Wild monkeys living in forests of Fukushima have lower blood cell counts than monkeys from northern Japan, and carry detectable levels of cesium in their bodies, researchers have found. sorendreier.com

Local authorities in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan on Sunday started handing out iodine tablets to residents living within 5 km of the Sendai nuclear power plant, which may be restarted in the fall. japantimes.co.jp

The prompt restart of Japan’s nuclear power reactors would have “big advantages” for the country’s economy and environment, according estimates by the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan. world-nuclear-news.org

Workers at the Turkey Point nuclear plant south of Miami found a dead crocodile in its water intake last week, which merited a report to regulators but did not affect plant operations. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

 

 

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

Arakawa river in Fukushima city was awarded a prize as the clearest river in Japan by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. fukushima-diary.com

Roughly 20 or more of the water tanks holding radioactively contaminated water at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant are secondhand. mainichi.jp

Companies in France and the U.S. have recently developed RFID tags with potential applications in nuclear plant welding inspections and nuclear medicine. nuclearstreet.com

A new National Academy of Sciences (NAS) assessment examining the causes of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident affirms the culture of safety adhered to by the U.S. nuclear industry. science20.com

TEPCO admitted a few weeks ago to METI that the trench freezing operation underway for units 2 and 3 was not working. fukuleaks.org

More than 1 trillion Becquerels of radioactive substances were released into the environment during debris-clearing work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant last year, according to estimates by TEPCO.  ajw.asahi.com

Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning has said he hopes to announce plans to expand the utility’s fleet of power reactors by the end of the year. nuclearstreet.com

South Carolina’s V.C. Summer nuclear plant tripped offline Tuesday as it was powering up. nuclearstreet.com

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         A report by the Unites States National Academy of Sciences (NAS) requested by Congress was released yesterday. The report, which took two years to produce, was a response to the question of what lessons were learned from the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March of 2011. The conclusion of the report is that nuclear plant licensees and regulators “must actively seek out and act on new information with respect to hazards with the potential to affect the safety of nuclear power plants.”

         Up to the present, the nuclear industry and its regulators have focused on building nuclear power plants that can withstand specified failures or “design-basis events” such as equipment failures, loss of power or the failure of core cooling systems. In other words, how poor design could be the cause of or could exacerbate an accident.

        The report points out that our decades of experience with operating nuclear power reactors in the U.S. has shown that the risk of damage to a reactor core is dominated by what are called “beyond design basis events” such as hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, tornados, geomagnetic anomalies and earthquakes. The three biggest nuclear disasters, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima were all caused  by “beyond design basis events.” Concentrating on design-basis events did not prevent these nuclear catastrophes.

         The report said that the way that nuclear power plants are currently regulated “are clearly inadequate for preventing core-melt accidents and dealing with the consequences.” Utilizing modern risk assessment principles for licensing and regulating nuclear power reactors could help insure overall safety of currently operating nuclear power plants and any future nuclear power plants that are going to be built.

         The NAS said that it did not have the resources to do an in-depth analysis of overall preparedness for a nuclear disaster in the United States. It urged that the nuclear industry and other organizations that are responsible for emergency preparedness review how well they are prepared to deal with serious nuclear accidents that are associated with natural disasters that affect the whole region where nuclear power plants are located.

          The reports says that “Emergency response plans, including plans for communicating with affected populations, should be revised or supplemented to ensure that there are scalable and effective strategies, well-trained personnel, and adequate resources for responding to long-duration accident/disaster scenarios.” In addition, the NAS says that emergency planning should also consider positive actions such as distribution of potassium iodine pills, evacuation, sheltering in place, and other measure that could benefit offsite populations. The report’s conclusions  and recommendations are about technical matters and not policy. The report has four major recommendations to improve the safety and resilience of U.S. nuclear power plants.

        First, the U.S. nuclear industry and the NRC should improve resource availability and operator training. The training should include the ability to respond to unanticipated complexities with ad hoc solutions.

        Second, they should improve their ability to assess risks from events that could challenge the design of a nuclear reactor in a way that would impact safety including all manner of natural disasters.

        Third, the NRC should work to incorporate “modern risk concepts” into its nuclear safety regulations.

         Fourth, the U.S. nuclear industry and the NRC must build a strong “safety culture” and increase transparency and communication about their work on monitoring and improving nuclear safety.

         These proposals are worthwhile but I am afraid that if Congress does not pass new legislation requiring these changes and the Executive Branch does not strictly enforces adherence to the new legislation, there is little possibility that the NRC and the U.S. nuclear industry will adopt these changes on their own.

Government reports big decline in Alaska caribou after Fukushima releases began. enenews.com

New approaches to removing the contaminated water from trenches around units 2 and 3 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant are being explored after attempts to freeze it failed. world-nuclear-news.org

Two Chinese nuclear utilities have signed agreements that would see them cooperate in the construction and financing of new Candu units at Romania’s Cernavoda plant and at Argentina’s Atucha plant. world-nuclear-news.org

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its draft final rule and draft generic environmental impact statement on the continued storage of used fuel. world-nuclear-news.org

 

 

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         I have blogged before about the new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs) that are being developed. The argument for these reactors is that they can be made in a factory and shipped to the location where they will be used. One problem with that is the fact that a design flaw that is not caught in the design phase will be replicated many times. In any case, these new reactors will have to satisfy licensing requirements that will take years. Now there is a discussion about the possibility of getting the nuclear licensing agencies of the United States and the United Kingdom to work together to expedite the licensing of small modular reactors.

         Representatives of three companies working on SMRs made a joint presentation to the UK parliamentary Energy and Climate Change Committee in the U.K. a week ago. mPower was represented by CEO Bill Fox, NuScale Power was represented by Vice President Thomas Mundy and GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) was represented by Chief Consulting Engineer Eric Loewen.

         Mundy told the committee that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the U.K. Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) could collaborate on supporting research and development of SMRs as well as cooperating on licensing and export issues. However, Mundy pointed out that the two agencies differed in their approach to licensing and regulation. He said that the NRC is very prescriptive while the ONR is more performance based. In the end, the goal of the two agencies was the same: to insure that safety got the highest priority. The NRC has not yet licensed a SMR design but Mundy claimed that their SMR was based on fifty year old technology.

        Fox pointed that his company, mPower, had already spent five hundred million dollars on design, testing and licensing although they had not yet submitted a design to the NRC. He said that the U.S. and the U.K. governments should help fund the detailed engineering design work that was necessary to satisfy the licensing process. MPower is expecting to invest about fifteen million dollars a year in their scalable, modular, advanced light water reactor system. Fox claimed that there may be quite a few safety case analyses that while appropriate for a big reactor, might not be necessary for a SMR. The NRC has made changes to the requirements that must be met by SMRs. He suggested that the ONR in the U.K. should consider similar changes to licensing requirements for SMRs.

       Loewen said that the ONR had about three hundred and fifty safety analysis principles and that GEH PRISM reactor designs satisfy those principles. He did not envision any major problems in getting licenses in the U.K. for the PRISM design. The U.S. Department of Energy has signed an agreement for exploring the development of a PRISM reactor at the South Carolina Savannah River site. GEH PRISM reactors are also being considered  for the U.K. Sellafield nuclear site.

     The NRC is trying to streamline the approval process for SMRs. They hope to be able to review a license application within thirty nine months. While shortening the time it takes to license an SMR in the U.S. or the U.K would definitely benefit the manufacturer, it would be detrimental to the public if any corners were cut in considerations of safety of design. SMRs are being touted as a solution to the world’s energy needs that would be superior to just building more massive nuclear reactors for power generation. In reality, the industry seems to be asking for help in funding their research and development as well as special consideration when it comes to licensing.