South Korea’s Shin Wolsong 2 has been loaded with its first core of nuclear fuel as it prepares for commissioning. world-nuclear-news.org

Two South Korean municipalities have each agreed to host two new nuclear power reactors. Ulchin County has approved construction of units 3 and 4 at the existing San Hanul plant, while Yeongdeok County has approved a new two-unit plant. world.-uclear-news.org

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Vienna on Sunday to take part in Iran nuclear negotiations, and China’s foreign minister was expected to follow on Monday, the deadline to complete a comprehensive agreement. online.wsj.com

China’s Fuqing-1 nuclear unit in Fujian province entered commercial operation after the thermal performance test was completed, the China National Nuclear Corporation and China Nuclear Industry Construction Company have said. nucnet.org

 

A fire at Dounreay nuclear power plant has caused the release of radioactive particles “via an unauthorized route” but no threat to the public officials said. mariauir.com

A leaked government report in Germany says the country has more than twice as much radioactive waste to deal with than indicated in previous reports. nuclearstreet.com

Vietnamese officials have chosen Rosatom’s AES-2006 design for the country’s first nuclear power plant at Ninh Thuan, increasing the planned capacity of the four unit plant by about 800 MWe. world-nuclear-news.org

China’s nuclear generating capacity is set to triple over the next six years, according to an energy development plan published by the State Council. world-nuclear-news.org

 

 

 

 

        I have often blogged about problems with the cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in south central Washington State. The Federal government spend decades developing and manufacturing nuclear weapons there but that ended about twenty five years ago. Despite decades of cleanup, the Hanford site is still one of the most radioactively contaminated places on Earth. In addition to the nuclear waste and waste processing facilities at Hanford, it is also host to the only operating nuclear power reactor in Washington which is called the Columbia Generating Station (CGS). The CGS is owned and operated by Energy Northwest and CGS is the only operating reactor left from the failed attempt to build five reactors in Washington. It supplies about four percent of the electricity for the Pacific Northwest.

       Hearts of American Northwest (HAN) and Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) recently commissioned a report about the CGS. The report was written by Robert Alvarez of the Institute for Policy Studies. All three of these organizations have been regular critics of the nuclear industry in the United States in general and Hanford in particular.

      Alvarez’s report raised concerns about the safety of the spent fuel rods in the cooling pool. Spent fuel rods assemblies are removed from the reactor and placed in a cooling pool for several years that is five stories above the ground in a building next to the reactor. After cooling for several more years, the assemblies can be moved to dry cask storage onsite.

       In the event of an emergency such as an earthquake, the spent fuel pool could drain and expose the spent fuel to the open air. Contact with the air would ignite the spent fuel which would result in smoke and radioactive particulates being released into the environment. A deliberate terrorist attack could have the same effect. Such a fire could cause a thermal plume that could spread the radioactive contamination over hundreds of square miles. The disaster at Fukushima left a five story spent fuel cooling pool in a severely damaged pool that could have been drain by another earthquake.

        Alvarez also said that almost half of the incidence of radiation exposure to workers at Hanford between 1999 and 2011 took place at the CGS. He expressed concern that nearby cleanup activities could possibly expose the CGS workers to radiation in the event of an accident. HAN and PSR have demanded that CGS be shut down as a public threat.

       As might be expected, Energy Northwest (EN) was not pleased by the demand to shut down their power reactor. A spokesperson for EN suggested that Alvarez actually knew very little about their plant. He said that the chances of a fire breaking out in the concrete steel-lined spent fuel pool structure was very remote and not even a part of their disaster planning. The EN spokesperson also downplayed threats to worker safety saying that they had not exceeded the annual federal safety limit for workers’ exposure to radioactivity for the past seventeen years.

The Columbia Generating Station at Hanford:

Twice as much Fukushima radiation near California coast than originally reported. enenews.com

Even though a majority of Japanese citizens are confused by and opposed to Abe’s “snap election” where he recently dissolved the Lower House, Abe has moved forward with this cheap political ploy in order to prove he has a “mandate” from voters to carry out constitutional reforms and restart the nuclear reactors. rense.com

Radioactive leak as fire strikes Scottish nuclear plant. rt.com

French nuclear power giant Areva’s announcement this week that it was suspending its financial goals for 2015 and 2016 was met with an investor pullback, as stock prices plunged 16 percent on Wednesday. nuclearstreet.com

         As part of nuclear disarmament, Russia and the U.S. agreed to convert the plutonium in many of their nuclear warheads into fuel for nuclear reactors. The plutonium is mixed with uranium to dilute it producing what is called Mixed Oxide fuel (MOX). For fifteen years, plutonium warheads from Russia were converted to nuclear fuel to burn in U.S. nuclear power reactors. This arrangement is just ending which will cause the price of MOX to rise.

         In 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a ten year construction license to Shaw Areva MOX Services (SAMS) for the construction of the first MOX plant in the U.S. That license will run out in 2015 and the MOX plant is far from complete. After a two year delay, actual construction of the MOX plant began in 2007. The MOX plant design was based on the design of the French Melox MOX facility. The U.S. MOX plant was supposed to begin operation in 2016 with an estimated construction cost of about five billion dollars. In 2012, the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that the MOX plant would not be ready to operate before 2019 and that it would cost almost eight billion dollars. There have been budget cuts over the years and SAMS only requested three hundred and twenty million dollars for 2014 due to project delays.

        SAMS requested an extension of its construction license in May of 2014. They said that there had been significant progress in construction of the MOX plant and that they estimated that the facility was sixty percent complete although some key structures still had to be built including the emergency generator building and the reagents processing building.

         SAMS has offered several reasons for the extension request. Since this is the first such plant to be constructed in the U.S., they were not able to draw on prior experiences in such plant construction. They pointed out that the actual annual funding has been less than the project funding requirements for several years. There is a shortage of vendors who produce the necessary components. There is also a shortage of qualified construction workers available for the project. In addition, there was that two-year delay between the grant of the original construction license and the actual beginning of construction.

        In October of 2014, the NRC basically said that extension “would not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment because it does not involve any additional impacts or represent a significant change to those impacts described and analyzed in the previous environmental report and final environmental impact statement.” A week ago, the NRC granted SAMS the requested ten year license extension.

        Since the funding for the MOX project comes from Congress, there could be delays in construction introduced by reduction of funding in Congressional budget negotiations. As with many other nuclear construction projects, the MOX project is way behind in schedule and way over its estimated cost.

All efforts have failed to stop very high levels of radioactive materials from Fukushima disaster flowing into the Pacific Ocean. enenews.com

IRID has made some progress on their research to find ways to seal the containment structures at Fukushima Daiichi. fukuleaks.org

Bolivia’s Hydrocarbons and Energy Ministry said Wednesday that the country had signed letters of cooperation with France’s Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission. nuclearstreet.com

Koeberg Steam generators represent a stake in South Africa’s nuclear future. nuclearstreet.com