,000 cubic meters of contaminated concrete, 58,000 cubic meters of irradiated trees and undergrowth, and 157,710 gallons of toxic sludge, according to the utility.
’Biggest Concern’
Japan’s nuclear watchdog has ratcheted up alarm over the potential for more leaks of highly radioactive water from the hundreds of storage tanks at the Fukushima atomic plant.
The possibility of leaks from other tanks “is the biggest concern,” said Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka at a press conference yesterday. “This will need to be handled carefully on the assumption that one incident could bring another.”
Late last night, Tepco said water leaking from the storage tank probably ran into the ocean, citing high radiation readings in a drainage ditch.
As much as 20 trillion becquerels of cesium and 10 trillion becquerels of strontium leaked into the ocean since May 2011, Tepco spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida said today. The total amount of cesium and strontium is equivalent to about 100 times the annual limit on radiation from the plant to the ocean under normal conditions, according to calculations based on Tepco data……….
Leaking Tanks
Japan’s government has ordered an investigation into the safety of hundreds of other tanks storing contaminated water in Fukushima, the site of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl reactor exploded in 1986.
There are 226 tanks of similar bolted design to the leaking unit with the same 1,000-ton capacity at the site, said Tatsuya Shinkawa, director of the nuclear accident response office in the government’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, which called for the probe…… http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-21/tepco-shares-plunge-on-report-of-serious-radiated-water-leak.html
Low level nuclear alert issued at Hanford
Hanford issues low-level nuclear alert http://q13fox.com/2013/08/22/hanford-issues-low-level-nuclear-alert/#ixzz2cp68IuEI BENTON COUNTY, Wash. — An alert was issued late Wednesday night at the Hanford Nuclear Site in southeast Washington for the lowest level emergency following the detection of radiation on Hanford’s grounds.
The low-level emergency was issued at 10:32 a.m. when higher than expected levels of radiation were found on a routine test of the C Tank Farm, indicating the “potential of a waste transfer leak.” All operations were halted, and personnel were evacuated from the C Tank Farm area. Other affected facility personnel were instructed to take cover, or shelter in place.
Benton and Franklin Counties’ Emergency Operations Centers were activated shortly after the first reading, but the emergency alert was relegated to Hanford’s grounds. Additional radiological tests found no detectable levels of contamination, and the alert-level emergency was lifted at 5:05 a.m. Higher than expected levels of radiation were confirmed, but there was no indication of a leak or spill, and the levels were less than originally discovered, officials with Hanford said. Workers were instructed to report to the site as normal. C Tank Farm prepared to return to normal operations.
Built by early Hanford scientists, engineers, and constructors, single-shell and double-shell storage tanks were constructed throughout Hanford’s 200 Area to store the radioactive liquid wastes generated from the processing facilities on site.
“Decommissioning” -a pretty word for the nightmare that is Fukushima nuclear clean-up
the inevitable discourse manipulation – something that we have seen in the media ever since this disaster occurred. “Decommission the plant” suggests some calm and ordered scientific process akin to shutting down and defueling an old reactor which has reached the end of its design life. It sparks images of a wise nuclear engineer in a lab coat consulting a document, discussing some issue with a worker in brilliant white overalls with a Tepco logo, wearing a white hard-hat. The reality is that this is a nightmare disaster area where no one has the slightest idea what to do and which has always been out of control. All that they can do is continue to pump in the seawater to hope that the various lumps of molten fuel will not increase their rate of fissioning. And pray.
Pump and pray: Tepco might have to pour water on Fukushima wreckage forever Science Alert, CHRISTOPHER BUSBY 19 AUGUST 2013 Fukushima is a nightmare disaster area, and no one has the slightest idea what to do. The game is to prevent the crippled nuclear plant from turning into an “open-air super reactor spectacular” which would result in a hazardous, melted catastrophe…..
it is quite clear that the reactors are no longer containing the molten fuel – some proportion of which is now in the ground underneath them. Both this material and the remaining material in what was the containment are very hot and are fissioning. Tepco is quite aware – and so is everyone else in the know – that the only hope of preventing what could become an open-air super reactor spectacular is to cool the fuel, the lumps of fuel distributed throughout the system, mainly in the holed pressure vessels, and also in the spent fuel tanks and in the ground under the reactors.
That all this is fissioning away merrily (though at a low level) is clear from the occasional reports of short half life nuclides like the radioXenons. The game is to prevent it all turning into the open air super reactor located somewhere under the ground. To do this, they have to pump vast amounts of water into the reactors, the fuel pond and generally all over the area where they think the stuff is or might be. This means seawater since luckily they are near the sea. But they are also unluckily near the sea – since you cannot pump the sea onto the land without it wanting to flow back into the sea.
Now a good proportion of the radioactive elements, the radionuclides, are soluble in water. Continue reading
Frightening America makes a lot of money for 5 companies
5 Companies That Make Money By Keeping Americans Scared Reader Supported News, By Alex Kane, Salon 19 August 13 A massive industry profits off the government-induced fear of terrorism.
ichael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded America’s television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowden’s leaks and the continuing terrorist threat to America.
But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans.
Post-9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America’s national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it’s gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism.
What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car crash or their own furniture than a terror attack.
Here are five private companies cashing in on keeping you afraid.
1. The Chertoff Group…..
2. Booz Allen Hamilton……
3. Science Applications International Corp…..
4. Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies….
5. Security Solutions International….. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/424-national-security/18979-5-companies-that-make-money-by-keeping-americans-scared
Aging Palisades Nuclear Power Plant a worry to Chicago area residents
Residents Express Concern Over Aging Nuclear Plant Feds increase inspections at 42-year-old Palisades Nuclear Power Plant by 1,000 hours this year Chicago-area residents with property at a popular nearby vacation spot are growing increasingly concerned about one of their neighbors: The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant.
The South Haven, Mich., plant is a 42-year-old facility that many seasonal neighbors said is showing its age.
“It is a socio-technical system that has failed. That’s extremely dangerous,” said Ann Scott, an Oak Brook resident who also owns a cottage near the power plant. The plant has reported seven leaks since 2012, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Six leaks caused plant shutdowns. A leak in May spilled about 80 gallons of radioactive water into Lake Michigan.
Gail Snyder is another Chicago-area resident who owns property near the power plant.
neighbors are concerned by the recent shutdowns and startups at the plant. Critics said that can stress equipment at a nuclear power plant. “It’s just too old to keep going,” said Dillon Reed, a resident of Darien who also owns a cottage near the plant.
“It takes a lot of steps or a lot of things to go wrong for a nuclear disaster to occur, but the more pre-existing failures you have, the shorter that path becomes,” Lochbaum said…..
“They have allowed radioactive waste to leak into the water and there is no guarantee that today it isn’t going to happen again on a much greater scale,” Scott said. http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/palisades-nuclear-power-plant-chicago-219870131.html#ixzz2cG5OCRl1
New plan for Fukushima nuclear reactors – a concrete tomb?
Bloomberg: Tepco now in talks to cover Fukushima reactors with concrete for next 75 years — Officials reviewing plan in U.S.http://enenews.com/just-in-tepco-now-in-talks-to-cover-fukushima-reactors-with-concrete-for-next-75-years-officials-reviewing-plan-with-u-s-experts
(at left – Chernobyl’s concrete tomb building in progress)
Title: Nagasaki Bomb Maker Offers Lessons for Japan’s Fukushima Cleanup
Source: Bloomberg
Author: Shigeru Sato & Yuji Okada
Date: Aug. 15, 2013
[… Tepco] has sent engineers on visits to the Hanford site in Washington state this year to learn from decades of work treating millions of gallons of radioactive waste. Hanford also has a method to seal off reactors known as concrete cocooning that could reduce the 11 trillion yen ($112 billion) estimated cost for cleaning up Fukushima. […]
At Hanford, the energy department finished a $65 million cocooning project in June last year, the DOE said in a statement. That involved demolishing the last one of the nine reactor buildings down to the four-foot- (1.2 meter) thick concrete shield around the reactor core.
More concrete was added to the shield, along with a new concrete roof to put the reactor into so-called safe storage for 75 years. This allows radiation levels to decay to safer levels in the core and gives the operator time to determine the final disposal method, according to the statement.
There are three ways to decommission nuclear reactors, said Ishikawa. One is immediate dismantling. Another, used at the wrecked Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, entombed the whole building in concrete. The third is cocooning used at Hanford. Entombing and cocooning cost less than immediate dismantling as it reduces the expense for handling and moving highly radiated material, Ishikawa said.
Tepco is talking with the DOE on whether cocooning could work for the crippled reactors in Fukushima. Sealing them off in concrete for 75 years would allow more focus on cleaning up surrounding areas so that residents could return, said Ishikawa. […]
Published on ENENews ten hours earlier: Nuclear Experts: One century before Japan tries to deal with Fukushima’s melted cores? — “More likely what’s left of reactors will be left in situ for 100 years or more” (VIDEO)
Lengthy, expensive process of new tomb for Chernobyl’s shattered nuclear reactor
Chernobyl copes with nuclear fallout a quarter-century on, Global Post Jakub Parusinski February 25, 2013 As a new structure around the destroyed nuclear reactor goes up, life for locals remains blighted. The so-called exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was once home to some 120,000 people, who were evacuated following the reactor meltdown at in 1986. Trees that sprouted in living rooms are now pushing through rooftops inside this highly contaminated, sealed off area, while wild horses and wolves roam the woods.
However, there are also some 7,000 people working here, including almost 3,000 at the plant itself.
An international fund managed by theEuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development is spending an estimated $2 billion to build a new confinement shelter to protect the world from Chernobyl’s radioactivity for the next 100 years……
Built by a French-led consortium, the 360-foot giant hangar-like casing is being constructed with modern equipment on infrastructure that’s better maintained than in the capital Kyiv, 70 miles to the south. While hundreds in the Ukrainian capital injure themselves every day slipping on ice-covered sidewalks, roads in the exclusion zone are swept clean for a stream of cement trucks….. Completion of the reactor confinement structure, set for 2015, will calm longstanding fears about a collapse of the current sarcophagus. Those living around the zone face a less certain future. … http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/130221/chernobyl-nuclear-reactor-confinement
Report: American nuclear power plants could be a terrorist target: safety inadequate
U.S. nuclear power plants vulnerable to 9/11-style attacks: report By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON | Thu Aug 15, 2013 (Reuters) – U.S. nuclear power plants are not adequately protected from threats, including the theft of bomb-grade material that could be used to make weapons and attacks intended to cause a reactor meltdown, a University of Texas report said on Thursday.
Not one of the country’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors or three research reactors is protected against an attack involving multiple players such as the ones carried out by 19 airplane hijackers on 9/11, said the report by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project, or NPPP, at the University of Texas, Austin The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) only requires power plants to protect against attacks carried out by five or six people, according to the report, entitled Protecting U.S. Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack. In addition, the NRC does not require plants to protect themselves against attacks from high- powered sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The three research reactors, including one in Gaithersburg, Maryland, 24 miles from the White House, are powered by highly enriched uranium, that if stolen, could be used to make nuclear weapons, the report said.
Power utilities have argued they have done all they can to ensure security at plants without dramatically raising power bills and that it is the responsibility of the U.S. government to defend against attacks, said Alan Kuperman, the NPPP coordinator, and a co-author of the report. “The problem is that’s not occurring,” he said. Continue reading
107 potential 9/11 type targets – America’s nuclear power plants
Report: U.S. nuclear plants remain vulnerable to terrorists By Jamie Crawford, CNN August 15, 2013 Washington (CNN) — None of the 107 nuclear facilities in the United States are protected against a high-force terrorist attack, and some are still vulnerable to the theft of bomb-grade nuclear fuel, or sabotage intended to cause a nuclear meltdown, a new report says.
The Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (NPPP) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas released the report Thursday. It wants to shine a light on the security gaps that still exist more than 10 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
“It would be a tragedy if the United States had to look back after such an attack on a nuclear reactor and say that we could have and should have done more to prevent the catastrophe,” said Prof. Alan J. Kuperman, co-author of the report.
The study was done at the request of the Defense Department after the Pentagon commissioned an academic study of the security vulnerabilities of the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear power reactors and three civilian research reactors……. Continue reading
Critically dangerous – removing radioactive rods from Fukushima’s elevated cooling pool
The deadliest part of Japan’s nuclear clean-up Stuff.co.NZ AARON SHELDRICK AND ANTONI SLODKOWSKI 14 Aug 13, The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is preparing to remove 400 tonnes of highly irradiated spent fuel from a damaged reactor building, a dangerous operation that has never been attempted before on this scale.
INADVERTENT CRITICALITY “There is a risk of an inadvertent criticality if the bundles are distorted and get too close to each other,” Gundersen said. He was referring to an atomic chain reaction that left unchecked could result in a large release of radiation and heat that the fuel pool cooling system isn’t designed to absorb.
“The problem with a fuel pool criticality is that you can’t stop it. There are no control rods to control it,” Gundersen said. “The spent fuel pool cooling system is designed only to remove decay heat, not heat from an ongoing nuclear reaction.”
The rods are also vulnerable to fire should they be exposed to air, Gundersen said.
The fuel assemblies are situated in a 10 metre by 12 metre concrete pool, the base of which is 18 metres above ground level. The fuel rods are covered by 7 metres of water, Nagai said.
The pool was exposed to the air after an explosion a few days after the quake and tsunami blew off the roof. The cranes and equipment normally used to extract used fuel from the reactor’s core were also destroyed. Tepco has shored up the building, which may have tilted and was bulging after the explosion, a source of global concern that has been raised in the US Congress……….
Under normal circumstances, the operation to remove all the fuel would take about 100 days. Tepco initially planned to take two years before reducing the schedule to one year in recognition of the urgency. But that may be an optimistic estimate.
“I think it’ll probably be longer than they think and they’re probably going to run into some issues,” said Murray Jennex, an associate professor at San Diego State University who is an expert on nuclear containment and worked at the San Onofre nuclear plant in California.
“I don’t know if anyone has looked into the experience of Chernobyl, building a concrete sarcophagus, but they don’t seem to last well with all that contamination.” Corrosion from the salt water will have also weakened the building and equipment, he said….. http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9041215/The-deadliest-part-of-Japans-nuclear-clean-up
Japan’s only 2 operating nuclear reactors to shut indefinitely
Japan to go nuclear-free during safety checks Fox News, August 14, 2013 OKYO (AFP) – Japan will go without nuclear power for a period starting September when its only two operating reactors are shut down for mandatory safety checks, a utility company said Wednesday.
Kansai Electric Power, which runs both reactors at the Oi nuclear plant in western Japan, said the units will go offline on September 2 and 15 respectively for an indefinite duration…… The two Oi reactors resumed operation in July last year while two other units at the same plant have remained offline for safety checks…… A vocal anti-atomic campaign, whose leading lights say the industry had an overly cosy relationship with its regulators in the decades leading up to the disaster, nudged the government into establishing a new industry watchdog.
It has set stricter standards that operators must show they can meet before they will be granted permission to re-start idle reactors. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/14/japan-to-go-nuclear-free-during-safety-checks/#ixzz2c5cMEa00
1 This Month
22 June – Virtual Event –Climate Change: New Data, New Debate
Monday, June 22, 2026 2:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. CT
YouTube. Register here
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
1st July – Webinar Waste of Space: The Environmental Harm of Military and Civil Space Activity st July, 7 pm
Report Launch Online: We are seeing an increasing exploitation of space for military and commercial purposes. This must change.
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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