Japanese court rejects demands to evacuate children while acknowledging that radiation is a risk in health. washingtonpost.com

For the first time, a source from inside the San Onofre nuclear power plant has come forward to warn that restarting the power plant is too dangerous. enenews.com

South Korea wants to recycle and reprocess used reactor fuel but requires American consent. world-nuclear-news.org

 Nuclear safety regulators will remain on site to inspect the Kewaunee Power Station as it moves from generating power to shutting down and decommissioning.  jsonline.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 27, 2013

Ambient office = .099 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .126 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .083 microsieverts per hour

Vine ripened tomato from local grocery store = .109 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .073 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .052 microsieverts per hour

               The U.S. Congress has been debating policies with respect to the disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods. The pools at U.S. nuclear reactors will all be full in five years if alternatives are not found. Temporary storage such as dry casks on site will require massive investment to be practical. And, after cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Repository, it is estimated that it may require forty years to site and construct a new permanent U.S. geological repository.  To make matters worse, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Fund for a permanent repository that was promised in 1999 is under attack by lawsuits from utilities seeking to claw back money that they have already paid.

              A Blue Ribbon panel commissioned by President Obama issued its final recommendations in January of 2012 urging action on interim storage of nuclear waste, resumption of the site selection process for a new geological repository and the creation of a quasi-government agency to manage the new program and to take control of the Nuclear Waste Fund.  It may be possible for the new agency to use only the Nuclear Waste Fund and not have to get Congressional appropriations.  Most of this could be accomplished by revisions to the 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

              Temporary storage would allow high level waste to be kept readily available for reuse in reactors or allow it time to cool off for permanent storage. The new permanent repository would only be storing waste that could not be reused. It would be cool enough so that different criterion could be used in site selection which would increase the number of possible sites. The new agency would seek consensus from every level of government including local, tribal, state, regional and national in its search for a new permanent repository.

               Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska have collaborated to produce draft legislation that would implement many of the recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Panel. Under the provisions of the new legislation, the Department of Energy would no longer be responsible for nuclear waste disposal. Nuclear waste would now be handled by a new agency with a director appointed by the President. The new agency would have authority over the Nuclear Waste Fund. It would create a consent based process for siting new temporary waste storage facilities in communities that would accept them. This new process could be in place as soon as 2021.

               The new legislation is certainly welcome and, being bipartisan, should not be controversial. Congress should move quickly to pass this legislation so the new agency can be created and begin its work as soon as possible. The U.S. Government has already spent over two and a half billion dollars on lawsuits over nuclear waste disposal. If nothing is done, these lawsuits could amount to over twenty billion dollars by 2020 which is a substantial portion of the twenty seven billion dollar Nuclear Waste Fund. Passing this legislation should halt the lawsuits. In addition, time is running out. Estimates are that the spent fuel pools at U.S. reactors will all be full by 2019, two years before the earliest implementation of the plan in the legislation. If the full pools necessitate shutting down U.S. reactors, there could be serious energy short falls around 2020 even with the passage of the legislation.

Japan refused to back statement against the use of nuclear weapons. japantimes.co.jp

IAEA gives little insight to the Fukushima disaster cleanup. simplyinfo.org

Artists turn Bosnia nuclear weapon bunker into art gallery.  huffingtonpost.com

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant performed beyond its best expectations after being struck by a mammoth earthquake and a 40-ft-high tidal wave in 2011. enenews.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 25, 2013

Ambient office = .063 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 073 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .087 microsieverts per hour

Romaine lettuce from local grocery store = .090 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .152 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .124 microsieverts per hour

           I have written a post about the German withdrawal from nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster. Germany derives less than twenty percent of its electricity from nuclear power and it is anticipated that the transition to other energy sources should have little impact on the German economy. France, Germany’s next-door neighbor, is much more dependent on nuclear energy. France gets over seventy five percent of its electrical power from nuclear energy. While Germany can easily survive a retreat from nuclear power, any such retreat will be very problematical for France.

            A great debate has been raging in France over the future of France’s reliance on nuclear power. Some factions say that France should continue to derive the majority of its electricity from nuclear power. They say that the current generation of nuclear reactors should be replaced by new reactors as they reach the end of their operational lifespans. Other factions want France to follow the lead of Germany and begin immediately to replace nuclear power with other energy sources for electrical generation. In between these extremes is a third group who recommend that France move slowly and carefully to gradually replace nuclear electrical generation as the current generation of reactors is retired over the next few decades.

             The Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) is the French national agency charged with nuclear safety research. A recent statement from the head of the Institute sought to clarify the choices for France’s nuclear future. He said that if France is going to stop relying on nuclear energy for the majority of its electrical generation capacity, then it must do so immediately. The only other real option is to continue reliance on nuclear energy. The “go slow” or “continue debating” options are not really viable.

             The current French President has begun the process of cutting the percentage of nuclear power utilization in France by thirty percent by 2025, from seventy five percent to fifty percent. He has made no official statement about what will happen after 2025.

             France’s nuclear industry depends on the availability of highly trained specialists to operate its fleet of fifty eight nuclear reactors. About half of the current staff operating the reactors will retire by 2018. If France continues to debate its nuclear future and does not provide a clear statement on official energy policy, this uncertainty will make careers in the nuclear industry much less attractive to students trying to decide on a profession. So choosing to do nothing and make no firm decisions now would make the availability of a trained nuclear workforce much less certain in the future. This, in turn, would decrease investment in and political support for continued reliance on nuclear power. In a way, making no decision now will tend to bias things in the direction of making a choice to end the use of nuclear power in France.

            In addition to issues with the workforce, there is also the question of availability of components needed for repairs. If the demand for parts for reactors falls off, more and more companies will get out of that business. The price of parts that are still available will go up and, once again, investment and support will fall.

           Another concern that was raised is the fact that there are sets of French reactors built around the same time with the same design. If it turns out that there is a flaw in the design or a particular aging problem with one of these sets, then when it shows up in one of the set, the rest of the same family of reactors will probably be shut down to investigate. This could mean as many as five to ten reactors going off line at the same time as Frances nuclear fleet ages. This was one of the reasons that the French President wanted to reduce dependence on nuclear power.

           And, finally, if there is a major nuclear accident anywhere in the world, there will be more public resistance in France against the use of nuclear power. It would appear that the most logical decision for France to make would be to abandon nuclear power as soon as possible. But that is very unlikely to happen.

 

West Coast Radiation Crisis at San Onofre Edison nuclear plant – Part 1. rense.com

Possible radioactive traces from a North Korean nuclear test in February have been detected for the first time in Japan. enenews.com

France’s state-controlled nuclear engineering giant, Areva, says revenue grew 12.5 percent in the first quarter, driven by strides in its mining and fuel-treatment businesses.  miamiherald.com

A Japanese newspaper has reported that Turkey and the Areva-Mitsubishi Heavy Industries consortium Atmea plan to build four reactors at the country’s Sinop plant. nuclearstreet.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on April 25, 2013

Ambient office = .101 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 079 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .070 microsieverts per hour

Mango from local grocery store = .091 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .104 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .089 microsieverts per hour

              In our modern world there are often bitter arguments between different interest groups over things like the expansion of airports, the dangers of nuclear power plants, the siting of wind farm turbines and protection of the environment. Near the town of Lydd, England, all four of these issues collide. Lydd is a picturesque located on the edge of the Romney Marsh wetlands near the English Channel. The Dungeness Nuclear power station is near Lydd. There is also a small airport near the town which is being considered for expansion to handle major air traffic. And, finally there is a proposal to create a new wind farm in the area.

            In this one village on the English Channel we see a collision of the need for electricity, reduction of carbon dioxide, increased air transportation, movement into renewable energy, protection of wetlands and fear of nuclear reactors.

            The current airport is surrounded by protected bird habitats including a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds preserve. The area is under one of the main migratory bird routes for Southern England. This guarantees that there will be a lot of birds in the air. Wind turbines would kill many birds over the Marsh. Increasing air traffic with more and bigger planes landing and taking off will increase the probably of major air accidents caused by birds being sucked into engines. Plane crashes in the Marsh would result in destruction of bird habitats and pollution of the Marsh with fuel from plane crashes.

            The siting of a nuclear power plant in a wetlands area and major bird habitat is already problematic. The construction of the second set of reactors at the Dungeness plant was authorized in 1965 and scheduled for completion in 1970. A series of design, construction and equipment problems delayed completion of the project for fourteen years until 1985, ultimately increasing the cost to over four times the original estimate. In 2009, Unit B21 was shut down for routine maintenance but serious problems were discovered which kept the reactor shut down for eighteen months. Also in 2009, a small fire shut down Unit B22. Since then both reactors have had to be shut down for months at a time on several different occasions. These are gas cooled reactors so at least there is not a problem with release of heat into the wetlands as discussed in my previous post.

            If there was a major accident or terrorist attack at the Dungeness nuclear power station and radioactivity was released, the results would be devastating for the Romney March environment in general and the bird habitats in particular. In addition to problems internal to the power plant, the increased air traffic would also pose risk. If a plane was brought down by migratory birds or any other cause such as mechanical failure or terrorist act and crashed into the Dungeness reactors, the results could be horrible for the Marsh.

          There are always tradeoffs between the competing needs and desires of different interest groups in regional planning but this problem is especially acute in Lydd near the Romney Marsh on the coast of England.

The Fukushima Prefectural Government has been forced to reveal children’s thyroid gland tests to an NPO after earlier refusing to release the results carried out following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. mainichi.jp

Study shows that Fukushima fallout spiked a year after the disaster.  enenews.com

Japanese Minister of Economy declares on TV that Japanese nuclear plants will restart as soon as this fall. ex-skf.blogspot.jp

The EPA has signed the revised PAG rules that have caused much concern among experts and others in the EPA.  simplyinfo.org