Japan Government says that Tokyo area was hit with an ‘unnoticed’ wave of Fukushima radioactive material. enenews.com

China’s largest nuclear power company filed for a $2 billion initial public offering in Hong Kong last week. nuclearstreet.com

Given that spent fuel stored at nuclear power plants will remain dangerous to humans for at least 10,000 years and harmful to the environment for 1 million years more, the NRC suggestion that the waste will be properly stored, maintained and protected is ludicrous. mycentraljersey.com

Iranian authorities have arrested a Ukrainian national suspected of sabotage at the country’s sole nuclear power plant, an Iranian newspaper reported on Sunday. abcnews.go.com

On Thursday, a panel of experts organized by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) determined that it will not change its 2013 judgment that an active geologic fault exists under the Unit 2 reactor at the Tsuruga nuclear power plant. nuclear-news.net

Seeking a better way to dispose of long-lived transuranic elements, Hitachi recently announced a second round of research with American universities exploring a technology to use them in boiling water reactor fuel. nuclearstreet.com

An official in Kenya has confirmed that the country hopes to build a 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant in the next decade and has sent delegations to South Korea, the U.S. and China to explore potential reactor technologies.  nuclearstreet.com

Experts warn of ‘Inevitable’ Fukushima disaster in California. nuclear-news.net

         China has very ambitious plans for nuclear power. They have twenty one operating nuclear power reactors and there are twenty eight more under construction. Nuclear power supplies two percent of the electricity in China and they want to raise that to six percent by 2020. Then they want to raise that to sixteen percent by 2030. Most of the reactor construction involves what are called Generation Two reactors, the current widely used type of power reactor.

        China has been working on their own design for a Generation Three reactor. There have been calls by Chinese government agencies for constructing more of the new Gen Three design instead of the old Gen Two types. China intends to export nuclear technology but all of its existing reactors are imports. In order to export nuclear technology, China has to have its own designs for which it holds the intellectual property rights. There are several different governmental agencies and government owned companies involved in designing and building nuclear reactors.

        In 2004, the State Council approved importing Generation Three reactor technology from foreign sources. An open bidding process was held. The newly formed State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation is under the direct administration of the State Council. It was given the task of selecting the nuclear technology that would be imported. By 2006, the experts at the SNPTC had settled on the Westinghouse AP1000 Generation Three reactor design and four AP1000 are currently under construction. The SNPTC has been working on developing a CAP1400 with higher generating capacity. This design would be totally owned by China.

        The China National Nuclear Corporation began working on the design of a Chinese version of the AP1000 in 1994 but the approval of the Westinghouse AP1000 by the SNPTC in 2007 caused much of the funding and technology support to shift from their project to the AP1000 program of the SNPTC. After several years passed, CNNC was able to continue work on its version of a Chinese reactor design. In late 2011, CNNC announced that its ACP1000 had reached the engineering design phase.

       At the same time that CNNC was working on designing a Chinese version of the AP1000, China General Nuclear had imported two French Areva M-310 reactors and was developing a reactor design based on the French reactors. This effort was successful and resulted in the Generation Two CPR-1000 Chinese reactor. It was almost completely Chinese but the French still retained some intellectual property rights so the Chinese could not export that reactor design. By 2010, fifty seven of the CPR-1000 reactors were scheduled to be constructed. Following the Fukushima disaster in March of 2011, it was decided that Generation Three was the future. Six CPR-1000 reactors are in operation and sixteen are under construction but there will be no more built.

       The State Council and the National Energy Administration of China were confronted with the task of reconciling these two different reactors designs being developed by two competing government owned utility companies. The CPR-1000 was a proven technology while the ACP1000 only existed on paper. After some political maneuvering, it was decided that the two designs should be merged and upgraded to Generation Three. This will be difficult because the two reactor designs are quite different. The Hualong One reactor design is the designation for the new combined reactor design.

        High-level Chinese government agencies have decided that the Hualong will be an important “brand” of Chinese nuclear technology exports. They have called for early deployment of demonstration Hualong reactors in China attract potential international buyers.

Hualong One reactor model:

Chinese Hualong One Reactor Model.png

Professor Takamitsu Sawa’s says that Japanese universities have failed to develop because of financial disparities in professors’ pay and status. japantimes.co.jp

Fukushima ‘globally enhanced’ cesium-137 levels in the air by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude (100 to 1000 times). enenews.com

Areva has presented Azerbaijan government officials with its proposals to construct a nuclear research reactor in the Central Asian country. world-nuclear-news.org

Iran has failed to address concerns about suspected atomic bomb research by an agreed deadline, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday, a setback to hopes for an end to an international stand-off over Tehran’s atomic activity. reuters.com

         India is one of the few countries in the world that is dedicated to a massive expansion of nuclear power generation. Currently India has twenty operating nuclear reactors which supplies about three percent of their electricity. There are seven more reactors under construction. India has announced that its want to supply twenty five percent of its electricity from nuclear power by 2050. The recently elected Prime Minister of India is a very strong supporter of nuclear power.

          Due to dwindling uranium reserves, Indian is seeking trade agreements that will let it mine for uranium in Australia. Some Indian companies want to apply for licenses to mine uranium in the Queensland state of Australia. Queensland had a moratorium on new uranium mining leases that lasted for twenty five years but has just been cancelled.

         Indian Prime Minister Modi recently returned from Japan where he discussed a huge ninety billion dollar Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement between India and Japan. Many Indian and Japanese companies are eager to participate. The trade deal has not been signed but Japanese Prime Minister Abe has promised that Japan will double its direct investment in India in the next five years. India would be the biggest global market for Japanese nuclear technology exports if a trade agreement can be finalized.

         The Indian government is confident that it has adequate security in place to deal with threats to its nuclear program but there are dissenting voices. India never signed any of the international nuclear non-proliferation treaties as it built and tested nuclear weapons to balance the nuclear program of Pakistan. For a long time, there was a ban on exporting nuclear technology to India but the Nuclear Suppliers Group has been working on a framework  to end the ban since 2008.

         The Nuclear Threats Initiative in Washington, D.C. publishes a ranking of security in the twenty five countries that have nuclear power reactors. In their ranking of the safety of nuclear materials in these countries, India is rated twenty third out of twenty five. This ranking was based partly on the fact that India has no independent nuclear regulatory agency to monitor compliance with national regulations on nuclear power and nuclear materials.

          Currently India has the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board which was established in 1983. It has been unable to perform its duty to regulate the safety and security of Indian civilian nuclear facilities effectively because it is under the control of the Indian Department of Atomic Energy.

        This arrangement has been criticized and a proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) bill was brought up in the Indian Parliament in 2011. Unfortunately, while a step in the right direction, the NSRA would still not be a completely independent regulatory agency. Critics are calling for a more independent agency. A big concern is that the chairperson and members of the NSRA would be appointed by the Council of Nuclear Safety, chaired by the Prime Minister. The bill even explicitly says that “the Central Government may, for the purposes of national defense and security, exempt any nuclear material, radioactive material, facilities, premises and activities; the premises, assets and areas associated with material and activities from the jurisdiction of the Authority.” The government changed recently and the bill would have to reintroduced to be considered.

       There are real problems with a huge expansion of Indian nuclear power and adequate regulation is one of the biggest.

India Atomic Energy Regulatory Board logo.png

Fukushima nuclear material has been reported in West Coast groundwater. enenews.com

California nuclear plant engineer says that the U.S. was hit by the explosion at Fukushima Unit 3.  enenews.com

Investigations into potential cracks in boiler spines at two units at each of the Heysham I and Hartlepool sites are likely to take until the end of the year to complete, EDF Energy has announced. world-nuclear-news.org

Russia and Algeria have signed an intergovernmental agreement to cooperate in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. world-nuclear-news.org