The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) will give a stamp of safety approval as early as July 9 to two idled reactors at the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant in Kagoshima Prefecture, paving the way for Kyushu Electric Power Co. to restart the reactors this autumn. Mainichi.jp

Fukushima prefectural government and Iwaki city government are going to open 2 swimming beaches this summer at Yotsukura & Nakoso without analyzing the beach sand. Fukushima-diary.com

A team from Westinghouse and the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light-Water Reactors has been recognized for its work on simulation of conditions in nuclear reactor cores using Titan, the USA’s most powerful supercomputer. World-nuclear-news.org

Owners of the former Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant are speeding up a transfer of used fuel, to address concerns from local residents. Whbl.com

 

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         Today is the Fourth of July. We celebrate the successful American Revolution that won our independence. Psychologists say that independence is one of the most important things to human beings. The ability to determine the course of our own lives and make our own choices is one of the things we brag about with respect to the United States.

         There is a lot of talk these days about energy independence. Ironically, the U.S. has just passed Saudi Arabia in oil production. If we were primarily interested in energy independence, then we would keep the oil for our own use. However, some of the big energy companies have plans to sell U.S. oil on the international market. This would reduce the oil we have for our own use and increase the dependence of other countries on us.

         The U.S. is currently producing record amounts of natural gas by the process known as hydraulic fracking which is polluting groundwater, contributing to green house gases and may be causing earthquakes. When the Russians threatened to turn off European gas, there were calls to liquify U.S. natural gas and ship it to Europe. This would reduce the natural gas that we have available and make Europe dependent on us.

         Coal producers are digging up U.S. coal and shipping it overseas to China. This reduces the coal that we might need and it also makes China more dependent on us. Ironically, the pollution from the burning of U.S. coal in China is blown back across the ocean to pollute the air on the U.S. West Coast.

         When it comes to nuclear power, while there are uranium mines in the U.S., a lot of the easy to mine uranium has been dug up and future U.S. uranium mining will be more expensive. The nuclear industry is truly global and the continued fueling and operation of nuclear power reactors depends on a global supply chain. When countries buy nuclear technology from other countries, they become dependent on those other countries for replacements. If the foreign company no longer makes those components, there are serious problems with keeping the old reactors running. Nuclear waste is piling up all around the world and nuclear plant operators are hard pressed to dispose of it. Some countries have been talking about developing a permanent geological repository that would take in nuclear wastes from other countries. This would mean that other countries that could not dispose of their own waste would not have energy independence.

       While complete energy independence would be wonderful, the current situation in energy generation is more interdependent. Given that the cost of mining and drilling, transportation, processing, operations and waste handling will just keep going up, nuclear power is one of the least independent energy sources that we have. Development of sustainable and renewable alternative energy generation technology is the true path to energy independence.

 

Top U.S. official says that no technology exists anywhere to solve the problem of Fukushima’s melted fuel.  enenews.com

Healthcare workers in Fukushima are seeing more and more people with physical conditions and diseases. enenews.com

A software error at the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant in Kansas that would have overestimated iodine emissions in the event of an accident was of low to moderate safety significance, US regulators have ruled.  world-nuclear-news.org

Russia’s nuclear regulator Rostechnadzor has approved the life extension of unit 1 of the Kalinin nuclear power station and has issued a new 10-year licence for the unit. nucnet.org

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

        I have blogged before about the nuclear waste situation in Russia. In one post, I discussed how Russia had been taking in illegal shipments of nuclear waste from European countries. I have also discussed how Russia has been dumping nuclear waste into the sea around the port of Murmansk. Now a report on the decades of Russian dumping into the Kara Sea of the Arctic Ocean has been provided by the Russians to the Norwegians. Norwegian officials are demanding high level talks with the Russians about their nuclear waste.

       The catalog of dumped nuclear waste and reactors in the Kara Sea is much larger than thought by the Norwegian authorities and the Russian authorities. The known waste dumps include “seventeen thousand containers of radioactive waste, nineteen ships containing radioactive waste, fourteen nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; seven hundred and thirty seven other pieces of radioactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.”

       Given that the Soviets and the Russians kept poor records of nuclear waste dumping, it is likely that the catalog provided to the Norwegians is not complete. The Russians and the Norwegians have formed a task force to investigate the nuclear waste in the Kara Sea. The task force will send an expedition to the Kara Sea area where the Soviet and Russian waste has been dumped. The Russians are eager to explore the same area of the Kara Sea for possible oil production. Some see the Russian report provided to the Norwegians as a veiled plea for help because the Russians cannot handle their nuclear waste problems on their own. There were joint expeditions before in 1992, 1993 and 1994 to map the extent of nuclear waste in the Kara Sea but the new report shows that a lot of waste dumping was excluded from these earlier expeditions.

        The K-27 submarine that was deliberately sunk in the Kara Sea in 1981 with two nuclear reactors full of spent nuclear fuel on board was not part of the initial report on nuclear waste that the Russians gave the Norwegians. Now it is being reported that it is possible that the spent nuclear fuel in the K-27 could achieve criticality and cause an explosion. The expedition will try to determine if the K-27 could be raised and whether or not it has been leaking radioactive materials.

        The Soviet Union and Russia have a very poor record when it comes to keeping track of nuclear waste dumping. They also have a poor record when it comes to insuring the safety of people living in the areas where nuclear waste has been dumped. Unfortunately, the Russian are dedicated to the use of nuclear power at home and the export of nuclear reactor technology and nuclear fuel to foreign companies. They are building new fast breeder reactors with the intent of producing nuclear fuel to compete with uranium fuel in the international marketplace. I fear that the Russian people are not being told the real costs and real dangers of nuclear power generation.

Approximate location of the K-27 submarine:

On 5/20/2014, the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism published a report about radioactive contamination of Tokyo sewage sludge. fukushima-diary.com

The agricultural associations in Fukushima prefecture started requesting approx. 200 companies to purchase the peaches produced in Fukushima from 7/1/2014. fukushima-diary.com

The UK is taking control of more of the foreign-owned separated plutonium it is storing, avoiding the cost and security measures associated with transporting the fuel back to other countries. world-nuclear-news.org

Ukraine’s state nuclear operator Energoatom and Holtec International have signed an agreement for the construction of a centralized repository for spent nuclear fuel at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. nucnet.org

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         Nulcear waste disposal is a great unsolved problem. Geological repositories have been created by some nations but some have had to be closed because of unanticipated problems. In the U.S., years were spent working on a Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada before the project was cancelled in 1999. The best current estimate is that there will be no permanent geological repository in the U.S. before 2050. Other countries are moving ahead in creating new geological repositories for nuclear waste.

         France is currently dependent on fifty eight nuclear power reactors for about seventy five percent of its electricity.  In 2006, the French 1991 Waste Management Act was updated to declare that a permanent geological repository was the preferred solution to France’s nuclear waste disposal. There are about ten thousand cubic feet of high level radioactive wastes and about one million four hundred thousand cubic feet of long lived intermediate level radioactive wastes in France. These two categories of nuclear waste make up about ninety nine percent of the radioactive wastes generated by France’s nuclear power reactors over the past few decades.

         Work is starting on the creation of a new geological repository at Cigeo by Assystem, Cegelec and Spretec engineering firms. Cigeo will consist of disposal tunnels called galleries in a layer of clay near Bure, east of Paris. Twenty seven million dollars have been allocated for a four year project during which Assystem will undertake high-level studies followed by detailed design of the technical procedures for the transfer and storage of waste packages at Cigéo.

       The Assystem’s five month study will focus on creating specifications for Cigeo’s systems and procedures. These specifications will then be used to develop a license application. Assystem will also develop a “roadmap” for Cegelec and Spretec representing the best technical and economic solution to France’s nuclear waste storage problem.

       Andra, the French national radioactive waste disposal company, put out their plans for Cigeo for public comment in 2013. Based on the public input, Andra will conduct a pilot plant test where all of the disposal functions can be tested in real conditions. These include:

·       Technical measures to control operating risks

·       Capacity to remove packages being disposed of

·       Disposal monitoring sensors

·       Techniques for sealing cavities and galleries

 

          The public feedback included the desire to allow for easy removal of waste packages from the repository in the future. The public feedback also requested that the entire master plan for Cigeo’s development and operation be updated on a regular basis with input from all the different stakeholders as well as the French government.

           Next year, Andra will submit the Cigeo master plan to the French government along with optional plans for security and retrievability. They hope to have the license application ready for government review in 2017 with construction beginning in 2020 if the application is approved. Cigeo should be ready for a pilot test of the facility by 2025.

Artist’s rendering of Cigeo site:    

    

Highly exposed Fukushima workers significantly increased from April to May. fukushima-diary.com

TEPCO has submitted a plan for removing the spent fuel from the Unit 3 reactor building. fukuleaks.org

Ukraine has rekindled a long-held ambition to have its own storage facility for used nuclear fuel with the signing on 24 June of a revised contract with Holtec International. world-nuclear-new.org

The largest nuclear power facility in the U.S. issued an unusual event declaration over the weekend after workers reported feeling an earthquake at the Palo Verde plant near Phoenix. nuclearstreet.com