China’s gambling on a nuclear future, but is it destined to lose? By James Griffiths, CNN September 14, 2019 Hong Kong (CNN Business)Panicked shoppers thronged supermarket aisles, grabbing bags of salt by the armful. They queued six deep outside wholesalers. Most went home with only one or two bags; the lucky ones managed to snag a five-year supply before stocks ran out.
This was China in the days after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, when people in cities up and down the country’s highly populated east coast bought huge quantities of iodized salt in the misguided belief it would protect them from radiation.
The 2011 disaster — the worst nuclear accident in 25 years — threw a major wrench into China’s ambitious nuclear plans. It sent authorities scrambling to reassure people that they were not at risk of a similar catastrophe and sparked an immediate moratorium on new power plants.
That ban was lifted this year. Now, China is gradually ramping up construction again.
With around a dozen nuclear power plants in the works, China will overtake France as the number two producer of atomic energy worldwide within two years. If it continues with its aggressive plan, it will surpass the United States to become number one by 2030.
China is the world’s largest consumer of energy, thanks mainly to industrial activity. This is only going to increase, with households expected to use nearly twice as much energy by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency. At present, some 60% of that energy consumption is powered by coal. But China is spending heavily on natural gas and nuclear power, as well as renewables — the country accounted for almost half of all investments in the latter globally in 2017.
Beijing’s outward enthusiasm for nuclear energy masks a multitude of challenges facing China’s atomic plans.
Surveys and protests against proposed nuclear plants suggest ordinary Chinese are a lot less enthusiastic about nuclear power than their leaders are. The potential ramifications of a nuclear disaster in the world’s most populated country are stark, to say nothing of economic or environmental fallout. And while China’s nuclear industry has a strong safety record — and domestic regulations have tightened since Fukushima — some fear corruption and supply line issues could undercut these efforts.
Nuclear is also not the attractive clean energy solution it once was. In the years following the Fukushima disaster, renewable energy such as solar and wind have plummeted in price thanks in part to heavy Chinese investment, while new safety standards have driven up the cost of nuclear power.
“For a long time, China was basically subsidizing the (nuclear) industry, and now they’re trying to put it on a market footing,” said Miles Pomper, a Washington-based expert in nuclear energy at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
“When you do that, oftentimes it doesn’t meet the market test, especially competing with wind and other kinds of power.”
China’s National Energy Administration and Atomic Energy Authority did not respond to requests for comment for this report.
Nuclear panic
The Fukushima disaster was a shocking wake-up call to all countries with coastal nuclear plants. It raised concerns that other plants could be vulnerable to tsunamis and other extreme weather…….
The sudden aversion to nuclear energy reached China, where the State Council immediately suspended approval of nuclear power projects and ordered a comprehensive safety inspection of all existing facilities. New regulations were passed, including the 2020 Vision for Nuclear Safety and Radioactive Pollution Prevention, which set safety standards and inspection goals, as well as a Nuclear Safety Act that went into effect last year.
In particular, according to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), new power supplies and water pumps were issued to all Chinese nuclear plants to protect against the flooding and power loss suffered at Fukushima. New emergency response protocols were introduced, including the need for emergency response drills.
The effect of the disaster on China’s domestic nuclear industry has been profound. Some semi-official projections that China might have more than 400 nuclear plants by 2050 “have been cut in half,” according to Mark Hibbs, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment and co-author of “Why Fukushima Was Preventable.”
The failure of Japan, “one of the world’s most technologically equipped and experienced” countries as regards nuclear power, raised serious questions as to whether China too was vulnerable to a serious accident, Hibbs wrote in a report on the country’s nuclear industry last year.
Safety fears
Despite China’s efforts to alleviate public concern after Fukushima with a moratorium and new safety checks, support for nuclear energy remains tepid at best and outright hostile at worst.
A government-supported survey in August 2017 found that “only 40% of the public supports the development of nuclear power in China,” according to the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The Fukushima accident “has had the consequence that the public has become more sensitive to the possible development of nuclear energy projects, and is opposing such projects, especially near their homes.”
Plans to build a nuclear waste processing plant in the eastern province of Jiangsu resulted in violent protests from locals and the project eventually being scrapped in August 2016, according to Chinese media. ……….
“So far, knock on wood, there hasn’t been any significant, major accident (in China),” said Pomper, the nuclear expert. “But there’s certainly a lot of skepticism and concern there, given China’s performance in other sectors in terms of safety.”
China’s industrial safety record has improved substantially in recent years, but “accident rates, death tolls and the incidence of occupational disease are all still comparatively high,” said China Labor Bulletin, a workers’ rights organization. There were 134 work-related accidents each day on average in 2018, according to official figures.
In his report, Hibbs noted that “China faces numerous challenges from its historically weak industrial safety culture and the strain on regulatory capacity that has been exacerbated by nuclear growth.”
“Barring measures to effectively generalize safety culture, more nuclear power reactors in China means greater risk,” he said.
Legacy of disaster
Nuclear is, perhaps, the only industry where accidents in one plant or one country have a major knock-on effect worldwide……It is the long shadow of nuclear disasters that makes the risks too great to bear for many. Parts of the Chernobyl exclusion zone will remain contaminated for at least 300 years, and it will take decades before the Fukushima plant is fully decommissioned, with tens of thousands of residents still displaced. Some areas around the site may never be totally safe .
Following the Fukushima disaster, an initial exclusion zone extending 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) around the stricken plant was established, which was later extended to 30 km (18.6 miles), though some experts said at least 80 km (50 miles) should have been considered.
In the densely populated parts of eastern and southern China where many of the country’s nuclear reactors are located, such an exclusion zone could impact huge numbers of people.
A 20 km exclusion zone around the Daya Bay nuclear plant in southern China, for example, would include much of the nearby areas of Pingshan and Huiyang, affecting around 1 million people. Any larger exclusion zone could effect the nearby metropolises of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, which between them are home to almost 20 million people.
“You’re also dealing with prevailing winds,” said Pomper. “Does this blow off into the rest of China, or Korea or Japan?”‘…..
in the years after Fukushima, as the nuclear industry saw its projects stalled and stringent new safety regulations introduced, renewables have continued to leap ahead, becoming cheaper and more reliable. In the United States, renewable energy, led by solar and wind, is projected to be the fastest-growing source of electricity generation for at least the next two years.
Meanwhile, new regulations and more frequent safety inspections are driving up already the high costs of building new nuclear plants.
“A complaint of the (nuclear) industry is that regulation is costing them all this money and that’s why they’re not competitive,” Pomper said. “But some of it is just basic economics: Nuclear plants are very expensive to build … and it takes a huge (amount of) time to build them.”
He added that while “regulations don’t help, a lot of them are necessary, and (nuclear plants) were not very competitive beforehand.”
Nuclear energy remains a key part of China’s current five-year plan. Whether it is still a priority when that economic blueprint expires next year remains to be seen.
“We will be doomed if we allow another nuclear accident to occur.”
Japan’s newly appointed environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, held a news conference on Wednesday at his ministry in Tokyo.
September 12, 2019
Japan’s new environmental minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, called Wednesday for permanently shutting down the nation’s nuclear reactors to prevent a repeat of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, comments that came just a day after Koizumi’s predecessor recommended dumping more than one million tons of radioactive wastewater from the power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Koizumi was appointed to his position Wednesday as part of a broader shake-up of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet. He is the 38-year-old son of former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a vocal critic of nuclear energy.
“I would like to study how we will scrap them, not how to retain them,” the younger Koizumi, whose ministry oversees Japan’s nuclear regulator, said during his first news conference late Wednesday. “We will be doomed if we allow another nuclear accident to occur. We never know when we’ll have an earthquake.”
In March of 2011, a powerful earthquake triggered a tsunami that caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant on Japan’s northeastern coast, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee radiation around the plant. It was the world’s second-worst nuclear disaster, after Chernobyl.
After the disaster, all 54 of Japan’s nuclear reactors were shut down. Reuters reported Wednesday that “about 40 percent of the pre-Fukushima fleet is being decommissioned” and only six reactors are currently operating. Amid drawn out legal battles over the impacts of the meltdown, campaigners have ramped up opposition to nuclear power generation in the country.
However, some Japanese politicians, including the current prime minister, have argued that nuclear energy is necessary to meet national climate goals. Japan’s new trade and industry minister, Isshu Sugawara, criticized Koizumi’s call to shutter the country’s reactors. “There are risks and fears about nuclear power,” Sugawara said. “But ‘zero-nukes’ is, at the moment and in the future, not realistic.”
According to The Guardian:
Japan’s government wants nuclear power to comprise 20 percent to 22 percent of the overall energy mix by 2030, drawing criticism from campaigners who say nuclear plants will always pose a danger given the country’s vulnerability to large earthquakes and tsunamis.
Abe, however, has called for reactors to be restarted, arguing that nuclear energy will help Japan achieve its carbon dioxide emissions targets and reduce its dependence on imported gas and oil.
Despite Abe and Sugawara’s stances, “the government is unlikely to meet its target of 30 reactor restarts by 2030,” due to local opposition and legal challenges, noted The Guardian.
The Telegraph reported Thursday that Koizumi “was a surprise addition” to Abe’s cabinet, considering that the new minister “has expressed sharp differences with senior members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party since he was first elected in 2009 and supported a rival in the most recent election for party president.”
Polls often indicate that Koizumi is considered a popular contender to serve as the next prime minister—and Abe’s choice to appoint him to the cabinet, according to The Telegraph, is “seen as an effort to give a new generation of politicians an opportunity to learn the ropes of government.”
Koizumi replaced Yoshiaki Harada, who made headlines around the world earlier this week. Responding to a projection from Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) that the utility will run out of storage space for contaminated groundwater around the Fukushima plant around the summer of 2022, Harada suggested during a news conference Tuesday that “the only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it.”
As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, Harada’s comments were swiftly condemned by critics of nuclear energy both in Japan and around the world as well as the neighboring government of South Korea.
New environment minister says Japan should stop using nuclear power
September 12, 2019
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s newly installed environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, wants the country to close down nuclear reactors to avoid a repeat of the Fukushima catastrophe in 2011.
The comments by the son of former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, himself an anti-nuclear advocate, are likely to prove controversial in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which supports a return to nuclear power under new safety rules imposed after Fukushima.
“I would like to study how we will scrap them, not how to retain them,” Shinjiro Koizumi said at his first news conference late on Wednesday after he was appointed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Japan’s nuclear regulator is overseen by Koizumi’s ministry.
Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi station run by Tokyo Electric Power melted down after being hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, spewing radiation that forced 160,000 people to flee, many never to return..
Most of Japan’s nuclear reactors, which before Fukushima supplied about 30 percent of the country’s electricity, are going through a re-licensing process under new safety standards imposed after the disaster highlighted regulatory and operational failings.
Japan has six reactors operating at present, a fraction of the 54 units before Fukushima. About 40 percent of the pre-Fukushima fleet is being decommissioned.
Shinjiro Koizumi’s father, a popular prime minister now retired from parliament, became a harsh critic of atomic energy after the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Japan should scrap nuclear reactors after Fukushima, says new environment minister
Shinjiro Koizumi says: ‘We will be doomed if we allow another accident to occur’
September 12, 2019
Japan’s new environment minister has called for the country’s nuclear reactors to be scrapped to prevent a repeat of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Shinjiro Koizumi’s comments, made hours after he became Japan’s third-youngest cabinet minister since the war, could set him on a collision course with Japan’s pro-nuclear prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
“I would like to study how we will scrap them, not how to retain them,” Koizumi, 38, said. “We will be doomed if we allow another nuclear accident to occur. We never know when we’ll have an earthquake.”
Koizumi faced an immediate challenge from the new trade and industry minister, who said that ridding Japan of nuclear power was “unrealistic”.
“There are risks and fears about nuclear power,” Isshu Sugawara told reporters. “But ‘zero-nukes’ is, at the moment and in the future, not realistic.”
Japan’s government wants nuclear power to comprise 20% to 22% of the overall energy mix by 2030, drawing criticism from campaigners who say nuclear plants will always pose a danger given the country’s vulnerability to large earthquakes and tsunamis.
Abe, however, has called for reactors to be restarted, arguing that nuclear energy will help Japan achieve its carbon dioxide emissions targets and reduce its dependence on imported gas and oil.
All of Japan’s 54 reactors were shut down after a giant tsunami caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011.
Nuclear power accounted for about 30% of Japan’s energy production before the disaster. Today, just nine reactors are back in operation, having passed stringent safety checks introduced after the Fukushima meltdown.
But the government is unlikely to meet its target of 30 reactor restarts by 2030 amid strong local opposition and legal challenges.
Although he faces potential opposition from inside the cabinet, Koizumi should at least receive the backing of his father, Junichiro Koizumi, a former prime minister who has emerged as a vocal opponent of nuclear power.
While Japan debates the future of nuclear energy, the younger Koizumi, who has been tipped as a future prime minister, is now at the centre of a controversy over the future of more than a million tonnes of contaminated water stored at Fukushima Daiichi.
On Tuesday, his predecessor as environment minister said the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, had no choice but to dilute the water and release it into the Pacific ocean rather than store it indefinitely.
The prospect of dumping the water into the sea has angered local fishermen and drawn protests from neighbouring South Korea.
10 Sept 2019 | Japan’s environment minister announced Tuesday that the country will have to dump radioactive water from the Fukushima power plant into the ocean because it is running out of space, Reuters reported. According to Reuters, Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, has collected more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the cooling pipes used to keep fuel cores from melting since the plant was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. “The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it,” the minister, Yoshiaki Harada, told a news briefing in Tokyo…The government is awaiting a report from an expert panel before making a final decision on how to dispose of the radioactive water. (The Hill, Reuters)
After Fukushima, Japan’s nuclear power fleet went offline with plans to restart only when safety concerns could be addressed. On his first day at the office, the new environment minister has said he has no intention of ever restarting the reactors. The move could put Shinjiro Koizumi at loggerheads with PM Shinzo Abe, a vocal proponent of nuclear.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2019 MARIAN WILLUHNOn his final day in office, Japanese environment minister Yoshiaki Harada stunned environmentalists by announcing more than a million tons of contaminated water from the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station will have to be dumped in the Pacific.
A day later Japan inaugurated a new environment minister who, at his very first press conference, flew in the face of prime minister Shinzo Abe’s plans to restart the nation’s nuclear power plants.
Shinjiro Koizumi took office yesterday and within hours revealed his intentions regarding the nuclear fleet, which comes under his ministerial purview.
“I would like to study how we will scrap them, not how to retain them,” said Koizumi of the reactors. “We will be doomed if we allow another nuclear accident to occur.”
Disaster
After an earthquake and subsequent tsunami battered the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station in early 2011 – causing a triple meltdown at the plant – Japan shuttered its 54 reactors. Plans have been in place to restart most of them, encouraged by Prime Minister Abe. The PM says the country’s reliance on 30% of its energy from nuclear ensures it can hit its carbon emission reduction targets. Any permanent closure of nuclear assets could mean a big push on solar and other renewables.
Many Japanese heavily oppose nuclear. Tuesday’s announcement wastewater may be dumped into the ocean immediately had fisheries voicing protest, for example. The decision to dump the waste is not final and will be reviewed by a panel of experts appointed by the government.
At 38, Koizumi is Japan’s youngest post-war minister and has been dubbed “a rising star” by Japanese media. He is the son of former PM Junichiro Koizumi and does not appear content to remain in the old man’s shadow, with political analysts predicting the new environment minister is on the path to becoming PM himself.
Shinjiro Koizumi says: ‘We will be doomed if we allow another accident to occur’, Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Thu 12 Sep 2019 Japan’s new environment minister has called for the country’s nuclear reactors to be scrapped to prevent a repeat of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
“I would like to study how we will scrap them, not how to retain them,” Koizumi, 38, said. “We will be doomed if we allow another nuclear accident to occur.”
Japan’s government wants nuclear power to comprise 20% to 22% of the overall energy mix by 2030, drawing criticism from campaigners who say nuclear plants will always pose a danger given the country’s vulnerability to large earthquakes and tsunamis.
Abe, however, has called for reactors to be restarted, arguing that nuclear energy will help Japan achieve its carbon dioxide emissions targets and reduce its dependence on imported gas and oil.
All of Japans 54 reactors were shut down after a giant tsunami caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011.
Nuclear power accounted for about 30% of Japan’s energy production before the disaster. Today, just nine reactors are back in operation, having passed stringent safety checks introduced after the Fukushima meltdown.
But the government is unlikely to meet its target of 30 reactor restarts by 2030 amid strong local opposition and legal challenges.
Although he faces potential opposition from inside the cabinet, Koizumi should at least receive the backing of his father, Junichiro Koizumi, a former prime minister who has emerged as a vocal opponent of nuclear power.
While Japan debates the future of nuclear energy, the younger Koizumi, who has been tipped as a future prime minister, is now at the centre of a controversy over the future of more than a million tonnes of contaminated water stored at Fukushima Daiichi.
On Tuesday, his predecessor as environment minister said the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, had no choice but to dilute the water and release it into the Pacific ocean rather than store it indefinitely.
The prospect of dumping the water into the sea has angered local fishermen and drawn protests from neighbouring South Korea.15.23 AESTLast modified on Thu 12 Sep 2019 15.59
North Korea is willing to restart talks with the United States in late September over its nuclear programme, but warned that chances of a deal could end unless Washington takes a fresh approach.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, agreed in a 30 June meeting with Donald Trump to reopen working-level talks stalled since their failed February summit in Hanoi, but this has yet to happen despite repeated appeals from Washington.
n a statement carried by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, the deputy foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, said Pyongyang was willing to have “comprehensive discussions” with the United States in late September at a time and place agreed between both sides.
Asked for comment, a US state department spokeswoman said: “We don’t have any meetings to announce at this time.”
On Sunday, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said he hoped to return to denuclearisation talks with North Korea in the coming days or weeks.
But Choe highlighted that Washington needed to present a new approach or the talks could fall apart again.
“I want to believe that the US side would come out with an alternative based on a calculation method that serves both sides’ interests and is acceptable to us,” Choe said.
“If the US side toys with an old scenario that has nothing to do with the new method at working-level talks which would be held after difficulties, a deal between the two sides may come to an end.”
In April, Kim set a year-end deadline for the United States to show more flexibility in talks, which broke down in February over US demands for North Korea to give up all of its nuclear weapons and Pyongyang’s demands for relief from punishing US-led international sanctions.
The end-of-September timeframe would coincide with the annual United Nations general assembly in New York, which Pompeo is due to attend. North Korea’s mission to the United Nations said last week that the foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, would not attend “due to his schedule”.
North Korea has demanded that Pompeo be replaced with a “more mature” person in the US negotiating team, while lauding the rapport built between Kim and Trump in three meetings since June 2018.
The US special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, led working-level talks with North Korea in the run-up to the failed Hanoi meeting.
Checking in on China’s Nuclear Icebreaker,Speculation has trailed the news that China’s first nuclear-powered icebreaker ship was in the works. The Diplomat, By Trym Aleksander Eiterjord September 05, 2019 In June 2018, on the heels of China’s Arctic White Paper, The Diplomatreported on a tender issued by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), the country’s largest nuclear operator, to build what would be China’s first nuclear-powered icebreaker.
Calling for bids to provide technical consultancy services on a “nuclear-powered icebreaker and comprehensive support vessel demonstration project,” the tender left ample room for speculation. The bidder would provide “verification and consultancy services” throughout all stages of the project — from basic design to construction and testing — both on the vessel itself and the onboard nuclear propulsion system. ……
Nuclear icebreakers might, on the one hand, mark a convergence of China’s Arctic and broader naval ambitions. On the other hand, however, such plans are likely to produce unfavorable optics for a country eager to be seen as a benign partner in the region. Unilaterally developing ships that would give the country outsized access to the maritime Arctic runs the risk of undermining China’s desired image – that of a gentle, “near-Arctic” giant. https://thediplomat.com/2019/09/checking-in-on-chinas-nuclear-icebreaker/
Rooppur plant’s cost higher as it is a new experience for Bangladesh , Daily Star. 8 Sep 19,Science and Technology Affairs Minister Yeafesh Osman tells JSScience and Technology Affairs Minister Yeafesh Osman today said that the installation cost of Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) is higher than that of India as Bangladesh is new to implement such a power plant.
He also spelt out a number of reasons behind the excessive cost of the power plant compared to Kudunkulam Nuclear Power Plant in India.
The minister made the statement while responding to a tabled starred question from BNP MP Rumeen Farhana in the Parliament. She in her question said that the capital expenditure of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant is Tk 45,000 crore higher than that of Kudunkulam Nuclear Power Plant in India.
Yeafesh said that the infrastructural expenditure of the nuclear power plant in Bangladesh is comparatively higher than that of India as the country is new in setting up nuclear power plant.
China plans giant underground lab to research nuclear waste, By Julie Zaugg and Nanlin Fang, CNN, September 6, 2019 China is building a laboratory up to 560 meters (1,837 feet) underground in the middle of the Gobi desert to carry out tests on nuclear waste, officials have confirmed.
The facility, in remote Beishan, Gansu province, will be used by scientists and engineers to test the suitability of the area for the long-term storage of the highly radioactive waste generated by nuclear power plants. Construction begins next year and will finish by 2024. ……..
The site was selected in Gansu because it presents ideal conditions to prevent leaks: there is no seismic activity nearby and the bedrock the lab will be housed in is made of granite, which reduces the risk of groundwater seepage or fractures, according to a paper published in The Journal of Rock Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering last year.
Construction begins next year, with the facility expected to be completed by 2024. Research will be carried out until 2040 — and if the results are positive, a long-term storage facility will be built.
Underground disposal is considered to be the best solution for nuclear waste, as radioactive material takes thousands of years to decay, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA). The spent fuel should be packaged in sealed copper canisters and placed in underground tunnels or caverns, surrounded by cement or bentonite clay to provide another barrier…….
Nuclear waste is currently stored in cooling pools at reactor sites, but these are not foolproof, says Greenpeace. “They lack secondary containment and are vulnerable to loss of cooling, and in many cases lack independent back-up power,” the environmental organization said in a January report.
The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that 250,000 tons of spent fuel is in storage worldwide.
The only underground storage facility currently in operation is based in New Mexico, US, but it is used exclusively for defense-related waste. Finland has identified a site, on an island 143 miles northwest of Helsinki. Other sites have been discussed in Nevada, Sweden and France but face strong local opposition, according to the WNA.
Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant
September 2, 2019
Japan’s nuclear policy-setting body adopted a report Monday saying the country is entering an era of massive nuclear plant decommissioning, urging plant operators to plan ahead to lower safety risks and costs requiring decades and billions of dollars.
Twenty-four commercial reactors–or 40 percent of Japan’s total–are designated for or are being decommissioned. Among them are four reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant that were severely damaged by the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern Japan.
The annual nuclear white paper, adopted by the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, urges utilities to learn from U.S. and European examples, especially those of Germany, France and Britain. Japan hasn’t yet completed the decommissioning of any reactors and doesn’t have concrete plans for the final disposal of radioactive waste.
“Taking into consideration further increase of nuclear facilities that will be decommissioned, new technology and systems need to be developed in order to carry out the tasks efficiently and smoothly,” the report said. “It’s a whole new stage that we have to proceed to and tackle.”
Japanese utilities have opted to scrap aged reactors instead of investing in safety requirements under post-Fukushima standards. The decommissioning of a typical reactor costs nearly 60 billion yen ($560 million) and takes several decades.
Before the Fukushima disaster, Japan had 60 commercial reactors that provided about 25 percent of the country’s energy needs.
Despite the government’s renewed ambitions for nuclear power, reactor restarts are proceeding slowly as nuclear regulators spend more time on inspections. Meanwhile, anti-nuclear sentiment persists among the public and makes it more difficult for plant operators to obtain local consent in making revisions to their facilities. Any plan related to nuclear waste storage tends to get strong resistance.
Since the Fukushima accident, only nine reactors in Japan have restarted, accounting for about 3 percent of the country’s energy supply, compared to the government’s ambitious 20-22 percent target.
In July, Tokyo Electric Power Holdings Co., or TEPCO, announced plans to decommission all four reactors at its second Fukushima plant, Fukushima No. 2, which narrowly avoided meltdowns in 2011. The move followed eight years of demands by the local government and residents for the reactors’ closure.
TEPCO said the decommissioning of Fukushima No. 2 alone would cost 410 billion yen and would take four decades, but experts have raised concerns about whether those estimates are realistic for a company already struggling with the ongoing cleanup of the wrecked Fukushima plant, estimated to cost about 8 trillion yen.
Japan Atomic Power Co., which has been decommissioning its Tokai nuclear plant since 2001, announced in March that it was pushing back the planned completion of the project by five years, to 2030, because the company still has been unable to remove and store highly radioactive materials from the core. The decommissioning of the government’s Tokai fuel reprocessing facility is expected to take 70 years and cost 770 billion yen.
The white paper stated that Japan is pursuing its divisive spent-fuel reprocessing ambitions and a plan to develop a fast-breeder reactor despite international concerns over the country’s plutonium stockpile of 47 tons, though the commission calls for more efforts in reducing the stockpile and increasing transparency.
France’s recently reported move to abandon ASTRID, its next-generation fast reactor that would theoretically produce more plutonium while burning it as fuel, could be a setback for Japan, which was hoping to jointly develop the technology.
some analysts and many members of the public remain sceptical about whether it is really safe.
China earmarks site to store nuclear waste deep underground
Researchers will conduct tests at the location in Gansu to see whether it will make a viable facility to store highly radioactive waste safely Scientists say China has the chance to become a world leader in this field but has to find a way to ensure it does not leak, SCMP, Echo Xie September 06, 2019 China has chosen a site for an underground laboratory to research the disposal of highly radioactive waste, the country’s nuclear safety watchdog said on Wednesday.
Officials said work would soon begin on building the Beishan Underground Research Laboratory 400 metres (1,312 feet) underground in the northwestern province of Gansu.
Liu Hua, head of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, said work would be carried out to determine whether it was possible to build a repository for high-level nuclear waste deep underground. …….. [China] needs to find a safe and reliable way of dealing with its growing stockpiles of nuclear waste. …..
Some Chinese scientists said the country had the chance to lead the world in this area of research but others have expressed concerns about safety. ……
Despite broad scientific support for underground disposal, some analysts and many members of the public remain sceptical about whether it is really safe.
Lei Yian, an associate professor at Peking University’s school of physics, said there was no absolute guarantee that the repositories would be safe when they came into operation…….
China is also building more facilities to dispose of low and intermediate-level waste. Officials said new plants were being built in Zhejiang, Fujian and Shandong, three coastal provinces that lack disposal facilities.
Vietnamese trainees sue Fukushima firm over decontamination work, September 5, 2019 (Mainichi Japan, TOKYO (Kyodo) — Three Vietnamese men on a foreign trainee program in Japan have sued a construction company for making them conduct radioactive decontamination work related to the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima Prefecture without prior explanation, supporters of the plaintiffs said Wednesday.
The lawsuit, dated Tuesday and filed with a branch of the Fukushima District Court, demanded that Hiwada Co., based in Koriyama in the northeastern Japan prefecture, pay a total of about 12.3 million yen in damages, according to the supporters.
The case is the latest in a string of inappropriate practices under the Japanese government’s Technical Intern Training Program which has been often criticized as a cover for cheap labor.
According to Zentouitsu Workers Union, a Tokyo-based labor union that supports foreign trainees, Hiwada made the plaintiffs conduct decontamination work in the cities of Koriyama and Motomiya in Fukushima Prefecture between 2016 and 2018……. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190905/p2g/00m/0na/014000c
Diplomats from 22 countries and regions attended a briefing at the Foreign Ministry, where Japanese officials stressed the importance of combating rumors about safety at the plant, which was decimated by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, while pledging transparency.
The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, said last month that it would run out of storage space for the water in 2022, prompting South Korea to raise safety questions amid tensions with Japan that have intensified over trade and history. South Korea was among those represented at Wednesday’s briefing.
Water must be continuously pumped into the four melted reactors at the plant so the fuel inside can be kept cool, and radioactive water has leaked from the reactors and mixed with groundwater and rainwater since the disaster.
The plant has accumulated more than 1 million tons of water in nearly 1,000 tanks. The water has been treated but still contains some radioactive elements. One, tritium — a relative of radiation-emitting hydrogen — cannot be separated.
Tritium is not unique to Fukushima’s melted reactors and is not harmful in low doses, and water containing it is routinely released from nuclear power plants around the world, including in South Korea, officials say.
The water has been a source of concern, sparking rumors about safety, especially as Japan tries to get countries to lift restrictions on food imports from the Fukushima area ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Import restrictions are still in place in 22 countries and regions, including South Korea and China.
“In order to prevent harmful rumors about the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant from being circulated, we believe it is extremely important to provide scientific and accurate information,” Yumiko Hata, a Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official in charge of the Fukushima accident response, said at the briefing. “We appreciate your understanding of the situation and continuing support for the decommissioning work at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.”
Officials said there were no complaints from the diplomats Wednesday about Japan’s handling of the water.
More than eight years after the accident, Japan has yet to decide what to do with the radioactive water. A government-commissioned panel has picked five options, including the controlled release of the water into the Pacific Ocean.
As disputes between Japan and neighboring South Korea escalated over export controls and colonial-era labor used by Japanese companies, Seoul last month announced plans to step up radiation tests of Japanese food products, and asked about the contaminated water and the possibility of its release into the sea.
Experts say the tanks pose flooding and radiation risks and hamper decontamination efforts at the plant. Nuclear scientists, including members the International Atomic Energy Agency and Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority, have recommended the water’s controlled release into the sea as the only realistic option scientifically and financially. Local residents oppose this, saying the release would trigger rumors of contamination, which would spell doom for Fukushima’s fishing and agriculture industries.
The panel recently added a sixth option of long-term storage.
Japan’s Tepco weighs retiring some reactors at massive plant
Dismantling one or more units geared to easing local opposition to resuming operations
When fully operational, Tepco’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility is the largest nuclear power plant in the world.
August 24, 2019
TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings is considering decommissioning one or more of the seven reactors at a key nuclear power plant in northern Japan, Nikkei has learned, as it attempts to ease community pushback against restarting it.
Tepco will not aim to reactivate all of the No. 1 through No. 5 reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Niigata Prefecture — meltdown-hit Fukushima Prefecture’s western neighbor. It will instead pick at least one of them to dismantle after restarting the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors, as approved by the central government. Tepco President Tomoaki Kobayakawa is expected to convey that intent to Masahiro Sakurai, mayor of the city of Kashiwazaki, in meetings on Monday.
The plant — the world’s largest when fully operational — is undergoing separate checks led by the prefectural government, leaving the time frame for a restart unclear.
The utility hopes that offering a plan for decommissioning down the road, as Sakurai has demanded, will help win over locals for its efforts to restart the two greenlit reactors, an important step in improving its financial health.
Tepco decided in late July to retire all its remaining reactors in Fukushima Prefecture on top of the ongoing decommissioning of disaster-stricken Fukushima Daiichi, the site of the 2011 meltdown resulting from a massive earthquake and tsunami. Coming on the heels of July’s move, the utility judged that issues of manpower and finance would preclude immediately moving to dismantle parts of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa.
In June 2017, Sakurai asked that Tepco present a plan for dismantling at least one of reactors No. 1 through No. 5 within two years as a condition for restarting No. 6 and No. 7. Tepco has missed that deadline. Restarting the two reactors, which passed central-government safety inspections in December 2017, would likely create an easier environment for tackling the problem.
Tepco aims to shoulder the costs of decommissioning Fukushima Daiichi and paying out compensation. An outflow of customers on its capital-area home turf has left it in worsening financial straits. It hopes for relief from Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, where each reactor it restarts is expected to provide a roughly 100 billion yen ($939 million) shot in the arm per year.
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