Japan banking on non-viable reprocessing, because it has nowhere to put nuclear wastes
the government has delegated the task of dealing with waste to the private sector, so there is no central decision-maker
“Why does the government stick to the very costly recycle policy? That is because if they give it up, they should explain where a final repository will be located,”
Beyond Fukushima Japan faces deeper nuclear concerns, Vancouver Sun, By RISA MAEDA, Reuters February 24, 2012 TOKYO“…..A DECENT BURIAL With Japan’s recycling efforts running so far behind the required pace
to deal with the waste problem, Japan needs to find another resting place for its waste, away from nuclear power plants, which are typically located on the coast.
But unlike France and the United States, the world’s biggest atomic power generators, Japan does not have much in the way of geologically stable and empty landscapes in which to bury nuclear waste for centuries. Given its population density is 10 times higher than the United States and almost three times higher than France, Japan faces a “not in my backyard” problem like no other big nuclear-power nation. Continue reading
Nuclear reprocessing not a viable option for Japan
Fast-breeder said realistic no more, Japan Times, 25 Feb 12, Kyodo A panel of experts reviewing the nuclear fuel cycle policy in light of the Fukushima crisis has agreed that while a fast-breeder reactor has advantages, from a technology viewpoint it can’t be considered a realistic option for the next 20 to 30 years. The nuclear fuel policy involves reprocessing spent fuel to produce plutonium that can be reused to produce electricity.
The subcommittee of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission said in a draft document summarizing its discussions that two viable options during the next few decades would be to not reprocess spent nuclear fuel, and to recycle plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, or MOX fuel.
The former option is called the “once-through” cycle, in which uranium fuel is used in nuclear reactors just one time and disposed of by burying it in the ground. In the latter option, MOX fuel is manufactured from plutonium recovered from spent nuclear fuel and used
in ordinary reactors. Continue reading
Japan’s nuclear recycling plant, a probable failure
“an 80 to 90 percent chance of the [nuclear recycling] plant being a failure”
even if Rokkasho gets up and running, two problems remain: it alone cannot recycle enough fuel to stop the waste mounting up, and there is still the issue of burying the vitrified waste permanently in a crowded, quake-prone country.
Beyond Fukushima Japan faces deeper nuclear concerns, Vancouver Sun, By RISA MAEDA, Reuters February 24, 2012 TOKYO – On a hillside in northern Japan, wind turbines slice through the cold air, mocking efforts at a nearby industrial complex to shore up the future of the demoralised nuclear power industry.
The wind-power farm at Rokkasho has sprung up close to Japan’s first nuclear reprocessing plant, a Lego-like complex of windowless buildings and steel towers, which was supposed to have started up 15 years ago but is only now nearing completion.
Dogged by persistent technical problems, it is designed to recycle spent nuclear fuel and partly address a glaring weakness in Japan’s bid to restore confidence in the industry, shredded last year when a quake and tsunami wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi power station to the south, triggering radioactive leaks and mass evacuations.
But the Rokkasho project is too little, too late, according to critics who say Japan is running so short of nuclear-waste storage that the entire industry risks shutdown within the next two decades unless a solution is found.
“You don’t build a house without a toilet,” said Jitsuro Terashima, president of the Japan Research Institute think tank and member of an expert panel advising the national government on energy policy after the Fukushima disaster….
Long-term storage of highly radioactive waste is a problem common to all nuclear-powered nations, including the United States, but experts say Japan’s unstable geology and densely populated terrain mean that its challenges are far bigger. Continue reading
Nuclear bombing: find out how your city would fare – with NUKEMAP
Nukemap: Shall we play a game? cnet, by Daniel Terdiman February 23, 2012
Tool shows what would happen if history’s most notorious nuclear weapons were dropped on different cities. It’s scary and sobering–and more than a million people have used it. Want to play god much?
With Nukemap, a new tool that lets anyone test out–on a Google Map–the effects of some of history’s most famous nuclear explosions on cities around the world, you can. Continue reading
A smartphone app to measure ionising radition
DIY Geiger counter smartphone app to measure radiation 23 February 2012 Kat Austen, CultureLab editor In the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster, amidst a climate of general mistrust of government radiation data, a number of crowdsourced initiatives for mapping radiation levels sprang up, such as Japan Geigermap, in which radiation readings from citizens are aggregated and displayed online using a web service called pachube.
But most Geiger counters for personal use cost around $200, prohibiting many from measuring radiation for themselves. That’s where non-profit organisation radiation-watch.org has stepped in.
They have devised a way for people to construct their own smartphone-compatible Geiger counter at home. Pocket Geiger uses 8 photodiodes to detect the radiation, aluminium foil to screen alpha and beta particles, and a plastic “Frisk” sweet box for the housing. The total cost is just $46.
Ishigaki started the project in June last year, and with the help of supporting scientists and a team of hackers he has developed the self-assembly Geiger counter and app to allow anyone to measure radiation levels in their home or neighbourhood and upload them to a central server, where they can be visualised on a map.
The project has now grown to over 10,000 users, but due to privacy issues the maps can only be viewed within the radiation-watch.org community.
Continuing to develop the technology, the team have recently launched the Pokega Type2. The first Geiger counter without an internal battery, the Pokega Type2 uses the same technology as its predecessor, except that it uses the smartphone as a source of power.
Costing just $65, the Pokega Type2 was developed with the help of a variety of external organisations, such as Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization and the Dutch Metrology Institute. http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/02/diy-geiger-counter-smartphone.html
Top medical isotope can be produced without nuclear reactor
Nuclear medicine has long been touted as a selling point for nuclear power – a kin do healthy fig leaf put over a n unhealthy, toxic industry. – Christina Macpherson
Nuclear Reactors Not Needed to Make the Most Common Medical Isotope, Science Now by Robert F. Service on 20 February 2012, In recent years, hospitals worldwide have been grappling with short supplies of technetium-99 (Tc-99), the most commonly used radioisotope in medical imaging scans. But help may be at hand: A team of Canadian researchers reported today that they’ve made critical progress in developing a stable new supply of the isotope.
Tc-99 is currently produced in nuclear reactors fueled with highly enriched uranium, which has raised concerns that the nuclear fuel could be intercepted by terrorists to make a nuclear weapon. The new setupproduces Tc-99 with a medical cyclotron, thereby eliminating proliferation concerns. But economic and technical considerations may make it more practical for shoring up Tc-99 supplies in Canada than in the United States. Continue reading
Monumental mess of UK’s monumental nuclear reprocessing project
Sellafield faces nuclear option as overspending threatens plant’s future, The Independent UK, 13 Feb 2010 Britain’s biggest single nuclear project has run into serious trouble, with missed deadlines and cost overruns threatening the future of the nuclear reprocessing operation at Sellafield in Cumbria.
Nuclear authorities have ordered a review of a monumental construction project at Sellafield that is millions of pounds over budget and more than four years late following a series of delays and financial mismanagement. Continue reading
Thorium nuclear reactors – not all they’re cracked up to be
What you then get, as well as heat energy, radiation, and fission products from the Plutonium and Uranium, is U232. U232 (and its decay products) emit very hard gamma radiation.
will anyone really trust the nuclear lobby when it says ‘we have the answer’, as so often before?
Nuclear Problems, Environmental Research Web, 12 Feb 12,”……With uranium fired reactors out of favour after Fukushima, for the longer term, some in the nuclear lobby have been promoting thorium as an allegedly safer fuel- looking at molten flouride salt systems.
The Weinberg Foundation was launched last year to promote the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) Continue reading
USA’s failed plutonium plant and the USA insider deals with AREVA
But the good news for Areva is the tax paid contract is still bringing in the big bucks with no 
end in sight.
the waste from these processes all add to the huge amount of waste already stored in leaking tanks at SRS.
Abraham, like so many others in Washington, sells his influence…. And Abraham does not sell influence only in the United States. He sells himself to the entire world.
When is enough, enough? How much money do former government officials have to make before they go home and give back to their communities rather than take money to influence their friends in Washington?
Spencer Abraham Cashes In, DC Bureau, By Joseph Trento, February 2nd, 2012 In January 30 was former U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham’s last day as the non-executive chairman of Areva Enterprises Inc, the French atomic power firm’s American operation. This marked the end of a very lucrative arrangement for both Abraham and the French government own nuclear company – mostly at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.
It all began in the 1990s when the United States’ response to disposing of 34 metric tons of plutonium from shuttered nuclear weapons programs was a proposed mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) near Aiken, South Carolina. When Abraham became Energy Secretary in 2001, Areva was a key contractor for the MOX plant. According to his DOE calendars, among his first trips were to France to visit their nuclear officials and operations. Abraham maintained a close relationship with the then head of Areva, Anne Lauvergeon. In turn, not long after he left the Energy Department, Abraham cashed in and went to work for Areva and “Atomic Annie,” as she was known. In 2007, DOE broke ground on the MOX plant.
Today, the DOE’s MOX fuel plant is still under construction. It has cost billions of dollars, is over budget and behind schedule. But Spencer Abraham will never be held responsible for the cost overruns and delays. In fact, he has been handsomely rewarded.
Despite spending billions of dollars on the MOX plant, DOE has yet to line up a single customer even with massive government subsidies being offered to buy the fuel. No utility will touch it. Continue reading
SMRs – Small Modular nuclear Reactors the latest probably dud design
Small Modular Reactors, the latest ‘rabbit out the nuclear hat’ are generally based on scaled down BWR or PWR technology and illustrate the nuclear industry’s schizophrenic attitude to reactor size.
SMRs may turn out to be the latest in a long lineof nuclear designs that looked good on paper, but could not make the transition to commercial technology.
Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012, Platts, London, 30 January 2012 “……..Technological cul-de-sac If plant life extensions can be achieved in France and the US and Gen III+ does prove a blind alley, it raises the question of what options are open to the nuclear sector. Ten years ago, the industry answer would have been Generation IV designs. Unlike Gen III+, which evolved from existing Pressurised and Boiling Water Reactors, these would be based on radical new technologies. Six technologies were selected by the major nuclear countries as the most promising.
End of the line for Japan’s dangerous, super expensive fast breeder nuclear reactor
Japanese parliamentarian and a critic of nuclear power Taro Kono said: ”We spend billions of yen every year just to maintain Monju. It’s crazy. We spend so much money just to keep things not running.”…
critics and nuclear watchdog groups call Monju Japan’s most dangerous reactor, because it uses plutonium fuel and cools its reactor with sodium, which can explode if it comes into contact with water.
Fast-breeder reactor faces closure, The Age, February 2, 2012 TSURUGA: Japan’s long and expensive pursuit of a super-efficient nuclear reactor is on the brink of failure amid new government concerns about its runaway costs.
The four-decade project to develop a so-called fast-breeder reactor has consumed more than $13 billion in funding, so far producing onlyaccidents, controversies and a single hour of electricity. Continue reading
Dim prospects for global nuclear industry
Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012, Platts a leading global provider of energy, metals and petrochemicals information., London, 30 January 2012 Even before the Fukushima disaster, the long-awaited nuclear renaissance in the West seemed to be running out of steam. There were two main factors behind this failure; the new Generation III+ reactors produced to take account of the lessons of Chernobyl that would spearhead the revival were not living up to their promises, and, more importantly, banks were proving unwilling to provide finance
Energy Economist – Report.
The key markets for the renaissance were the US and the UK. As pioneers of nuclear power, potentially large markets and countries that seemed to have abandoned plans for new nuclear plants, a successful revival in these countries would have been a powerful endorsement for these new technologies. Continue reading
BRICs – Brazil, Russia, China, India, all nuclear prospects looking dodgy
China is looking much less committed to nuclear power than it was a year ago.
The reality is that China needs nuclear power much less than the nuclear industry needs China.
Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012 Source: Platts – a leading global provider of energy, metals and petrochemicals information. London, 30 January 2012 “….BRICs [Brazil, Russia, India and China] + South Korea China has dominated new nuclear plant orders in the past few years, accounting for 25 out of the 38 reactors on which construction started worldwide between 2008-2010. Six of these units were for Gen III+ designs, four AP1000s and two EPRs. Almost all the others used a design imported from France in the 1980s, which in turn had been licensed from Westinghouse in the early 1970s. This design, the CPR1000, is showing its age and there was an expectation, even before Fukushima, that the AP1000 would replace it. This would have been a huge boost to the AP1000, giving it the volume of orders that might have allowed costs to come down and for teething problems to be solved. The EPR, by contrast, appears to have no prospect of further orders in China.
However, there were signs that the strain of the rapid pace of construction was beginning to show. In 2011, no new starts were made, compared with ten in 2010. Fukusima explains this to a degree, but some might have been expected in the first three months of 2011 before disaster struck. The reason behind the slowdown is the high cost of the AP1000. The large Chinese utilities appear to be looking at other options.
There is now talk of pursuing indigenous advanced designs developed from the CPR1000 as well as Small Modular Reactors. China has always been adept at convincing nuclear suppliers that there was a great future for their particular technology in China.
It is unclear whether talk of SMRs and new advanced designs will go any further. Continue reading
Nuclear fuel could be corroded by seawater
How sea water could corrode nuclear fuel, UC Davis, January 26, 2012, Japan used seawater to cool nuclear fuel at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant after the tsunami in March 2011 — and that was probably the best action to take at the time, says ProfessorAlexandra Navrotsky of the University of California, Davis.
But Navrotsky and others have since discovered a new way in which seawater can corrode nuclear fuel, forming uranium compounds that could potentially travel long distances, either in solution or as very small particles. The research team published its work Jan. 23 in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This is a phenomenon that has not been considered before,” said Alexandra Navrotsky, distinguished professor of ceramic, earth and environmental materials chemistry. “We don’t know how much this will increase the rate of corrosion, but it is something that will have to
be considered in future.”….
In the new paper, the researchers show that in the presence of alkali metal ions such as sodium — for example, in seawater — these clusters are stable enough to persist in solution or as small particles even when the oxidizing agent is removed.
In other words, these clusters could form on the surface of a fuel rod exposed to seawater and then be transported away, surviving in the environment for months or years before reverting to more common forms of uranium, without peroxide, and settling to the bottom of the
ocean. There is no data yet on how fast these uranium peroxide clusters will break down in the environment, Navrotsky said… http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10131
A cheaper alternative to rare earths, for electric cars
Toyota Finds Way To Avoid Using Rare Earth: Report, Planet Ark, 24-Jan-12, JAPAN by Chang-Ran Kim and Risa Maeda Toyota Motor Corp has developed a way to make hybrid and electric vehicles without the use of expensive rare earth metals, in which China has a near-monopoly, Japan’s Kyodo News reported.
Toyota, the world’s top producer of fuel-saving hybrid cars such as the Prius, could bring the technology to market in two years if the price of rare earths does not come down, Kyodo said, citing a source familiar with the matter.
A Toyota spokeswoman said the company continues to research ways to reduce rare earth usage and has no time frame yet for commercialization.
Rare earth metals like neodymium and dysprosium are used in the powerful magnets in motors that power hybrid and electric cars, and demand is expected to surge as more of the environmentally friendly cars hit the market.
China produces more than 95 percent of the world’s rare earth metals. Its efforts to limit exports, citing resource depletion and environmental degradation, have alarmed its customers and trading partners and have sent prices soaring.
Japan accounts for a third of global rare earth demand and is aiming to cut consumption, providing subsidies for recycling and investing in new ways to limit their use. http://www.planetark.org/enviro-news/item/64496
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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