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Release of tritium-tainted water into sea is opposed by Fukushima fisheries group

Fukushima fisheries group opposes release of tritium-tainted water into sea https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/08/30/national/fukushima-fisheries-group-opposes-release-tritium-tainted-water-sea/#.W4hrkSQzbGg

JIJI TOMIOKA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. – The head of a fisheries industry group in Fukushima Prefecture expressed opposition on Thursday to the idea of releasing water containing radioactive tritium from a crippled nuclear plant in the prefecture into the ocean.

The tritium-tainted water is from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, which was damaged heavily in the powerful earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

“At a time when harmful rumors are still circulating in Japan and some countries continue to restrict imports (of Fukushima goods), releasing the tainted water into the sea will inevitably deliver a fatal blow to the Fukushima fishery industry,” Tetsu Nozaki, who leads the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Associations, said.

His remarks came during a public hearing held by a subcommittee of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy in the Fukushima town of Tomioka.

The hearing was for the canvassing of opinions on how to deal with the tritium-tainted water. Releasing it into the sea has been proposed as one option. Similar hearings will be held in the city of Koriyama, Fukushima, and Tokyo on Friday.

Using special equipment, Tepco is lowering the radiation levels in contaminated water at the plant, but the device cannot remove tritium. While the processed water is kept in tanks within the premises of the nuclear power station, the amount of tainted water continues to increase as the plant’s damaged reactors need to be cooled continuously. Tepco is about to run out of suitable sites to construct new storage tanks, according to the government.

Discussions on ways to deal with the tritium-contaminated water are underway at the subcommittee of the government agency.

In a June 2016 report, an expert panel of the agency said that releasing the polluted water into the sea after it is diluted with fresh water would be relatively cheap and time-efficient.

August 31, 2018 Posted by | Fukushima continuing | Leave a comment

Japan’s municipalities in growing rejection to hosting nuclear waste dumps

Assemblies make moves to reject playing host to nuclear waste http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201808280029.html By CHIAKI OGIHARA/ Staff WriterAugust 28, 2018 More local assemblies are taking measures to send a strong message to the central government not to bother asking them to host storage facilities for nuclear waste.The moves, in the form of ordinances, were accelerated after the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in July 2017 released its Nationwide Map of Scientific Features for Geological Disposal that classified areas around Japan into four colors denoting their suitability as storage sites for nuclear waste.

Electric power companies are looking for land plots to construct an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. The central government is planning a final storage facility where high-level radioactive waste would be mixed with glass and vitrified before being buried more than 300 meters underground.

Twenty-two municipal assemblies now have ordinances that limit the entry of highly radioactive waste into their communities.

About half of the ordinances were adopted by 2005, followed by an extended period when concerns decreased about being chosen as a site for nuclear waste storage facilities.

But the release of the geological disposal map prompted five municipal assemblies to quickly adopt ordinances limiting the introduction of nuclear waste to their communities.

Dark green areas on the map show places deemed appropriate for hosting the final storage facility. They are all within 20 kilometers from the coast, have favorable geological features and are considered adequate for the transportation of waste.

About 900 municipalities fall into the dark green areas.

Light green areas on the map have favorable geological features but face problems in transporting the waste.

Orange areas are considered inappropriate from a geological standpoint, while silver areas are also deemed inappropriate because they have reserves of natural resources that could be mined in the future.

Between autumn 2017 and spring 2018, the village of Yamato and the towns of Higashi-Kushira and Kimotsuki–all in dark green areas in Kagoshima Prefecture–adopted ordinances to reject the acceptance of nuclear waste.

Two towns in Hokkaido passed similar ordinances. Biei, located in a light green area, took the action in April, while Urakawa, which lies mostly in a dark green area, adopted the ordinance in June.

Kagoshima Prefecture has the most municipalities–11–with such ordinances. In 2000 and 2001, six municipalities adopted the ordinances amid rising concerns that an interim spent fuel storage facility would be brought in. Between 2005 and 2015, four other municipalities followed suit.

The town of Yaku was among the first group, but its ordinance became invalid after it merged with Kami-Yaku to form the new town of Yakushima.

The Yakushima town assembly is now planning to submit an ordinance in its September session to reiterate its opposition to serving as a site for nuclear waste storage.

However, the law for nuclear waste storage would take legal precedence over any municipal ordinance, meaning that the local governments could still be asked to accept the nuclear waste.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan (NUMO) is in charge of the final nuclear waste storage project, and it has held explanatory meetings around Japan about the geological disposal map.

At those meetings, NUMO officials have stressed that it would not force a locality to accept nuclear waste if the prefectural governor or municipal mayor was opposed.

Still, Kohei Katsuyama, chairman of the Yamato village assembly in Kagoshima Prefecture, said the ordinance serves as a strong sign of the municipality’s stance of rejecting any idea of serving as host of a nuclear waste storage facility.

August 29, 2018 Posted by | Japan, politics, wastes | Leave a comment

South Korea’s nuclear corporation in desperate effort to save Moorside nuclear plant project 

Kepco in last-ditch attempt to save Moorside nuclear plant project https://www.ft.com/content/50389e18-a6df-11e8-926a-7342fe5e173fSouth Korean utility group looks at potential lenders to finance construction Sylvia Pfeifer in London, Song Jung-a in Seoul and Leo Lewis in Tokyo, 28 Aug 18

Korea Electric Power Corp is meeting lenders to finance the construction of a new nuclear power plant in west Cumbria, as it makes a last-ditch attempt to save the project. Kepco said it was “exchanging opinion with potential lenders” but noted that the Korean government, which owns a majority stake in the company, had said it was “too early” to enter financing negotiations. The South Korean group was named last December as the preferred bidder for Toshiba’s NuGen unit, which was to build the plant at Moorside. But the deal ran into problems after the UK announced in June that it was considering how the funding for new nuclear power plants should be structured. One model under review is for private investors to secure a return on a nuclear plant’s so-called regulated asset base (RAB). The following month, Toshiba said it was exploring alternative options for the business and had terminated Kepco’s preferred bidder status.

Toshiba has set a deadline to secure a deal by the end of September, according to people close to the negotiations. The company declined to comment. The persistent delays have prompted NuGen to review its operations. It started a 30-day consultation period at the start of August raising the prospect of about 100 job losses. Toshiba is believed to have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on developing the site so far. It was forced to pay close to $139m to buy a 40 per cent stake held by France’s Engie last year. The failure of the Moorside plant would deal a blow to the UK government’s plans to encourage the construction of new reactors to replace its ageing fleet.

A government spokesperson in Seoul confirmed the company had launched a joint study to ascertain whether the RAB model was “workable”. The Korean government is understood to remain keen to progress with the investment because it would give it a foothold in one of the few western nations backing the construction of new reactors. But it has said the investment must pass a “national audit” test before it can proceed.

Kepco wants to deploy two of its APR-1400 reactors at Moorside to generate a combined electricity of about 3GW — close to 7 per cent of Britain’s electricity needs. Kepco said it was “too early” to say whether it would be able to meet the criteria for the audit. A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said the government had “repeatedly engaged with Kepco and the government of the Republic of Korea both in Korea and the UK in support of ongoing Moorside negotiations”. “Ultimately, this remains a commercial matter between Toshiba and Kepco,” he added.

August 29, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, South Korea, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear fuel soon to be removed from Japan’s failed Monju fast breeder reactor

Nuclear fuel removal to start at Monju reactor  NHK, 28 Aug 18 The operator of Japan’s Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor plans to soon start removing its nuclear fuel from a storage container as part of the plant’s decommissioning.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency plans to scrap the reactor in Tsuruga City in Fukui Prefecture, central Japan, over 30 years.

Work to move the fuel to a detached storage pool was to start in late July. But it was postponed due to equipment trouble including fogging up of monitoring camera lenses during trials.

The work is now to start on Thursday……..https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180828_33/

August 29, 2018 Posted by | decommission reactor, Japan | Leave a comment

How India & Pakistan Deal With The Bomb -“Brokering Peace in Nuclear Envi­ronments “

Diplomacy In The Nuclear Age, Kashmir Observer, HAIDER NIZAMANI • Aug 28, 2018, How India & Pakistan Deal With The Bomb

India and Pakistan ‘gatecrashed’ the nuclear club in May 1998. Children who were born right after the nuclear tests, carried out by the two countries in that year, are now able to vote — a generation, particularly in Pakistan, that has grown up on a steady diet of nuclear national­ism that portrays weapons of mass destruction as guarantors of national security and sources of col­lective pride. In times when the country can showcase little by way of achievements, we always console ourselves by saying that we have nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons and their delivery systems are made by experts trained in science and engineering but there is also another ‘nuclear expert’ whose bread and butter is linked to writing about these. There was only a small group of such ex­perts two decades ago but nuclear tests by India and Pakistan have opened up many new spots for them. They are camped mainly in think tanks in New Delhi, Islam­abad and Washington DC.

An overwhelming majority of them use the lens of political realism that sees states as key actors who pursue their national interests in competition with each other. Moeed Yusuf also belongs to this tribe of nu­clear experts. He defines the crises explored in his book as “exercises in coercion through  adversaries seek to enhance their relative bargaining strength vis-à-vis their opponents”………..

limitations of Yusuf’s book Brokering Peace in Nuclear Envi­ronments   are, in fact, the limitation of realist theory that focuses on state actors and their actions and does not delve into the social, economic, political and strategic fac­tors that cause those actions and determine their direction and outcome. Additionally, many Indian and Pakistan security experts consciously or un­wittingly end up echoing official versions as the true versions of history. In many parts, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments also follows the same path which makes its analysisa bit lopsided and its prescriptions a little too Pakistan-centric.

Its strength, however, is the large number of interviews that Yusuf has conducted with poli­cymakers, especially from the United States and Pakistan, who played key roles during the three crises mentioned above. For this reason alone, if for nothing else, his book should be seen as a good addition to the academic literature available on war and peace between India and Pakistan. https://kashmirobserver.net/2018/feature/diplomacy-nuclear-age-35464

August 29, 2018 Posted by | India, Pakistan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japanese students submit nuclear abolition petition to UN

Students submit nuclear abolition petition to UN  https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180829_06/  A group of Japanese high school students has visited the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva to submit a petition calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The 20 “peace messengers” met Anja Kaspersen, the director of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, on Tuesday. Some of the students are from the atomic-bombed cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The students showed Kaspersen photos taken immediately after the 1945 bombings. They told her the bombs not only killed many people but also forced survivors to live with burns and aftereffects.

They submitted about 100,000 signatures they had collected over the past year and urged the UN to do more to create a world with no nuclear weapons.

Kaspersen said the students’ campaign is not just about hope, but it is also helping young people in many countries to promote generosity and understanding.

The UN adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons last year, but nations possessing nuclear weapons and Japan have not joined it. Riko Shitakubo from Hiroshima said she renewed her resolve to keep trying to change the situation surrounding nuclear weapons.

August 29, 2018 Posted by | Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Water leak in Japan’s unfinished Rokkasho nuclear reprocessing plant

August 29, 2018 Posted by | incidents, Japan | Leave a comment

China reaffirms commitment to no first use of nuclear weapons

China stands by its commitment not using nuclear weapons, Pakistan Observer , August 28, 2018  BEIJING : China on Tuesday reiterated that it will not use nuclear weapons first and foremost at any time and under any circumstances.

This is the policy from the first day, since the possession of nuclear weapons, said Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying at a regular news briefing.

The Chinese government has solemnly stated that it will never go for first use of nuclear weapons. China has always abide by this commitment, firmly adheres to the nuclear strategy of self-defense and defense, and always maintains nuclear power at the minimum level required for national security, without posing a threat to any country.

We resolutely oppose any ill-conceived practices that arbitrarily distorted China’s policy intentions and sought excuses for expanding and strengthening its nuclear arsenal, she added.

Hua Chunying termed the US Department of Defense’s annual report to this effect, ridiculous, stating that the so-called report is unreasonable to China.

Asked to comment on President Trump’s statement on China-US economic and trade consultations, she said China’s position on relevant issues is consistent and its attitude is very clear and consistent.

“We have consistently advocated the resolution of contradictions and differences through dialogue and consultation, and we insist that dialogue and consultation must be based on reciprocity, equality and integrity. Only such communication and consultation can make sense and progress can be made,” she added……..https://pakobserver.net/china-stands-by-its-commitment-not-using-nuclear-weapons/

August 29, 2018 Posted by | China, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japan – Nuclear waste briefings in coastal areas 

Nuclear waste briefings in coastal areas  https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180827_27/ Japanese energy agency officials say they will continue to hold public briefing sessions on the disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

The government last year released a map showing which parts of the country may be scientifically suited to hosting an underground disposal site.

The Agency for Natural Resources and Energy has so far invited residents to 55 briefing sessions. Most have taken place in prefectural capitals.

On Monday, the agency held a meeting in Tokyo to explain the sessions to regional officials.

Agency officials said participants tend to question whether highly contaminated nuclear waste can safely be stored in earthquake-prone Japan. They also express concerns over how local people’s opinions may be reflected.

The agency plans to hold further briefings, mainly in coastal areas that are considered to be relatively suitable for underground waste storage.

The districts cover about 900 municipalities.

The officials say they will decide on where to hold the briefing sessions after discussions with the municipalities.

August 29, 2018 Posted by | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan revises guidelines for earthquake probabilities

New earthquake probability scale https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180828_18/ Japanese government officials have revised the chances for earthquakes linked to marine trenches in order to avoid misleading the public. The government’s task force for earthquake research released its assessment of quakes that may hit Japan, along with their probabilities of occurring within 30 years.

Currently, the chances of quakes linked to marine trenches are given in percentages.

But experts fear that such descriptions could cause misunderstandings. People might feel safe living in an area with a small quake possibility figure, such as 0.1 percent or less.

The task force said it has introduced a new 4-rank scale to describe quake probabilities.

The highest rank of 3 means having the biggest chance of a large-scale quake within 30 years– a chance of 26 percent or more. Rank 2 is for areas with the chance of a quake between 3 and 26 percent. The rank of 1 suggests quake probabilities of less than 3 percent. Another rank of X suggests the chances of a quake cannot be calculated due to a lack of data, but an imminent quake cannot be ruled out.

Under the new classification system, possible mega quakes, including along the Nankai Trough off the Pacific coast from central through western Japan, are ranked 3.

August 29, 2018 Posted by | Japan, safety | Leave a comment

Taiwan to hold referendum on lifting Fukushima food ban in November

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Senior officials of the Kuomintang, Taiwan’s largest opposition party, hold a press conference on Aug. 27, 2018 at their headquarters in Taipei to state their opposition to lifting a ban on food imports from Fukushima and four other Japanese prefectures. The banners read “oppose nuclear food.”
 
August 28, 2018
TAIPEI — Taiwan’s largest opposition party Kuomintang has announced that it has collected some 470,000 signatures supporting a referendum on whether to lift a ban on the import of food products from five Japanese prefectures, including Fukushima, imposed after the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant disaster.
The number is far more than the 280,000 legally required to hold a referendum, and it is most likely that one will be held on Nov. 24 in tandem with general local elections.
Taiwan has banned foodstuff from the prefectures of Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Chiba and Gunma in the northern and eastern parts of Japan, and the Kuomintang supports the ban.
A national referendum must have a turnout rate of at least 25 percent for the result to be valid, but this hurdle is likely to be cleared if the voting is done alongside the local elections. If voters back the ban, it would be extremely difficult for the administration of Tsai Ing-wen to ignore the outcome and Japan-Taiwan relations would suffer substantially as a result.
Behind the referendum move is a political rivalry between the Kuomintang and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) headed by Tsai. The opposition is stepping up attacks on the ruling party in a bid to win the local elections and build political momentum toward the 2020 presidential election.
The Kuomintang has launched a negative PR campaign against food items from Fukushima and the other prefectures because the Tsai administration is positive about lifting the import ban. The opposition called the Japanese products “nuclear food,” meaning contaminated by the nuclear accident, and accused the government of ignoring people’s food safety concerns. A person linked to the DPP lamented that the issue is “being used in a political fight.”
The government of Japan has repeatedly urged Taiwan to lift the import ban, saying the safety of its food items is scientifically proven. However, the Tsai administration is hesitant about rushing a decision on resuming imports as it faces faltering approval rates and the issue could trigger explosive opposition from some voters.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180828/p2a/00m/0na/027000c

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August 28, 2018 Posted by | Taiwan | , , | Leave a comment

Former worker’s book: TEPCO unfit to operate nuclear plants

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Toru Hasuike, a former employee of Tokyo Electric Power Co., talks about his new book in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture.
 
August 27, 2018
KASHIWAZAKI, Niigata Prefecture–Toru Hasuike, who worked at Tokyo Electric Power Co. for 32 years, has published another book that he says shows his former employer should be declared “ineligible” to operate nuclear power plants.
“Kokuhatsu” (Accusation), a 250-page book released on Aug. 27 by Tokyo-based Business-sha Inc., reveals episodes that underscore the utility’s culture of cover-ups and collusion, including how it stacked the decks in its favor for government approval of its new reactors, he said.
After graduating from the Tokyo University of Science, Hasuike, 63, had worked in TEPCO’s nuclear division, including a stint at the now-embattled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, from 1977 until he left the company in 2009.
His first book about the utility, titled “Watashi ga Aishita Tokyo Denryoku” (Tokyo Electric Power Co. that I loved), was released by Kyoto-based Kamogawa Co. in September 2011, a half-year after the disaster struck the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
In that book, Hasuike describes the day-to-day activities at TEPCO and the closed nature of the regional monopoly in a matter-of-fact tone. He does not accuse the company of cover-ups or collusion in the book.
“Back then, I believed that even TEPCO would transform itself (following the Fukushima nuclear disaster),” Hasuike said in an interview with The Asahi Shimbun in Kashiwazaki. “But TEPCO’s corporate culture of trying to cover up things and form collusive ties with authorities has not been overhauled. In my latest book, I wrote about all that I saw.”
Assigned to the utility’s main office in Tokyo, Hasuike, who had an engineering background, was primarily involved in work responding to nuclear regulators’ safety inspections of TEPCO’s plants as well as research into the disposal of high-level radioactive waste.
He said he documented a number of his experiences that epitomize the collusive ties between the utility and nuclear regulators before the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Hasuike said these episodes made him question the feasibility of TEPCO’s new stated goal of pushing for organizational reform that puts safety management of its nuclear facilities above everything else.
Hasuike was born and raised in Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture, a city that co-hosts TEPCO’s seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, the largest nuclear power station in Japan.
His parents and other relatives live in the coastal city.
The Diet’s Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission also pointed out TEPCO’s propensity to seek cozy ties with regulating bodies.
In its report published in 2012, the commission denounced collusion between TEPCO and the government’s nuclear watchdog, describing nuclear authorities as a “regulatory capture” of the company because they were easily manipulated by TEPCO’s vast wealth of nuclear expertise.
In his new book, Hasuike describes, for example, TEPCO’s moves related to the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.
The company is currently seeking to bring those reactors back online as soon as possible to save on fuel costs needed to operate its thermal plants.
Hasuike said in the book that TEPCO sent some of its employees to the then Science and Technology Agency in 1990 on the pretext of “assisting in preparations” for a public hearing planned by the government’s Nuclear Safety Commission.
The agency’s commission was scheduled to hold a public hearing at the Niigata prefectural government building on whether to give approval and licenses for the construction of the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.
The TEPCO employees were sent to the agency, where the commission’s secretariat was located, to check postcards sent by those hoping to attend the hearing. Specifically, TEPCO wanted to know their stance on nuclear energy and prevent the hearing from being dominated by anti-nuclear attendees, according to the book.
When they grasped the number of nuclear opponents who planned to attend, the TEPCO employees made arrangements to send several times that number of application postcards to the pro-nuclear energy camp to ensure their representation was larger than nuclear skeptics at the hearing, Hasuike wrote.
After the applicants were selected and those permitted to ask questions at the hearing were chosen, the TEPCO employees advised the pro-nuclear attendees on their proposed questions with the aim to make the plant look safe, according to the book.
Hasuike has also been known as a relentless critic of the government for its handling of the decades-old issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents. He has appeared on TV programs and written several books on the subject.
His younger brother, Kaoru, returned to Japan in 2002 after being abducted to North Korea in 1978. But many other abductees remain unaccounted for, and there are few signs of progress toward a resolution of the issue.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201808270044.html

August 28, 2018 Posted by | Japan | , , | Leave a comment

Fukui disaster drill for simultaneous atomic accidents ends

Like the one they did in 2011???
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People are helped into a Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter as part a two-day evacuation drill for multiple nuclear accidents in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, on Saturday.
Aug 26, 2018
FUKUI – A nuclear disaster drill for simultaneous accidents at the Oi and Takahama nuclear power plants in Fukui Prefecture ended Sunday after mobilizing 21,000 people.
It was the first disaster response drill designed for serious simultaneous accidents at multiple plants since the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March 2011.
The drill involved about 21,000 people including residents and officials from the Cabinet Office, the Nuclear Regulation Authority and municipal governments.
Sunday’s exercise focused on evacuating residents from Fukui and surrounding prefectures. It also involved personnel aboard the Maritime Self-Defense Force minesweeper tender Bungo, which was deployed to provide first aid to “injured” participants who were ferried there by helicopter.
In the town of Takahama, 20 residents were flown to Osaka on a Ground Self-Defense Force CH-47J chopper and bused to Sanda in Hyogo on the assumption that a evacuation route was cut off by a landslide.
Preparations involving the Oi and Takahama plants, both managed by Kansai Electric Power Co., are deemed necessary as they are just 13.5 km away from each other.
The exercise assumed radioactive substances were released after an earthquake in northern Kyoto knocked out the cooling systems of the two plants’ reactors.
As part of the drill, task forces created at the two plants’ off-site emergency response centers were integrated into Oi’s task force.
Katsunori Yamamoto, 64, who runs a nursing home 5 km from the Takahama plant, played one of his residents. He was evacuated to Tsuruga by a wheelchair-accessible van driven by a Kansai Electric worker.
“I want to assess risks to our nursing home residents,” he said.

August 28, 2018 Posted by | Japan | , , , | Leave a comment

Watchdog says TEPCO nuclear disaster drill ‘unacceptable’

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An emergency drill at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture
August 22, 2018
The government’s nuclear watchdog slammed Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s efforts as “unacceptable” in communicating with nuclear authorities during an emergency drill held at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant.
TEPCO, operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, was among three utilities to receive the lowest of the three-level scores in terms of ability to share information expediently and accurately, the Nuclear Regulation Authority said July 25.
It was the first time for the company to be given the lowest score on communication skills in a yearly drill.
“It is unacceptable that TEPCO received a low rating, given that it was responsible for the Fukushima disaster,” an NRA official said. “TEPCO appears to be too compartmentalized for its relevant sections to work together and share information.”
The NRA is set to instruct the company to hold additional drills at the plant, which is located in Niigata Prefecture, if it receives another low rating.
The utility was slow in relaying information to the watchdog, and its briefing on its handling of the mock accident was inadequate, according to the NRA’s report.
“We could not respond sufficiently because the envisioned accident was harsh,” said Kiyoto Ishikawa, the chief of the plant’s publicity department, at a news conference.
The drill in question was carried out in March under the scenario of coping with a serious accident.
It involved difficult procedures to cope with a failure in the communication system to send such critical information as the pressure level in the reactors’ containment vessels to the NRA. Operators also simulated a string of maneuvers of the venting system to lower pressure inside the No. 6 reactor that suffered core damage.
“We had to deal with a tough situation because it proceeded with less time allotted for us than in a real accident,” Ishikawa said. “We are determined to make more efforts and improve our standing.”
The NRA’s assessment comes at a time when TEPCO seeks to bring the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant back on line in the near future to save expensive fuel costs incurred by the operation of its thermal power plants.
With seven reactors, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is the largest in Japan. It is the only nuclear complex for TEPCO to turn to as it proceeds with decommissioning of the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 nuclear plants.
The two reactors have cleared the screenings by the NRA under the stricter reactor regulations put in place following the 2011 Fukushima triple meltdown.
The other plants that were rated on par with the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in the evaluation of emergency drills were Hokuriku Electric Power Co.’s Shika plant in Ishikawa Prefecture and Chubu Electric Power Co.’s Hamaoka plant in Shizuoka Prefecture.
In the case of the Shika plant, Hokuriku Electric’s in-house information sharing system got bogged down, making it impossible for the NRA to remain in the communication loop.
In total, 10 operators of nuclear power plants carried out emergency drills.
The NRA considers it vital for the operator of a nuclear plant to share accurate information on the accident since the prime minister declares a “nuclear emergency” based on the NRA’s report.
In the Fukushima disaster, TEPCO had trouble passing on information on the unfolding nuclear crisis with the government swiftly and accurately, resulting in confusion.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201808220008.html

August 27, 2018 Posted by | Japan | , , , | Leave a comment

TEPCO seeks nuclear power industry tie-up with key players

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Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant
August 22, 2018
Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings Inc., operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, has begun talks with the nuclear industry’s key players about a possible tie-up for maintenance and management services and decommissioning of reactors.
The company is in discussions with Chubu Electric Power Co., Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., according to sources.
If the talks go well, a consolidation of the nuclear industry could be in the cards, the sources said.
TEPCO seeks to restart two of the seven reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture in the near future. Both are boiling water reactors, the same type as those that are to be decommissioned at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
TEPCO operates 11 boiling water reactors, seven of which are located at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. The remainder are located at the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant.
However, the utility announced in June it would pull the plug on the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant, which suffered damage in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami and narrowly escaped a serious disaster like at its sister plant.
Chubu Electric also operates three boiling water reactors at its Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka Prefecture. The plant’s two other reactors are in the process of decommissioning.
Hitachi and Toshiba were both involved in the design and construction of those reactors.
The four parties seek to streamline their nuclear energy operations through cooperation in maintenance and management services as well as safety management of their facilities after the restarts of their reactors.
Utilities today face an exceedingly higher price tag for bolstering safety precautions at their plants that are required under the stricter new reactor regulations put in place in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 disaster.
With none of their reactors back online, TEPCO and Chubu Electric fell behind other utilities.
Kansai Electric Power Co. and other operators of pressurized water reactors have restarted their plants.
Meanwhile, work to decommission reactors is looming large for TEPCO and other utilities, as many reactors are aging and nearing their 40-year life span.
The four companies are also expected to discuss possible construction of new nuclear plants in the coming years.
TEPCO plans to call on other electric power companies to join a consortium it seeks to set up in fiscal 2020 in connection with its project to construct the Higashidori nuclear plant in Aomori Prefecture. The construction of the facility has been suspended since the quake and tsunami.

August 27, 2018 Posted by | Japan | , , , , | Leave a comment

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