The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday they plan to postpone starting the removal of melted nuclear fuel from the No. 1 reactor at the disaster-struck Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant by five years from the initially planned fiscal 2020 amid delays in decommissioning work. english,kyodonews.jp

Tokyo hopes to boost international pressure on South Korea to remove its import ban on seafood produced in eight prefectures, including Fukushima, according to government officials. japantimes.co.jp

JNFL submitted a request to the Nuclear Regulation Authority in January for reviews of the Rokkasho plant to ensure that it meets new safety standards for fuel cycle facilities introduced last December. world-nuclear-news.com

The White House said on Friday it regretted Russia’s decision not to attend preparatory meeting last week for the 2016 nuclear security summit. euronews.com

          I have often mentioned my lack of faith in the competence and integrity of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I have blogged before about their failure to adequately monitor and regulate the nuclear power industry in the U.S. Today I am going to talk about another problem with the NRC. The Union of Concerned Scientists recently published an article by Dave Lochbaum, the director of the Nuclear Safety Project criticizing the NRC for withholding documents from the public.

           In 2004, the NRC made the decision to withhold documents that it had received from nuclear power plant operators dealing with fire protection and emergency planning. The NRC policy paper admitted that most information related to fire protection and emergency planning would not need to be designated as sensitive. This means that the NRC had no need to withhold most such documents from the public but they decided to withhold many such documents anyway. The NRC policy paper stated that all fire protection and emergency planning documents from plant operators would be categorized as “nonpublic.”

          The NRC maintains an online library called ADAMS that is open to the public. However, “nonpublic” documents are not placed in this online database. In addition, there is not even a mention of such documents in the index or bibliography of ADAMS. The 2004 NRC policy paper also said that the NRC “will review for release upon request” any request for any of the fire protection or emergency planning documents from plant operators. The problem with this policy is that the public currently has no way of even knowing that some documents even exist which makes requests for them impossible.

         When Lochbaum discovered this NRC practice in 2014, he immediately filed a request under the Freedom of Information ACT (FOIA) for all incoming documents from all U.S. nuclear power plants that dealt with fire protection from October 1, 2004 to the present. Eventually, the NRC added hundreds of such documents to the ADAMS online database. When Lochbaum reviewed these documents he found a number of requests from nuclear power plant operators in 2006 and 2007 for amendments to or exemptions from NRC fire protection regulations during negotiations over relicensing. Some of these were granted by the NRC. Federal law states that the NRC must consider public input when reviewing licensing of nuclear power plants. Obviously this could not happen if the documents were hidden and the requests were granted without public input.

         None of the information in the documents that Lochbaum reviewed were redacted meaning that the NRC did not consider any of the information in the documents to be of a “sensitive” nature justifying withholding them from public scrutiny. It turns out that none of the plant operators who submitted these documents requested that they be kept secret. The NRC withheld these documents from public access for reasons of their own which have not been adequately explained. Lochbaum has also requested the emergency planning documents that have been withheld by the NRC but has not received a response yet.

         With respect to public transparency of its activities, the NRC says “Nuclear regulation is the public’s business, and it must be transacted publicly and candidly. The public must be informed about and have the opportunity to participate in the regulatory processes as required by law. Open channels of communication must be maintained with Congress, other government agencies, licensees, and the public, as well as with the international nuclear community.” The behavior of the NRC since 2004 has seriously violated what the NRC says is one of its core values of openness. This is just one more reason that the expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. is a very bad idea. If we cannot depend on government agencies to carry out their mandated activities with openness and transparency, we must depend on the honesty and competence of the nuclear industry which has proven to be unworthy of such trust in the past.

Fire at Hartlepool Nuclear Power Station near Cleveland:

Japanese official says that Fukushima “destroyed our life… it can destroy history itself.”  enenews.com

Food products ‘heavily contaminated’ by Fukushima found in US. enenews.com

U.S. authorities on Friday arrested the general director of TENAM USA Corp, Vadim Mikerin, 55, for his part in a kickback scheme that included $1,692,995 in bribes for securing non-competitive contracts for transporting uranium from Russia to the United States. nuclearstreet.com

French security chiefs are investigating a spate of mysterious and illegal flights by tiny, unmanned drones over French nuclear power stations. therakyatpost.com

TEPCO has begun work to remove fuel from the reactor to the spent fuel pool at unit 5 Fukushima Daiichi.  fukuleaks.org

A roof section of a structure covering the Unit 1 reactor at TEPCO’s Fukushima nuclear power plant was removed Friday. the-japan-news.com

Three environmental groups sued a state agency Thursday over the effects of the Northwest’s only commercial nuclear power plant on the water quality of the Columbia River. nuclearnews.net

The disposal of radioactive waste from the planned Diadem radioactive waste storage facility at the ASN (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire) site in Marcoule, southern France, is not liable to result in significant radioactive contamination in another member state, even in the event of an accident, the European Commission has said. nucnet.org
 

 

US sailors have won a major battle in Fukushima lawsuit. enenews.com

Thirty billion dollars in funding for roads, bridges and thousands of new homes in areas devastated by the tsunami in Japan three and a half years ago is still languishing unspent in the bank. trust.org

As part of the restructuring of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (ACEL), a new organization – Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) – is set assume full responsibility for all day-to-day operations at its nuclear laboratories. world-nuclear-news.org

In a major boost to indigenization of defense manufacturing, India’s first nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed submarine INS Arihant will head out for sea trials by the year-end.  economictimes.indiatimes.com
 

 

 

          I have blogged before about the thrust of nations which export nuclear technology to sell nuclear reactors to developing nations. I recently read about that the United States has offered to help Malaysia build a nuclear power plant. In 2009, the Malaysian government presented its plan for nuclear power claiming that nuclear power was inexpensive, clean and safe.

         The Malaysian Physicians for Social Responsibility (MPSR) are not happy about the project. “We have been working to convince the government that such a project is not a wise or viable energy option since it carries inherent risks and is not affordable, economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sound.”

         The MPSR believe that “the cost of electricity generated by a nuclear power plant is far higher than electricity from fossil fuels or renewable energy.” They quote Moody’s Corporate Finances that rates the relative risk of investments about the cost of electricity from nuclear power. Moody’s estimated that the when nuclear power generates a kilowatt, the cost of that kilowatt is almost three hundred percent higher than a kilowatt generated by wind power and about one hundred and fifty percent higher than a solar energy kilowatt. (Both wind and solar power keep getting cheaper as nuclear power keeps getting more expensive.)

         The MPSR also cite a 2014 World Nuclear Industry Status Report that projects that the adoption of renewable energy sources will increase at a rapid pace as the investment in renewables far surpasses the future investment in nuclear power plants and fossil fuel plants.

         The MPSR mentions that Greenpeace has identified almost a hundred minor nuclear accidents across the globe between 1952 and 2009. Greenpeace claims that any of those accidents could have easily escalated into a major accident that would threaten the environment and human health. The horrible nuclear disaster at Fukushima vividly displays just what can happen when a conjunction of factors destroys a nuclear power plant.

        The MPSR says that the “most dangerous and unacceptable” feature of the use of nuclear reactors to generate electricity is the production of radioactive waste, some of which can remain radioactive and dangerous for thousands of years. While there has been some effort to create underground repositories where such waste could be safely stored, there is no global solution to disposing of the hundreds of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel that have been generated by nuclear power plants.

        The MPSR complains that there is no compelling evidence that nuclear power is safe, clean or cheap. They say that there is little public support for the project, that there has not been a genuine dialog, debate or consultation with the Malaysian public about the project.  The MPSR points out that other nations are phasing out nuclear power and calls on the Malaysian government to take into account the dangers of nuclear power and cancel the project.

         I sincerely hope that other developing nations can mount serious opposition to the current hard marketing push of the nations that export nuclear technology.