Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has begun trials of the first unit of the improved water decontamination system at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the company announced on its website. en.ria.ru

Fukushima plant plagued by problems as radioactive material bleeds into Pacific. enenews.com

Pakistan is developing sea-based missiles and expanding its interest in tactical nuclear warheads to give it a “second-strike” capability if a catastrophic nuclear attack destroyed all its land-based weapons. indiantimes.com

The head of the U.N. atomic agency is urging Iran to provide answers over suspicions that Tehran worked on nuclear arms. foxnews.com

         I have mentioned insurance for nuclear power plants in previous blog posts but have never really gone into nuclear insurance in detail. At the World Nuclear Association’s 2014 Symposium in London, Mark Tetley, the managing director of the power, nuclear and construction division at Lloyd’s broker Price Forbes discussed nuclear insurance. “It is my belief that insurers could do more. We could provide cost effective, materially higher financial support for the nuclear industry, reducing the burden of accident costs that currently falls to governments and taxpayers, and thus improving the industry’s image,” he said.

        There are two types of nuclear insurance for operating nuclear power plants. The first type of insurance covers the plant, building and income stream of the owners. The second kind of nuclear insurance covers payments to victims of nuclear accidents at a plant. This type of nuclear insurance is based on international treaties drawn up when nuclear power was young. An important feature of the treaties is a cap on the liability of a nuclear plant operator for damage caused and harm inflicted by a nuclear accident. Tetley says that the national and local laws  based on these treaties are out of date. Both the nuclear industry and the insurance business have grown enormously since the treaties were implemented.

       In the United States, the Price Anderson Act limits the liability of nuclear plant operators in case of accidents. Once the cost of an accident has passed a half a billion dollars, then additional costs are supposed to be covered by the assets of the owners of the nuclear power plant where the accident occured. Unfortunately, it is not improbable that a company might not be able to pay all the additional costs and would have to declare bankruptcy. In this situation, the additional costs would have to be borne by the U.S. taxpayers.

     Only the first three hundred and seventy five billion dollars of an accident are covered by insurance in the U.S. There is a fund that all U.S. nuclear power plant operators would pay into in the event of a major nuclear accident. Currently, that fund would collect about thirteen billion dollars. Estimates of the cost of the Fukushima accident are currently at forty billion dollars and the estimated cost of the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine is over eighty billion dollars. In light of previous major accidents, the thirteen billion dollar fund of the U.S. is not even nearly enough.

       International treaties on nuclear liability are currently in the process of implements a broader definition of nuclear damage which must be compensated. This includes considering compensation claims for up to thirty years after an accident. Insurers say that they simply cannot afford to offer insurance that would satisfy the new requirements. In addition, different countries have chose different limits on nuclear liability. Belgium caps liability at about a billion and a half dollars while China caps liability at forty five million. This is a huge different. Trying to comply with all the different caps and regulations across the globe is very difficult for international insurance companies.

(See Part 2)    

Experts highly suspicious of Japan’s claim that nobody suffered acute radiation syndrome after Fukushima.  enenews.com

More damage will come as radioactive material from Fukushima biomagnifies in food chain.  enenews.com

The Electric Power Research Institute recently announced an agreement with Purolite to commercialize a resin that helps remove radioactive cobalt from the water systems of nuclear power plants.  nuclearstreet.com

Russia has announced two new milestones in its ‘Proryv’, or Breakthrough, project to enable a closed nuclear fuel cycle. world-nuclear-news.org

         In my last blog post, I talked about the U.S. NRC approving the GE-Hitachi Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor design. The whole issue of licensing is complicated with different countries applying different criterion for granting licenses. And inside a particular country, the rules may not be applied consistently. The nuclear industry would prefer to have a more consistent and faster licensing process. This would certainly be more attractive to investors.

        Some licensing and permitting goals are obvious. One of the most important is insuring safety and security. Regulatory agencies want to decrease threats to the environment and other negative possible impacts. There should be transparency and acceptance by all the stakeholders, not just the shareholders. The industry and the regulatory agencies should be efficient. In addition, the nuclear industry would like to facilitate investment.

        According to the nuclear industry, the licensing and permitting of nuclear reactor construction is too long and costly. There are many issues that must be resolved. A site must be selected and its suitability documented. A “licensable entity” must be created. A reactor design must be selected and certified. A supply chain must be created that supports the reactor and satisfies the regulators. Long term commitments must be made with respect to fuel, etc. The community of stakeholders must be involved early in the process and continue to be engaged. And, finally, all the paper work involved with licensing and permitting must be completed, submitted, approved and defended against law suits. The big problem with finding investment lies in the fact that investors must be secured before the licensing and permitting process begins with no guarantee that it will be successful.

        In the United Kingdom, there are many approvals that must be obtained during the process of licensing and constructing a nuclear power reactor. “The first phase includes justification of a reactor design; a Generic Design Assessment; a nuclear site licence application; a funded decommissioning plan; a strategic siting assessment; an environmental impact assessment; a Development Consent Order (DCO) application; consultation with the local community; a generation licence; preliminary site work permission, nuclear insurance; and an environmental permit. The second phase requires satisfying ongoing licence and DCO pre-operation conditions, as well as other consents for materials handling and grid connection.”

        There are three new trends with respect to nuclear power reactor licensing and construction. There are vendor-initiated ventures where private companies and consortiums dominate and utilities no longer play a prominent role. Vendors prefer to have a customer lined up before investing in preliminaries. Key milestones need to be coordinated to attract investors. Unlike utilities, some consortium members may want to pull out of the arrangement and there must be an exit strategy for them. A consortium of different entities may have a diversity of goals and internal processes that must be taken into account.

        A second trend is toward setting up new build sites near existing legacy sites. Factors taken into account for the original sites such as seismic stability, water availability and transportation usually remain the same which benefits siting new reactors in the same area. On the other hand, there might be conflict between the safety of the legacy power plant and the new power plant or left over contamination from a previous power plant. The new and old power plants might compete for labor, transportation, grid capacity, etc.

       The third trend has to do with gain the cooperation of the regulatory agencies by engaging the regulators in the commercial licensing and permitting timelines. Changes to governmental planning can serve to improve the predictability of projects. Political goodwill through community engagement can lower the risk of engaging in the licensing and permitting process.

UK nuclear regulatory agency logo:

The melted fuel for the Fukushima Unit 1  reactor is outside the pedestal and could possibly be outside of containment. fukuleaks.org

Japan had about 47.1 tons of plutonium in and outside the country at the end of 2013, about 2.9 tons more than the year before, the Cabinet Office said on Tuesday. japantimes.co.jp

Research by a team led by Jae W Kwon at the University of Missouri in the USA has opened the door for the development of a new generation of water-based batteries powered by beta radiation. world-nuclear-news.org

A company developing a potential site for Utah’s first nuclear plant will face another court challenge to its water rights. nuclearstreet.com

          New nuclear reactor designs are constantly being developed. Any design that will be built in the United States has to get approval from the NRC. That approval is a critical step in the construction of any new reactor. The NRC has just approved the design of the GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s Economic Simplified Boiling-water Reactor (ESBWR) for use in the U.S. Once the new certification rule is published in the U.S. Federal Register, thirty days later the rule goes into effect.

         The ESBWR is designed to generate about one and one half gigawatts of electricity. The design includes what is called natural circulating coolant. There are passive safety features involved which would be able to cool down the reactor automatically without human involvement in case of a malfunction or a serious accident. The design includes a taller reactor vessel, a shorter core and improved water flow through the vessel all of which serve to enhance natural circulation of water. It also includes an isolated condenser system that can control the level of the water and also dissipate heat from radioactive decay while the reactor vessel is pressurized. And, finally, if the reactor pressure falls, there is a gravity driven cooling system that will maintain water levels. GE-Hitachi first submitted the ESBWR design to the NRC in 2005.

         The NRC carried out a thorough engineering evaluation on the design and issued a safety evaluation report in early 2011. There was a draft certification rule notice that was published following the report. Included in the notice were public comments and petitions being circulated by activists. Following the draft certification notice, the NRC requested additional information about the steam dryer in the design. The steam dryer prevents excess moisture from causing damage to the turbine that generates the electricity in a nuclear power plant. In May of 2014, the NRC issued a supplement to the original draft certification notice to take into account changes in the analysis of the steam dryer in the design. There were no public comments about the supplemental material added to the original draft certification notice.

         The NRC is considering two combined construction and operating applications that include the new GE-Hitachi reactor design. Detroit Edison wants to add a third reactor to the Fermi plant in Monroe County, Michigan. Dominion Virginia Power is asking for a license to add a third reactor to the North Anna power plant in Louisa County, Virginia. It is expected that the NRC will issue a license for the new Fermi reactor in 2015 and a license for the new North Anna reactor in 2016.

        In addition to the certification of the new ESBWR design, the NRC has certified four other new reactor designs. These include the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor, the System 80+, the AP600 and the AP1000. The Chinese are developing their own reactor design based on the AP1000. There are several reactor construction projects around the globe which involve the AP1000 design.

GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s Economic Simplified Boiling-water Reactor design:

A magnitude 5.6 earthquake occurred in South part of Ibaraki at 12:28 9/16/2014 (JST), according to Japan Meteorological Agency. fuklushima-diary.com

The Minister of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan says that the contaminated water at Fukushima is completely under control. ex-slf.blogspot.jp

Nuclear deal is elusive as Iran and six powers resume talks in New York. reuter.com

Unplanned shutdown problems at PPL nuclear plant near Berwick resolved, NRC says. timesleader.com