A wall of water may flood the control room at the U.S. Palisades nuclear plant on Lake Michigan if the leaking 300,000 gallon tank fails? enenews.com

Tokyo Electric Power Co. will demolish and replace the makeshift canopy covering a badly damaged reactor building at its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in order to remove rubble and radioactive material. ajw.asahi.com

Iran says nuclear sites safe from earthquakes and cyber threat. reuters.com

North Korean nuclear weapons matter of when, not If, experts say. huffingtonpost.com

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

Ambient office = .087 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .100 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .088 microsieverts per hour

Mango from Costco = .121 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .106 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .085 microsieverts per hour

          California is dealing with a crisis with respect to the supply of electrical power available to its citizens in the southern part of the state. This crisis involves the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. I have discussed the San Onofre power plant in previous posts. The power plant is located on the Pacific Coast near San Diego. It is operated by Southern California Edison (SCE). SCE’s parent company, Edison International owns seventy eight percent of the plant. San Diego Gas & Electric Company owns another twenty percent and the city of Riverside Utilities Department owns about two percent. Unit One went operational in 1968 and was shut down in 1993 after twenty five years of operation.  Unit Two was completed in 1983 with a license to operation until 2022 and Unit Three was completed in 1984 with a license to operate until 2022. At full operation, the plant can generate two thousand, two hundred and fifty megawatts of electricity.

           There have been many problems at San Onofre including failure of emergency generators, bad electrical system wiring, falsified fire safety data and other issues that have earned the plant many citations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It has also been reported that employees are afraid to report concerns for fear retaliation by the company.

            In January 2012, the Unit Two reactor was shut down for refueling and replacement of a critical component. Unexpected wear was found in the tubes for steam generators installed in 2010 and 2011 for both reactors and the Unit Three reactor was also shut down. The cause of the wear in the tubing has been attributed to changes in the alloy of the tubes and design changes that were not reported to the NRC. Neither reactor has been restarted and the NRC has said that no permit will be issued until a number of problems had been corrected.

            In May of 2012, the Huntington Beach Power Station restarted two natural gas generators to help make up the loss in electrical capacity caused by the San Onofre shut down. The Encina Power Station is also supplying additional electricity to the area. The substitute power and strong conservation measures have prevented serious shortfalls in electrical capacity in the San Diego area to date. However, the burning of natural gas has resulted in increased pollution in the area. The cost of electrical power has also been rising due to the reactors being offline.

           The estimated costs of repairing Unit Three with all the requests of the NRC would cost billions of dollars and take at least five years. The owners of San Onofre have been considering shutting down Unit Three permanently. Recently, the owners threatened to shut down the plant permanently if they are not issued a permit to restart Unit Two in the near future.

           The San Onofre power plant has been the site of many public protests. The citizens in the area are concerned that the history of problems and the new issue of the wear in the generator tubing show that the plant is unsafe to operate and anti-nuclear activists want it shut down permanently. They say that the owners care more about profits than public safety. On the other side of the debate, supporters of the plant argue that permanently shutting down both reactors would have serious economic repercussions in the region. The cost of having both reactors offline is nearly one half billion dollars to date.  

         The debate over the future of San Onofre and power generation in Southern California is a preview of the national debate that is heating up. The U.S. nuclear fleet is aging. Many of the operating reactors have passed their original intended lifespan and are wearing out. Using other sources of energy such as natural gas will have environmental and economic impacts. No alternative energy sources are ready to take up the slack tomorrow. There has been talk of a “nuclear renaissance” in the United States with President Obama supporting the construction of new reactors for power generation. I think that this is a bad idea. The money would be better spent on a major national push into conservation and alternative energy sources.

San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station from KPBS:

Citizen’s lab in Japan says that food contamination from Fukushima will last for more than 10 years. fukushima-diary.com

One of two reactors at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in southern Maryland shut down suddenly Wednesday night after an as-yet unexplained malfunction, a Constellation spokesman said. baltimoresun.com

Electricity generation at Dominion’s Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin ended today after almost 40 years of operation. world-nuclear-news.org

Southern Co. and federal regulators have reached an agreement to resolve allegations that an employee helped other workers cheat on exams at the Farley nuclear plant in Alabama. nuclearstreet.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 09, 2013

Ambient office = .081 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .090 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .094 microsieverts per hour

Dried blueberries from Costco = .067 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .070 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .065 microsieverts per hour

              I have discussed my concerns about the impact of financial problems on nuclear safety in the United States. I have recently spent a lot of blog posts on problems involving civilian nuclear reactors in the United States but I have also mentioned and posted links about problems at governmental installation such as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The Savannah River Site is a United States nuclear reservation twenty five miles southeast of Savannah, Georgia. The site was developed after World War II to refine nuclear materials that would be used to build nuclear weapons. The site is owned by the United States government and managed by a group of corporations. The great deal of the work currently being done at the site involves the cleanup of waste and pollution related to the work done for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. None of the reactors on the site are operating but two of the reactor buildings are being used to store nuclear materials. The site also includes the only radiochemical separation facility in the U.S. as well as the only tritium production facility in the U.S. Currently, they are constructing what will be the only mixed oxide fuel plant in the U.S. which will be able to convert nuclear weapons grade plutonium into fuel for commercial reactors. Both the clean up and production work at Savannah River are important for the United States weapons program and the U.S. civilian nuclear industry.

             The United States Congress drafted a plan to cut federal spending commonly referred to as the “sequester” back in 2012 during fierce partisan budget battles. The idea was that there would be a future date set for broad cuts mandated across a range of programs if a more agreeable budget could not be drafted by the deadline. The assumption was that since all sides of the argument would lose if the sequester was implemented, they would have sufficient incentive to come to some bipartisan agreement on a better budget by the deadline.  Unfortunately, that turned out not to be true. For a variety of reasons, a better budget was never agreed to and the sequester was implemented. The Republicans decried cuts to the defense budget and Democrats focused on cuts to the nation’s safety net for the poor. Buried in the sequester is a cut that has not gotten much press but is very worrisome.

              Under the sequester, the funding for the Savannah River Site has been cut by one hundred million dollars. There will be a loss of about one thousand workers which is about ten percent of the workforce. In addition, the scope of work will be narrowed. Because Savannah River is so important and cuts to their budget could endanger public safety, the Department of Energy is trying to shift about eighty millions dollars from other projects. However, this is not a simple process. Such shifting of funds is called “reprogramming” and it requires Congressional approval. DOE and the Office of Management and Budget are working on getting a proposal to two committees in the Senate and two committees in the House. The proposal is bundled along with a batch of measures for funding other nuclear facilities such as Hanford, Idaho National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge. The set of funding proposals has not made any progress since March 18^th.  If the money for Savannah River is not transferred by June 1, 2013, between seven hundred and nine hundred workers will be furloughed.

           My greatest fear for the future of the U.S. nuclear program, public and private, is that there will be steeply increasing costs associated with reactor problems and nuclear waste and that more and more critical work will be delayed or cancelled in coming budget battles. Eventually, there may be areas associated with nuclear facilities that are just fenced off and forgotten until some horrible accident forces us to pay attention to them.

Black soot, neutrons and early events in the Fukushima nuclear accident gets new concern. simplyinfo.org

Fukushima forests have been found to be radioactive. nuclear-news.net

Fire burning next to buried nuclear waste near St. Louis. enenews.com

Air Force sidelines 17 nuclear missile officers. washingtonpost.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 08, 2013

Ambient office = .118 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .133 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .114 microsieverts per hour

Redleaf lettuce from Costco = .107 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .075 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .067 microsieverts per hour

              One of the constant refrains heard from corporate officials in the United States is that the free market should decide which businesses succeed and which fail. An interesting theory but the market in the United States is anything but free.  There are the governmental regulations that businesses decry but they protect the interests and health of the citizens. There are also massive subsidies and tax breaks for corporations.  How can the “marketplace decide” if some companies are protected against failure by the U.S. Government. The banks that were too big to fail in the recent economic crash come to mind. 

             The nuclear industry has laws that limit the liability of nuclear power companies for costs associated with a major accident. They also receive loan guarantees from the Federal Government to build new reactors. There are even laws in some states that permit utilities to raise electricity rates for money to build new reactors.  They may be allowed to keep the money even if the new reactors never get built. As far as the marketplace goes, several reactors are being shut down and other may not be built in the United States because they cannot compete on price with other sources of electricity. If power generation were allowed to exist in the free market, that would be the end of nuclear power generation.

            The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has regulations that say that any operator of a nuclear reactor in the United States must be “financially qualified” to operate and maintain said reactor safely.  The reason for this regulation is the fear that if a company is not able to make a profit from an operation reactor, they may be tempted to reduce funding for things like repairs, monitors, emergency backup systems, staff training, etc. And, if a company does in fact do any of these things, the odds of a major accident at their reactor will increase.

            Entergy is a company which is involved in electrical energy generation and retail distribution. They began expanding into nuclear power generation in 1998 and currently own and operate twelve reactors in eight states. I have dealt with some of the Entergy reactors in previous posts. There have been shutdowns caused by equipment problems and reports of numerous NRC regulatory violations at Entergy reactors. Recently, their Palisades reactor was shut down because of radioactive water leaking into Lake Michigan. A recent column in the Motley Fool website suggests that Entergy is not looking like a good investment.

            Recently, a report from Union Bank of Switzerland, a financial services company, states that Entergy is operating two of its plants at a loss and may also be losing money on a third power plant. The two plants that are losing money are the James A FitzPatrick plant in Oswego, New York and the Vermont Yankee plant in Vernon, Vermont. The plant that may be losing money is the Pilgrim reactor in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

            The Citizens Awareness Network  (Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York), Alliance for a Green Economy (New York), Pilgrim Watch (Massachusetts), and Vermont Citizens Action Network (Vermont) have file a joint petition seeking to have the NRC enforce the regulation about financial qualification against Entergy. The petitioners mention a series of equipment failures and emergency shutdowns at the three plants and raise the question of whether the financial problems of Entergy are causing the company to cut outlays for equipment repairs and replacements.

 

            This is a perfect example of an issue I raised in a previous post. If Entergy should fail as a company and be unable to fulfill its obligation to deal with its reactors and their waste, who will pick up the cost? In the soft energy market of today, other utilities may be reluctant to buy nuclear plants which have been having serious and expensive problems. If those plants cannot be sold, then the U.S. taxpayer will have to bear the cost of either repairs or retirement and disposal of the fuel. These costs would run into the billions.

 

Marco Kaltofan announced last week some new understanding of the strange radioactive black sand being found in Japan. simplyinfo.org

There is cesium contamination of freshwater fish in Fukushima and Eastern Japan. enenews.com

Mystery bacteria ‘cobwebs’ found in Savannah River Site cooling tank. aikenstandard.com

Convoy carrying nuclear weapons parts halted day of Y-12 incursion while plant secured. knoxnews.com