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Nuclear dream turning sour in San Clemente, USA

“It’s easy to get distracted by the beauty here and not think about a nuclear meltdown,” he said. But he added he thinks about that more often. “It would be great to just shut it down.”

Residents Rethink a Nuclear Neighbor, Deteriorating Pipes, Japan Disaster Spark Calls to Close California Plant, but Shortages Are Feared WSJ, By TAMARA AUDI, 6 April 12 SAN CLEMENTE, Calif.—For three decades, the reactor domes of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station have been fixtures on the coastline here less than five miles south of this surfer’s paradise.

“You see it, you just don’t think about it,” said Dan Kenton, a 49-year-old San Clemente resident.

That appears to be changing. Concern over the plant’s safety is growing in communities around San Onofre—about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego—after officials found deteriorating steam pipes in both reactors earlier this year. Both are now shut….. Continue reading →

April 6, 2012 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Los Angeles gets radioactive rain

(includes video) Radioactive Rain Detected in Los Angeles, LA Weekly ,  .http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/radiation_rain_los_angeles_fukushima.php  5 April 12,  Rain and mist that fell in Los Angeles last weekend was five times as radioactive as normal, environmental journalist and LA Weekly contributor Michael Collins reported on his website this week.

Collins tests samples with his own equipment and says that, on Saturday, he measured the highest proportion of radioactivity in the local environment since he began monitoring the local fallout from the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March of 2011:

One misty rain sample collected in downtown Santa Monica was over five times normal background radiation, the highest level in Los Angeles Basin rain since this reporter began sampling and testing different media March 15, 2011, four days after the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns begin.

He called the findings “shocking” and said his readings would qualify that sample as a hazardous material under the California Highway Patrol’s protocols.

Even background radiation Saturday night, which had apparently diminished significantly since his earlier sample, was 30 percent “hotter” than normal, he says.  Time for a good umbrella? Read more here.

.http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/radiation_rain_los_angeles_fukushima.php

April 6, 2012 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Small Modular Reactors – the latest desperate effort to revive the nuclear idustry

Small Modular Reactors, [SMRs] the latest “rabbit out the nuclear hat,” are generally based on scaled down BWR or PWR technology and illustrate the nuclear industry’s schizophrenic attitude to reactor size…. it was clear that the AP600 [small nuclear reactor] was hopelessly uneconomic…  SMRs may turn out to be the latest in a long line of nuclear designs that looked good on paper, but could not make the transition to commercial technology

Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012, The Energy Report 2 April 12, ”…….Technological Cul-de-Sac If plant life extensions can be achieved in France and the U.S. and Gen III+ does prove a blind alley, it raises the question of what options are open to the nuclear sector. Ten years ago, the industry answer would have been Generation IV designs. Unlike Gen III+, which evolved from existing Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), these would be based on radical new technologies. Six technologies were selected by the major nuclear countries as the most promising.

However, 10 years on, they seem no closer to commercial deployment. Continue reading →

April 6, 2012 Posted by | Reference, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Safety worries continue at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant

“It’s unsettling to live just a few miles from the plant,” ….. Regulators also found flaws in the utility’s analysis of how the plant would withstand different accident conditions such as earthquakes, tornadoes or loss of coolant.

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant Unlikely To Restart Before Fall (includes video) HUFFINGTON POST 04/ 4/2012 BLAIR, Neb. (AP) — Federal regulators said Wednesday it’s unlikely the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant will restart before fall because of the extensive inspections and repairs needed. Continue reading →

April 6, 2012 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission perturbed about troubled San Onofre nuclear station

US nuclear agency head to visit troubled Calif reactors  HOUSTON, Apr 5, 2012   (Reuters) – The chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and several California lawmakers are scheduled to tour the troubled San Onofre nuclear station in the state on Friday, the agency said.

NRC Chair Gregory Jaczko will visit Southern California Edison’s 2,150-megawatt San Onofre nuclear station near San Diego, where both reactors have been shut since January due to the discovery of premature wear on tubes inside giant steam generators. Continue reading →

April 6, 2012 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Health risks of cattle grazing on radioactively contaminated land

Uranium, Cattle Grazing and Risks Unknown NYT. By LESLIE MACMILLAN 4 April 12,  As I reported last weekend in The Times, a cattle rancher stumbled upon an abandoned uranium mine in the summer of 2010 on his grazing land, about 60 miles east of the Grand Canyon on the Navajo reservation, and notified federal officials. They came in with Geiger counters and found levels of radioactivity that were alarmingly high.

A year and a half later, the former mine in Cameron, Ariz., is not fenced off to either humans or animals, and cattle continue to roam through the site and eat grass that might be tainted with uranium and other toxic substances.

“Those cattle go to auction in Sun Valley and are sold on the open market,” said Ronald Tohannie, a project manager with the Navajo advocacy groupForgotten People. “Then people eat the meat.” Continue reading →

April 5, 2012 Posted by | health, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Cost of building nuclear plants, and the risk of time and cost overruns

 the issue of shifting the risk from the banks back to convincing consumers that they must bear the risk…. 

 the Vogtle project for two AP1000 reactors supplied by Toshiba/Westinghouse, is in a state (Georgia) where the regulator is already allowing cost recovery, even before the start of serious construction…. It is unlikely there will be many more states with regulators willing and able to commit consumers to repay all the costs, especially if things go wrong at these sites

Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012, The Energy Report, 5 April 12 “…..Gen III+ Claims The nuclear industry would probably like to forget the claims it made for Generation III+ designs. In short, Gen III+ reactors would achieve the dream combination of being both safer and simpler, making them cheaper and easier to build. The expected overnight (excluding finance charges) construction cost was forecast to be no more than $1,000/kilowatt hour (KWh), so that a typical 1,500-megawatt (MW) nuclear power plant would cost $1.5 billion (B). This was much less than the few plants completed in the 1990s and, not by coincidence, a figure that meant power from new nuclear reactors would be competitive with power from gas-fired plants.

However, the $1,000/KWh promise quickly began to unravel, when the first order for a Gen III+ design, Olkiluoto in Finland, was priced in 2004 at more than double that level. Construction of the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) supplied by French company Areva, and its only successor so far in the West, Flamanville in France, has descended into farce. Both plants are now five years over their expected construction time and the latest cost estimates are about double the level forecast at construction start. Most recent serious cost estimates and bids in the past few years for Gen III+ designs have been of the order of $6,000/KWh. Continue reading →

April 5, 2012 Posted by | business and costs, Reference, UK, USA | Leave a comment

USA Navy veterans were exposed to ionising radiation

Federal hearings confirm Navy veterans exposed to leaking radiation first revealed by  News Channel 5 By: Ron Regan, newsnet5.com  5 April 12,  SAN ANTONIO, Texas – Federal hearings confirm how Navy veterans were unwittingly exposed to leaking radiation that was first revealed in a series of exclusive 5 On Your Side investigations.

U.S. Navy veterans serving at McMurdo Station, Antarctica have long suspected that cancer deaths among those who served at the base in the 1960s and 70s may have been connected to a nuclear plant constructed at the base. Continue reading →

April 5, 2012 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

UK and USA cannot ignore the economic effects of Fukushima

Prospects for Nuclear Power in 2012, The Energy Report, 5 April 12 “Banks have signaled that they are unwilling to bear the risk of financing new nuclear projects, leaving three sets of interests that might be able to take it on: the utilities, the vendor or the consumer, in some form, via the state.”

Even before the Fukushima disaster, the long-awaited nuclear renaissance in the West seemed to be running out of steam. There were two main factors behind this failure; the new Generation III+ reactors produced to take account of the lessons of Chernobyl that would spearhead the revival were not living up to their promises, and, more importantly, banks were proving unwilling to provide finance.

The key markets for the renaissance were the U.S. and the UK. Continue reading →

April 5, 2012 Posted by | politics, UK, USA | Leave a comment

Rooftop solar energy program for Los Angeles

CLEAN LA Solar program, which includes a 150-megawatt FiT, will create 4,500 jobs, generate $500 million in economic activity and offset 2.25 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2016

Rooftop Solar Energy Program Wins Critical Approval From Los Angeles, City Council, Market Watch Los Angeles Business Council applauds decision allowing LADWP to create new national model for rooftop solar energy LOS ANGELES, Apr 03, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) – The Los Angeles City Council cleared the way for the launch of an innovative rooftop solar-energy program today, approving a measure to allow the Department of Water and Power
(DWP) to move forward with the groundbreaking CLEAN LA Solar program.

The CLEAN LA Solar program will allow local property owners to sell solar power generated from rooftops and parking lots back to the DWP, using a mechanism called a feed-in tariff, or FiT. Los Angeles will be the largest city in the nation to adopt such a program, which will supply renewable energy at a reasonable cost while spurring private investment, creating high-quality jobs, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and helping the state and city meet renewable power requirements. Continue reading →

April 4, 2012 Posted by | decentralised, USA | Leave a comment

USA military has had to stall plans for nuclear powered drones

Several drones are lost both in testing and in combat areas every year after the radio connection between controller and drone was broken. Most famously, a CIA-operated version of America’s most-advancedproduction UAV, the RQ-170 Sentinel crashed 140 miles inside Iran after the operators reportedly lost the radio signal that allowed them to control it….

U.S. decides against making crash-prone drones run on nukes Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s 1,000 pounds of fissionable nuclear material falling this way!  IT World, By Kevin Fogarty  April 02, 2012,   — The U.S. military has apparently shelved the idea of developing a nuclear-powered drone aircraft that would be capable of staying in the air for months, but would pose so great a risk of those it might crash on that it was canceled due to “political conditions.” Continue reading →

April 4, 2012 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

USA military industry wants dangerous nuclear powered drones

 “It’s a pretty terrifying prospect. Drones are much less safe than other aircraft and tend to crash a lot. There is a major push by this industry to increase the use of drones and both the public and Government are struggling to keep up with the implications.”

Years of development work on nuclear powered drones, NZ Herald, Apr 4, 2012 Drones have become a key weapon of the Obama Administration and US intelligence services and the military uses them in several countries, including Pakistan and Yemen.
They are operated by “pilots” thousands of kilometres away and sometimes remain in the air for days. A new generation of nuclear-powered drones would be capable of flying for months on end without refuelling. Continue reading →

April 4, 2012 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Costs are killing the USA nuclear industry

 ”nuclear power is neither affordable nor worth the risk….. the very different natures of nuclear disaster versus coal pollution rightly makes people worried.

Expert: Nuclear Power Is On Its Deathbed A new report from a University of Vermont researcher says the cost of the safety measures needed for nuclear energy will eventually make the power source economically unviable USA News, By JASON KOEBLER March 30, 2012   After the Fukushima power plant disaster in Japan last year, the rising costs of nuclear energy could deliver a knockout punch to its future use in the United States, according to a researcher at the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment.

“From my point of view, the fundamental nature of [nuclear] technology suggests that the future will be as clouded as the past,” says Mark Cooper, the author of the report.  Continue reading →

March 31, 2012 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

NRC approves 2 new nuclear reactors, seeing that consumers take the financing risks

the SCE&G and Vogtle proposals have proceeded because both state legislatures passed anti-consumer state laws that allow utilities to collect rates in advance of project completion to pay for financing costs, with no opportunity for refunds if the projects are cancelled. These schemes essentially shift the risk from big power companies and their shareholders onto the ratepayers—families and businesses.

Misguided NRC Approves New SC Nuclear Reactors  http://www.cleanenergy.org/index.php?/Press-Update.html?form_id=8&item_id=283 Local Organizations Frustrated as Federal Agency Fails to Fully Consider Fukushima Lessons COLUMBIA, S.C. – Just weeks after the one-year anniversary of the devastating nuclear disaster in Japan, today, in a 4-1 vote, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)approved a final license for two new reactors at the site of South Carolina Electric & Gas’ (subsidiary of SCANA Corp.) currently operating V.C. Summer nuclear power plant. Continue reading →

March 31, 2012 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

No new nuclear power plants says retiring CEO of Exelon nulcear company

Exelon’s ‘Nuclear Guy’: No New Nukes Forbes, Jeff McMahon , C3/29/2012  Nuclear power is no longer an economically viable source of new energy in the United States, the freshly-retired CEO of Exelon, America’s largest producer of nuclear power, said in Chicago Thursday.

And it won’t become economically viable, he said, for the forseeable future Continue reading →

March 30, 2012 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

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