Slowing down- China’s nuclear power programme
deciding not to build any inland nuclear power plants through 2015
Although China has not announced new nuclear power installed capacity targets for 2020, it is expected that targets will be adjusted downward from previous expectations. ….
China moves to strengthen nuclear safety standards and moderate the pace of its nuclear power development, Switchboard, Alvin Lin This post was co-written with my colleagues Jingjing Li, Jason Portner and Christine Xu, 23 Dec 12, .”……….. Before the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, China had been undertaking the world’s largest nuclear power plant construction program, with plans to expand its then approximately 11.5 GW of nuclear power to as much as 80 GW of nuclear capacity by 2020. (Given that current reactors are about 1 GW in size, this would be equivalent to building nearly 70 reactors over a decade.)
Following Fukushima, however, Beijing immediately suspended approval of all new nuclear power projects while it undertook a comprehensive safety review of existing and under-construction nuclear power plants, as well as research reactors and fuel cycle facilities, and developed its Twelfth Five Year Plan for Nuclear Safety……
The report concluded that operating reactors “basically fulfill” China’s nuclear safety laws and regulations and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s most recent standards, that they have the capacity to respond to design-basis accidents and severe accidents, and that safety risks are under control.
However, in spite of these conclusions, the inspection report and nuclear safety plan also identified areas for improvement. Continue reading
China looks to thousands of jobs and cheap electricity with home solar connected to the grid
First Home Solar Array Connected To China’s State Grid 
http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3531 27 Dec 12 For a nation that leads the world in solar panel production, China has been a little slow off the mark with grid connection in relation to home solar power – but that will change dramatically soon. China Daily reports the first residential solar power system has been connected to China’s State electricity grid in Qingdao, Shandong province. While grid connection is taken for granted in countries such as Australia, this first installation proved to be quite a task; taking 19 days to complete. However, we can expect grid connected residential solar to bypass Australia’s tally very soon. State Grid Corporation of China, the largest electricity utility in the world, only started allowing small-scale solar power systems to connect to the national grid in November.
The Qingdao installation will be the first of many millions as new policies mean the work needed to connect privately owned systems below 5 megawatts capacity to the grid will be carried out free of charge. State Grid will also purchase surplus electricity generated by these systems.
The scale of State Grid Corporation of China is staggering. It has over 1.5 million employees and in 2011, generated revenue to the tune of US$ 259.14 billion. Its service area represents 88% of the country and provides electricity to over one billion people.
There will be no shortage of work for those employees. According to RenewEconomy’s Giles Parkinson, rumour has it that China will boost their solar target to 40GW by 2015; which is an entirely achievable goal considering more than 5GW capacity has been installed in this year alone. While China’s love affair with solar is set to continue, its rapid ascent in solar manufacturing hasn’t been without its casualties; with numerous manufacturers falling by the wayside due to competition and external forces. China’s government recently announced it would carry out reforms to the industry; including promoting mergers and acquisitions and reducing government support for manufacturers.
China is often criticised; but something we can all be thankful for is the nation brought affordable solar to the world.
Long term investors wary about nuclear power’s future in Japan
Nuclear Caution Holds as Bonds Diverge With Stocks: Japan Credit
Bloomberg By Yoshiaki Nohara, Satoshi Kawano & Amina Mobley – Dec 26,
2012 Japan’s bond and stock investors are at odds as to whether Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe can speed up the restart of nuclear reactors idled
on earthquake concerns…… .
“The institutional investors at the core of the bond market are still not convinced whether nuclear power generation can resume in earnest and are considering the worst case- scenario,” said Takayuki Atake, chief credit analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. in Tokyo. “The equity markets, with their large proportion of individual investors, are more responsive to news flow and the short-term prospects.”…..
While the LDP has said Japan needs its 50 reactors working, all but two remain closed and any restart will need approval from the Nuclear Regulation Authority, which is investigating six atomic plants on concern they sit on active fault lines…….
Active Fault Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tsuruga and Tohoku Electric’s Higashidori plants may be sitting on active faults, teams of scientists working for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority said this month. Under the country’s guidelines, utilities are not allowed to construct reactor buildings and other important facilities above an active quake fault. Abe indicated he may allow utilities to build a new nuclear power plant if it meets safety standards to be set by the NRA, the Tokyo Shimbun reported Dec. 1, citing an interview with him. Former prime minister Yoshihiko Noda in September approved a policy calling for banning the construction of new atomic plants. LDP Chairman Hiroyuki Hosoda said in an interview with Bloomberg last month that Japan must restart its plants quickly after confirming they’re safe, citing increasing energy prices….. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-26/nuclear-caution-holds-as-bonds-diverge-with-stocks-japan-credit.html
With Japan’s new government, nuclear energy may be back
http://www.startribune.com/business/184510891.html?refer=y
December 23, 2012
Liberal Democratic Party’s big win may give nuclear industry a
reprieve.In the two days after the election the shares of Tokyo
Electric (TEPCO), the owner of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant, surged by 56 percent. Investors bet that the new government
would allow Japan’s reactors, almost all of which have been idle since
being struck by an earthquake in 2011, to restart.
That may be wishful thinking. Abe may want to steer clear of the
sensitive nuclear issue until upper-house elections in mid-2013. If
so, a time frame agreed with TEPCO’s 77 banks for restarting the first
of its seven Kashiwazaki-Kariwa reactors in Niigata prefecture may be
missed.
TEPCO says each stalled reactor costs it $1.2 billion in lost profit each year.
Furthermore, the nuclear industry now has an independent watchdog, the
Nuclear Regulation Authority, which is showing teeth. Its
investigators have so far issued seismic warnings against two nuclear
power plants, which may lead to their permanent mothballing.
By law, even an LDP government should be unable to boss the watchdog around.
Yet a share-price rally may still be warranted. TEPCO’s share price is
barely a tenth of what it was before the disaster.
That reflects a genuine fear that the company may go bust. Surely,
investors mutter, the LDP remains chummy enough with Japan’s nuclear
utilities not to let any of them collapse into bankruptcy?
Okinawa a refuge for Fukushima evacuees fleeing radiation
risks are several times higher for children and even higher for
fetuses, and may not appear for years.
Japanese flee Fukushima in fear of nuclear radiation, Mail and Guardian,
22 DEC 2012 – YURI KAGEYAMA, Okinawa is about as far away as one
can get from Fukushima without leaving Japan, and that is why Minaho
Kubota is here.Petrified of the radiation spewing from the Fukushima
Dai-ichi nuclear plant that went into multiple meltdowns last year,
Kubota grabbed her children, left her sceptical husband and moved to
the small southwestern island.
More than 1 000 people from the disaster zone have done the same
thing. “I thought I would lose my mind,” Kubota told The Associated
Press in a recent interview.
“I felt I would have no answer for my children if, after they grew up,
they ever asked me, ‘Mama, why didn’t you leave?'” Continue reading
Fukushima radiation’s slow journey to USA and China’s coasts
More Fukushima nuclear pollution to hit U.S. starting in 2015 — Study: Impact strength of Cesium-137 on West Coast to be as high as 4 PERCENT http://enenews.com/report-nuclear-pollution-from-fukushima-to-hit-u-s-in-2015-impact-strength-of-cesium-137-on-west-coast-is-as-high-as-4-percent-due-to-strong-currents
December 20th, 2012 Follow-up to: Ocean Absorbed 79 Percent Of Fukushima Fallout
Source: Science China Earth Sciences
Authors: GuiJun Han, Wei Li, HongLi Fu, XueFeng Zhang, XiDong Wang, XinRong Wu, LianXin Zhang
Date: November 2012 Continue reading
Tepco pays $142,130.00 in admission of a death caused by Fukushima nuclear disaster
Tepco admits link between death and Fukushima disaster for 1st time http://enenews.com/tepco-admits-link-between-death-and-fukushima-disaster-for-1st-time
December 20th, 2012
Title: TEPCO settles over death of evacuee
Source: Jiji Press
Date: Dec. 21, 2012
Tokyo Electric Power Co. has reached a settlement with the family of a woman from Minamisoma who died as a result of the accident at the utility’s crippled nuclear power plant […]
This is the first time that TEPCO has admitted a causal link between the death of an evacuee and the accident at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. A total of 183 cases of settlement have been made public […]
According to the center, the woman, who was hospitalized in the Odaka district of the city, died in April last year after she was forced to evacuate […]
Tepco paid the woman’s family 12,000,000 yen, equivalent to $142,130.00 at today’s exchange rate.
See also: NHK: Criminal inquiry into nuclear accident begins — Fukushima disaster “a criminal act by the gov’t and Tepco”? — Multiple prosecutors coordinating investigation
Japanese waking up to the false economics of nuclear power
Radiation leaking from the damaged power plants has laid bare national policies and economic choices that have long gone unquestioned in Japan. “Please imagine!” one man told a priest. “A rural town, where there were no jobs, no money and no industries, was able to receive a chunk of money suddenly just by welcoming the construction of nuclear power plants.”
The conferees pledged “to pray for and with the people of Fukushima and other communities suffering the harms caused by nuclear power” and to send the conference’s final statement to next year’s WCC Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea.
Nuclear tragedy finds a human face in Fukushima, Insights, ON 19 DEC 2012 BY STEPHENW “……..Christian and Buddhist clergy, as well as laypersons, told the 87 conferees from Asia, Europe and North America of their struggle to support families and communities, to cope with the disaster themselves and to challenge the official disaster response.
Conference participants resolved to initiate discussions in faith communities about “civilian and military uses of nuclear energy”, and to develop plans of action “including lifestyle changes”.
The conference began in the city of Koriyama, 100 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and well beyond the official disaster exclusion zones. Radiation hotspots there—created when a reactor building exploded and contamination was spread by prevailing winds—are as dangerous as areas in the town nearest to the nuclear plant. Continue reading
Lynas radioactive waste plans: unsafe?
Lynas’ waste plans a toxic pipe dream Aliran, 19 December 2012 by Wendy Bacon ” ……While Lynas says it is confident in the current by-product plans, they are yet to be tested. Dr Peter Karamoskas, who has been a nuclear radiologist for 13 years and represents the Australian public on the Radiation Safety Committee of Australia’s nuclear safety agency, shares none of that confidence.
Speaking on his own behalf, Karamoskas said that to be safe more than a million tons of WLP residue with a radioactive reading of 6Bq have to be mixed with five times the amount of aggregate to reduce its reading to 1Bq. While he said that a similar process had been used in the Netherlands, the waste was far less radioactive, sitting near 1Bq, which is the threshold for safety.
Karamoskas said it has never been used with material with the Lamp WLP reading of 6Bq. He says that it is extremely unlikely to be a long term solution from a safety or economic point of view: “If this was all ready to go they would be trumpeting it in the public arena … already it looks slippery. If this was possible wouldn’t most countries around the world be doing it?” He thinks it is extremely unlikely that the road mix could be imported, other than to a country with “lax standards” because it would breach international best practice standards. Continue reading
Pro nuclear Mr Amari likely to be Japan’s Economic Minister
Abe to Give Posts to Stimulus, Nuclear Advocates By TAKASHI NAKAMICHI, WSJ, December 20, 2012,
TOKYO—Incoming Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will likely form an
old-boy economic team led by fiscal stimulus and nuclear energy
proponents,….. Along with Mr. Aso, the incoming prime minister will
likely tap the policy head of the Liberal Democratic Party and
longtime ally, Akira Amari, to fill in a new ministerial post
responsible for guiding overall economic policy discussions. Mr. Amari
held the trade minister’s portfolio when Mr. Abe was last prime
minister from 2006-2007.
One of the LDP’s leading energy experts, Mr. Amari has defended
Japan’s reliance on nuclear plants, even after the March 2011
earthquake triggered the nation’s worst nuclear crisis. A one-time
employee at Sony Corp., 6758.TO -1.63% Mr. Amari represents the voices
of corporate Japan……
Mr. Abe is diverging from the path trodden by the outgoing ruling
Democratic Party of Japan, which has grown more fiscally conservative
and has pledged to exit nuclear power by 2040……
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324461604578191052600447858.html
National Christian Council finds nuclear power incompatible with life and peace
The science in play is not fiction. Children are growing up forbidden to play outdoors, young women worry that no one will want to marry them, a mother tests her rice harvest to see if she can share it with her children, families are paying off loans on radioactive homes they will never use. These are the kind of stories heard every day at a parish radiation information centre in Aizu Wakamatsu, Japan.
The conference concluded that “there is no safe use of nuclear power, no safe level of exposure to radiation, and no compatibility between nuclear power, life and peace.”
Nuclear tragedy finds a human face in Fukushima, Insights, ON 19 DEC 2012 BY STEPHENW
The everyday effects of radiation borne by survivors of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan add up today to an involuntary experiment with public health, community life and environmental affairs.
An ecumenical conference, called to listen to local residents, found that last year’s chain reaction of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear calamity has generated a “live” human tragedy, across a province, with no end in sight.
The Geiger counters that priests and parishioners pull out of their pockets like cell phones made the local anxieties and fears real for their visitors.
“I cannot tell my children that there will be something good if they live,” one mother told a Buddhist priest. Continue reading
Lynas rare earths project – the saga in Malaysia
The IAEA also recommended that Lynas proceed no further until it had filed comprehensive plans for the permanent disposal of waste, decommissioning of the plant and remediation of the site at the end of its life.
Lynas’ waste plans a toxic pipe dream Aliran, 19 December 2012 Scientists and community leaders are concerned about radioactive waste from Lynas’ Malaysian plant but the company representative who took Wendy Bacon’s questions brushed off the criticism. This is the second of two articles about Lynas by Wendy Bacon.Read the first here.http://aliran.com/11005.html
Australian rare earth company Lynas has always known it had a waste problem.
It plans to process rare earth concentrate, imported from its mine at Mount Weld in Western Australia, at its Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (Lamp) in Malaysia. It will not only produce rare earths for export but also a huge amount of waste, including more than a million cubic metres of low level radioactive material. Continue reading
Shutting down the critics of Lynas rare earths Malaysain project
Lynas’ waste plans a toxic pipe dream Aliran, 19 December 2012 Scientists and community leaders are concerned about radioactive waste from Lynas’ Malaysian plant but the company representative who took Wendy Bacon’s questions brushed off the criticism. This is the second of two articles about Lynas by Wendy Bacon “………Shutting down the critics
New Matilda asked to interview Lynas Executive Chairperson Nick Curtis but he was not available. Instead we interviewed a Lynas spokesperson who insists that the waste products of the Lamp project are “not hazardous in any way”. He refers to the safety record of Lynas which in “all of its constructions … has been achieved with zero lost time injury”.
When New Matilda suggested that problems are more likely to arise in the long term, even 20 or 30 years away, he replied: “I would be lying if I categorically tell you there is no risk in 20 or 30 years time from anything. What I can tell you is that the unanimous conclusion of all of the scientific experts from all of the different organisations that have investigated this material and everything else is that there will be no discernible risk for the public or anyone else from this facility.”
But this is far from true.
For example, in April this year, the National Toxic Network (NTN), a community-based network “working to ensure a toxic-free future for all”, published a preliminary assessment of the waste steam of Lynas’s Lamp project. It was prepared by Lee Bell, a qualified environmental scientist with 20 years experience in analysis of industrial process plants, groundwater monitoring and contaminated sites. He co-chaired the Core Consultative Committee on Waste under the former Labor government in Western Australia, which reformed the state’s hazardous waste sector. Readers of his 29 page NTN report (pdf), which was reviewed by another scientist, are likely to be concerned about the company’s environmental plans.
I asked Lynas’ spokesperson about the NTN report: “Whatever you think of it, it [the report] is a solid document. It appears to be academically referenced and it also appears to have had some form of review. If you read it, on a number of scores, you would be concerned?”…..
The Lynas spokesman rejected an NTN claim that Lamp’s location on a reclaimed swamp with a high rainfall is relevant to disposal of low level radioactive waste. Asked if he was aware it was a “marshy site”, he said, “I have no idea”. He explained that although there is a pristine fishing village and beach at Kuantan three and a half kilometres away on the coast, “if there is a risk there, it is much wider than just Lynas because the Lamp is in a petrochemical zone”. In fact, the site is on a reclaimed peat swamp……..http://aliran.com/11018.html
Trouble with nuclear fuel rods in Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant
Kyodo: Level 1 incident at Japan nuclear plant — Deformed fuel rods stuck together in pool http://enenews.com/kyodo-level-1-incident-at-japan-nuclear-plant-deformed-fuel-rods-stuck-together-in-pool
December 19th, 2012
Regulators confirm ‘level 1’ incident (on 7 level scale) at TEPCO nuclear plant in west Japan. Deformed fuel rods stuck together in pool
18 Dec 12
Title: Regulators confirm level 1 incident at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant
Source: Kyodo
Date: Dec. 19, 2012
Japan’s nuclear regulatory authority said Wednesday that recently confirmed trouble with fuel rods stored in a spent nuclear fuel pool at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant is a level 1 incident on a 7-point international scale.
A pair of fuel rods was touching as a result of deformation in the bundle of fuel rods, leading the Nuclear Regulation Authority to determine that the fuel had likely been loaded to the reactor core “in an abnormal situation.” The NRA’s assessment of the incident is provisional. […]
also: Nuclear fuel rods touching — “Serious fuel failure accident” risked at Japan plant
South Korea’s nuclear power bungles
A Year Of Nuclear Bungles, New Matilda, By Jim Green, 19 Dec 12,“……In South Korea, five engineers were charged with covering up a potentially dangerous power failure at the Kori-I reactor in May. The accident occurred because of a failure to follow safety procedures. The manager of the reactor decided to conceal the incident and to delete records, despite a legal obligation to notify the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission.
In early November, the South Korean government shut down two reactors at Yeonggwang to replace thousands of parts that had been supplied with forged quality and safety warranties. Plant owner Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) has acknowledged possible bribery and collusion by KHNP officials as well as corruption by firms supplying reactor parts. In late November there were further revelations and the current total stands at 8601 reactor parts, 10 firms and six reactors. Inadequate and compromised regulation has been a key contributor to the problems in South Korea’s nuclear industry — just as it was a key factor behind the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
South Korea wants to develop uranium enrichment technology (a direct route to nuclear weapons material) in violation of its commitments under the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula……. http://newmatilda.com/2012/12/19/year-nuclear-bungles
1 This Month
1 June Webinar – The High Cost of Nuclear Power – Register
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
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