A recent study has found that the level of radioactive cesium in seabed sediment has increase long after the Fukushima accident. enenews.com

Radioactive materials from the Fukushima disaster have been spread over the entire northern hemisphere and have recently been found in the southern hemisphere. enenews.com

The exact location of the four hundred fifty tons of melted fuel rods inside the damaged Fukushima reactors is unknown. enenews.com

A fire broke out on a transformer at the Cattenom nuclear plant in France. enenews.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 12, 2013

Ambient office = .111 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .134 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .074 microsieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from Costco =  .116 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .124 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .108 microsieverts per hour

           I have blogged about the Price-Anderson Act in the United States that defines a process for recovering damages from the owners of a nuclear power plant in case of a major accident. Each operator has to have three hundred and fifty million dollars of insurance per reactor and be ready to pay another one hundred and twelve million dollars over a period of time following an accident. There is a provision for Congress to recover additional costs from the plant owners if the total cost exceeds four hundred and sixty two million dollars.

         The Price-Anderson Act was created at the dawn of the nuclear power age in the U.S. in the 1950s.  It was considered necessary to give plant owners some protection in case of a major accident because of concern by investors about huge liabilities. It was only supposed to be temporary but was repeatedly renewed until the present day.

          Now Canada has passed a new law that raises their liability limit for nuclear plant owners. Their original limit was a seventy five million Canadian dollar cap on the liability of a nuclear plant owner when there was a major accident. It had been in place for forty years. The new limit has been raised to one billion dollars. The federal government had been trying to raise the limit to six hundred and fifty million Canadian dollars for years but had been blocked by powerful opposition in their parliament.

         Canada is also joining a program of the International Atomic Energy Agency for supplementing compensation for a nuclear accident. All member nations pay into a pool that a member can draw on for up to four hundred and fifty million Canadian dollars in the event of a nuclear accident. This makes their possible compensation ceiling one billion four hundred and fifty mission Canadian dollars.

         While this is over three times the set numbers of U.S. liability, the U.S. Congress does have the right to seek additional compensation. However, that would mean that a bill would have to pass both houses and these days it seems to be almost impossible for Congress to agree on anything enough to pass a particular bill so that might not be an option. Even if the U.S. government could pass a bill to squeeze a particular company for more money to cover the cost of cleaning up a nuclear accident, the company could declare bankruptcy and stick the tax payers with the bill.

          I appreciate the governments of the U.S. and Canada as well as the IAEA for their concern about getting nuclear plant owners to pay for the consequences of major nuclear accidents but the limits they have set are absurdly low. The estimate for the cost of cleaning up the accident at Fukushima is currently around two hundred and fifty billion U.S. dollars and that estimate will probably rise. So the plans of both Canada and the U.S. for nuclear liability are currently set at under one percent of the probable cost of a major nuclear accident. There has been some effort to raise the liability in the U.S. to six hundred and fifty billion dollars but it has so far been unsuccessful.

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission:

The decision to close California’s San Onofre nuclear plant is the latest setback for an industry that seemed poised for growth not long ago. nuclear-news.net

Nuclear dominoes are fall in California and Kentucky. ecowatch.com

TEPCO doesn’t plan to build a sarcophagus to entomb the Fukushima nuclear plant. fukushima-diary.com

TEPCO makes new admissions about Fukushima reactors in a new report. simplyinfo.org

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 11, 2013

Ambient office = .094 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .125 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .110 microsieverts per hour

Hass avacado from Costco =  .111 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .094 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .076 microsieverts per hour

South Korea on Thursday fired the head of the state-run company that oversees the country’s 23 nuclear reactors over a forged documentation scandal that has shut a host of those reactors down. nuclearpowerdaily.com

TEPCO has completed the support structure for the Unit 4 reactor at Fukushima. ex-skf.blogspot.jp

The Abe administration in Japan says that they will start removing the melted fuel cores from Fukushima in seven years which is earlier that previously reported. ex-skf.blogspot.jp

Two reactors under construction at South Carolina’s V.C. Summer nuclear plant will come online later than expected due to problems with an equipment manufacturer. nuclearstreet.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 10, 2013

Ambient office = .095 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .070 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .071 microsieverts per hour

Bing Cherry from Costco =  .102 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .075 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .065 microsieverts per hour

Former Fukushima worker say that TEPCO is very forward with restart of Fukushima Daini nuclear plant, and now it’s up to the government. fukushima-diary.com

Monju cooling system shuts off for 30 minutes. ex-skf.blogspot.jp

Officials deemed this week’s nuclear preparedness drill in Limestone County a great success with no mandatory changes needed by emergency officials in Limestone, Morgan, and Lawrence, Lauderdale counties. enewscourier.com

France, and Japan join forces to get a larger share of the global nuclear market. News.yahoo.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on June 9, 2013

Ambient office = .092 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .074 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .099 microsieverts per hour

Zante Currants from local grocery store =  .106 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .093 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .089 microsieverts per hour

 

             I have blogged in the past about my dislike of nuclear energy and the reasons why I think that it is a bad idea that should be retired as quickly as possible.  There are many complex aspects to the use of nuclear power to generate electricity. Even if I believed in nuclear power as a good way to generate electricity and combat global climate change, I would still be concerned about its viability above and beyond all the technical issues. Human beings don’t always rely on science to decide technological issues. Often there are other factors such as politics, economics, psychology, etc. that play a role in the adoption of new technology. Completely apart from the technical arguments over nuclear power generation, there looms the powerful force of public opinion. Every accident or problem with nuclear power that generates headlines corrodes the public trust of nuclear power.

           It has just been announced that Southern California Edison is going to close the troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant.  Replacement steam generators failed in two years due to unreported design changes. The cost of waiting for permission to restart the plant has convinced SCE to permanently close the plant. The debate over exactly who pays for the repercussions of the shutdown order has already begun accompanied by lawsuits, of course.

           Duke Energy is shutting down the Crystal River reactor in Florida because of mounting repair cost estimates and lost income from having the plant offline. Duke is looking to collect billions of dollars from Florida customers to pay for the closure.

           The Kewaunee reactor in Iowa in Wisconsin is being permanently retired because the company that owns it cannot make a profit on the electricity it generates in the current soft market for power and they have been unable to find a buyer.

           These three stories contain elements that will be repeated as the current generation of reactors continue to operate past their original lifespan licenses. Failing equipment, expensive repairs, lost revenue, lack of ability to compete with other power sources, and other factors that shut these reactors will also cumulatively sour the public and investors on continuing to support nuclear power.

           The giant utility companies that make huge profits off of building and operating nuclear reactors will not leave the field without putting up a fight. There is a publicity push by nuclear industry representatives to convince the public and the investors that there is a bright new age of nuclear power coming. Contracts to build two new reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia are given as an example of new life in the industry along with applications for twenty more new U.S. reactors. However, there have been delays and cancellation for other new reactors recently. Duke Energy announcing this year that it was cancelling plans to build two new reactors at the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant in North Carolina. Apparently the nuclear industry outlook is not as rosy as it is being portrayed.

           It would be better for the world if nuclear power were seen as the bad choice that it is and all nuclear reactors were shutdown tomorrow. This will not happen. Years will pass, there will be more reactors built, more accidents, more equipment failures, more corporate dishonesty, more government incompetence and huge amounts of public spent. There will be more loss of life and environmental degradation before we can put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. But there will be an inevitable rejection of nuclear power by the public driven by many factors.