Delayed Nuclear Reaction
Delayed Nuclear Reaction
Mother Jones 21 July by Bruce falconersEight years after 9/11, a global effort to secure nuclear plants from terrorists has only just begun. MoJo interviews the man in charge……………
even as the threat of terrorism has grown, security has remained an ad hoc affair, with each individual facility or country left more or less to its own devices. It was only last September that a Vienna-based nongovernmental organization called the World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS) began bringing nuclear security specialists together to formulate procedures to prevent violent extremists from obtaining the key ingredient in nuclear bombs. ………..
Roger Howsley: It’s a matter of record that there are terrorist groups that have made plain that if they could access nuclear weapons or nuclear materials and use them for terrorist purposes, they would do so. If you look at some of the court cases related to terrorists, you find that there are people who have actively tried to get hold of nuclear or radioactive materials or have planned to try to get hold them with a view to using them……………………
the thing that governments most worry about is the possibility of someone stealing a nuclear weapon or enough nuclear material to produce an improvised nuclear device, which would be shocking. But we also need to understand that there would be a high level of public paranoia if it were just a small amount of radioactivity that was dispersed. I’ve heard people call dirty bombs “weapons of mass disruption” as opposed to destruction—psychologically, people don’t respond proportionately to the scientifically calculated harm that might be caused from a radioactive release.
Delayed Nuclear Reaction | Mother Jones
Sloppy work at Perry nuclear power plant concerns Nuclear Regulatory Commission –
Sloppy work at Perry nuclear power plant concerns Nuclear Regulatory Commission CLEVELAND.COM July 18, 2009 John Funk Plain Dealer Reporter
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is concerned about sloppy workmanship and employee inattention to detail at the Perry nuclear power plant.The NRC wants plant owner FirstEnergy Corp. to explain how it plans to correct these problems……………………..orkers have continued to make small mistakes on routine, day-to-day jobs, in a number of unrelated areas.
Such mistakes are not in themselves a safety concern, but they are often the first signs at a nuclear plant that the culture of “safety first” is eroding and attention to safety is slipping……………..”
Sloppy work at Perry nuclear power plant concerns Nuclear Regulatory Commission – Cleveland.com
Marking the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. nuclear meltdown
Marking the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. nuclear meltdown Los Angeles Times By Louis Sahagun
July 13, 2009Holly Huff, 58, believes her leukemia and thyroid problems are related to the radioactive gases released from the Atomics International laboratory near her home when she was 8 years old.A reactor in Chatsworth began leaking radioactive gas on July 14, 1959. Some area residents blame the facility for their health issues and say the site remains contaminated……………………………..A reactor at the Atomics International field laboratory in the Santa Susana Mountains had experienced a power surge the night before and spewed radioactive gases into the atmosphere………………………..the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to spend $40 million in stimulus funds on a comprehensive radioactive survey of the nuclear site.“It’s about time,” said Holly Huff, who was 8 years old when the meltdown occurred a mile from her home.
Standing on a bluff overlooking the 2,850-acre facility, which is now owned by Boeing Co. and NASA, Huff said, “They say it will be cleaned up by 2017 — I doubt it. We’ll wait and see.”………………
………………….For about two weeks, the facility, which employed several thousand people, had been venting colorless and odorless radioactive gas into the environment.
“Radioactivity levels during the accident went off-scale,” said Dan Hirsch, a spokesman for the antinuclear group Committee to Bridge the Gap. “We thus do not know to this day how much radioactivity was released.”
Details of the incident were not disclosed until 1979, when a group of UCLA students discovered documents and photographs that referred to a problem at the site involving a “melted blob.”
Ever since, residents have worried about downstream health risks associated with soil contaminated by years of rocket and nuclear testing.
Radioactive emissions from the accident could have resulted in 260 to 1,800 cases of cancer within 62 miles of the site over a “period of many decades,” according to a study released in 2006…………………………………… Half a century after the accident, nuclear cleanup operations and chemical decontamination remain incomplete.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. nuclear meltdown – Los Angeles Times
Atomic Nightmare: Krümmel Accident Puts Question Mark over Germany’s Nuclear Future
Krümmel Accident Puts Question Mark over Germany’s Nuclear FutureBy SPIEGEL 13 July 09 The recent accident at the Krümmel nuclear power plant in northern Germany was more serious than was previously known. Anglea Merkel’s Christian Democrats are now finding themselves on the defensive with their plans to extend the life of German nuclear reactors………..
It was already awkward enough for Vattenfall that the accident, which resembled a similar breakdown two years ago, occurred after it had spent €300 million ($420 million) upgrading the plant. As in the 2007 incident, this time there was also a short circuit in a transformer. The reactor, which had just been started up, quickly had to be shut down again on Saturday, July 4.
Züfle was also forced to admit that the accident in the nuclear power plant was more serious than previously known. In addition to the transformer problem, he conceded, there was damage to “perhaps a few fuel elements,” namely the radioactive core of a nuclear power plant.
Nuke plant blames maintenance problems for leak
Nuke plant blames maintenance problems for leak philly.com Jul. 9, 2009 The Associated PressLACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – Officials at a New Jersey nuclear power plant say a maintenance problem is to blame for a tritium leak this year.The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a statement explaining what operators of Lacey Township’s Oyster Creek plant say went wrong.A 1991 report indicated two pipes had been recoated. But a new analysis finds they were not completely recoated and were prone to corrosion.
Nuke plant blames maintenance problems for leak | AP | 07/09/2009
Swedish nuclear watchdog puts plant on probation amid safety concerns |
Swedish nuclear watchdog puts plant on probation amid safety concerns
Detsche Welle 9 July 09 After a series of incidents that could endanger the security at a nuclear plant in Sweden, officials in the Scandinavian country have called for new security measures.
The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) has placed the Ringhals nuclear plant, in the southwest of the country, under special supervision after a series of incidents.
“The agency has on several occasions pointed out deficiencies that have been followed by measures from Ringhals, but the problems still remain,” said Swedish Radiation Safety Authority official Leif Karlsson……………
……………Sweden at one time had as many as 12 nuclear reactors in operation, but decommissioned two reactors at the Barseback plant in southern Sweden in an effort to cut back on nuclear energy. The current center-right government has announced that the country will continue relying on nuclear plants, disregarding a 1980 referendum in which Sweden decided to gradually phase them out.
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant
Vattenfall sacks head of defective nuclear plant
Deutsche Welle 08.07.2009
Four days after a technical failure shut down a nuclear power station in northern Germany, operator Vattenfall admitted to having made a mistake, while Social Democrats and Green are urging a boycott.
Vattenfall admitted that a mistake had been made at the Kruemmel nuclear power station and confirmed that it had fired the plant manager. The Swedish operators said the head of the reactor had broken an agreement with German authorities to install discharge detectors on a transformer.
It was a short-circuit on one of the transformers that caused the Kruemmel plant to shut down last weekend, thus restricting power supplies across much of the city of Hamburg.
Vattenfall has now said it will not repair the electrical transformers, responsible for the supply of power to on-site machinery, but will replace them entirely. As a result, the reactor will not resume operations for several months.
The latest incident at Kruemmel, just one of many problems that have dogged the plant over the past years, has sparked furious political debate over the security of nuclear fuel technology.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4464985,00.html
Reactor design puts safety into question
Reactor design puts safety of nuclear plants into question Globe and Mai Jun. 29, 2009 Feature speeds up rate of atomic reactions in event of a coolant leak; regulators say they misjudged size of the problem
Martin Mittelstaedt
If reactors are not shut down quickly, their ability to keep radioactivity from escaping would be put to the test, according to an internal commission document.
The document says Canada’s seven nuclear stations, which all use Candu technology, have a feature known as “positive reactivity feedback,” in which their atomic chain reactions automatically speed up if the water pumped into the reactors to cool them leaks, one of the worst accidents possible at a nuclear station. If reactors aren’t immediately shut down during this type of incident, positive reactivity leads to a quick snowballing in the pace of nuclear reactions, which in turn could cause potentially damaging overheating.
The fear is that with a large loss of coolant, such overheating could put the nuclear facilities’ containment features – the concrete domes and other protective mechanisms around reactors that are the last-ditch defences to stop the spread of radioactivity into the environment – to a dangerous test.
Reactor design puts safety into question – The Globe and Mail
Asse nuclear dump contains explosives
Asse nuclear dump contains explosives The Local 26 Jun 09 CETOnline: The controversial salt-mine nuclear waste storage facility in Asse, Lower Saxony is not only crumbling but also contains unknown amounts of explosive, it has emerged………………………………The DDP report said an explosives storage chamber still containing a variety of dynamite-related substances, can be found near the area where the radioactive waste is being kept.
Files from the Research Centre for the Environment and Health (GSF), which used to run the storage facility, show that over the last few years a bog of radioactive salt water has built up by the entrance to the explosive chamber.
FOI reveals catalogue of nuclear near misses
FOI reveals catalogue of nuclear near misses
SNP News 21 June 09 Energy Spokesperson, Mike Weir MP, has expressed disbelief and concern over a secret UK Government report which reveals a woeful safety record inside the UK’s nuclear power stations. The report authored by the UK Government’s chief nuclear inspector Mike Weightman and obtained by the Observer newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that more than 1750 leaks, breakdowns and other “events” were logged between 2001 and 2008. The reports notes that half of these incidents were deemed “to have the potential to challenge a nuclear safety system” according to inspectors…………………Commenting, Mr Weir said:
“The near disaster at Sizewell revealed last week was just the tip of the iceberg. The potentially catastrophic consequences of any one of these 1750 “incidents” does not bear thinking about.
“The UK Government’s cavalier approach to nuclear safety is a major cause for concern – a lack of safety inspectors will do nothing to reassure the rightfully fearful public.
“The risks and uncertainties of nuclear power, in terms of waste disposal, decommissioning, security and health concerns, or cost, are far too great.
“And it is not good enough for this information to be dragged out through FOI requests rather than made public by Ministers.
FOI reveals catalogue of nuclear near misses | SNP – Scottish National Party
Texas has highest number of radioactive metal incidents
Texas has highest number of radioactive metal incidents
06/03/2009 By ISAAC WOLF, Scripps Howard News Service
For more than a month in the summer of 2006, a metal recycler in Longview, Texas, produced half a million pounds of radioactive material, state and federal documents show.
When LeTourneau Inc. workers melted Cesium-137 — a radioactive material commonly released in nuclear accidents — the dust containing the radioactive isotope contaminated the workers, along with sections of the facility, according to a July 2006 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission report…………………..Other radioactive meltings in the Lone Star State include a May 1992 incident when El Paso metal recycler Border Steel melted Cesium-137 into a batch of iron, according to a barebones NRC report that provided no more details. In September 1993, Chaparral Steel in Midlothian also melted Cesium-137, according to a December 2007 Texas Department of State Health Services report.
Radioactive material has also been stolen in Texas. In 1996, at a Houston storage facility, someone swiped industrial X-ray devices containing the isotopes Cobalt-60 and Iridium-192. One of the devices was dropped near a scrap yard, where its protective shield was dislodged.
Scrap workers were exposed to dangerously high levels of radioactivity when they recovered the device, according to research by radiation experts James Yusko, of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and Joel Lubenau, who formerly worked for the NRC. Through reports, articles and personal correspondences, the two have unofficially tracked radioactive melting incidents in the United States and around the world.
‘Embarrassing’ mistake puts US nuclear list online
‘Embarrassing’ mistake puts US nuclear list online
By H. JOSEF HEBERT – 47 minutes ago
Google News WASHINGTON (AP) — The government’s inadvertent and red-faced Internet posting of a 266-page list of U.S. nuclear sites provided a one-step guide for anyone wanting details about such sensitive information. Obama administration officials said Wednesday the document contained no classified material about nuclear weapons. They contended the locations and other details already were available from public sources……………
…………The information, compiled for international nuclear inspectors, is a compilation of hundreds of civilian nuclear sites, along with maps and details of the facilities. The material includes sites for uranium storage, nuclear fuel fabrication plants and nuclear research facilities http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hCsPqjzeLAVBSZ0nrjjDm7Ywu-sAD98JJTCO1
Environmental groups seek to overturn Oyster Creek nuclear plant license renewal
Environmental groups seek to overturn Oyster Creek nuclear plant license renewal nj.com by MaryAnn Spoto/The Star-Ledger Monday June 01, 2009,
LACEY TOWNSHIP — Two months after the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey Township won a 20-year extension of its license, a coalition of environmental and citizens groups has asked a federal court to overturn the decision.
Citing inadequate information provided to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the plant’s safety, the coalition wants a federal court to invalidate the relicensing of the 40-year-old facility
“We are appealing the decision because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not have sufficient information available to it to decide whether Oyster Creek can operate safely for the next 20 years,” said the coalition’s attorney, Richard Webster, of the Eastern Environmental Law Center.
The coalition is composed of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, the New Jersey Sierra Club, the Public Interest Research Group, the Nuclear Information Resource Service and Grandmothers, Mothers and More for Energy Safety (GRAMMES).
They contend the continued operation of the plant, which stores 650 tons of radioactive waste in an above-ground fuel pool, is an unnecessary risk for the 3.5 million people who live within a 50-mile radius of Oyster Creek — the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant. They said its safety record is the second worst of the nuclear plants throughout the country and its thermal releases into a nearby body of water create environmental problems for Barnegat Bay.
Environmental groups seek to overturn Oyster Creek nuclear plant license renewal – NJ.com
Forget reprocessing nuclear waste
Forget reprocessing nuclear waste New Times SLO Paso Robles Klaus Schumann May 27th, 2009, i “………..
………….. the Ford and Carter administrations scrapped the U.S. reprocessing program in the late ’70s precisely because of the abundance of problems associated with it. It was deemed too expensive and too polluting in terms of further radioactive co
tamination. Worst of all, reprocessing doesn’t “recycle” the waste. It creates new radioactive wastes, some which can be directly converted into nuclear weapons, increasing proliferation risks.
Meanwhile, reprocessing plants in Europe, Russia, and Japan are plagued by radiation leaks and other scandalous problems. The Union of Concerned Scientists considers reprocessing as “dangerous, dirty and expensive.” Moreover, especially since 9/11, furth
r concerns have emerged, such as nuclear terrorism or accidents during frequent shipments. Overall, reprocessing was a bad idea then and is an even worse idea now.
New Times SLO | Publishing Local News and Entertainment for over 20 years in San Luis Obispo County
Nuclear reactor malfunctions, shuts down at Indian Point
Nuclear reactor malfunctions, shuts down at Indian Point.Breakdown is second problem in two weeks
BUCHANAN – A nuclear reactor at the Indian Point power plant in Buchanan automatically shut down this morning due to a malfunction. This is the site’s third unplanned break-down in three months.
According to officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the problem occurred around 5:30 a.m., when “a high vibration condition was detected on a main feedwater pump” in reactor Unit 3. The malfunction triggered a “high-level alarm,” then a turbine trip, then the reactor trip, said the NRC, in a statement.
This is the second time in two months that Unit 3 has malfunctioned. Plant operators manually tripped the reactor on May 15 after a main feedwater regulating valve in a steam generator failed, resulting in rising coolant levels that could not be controlled………………………….
These problems are occurring at a critical time for Entergy Nuclear, the New Orleans-based company that owns and operates Indian Point. Entergy is currently applying for a 20-year operating license renewal. It’s current licenses expire by 2015.
Indian Point’s critics, who include the state of New York and environmental groups, are formally petitioning the NRC to deny the license renewal. They’ve questioned the ability of the aging plant to operate safely and efficiently for another two decades.
Nuclear reactor malfunctions, shuts down at Indian Point. | recordonline.com
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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