The IAEA can’t guarantee any nuclear program is peaceful. blogs.reuters.com
Argonne partners with industry on nuclear reactor work. rdmag.com
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Geiger Readings for January 08, 2014
Ambient office = 129 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 91 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 81 nanosieverts per hourAvacado bar from Costco = 103 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 74 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 58 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Reactors 193 – Exelon And Other Nuclear Power Plant Owners Struggle to Compete in Energy Market
I have blogged in the past about cheap natural gas and declining electricity demand making nuclear power reactors less economical. Past recipient of many tax breaks, loan guarantees, guaranteed electricity prices and subsidies, now nuclear power is facing the prospect of having to compete with other sources of energy on a more level playing field. One of the unique aspects of nuclear energy is the fact that if the owners of a nuclear power plant in the United States cannot show that it is making a profit and cannot find someone who wants to buy the power plant, it can have the operating license pulled by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This would mean that the nuclear power plant in question would have to be shut down and decommissioned. About half of the one hundred nuclear power plants in the U.S. are directly competing with cheaper fossil fuels. As might be expected, owners of nuclear power plants are hard at work trying to find a way to stay in business.
Exelon Corporation has already had to close a nuclear power plant in New Jersey because it was not able to compete in the open energy market. Exelon has been a harsh critic of government support for other energy sources such as renewables. They apparently had no problem with government support when it helped the nuclear industry. Exelon is also complaining about the “regulatory burden” that it says is adding up to five percent to its operating costs per year. If all nuclear power plants were adhering scrupulously to all NRC regulations, the U.S. citizens and environment would be much safer. Hard to be sympathetic when failure to follow correct procedures could threaten the lives of millions of people near a nuclear power plant.
Exelon and other nuclear power plant owners are trying to get states to give them assistance in the form of price guarantees that may be higher than the market price for power or special consideration as a low carbon power source. While they complain about subsidies and quotas for renewable energy because of its low carbon footprint, they are actively seeking the same sort of government assistance for nuclear power. Without government help, the nuclear industry says that it will have to close more nuclear power plants because they can’t compete in the energy market place.
Many environmentalists who once opposed nuclear power are now supporting it as a low carbon energy source. Unfortunately, they are not considering all the different carbon sources in the entire nuclear fuel cycle as well as the carbon dioxide emitted in the construction of nuclear power plants and the transportation of equipment, materials and fuel. Even if you ignore the carbon issues and the lack of permanent nuclear waste depositories, the time needed to license and construct nuclear reactors is too long for nuclear power to help much with the climate crisis. We have to act in the next ten years to avoid disaster and the world simply cannot build and operate enough nuclear reactors to make much impact on the global supply of energy in that time. Renewables are getting cheaper every day and they do not have all of the baggage of nuclear power.
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Geiger Readings for January 07, 2014
Ambient office = 92 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 77 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 97 nanosieverts per hourBartlett pear bar from Costco = 103 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 89 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 77 nanosieverts per hour -
Radioactive Waste 112 – Japan Having Trouble Disposing of Fukushima Radioactive Debris
I often blog and post links about the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Despite concerns about earthquake and floods causing future accidents, the Abe government is determined to restart Japan’s idle fleet of nuclear reactors. Abe has made nuclear power a central theme of his administration. Both the restart of domestic reactors and the export of nuclear technology are seen by Abe as absolutely critical to the economic future of Japan. One problem that is ongoing and unanswered is what to do with all the radioactively contaminated waste produced by cleaning up the site of the Fukushima disaster.
It is estimated that one hundred and fifty two tons of contaminated waste including compost, incinerated ash, paddy straw and sewage sludge from the Fukushima cleanup have been accumulated from twelve prefectures. The government had intended to create permanent disposal sites in five prefectures mostly in northern and eastern Japan. However, the residents of those prefectures have blocked many of those projects.
In Shioya, Tochiga Prefecture in central Japan, local residents objected to the siting of a disposal facility because they were concerned about possible impact on an important hot spring. Over one hundred and seventy thousand people sign a petition against the project.
In Miyagi Prefecture, exploratory drilling to determine the best place to site a waste depository was halted by local resistance. Official’s vehicles were block by protestors when the officials came to the prefecture for a survey. A new ordinance to protect local water supplies was just passed in Miyagi and that may also interfere with the depository siting.
Gunma and Ibaraki Prefectures are far behind schedule in planning for depository siting. Neither prefecture has even developed a plan for selecting possible disposal sites.
Chiba Prefecture has begun removing wastes from a temporary storage site although Ministry of Environment officials are still trying to find another site that the waste can be moved to.
Fukushima Prefecture contains over eighty percent of the contaminated waste from the disaster. Existing waste disposal sites and new sites are being constructed in abandoned towns in the area of the power plant to take the most contaminated soil. Owners of the land that would be used have objected to the plan and this has slowed the siting process. Originally, it was hoped that disposal sites would be set up and operating by January of this year but this has not happened.
Japan was having problems storing the waste produced by nuclear power plants before the Fukushima disaster. Now they have to find a way to dispose of the debris from the disaster and it is not going well. Japan is highly populated but very small and it has a high density of people per square mile. The Japanese revere the small villages in the countryside and local residents have a lot of say over what happens in their area. Apparently a lot of Japanese citizens object to having a radioactive waste dump near their community.
Prefecture map of Japan:
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Geiger Readings for January 06, 2014
Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hourAmbient outside = 65 nanosieverts per hourSoil exposed to rain water = 61 nanosieverts per hourSunshine enegy bar from Costco = 81 nanosieverts per hourTap water = 114 nanosieverts per hourFiltered water = 104 nanosieverts per hour -
Nuclear Reactors 192 – Michigan Nuclear Power Station Leaked 2,000 Gallons of Oil into Lake Michigan
I often blog about nuclear power reactors. My focus has usually been on the radioactive material in the reactors and problems which may result in the release of radioactive materials into the environment. However, there is much more to a nuclear power plant than the reactors and their radioactive fuels. There are complex mechanical systems, complex electronic systems and complex human systems. There are possibilities for pollution of the ecosystem beyond nuclear materials in the operation of a nuclear power plant.
The Donald C. Cook Generating Station is located in southwest Michigan on the shore of Lake Michigan near the city of Bridgman, Michigan. The Station is operated by Indiana Michigan Power Company and it is owned by American Electric Power. Construction of the two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors at the Station began in 1969 and both reactors were connected to the grid and supplying power by 1978. In 2005, the NRC granted twenty year license extensions. Reactor 1 is now licensed until 2034 and Reactor 2 is now licensed until 2037. Both reactor produce about one gigawatt of electricity.
There have been accidents at the Station that took the lives of three people. The Station has had to be shut down several times due to serious mechanical problems in key systems. In 1996, both reactors were shut down for three years because the operators were not correcting serious problems in a timely and competent fashion. In 2003, Reactor 1 was shut down because a transformer fire triggered an automatic shutdown. One of the consequences of the fire was the release of cooling oil into Lake Michigan.
In October of 2014, the Station began leaking cooling oil into Lake Michigan. Officials at the Station notified state officials about the leak on December 13. The source of the leak was not found until December 20, 2014. During the two months of the leak, about two thousand gallons of oil from a cooling system leaked into the lake.
The communication manager for the Station said that there would be no impact on the lake from the spill. He commented that oil left a sheen on water and that they had found no sheen on the water in their reservoir, in the lake or on beaches. He concluded that the oil had dispersed.
The Director of a non-profit called the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, challenged the claim that dispersion of the oil removed any threat to the lake and surrounding ecosystem. He wondered if the officials at the Station really had any solid idea of how much oil had leaked into the lake during the two months that they were unaware of the leak.
Apparently small oil leaks, usually from power transformers, are common occurrences at nuclear power plants. It may seem that oil leaks of even a few thousand gallons should be considered trivial next to things like the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. However, to me, it simply reinforces the idea that nuclear plant operators may be slow to identify and fix problems like the oil leak but they are quick to claim that there is no threat to health or the ecosystem.
Donald C. Cook Generating Station:
