Our understanding of the situation at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has evolved since the release of radioactive materials in late February. There is still a debate going on about what caused the release and whether there is future risk for breaches of more drums of waste.

         A drum of nuclear waste from weapons production broke open and released radioactive particles of plutonium and americium which were detected twenty miles away in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Plutonium is very dangerous and inhaling a tiny quantity can result in illness and death. The WIPP found radioactive particles in filters but it turns out that unfiltered air was pouring out of the WIPP for weeks before the radiation was first detected so there may have been a greater release of radioactive particles than previously thought.

         Apparently the drum that burst came for the Las Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Records show that hundreds of drums from LANL were treated with a new type of absorbent that was not sufficiently tested before it was used. This absorbent did not properly prevent the formation of dried nitrate salts which are unstable and prone to burning and exploding. Over a hundred of these suspect drums were shipped to a temporary storage facility in Texas and dozens still remain at LANL. Another possible cause was uncovered when it was revealed that the drums from LANL may also have been treated with a chemical to change the pH of the material in the drums. This chemical can take part in a chemical reaction in a drum of waste to produce hydrogen gas that could lead to fires and explosions.

        The WIPP has been closed since the accident. Now the Department of Energy has estimated that it may take years to seal off the rooms called Panels that contain the suspect drums of waste from LANL. These huge rooms are filled with drums and then sealed off. They used to put up thick concrete seals when they finish filling a panel but they didn’t even put a steel door on panel 6 when it was full. Panel 6 contains drums from LANL as does Panel 7.

        A current concern is the possibility of a chain reaction in which one drum explodes and causes one or more other drums to explode. With plutonium as one of the primary constituents in the drums, if a series of drums exploded and released their contents it might just be possible for enough plutonium to combine to achieve a criticality or nuclear chain reaction. If this happened before the Panel 6 and 7 are sealed, the results could be devastating. It is possible that much more plutonium could be released which might require the evacuation and abandonment of the area near the WIPP. Even if the Panels 6 and 7 are successfully sealed, a plutonium criticality might breach the seal. With hundreds of oil wells and fracking wells just outside the WIPP fence, the ground could be destabilized enough to compromise the integrity of the salt formation that is supposed to contain the radioactive waste. At this point, it is too soon to say whether the WIPP will ever be opened to accept nuclear waste again. We will be fortunate if there are no further significant accidents at the WIPP.

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The Northern hemisphere is facing generations of radiologic contamination from Fukushima. enenews.com

Fukushima reactors released about 3 times more radioactivity than Chernobyl. enenews.com

 In a release Thursday, B&W announced it will provide steam generator repair, inspection and cleaning at the Dominion Millstone plant in Connecticut and at the Dominion North Anna and Surry plants in Virginia. nuclearstreet.com

Iran said on Tuesday it expected to sign a deal with Russia in late August on the building of two new 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors in the Islamic Republic, potentially boosting its case that it is refining uranium for civilian energy, not atom bombs. reuters.com

         The nuclear disaster at Fukushima caused nuclear nations to rethink their use of nuclear power to generate electricity. Germany and Switzerland have decided to close existing nuclear reactors and not to construct any new reactors. France is much more dependent on nuclear power than any of the other thirty one nations that use nuclear power. About seventy five percent of France’s electricity is currently generated by fifty eight operating nuclear power reactors.

         When Francois Hollande was running for President of France in 2012, he promised to reduce France’s nuclear power share to fifty percent of France’s electricity by 2025. He also promised to close the Fessenheim reactor, France’s oldest nuclear power reactor. Following Hollande’s election and a review of national energy policy, the Hollande administration has announced that nuclear’s share of electricity will indeed by reduced to fifty percent by 2025. Nuclear generating capacity will be capped at the current level of sixty three gigawatts. So, if any new reactors are brought online, an old reactor will have to be retired. One new reactor is currently under construction with estimated completion by 2016. The Fessenheim reactor will likely be shut down before the new reactor is brought online.

        In addition to the new goals for nuclear power generation, France’s Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), the agency that regulates the nuclear industry in France, has been given the authority to impose greater fines on nuclear plant operators for failures in plant safety or the failure to implement required safety enhancements.

        There will be regular reviews of France’s energy policy. The first review will cover the period of 2015 to 2018 and then a new review will be held every five years. France also has ambitious goals for reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, increase in renewable energy sources, reducing energy consumption and vastly increasing the number of electric cars in use in France. The French Energy Minister has said that they are not going to abandon nuclear power.

         A nuclear expert in France recently discussed three options that France has with respect to nuclear power. First, France could follow Germany in eliminating nuclear power for generation of electricity. Second, France could commit to nuclear power and build new generations of nuclear reactors to replace the old reactors that will have to be decommissioned. Third, France could opt to continue using nuclear power but cap or reduce its proportion of the electricity generated. He pointed out that there is currently a shortage of graduates in nuclear science from French engineering schools and many of the staff who currently operate French nuclear reactors are retiring. He said that if France chose to stop using nuclear power, the availability of new nuclear engineers would not be important. If France chose to go all in on nuclear power, then the students considering careers in the nuclear industry would be motivated to go into nuclear engineering. His big concern was that if France chose the third alternative of an intermediate stance on nuclear power, there was a serious danger that students would decide that work prospects in nuclear engineering was too uncertain to be attractive. A shortage of qualified nuclear engineers to operate the nuclear power plants could seriously impact France’s plans to continue the use of nuclear power.

Fessenheim nuclear power plant:

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On 6/17/2014, the chairman of 2020 Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee, Mori announced they are going to consider supporting Fukushima prefecture to fight against harmful rumor. fukushima-diary.com

TEPCO announced that they are going to keep using the Fukushima bypass well where they detected extremely high levels of tritium. fukushima-diary.com

The Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama briefly risked having to shut down all three of its reactors Tuesday when a system cooling electrical equipment rooms went offline. nuclearstreet.com

A Canadian standards organization recently finalized a new, comprehensive set of standards for civilian nuclear emergency management programs. nuclearstreet.com

             I have blogged in past posts about regulatory capture which is basically the take-over of a government agency by the industry that it is supposed to regulate. This can result in industry involvement writing the rules for regulation or failure of the agency to enforce regulations on industry. There is also the problem of a revolving door where people move back and forth between positions in the regulatory agency and positions in industry. Conflict of interest is a constant problem which may include the same person having both regulatory authority and also promoting the interests of a regulated industry. The standard way of dealing with such a situation is to have the person recuse themselves from the regulatory decision making process when it might be influenced by their private agenda.

           The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has often been accused of regulatory capture with good reason. The U.S. nuclear industry has been given far too much latitude with respect to following NRC regulations. Now a group of thirty four non-profit organizations including Friends of the Earth, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Sierra Club have drafted a letter demanding that one of the NRC Commissioners be forced to resign immediately due to a conflict of interest.

         Commissioner William D. Magwood recently applied for and was given a job with the international Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). The NEA is dedicated to promoting the use of nuclear power and the economic interests of member governments. The concern of the group of non-profits is that Magwood continued to participate in making decisions on regulations for the nuclear industry while he was applying and being hired for the NEA job. They say that he should have recused himself from helping to make decisions which would impact the implementation of nuclear power being promoted by the NEA.

         In part, the letter said that Magwood’s seeking and obtaining a nuclear promotion job while sitting on the NRC is “antithetical to the basic principles of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 that safety, not economics, must be the NRC’s paramount consideration and that promotional policies shall be left to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).” 

         The letter pointed out that allowing Magwood to retain his seat on the NRC would be a violation of federal laws that deal with the impartiality of judges. “Commissioner Magwood should resign because a reasonable person would question his independence and objectivity in applying NRC safety requirements or judging the significance of safety issues. Mr. Magwood has a conflict of interest whenever he is forced to consider a solution to a safety issue that could significantly increase the cost of nuclear power production and thus limit its viability in the marketplace.”   

          In addition, the non-profit group wants Magwood to retroactively recuse himself from decisions that he participated during the nine months between his application for the NEA job and his hiring for the job. During that time, the NRC was reviewing and voting on two nuclear safety related projects. The NRC was considering funding research into the adequacy of their safety regulations and research into supporting the movement of spent fuel rods from cooling pools to dry cask storage. Both of these proposals were voted down with Magwood casting negative votes. If these projects had been funded, the cost of construction and operation of nuclear power plants in the United States would have increased. This would have been in direct opposition to the stated goals of the NEA. A reasonable person would have to conclude that Magwood could have voted as he did to improve his chances of getting the NEA job.

NRC Commissioner William D. Magwood:

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The plan to stop contaminated water from the quake-crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant leaking into the sea by freezing soil and water is not working as well as Japanese officials had hoped. rt.com

Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara apologized on June 17 for suggesting that payments to residents in Fukushima Prefecture would resolve the problem of selecting a site to temporarily store radiation-contaminated soil. ajw.asahi.com

Rolls-Royce on Tuesday announced an agreement with China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. aimed at furthering the companies’ cooperation. nuclearstreet.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a new weapon at his disposal: a top-secret nuclear submarine named Severodvinsk. washingtontimes.com

             The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently released its annual survey of nuclear weapons. The United States with seven thousand three hundred warheads and Russia with eight thousand warheads have been dismantling their huge arsenals left over from the Cold War. The other signatories of the international nuclear arms treaties are China with two hundred and fifty warheads, France with three hundred warheads and the United Kingdom with two hundred and twenty five warheads. There are four other nuclear armed nations that have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaties. Israel has about eighty warhead, Pakistan has one between one hundred and one hundred and twenty warheads and India has ninety to one hundred and ten warheads. North Korea is thought to have a few small nuclear warheads but lacks sophisticated and powerful delivery systems. All in all, there are about sixteen thousand nuclear warheads in the world with four thousand that are operational and ready to launch.

         The survey points out that although signatories of the nuclear non-proliferation treaties have been paying lip services to eventually getting rid of all nuclear weapons, they have all announced intentions to deploy new delivery systems and upgrade their warheads. It is obvious that these nations consider nuclear weapons to be an important part of their strategic arsenal and intend to deploy and maintain them.

         The United States is planning on spending over three hundred and fifty billion in the next decade on its nuclear arsenal including a replacement for the current fleet of Trident submarines. Russia is constructing a new class of nuclear missile submarines and replacing the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles with mobile versions of the SS-27 missile. China is increasing spending on its ballistic missile program and constructing more warheads.

         India is more concerned with its current delivery systems. India does not have any submarines armed with nuclear missiles. It also lacks intercontinental ballistic missiles. India has declared a no-first use nuclear policy. If India is threatened with a nuclear attack from China or Pakistan, it feels that it must have nuclear missile submarines and ICBMs in order to deter attack or retaliate effectively. India has developed and tested an ICBM but it will be years before it can be deployed. They are also working on their first nuclear powered submarine which will be able to carry and launch nuclear missiles.

         Pakistan is working on increasing its production of fissile materials so it can construct more warheads. They also have no submarines with nuclear missiles or intercontinental ballistic missiles but, since they do not have to contend with a threat from China, they do not feel the pressure to develop them that India feels.

         As I have pointed out before, there are estimates that the detonation of as few as one hundred nuclear warheads could cause a nuclear winter. It is absolutely critical that nuclear armed nations understand that any significant launch of nuclear warheads for any reason from any country could be the end of human civilization. A weapon that destroys the user is useless for defense or retaliation.

India’s first ICBM – the Agni V:

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