I have already mentioned in several previous posts problems with TEPCO in particular and the Japanese nuclear industry in general I have covered the Fukushima disaster in March of 2011 extensively. Today I am going to delve into past problems involving Japanese companies that own and operate nuclear reactors.

        In 1988, a drive controller for control rod failed at Fukushima II-4. TEPCO asked Hitachi to substitute another drive controller and to put the serial number from the failed controller on the new controller which did not undergo the usual inspection process. This incident was only reported to the Japanese government by Hitachi in 2007.

         In 2002, TEPCO was involved in a scandal when a whistleblower provided information that showed that TEPCO had falsified inspection records and concealed problems at its nuclear power plants. Operation of the Fukushima I-1 reactor was suspended for a year because of falsification of a test on the seals of the containment vessel. TEPCO was forced to shut down all 17 of its reactors and four executives resigned. TEPCO presented a plan to regain public trust including “increasing transparency, improving company culture and instilling corporate ethics.”

        In late 2006, news of extensive falsification of records and deception with respect to safety at power plants came to light. In 2007, the government ordered all twelve power companies in Japan to submit thorough reports of all problems at their power plants. The reports contained over four hundred incidents at nuclear power plants including over two hundred that involved TEPCO reactors.

        Following the revelations of the mandated government reports in 2007, TEPCO again announced a plan to deal with their problems. Given what happened in March of 2011 at Fukushima and the charges against TEPCO that followed, all their plans for positive changes apparently had little effect. This appears to be a repeating pattern with scandals revealing falsified records, irregular behavior and unreported accidents leading to public censor. The guilty parties promise to do a lot better in the future. Time passes. Then there is another round of scandal, revelation and contrition which does nothing to improve the situation.

        The Japanese regulatory organization, the Nuclear Industrial and Safety Agency (NISA), has little power to force regulatory compliance. Part of the Ministry of Economy Trade and Industry and charged with promoting nuclear power in Japan, the Agency also has little motivation to crack down on non-compliant companies or to publicize problems. The billions of dollars that flow through the nuclear industry provide plenty of incentive for companies to cut corners, ignore procedures, bribe companies and officials all in the name of increasing profits. These problems are not restricted to Japan. There are similar patterns of behavior in other countries that have nuclear power programs. Nuclear power will not be a safe form of energy until these institutional issues are dealt with.

         When I was just a kid, someone said that I was a cynic. I got a dictionary and looked up the word. Turns out that it comes from an ancient Greek school of philosophy. These Cynics felt that human institutions were perfectible but they had not been perfected yet and they offered constructive criticism. Over the centuries, institutions who do not like to be criticized even when it is justified, distorted the meaning until the present day when the word has overtones of bitterness and harsh criticism.

         The reason that I bring up this personal story is that it reflects how I feel about the global nuclear industry. The institutions that design, build, own, manage and regulate the global network of commercial nuclear reactors may be perfectible but they certainly have not achieved perfection yet. As with all institutions, they are prone to become self-centered and self-serving. Corruption is an ever present danger in any industry that is regulated by government. Owners who feel that they are immune to the human and environmental damage that may be caused by their industries are tempted to cut corners, bribe officials, ignore regulation, etc. in the pursuit of profits. Here are a few examples from this year.

          In April, South Korean prosecutors charged four executives of the Korean Hydro and Nuclear Power with bribery. The charges were related to a lobbyist who collected six hundred thousand dollars from various suppliers to the Korean nuclear industry. The lobbyist guaranteed the suppliers that he could obtain contracts for them from friends in the industry. Although the whole idea of lobbying government officials is questionable, this clearly crossed the line from lobbying to bribery.

         Taiwan impeached four senior executives at the state-owned Taiwan Nuclear Power Company and the former Bureau of Energy director-general in June. The charges were related to procurement corruption that inflated the cost of orders by six billion dollars over what was actually required. Other officials are expected to face impeachment over similar charges.

         In June, Data Systems & Solutions, a company that provides reactor integrity solutions and reactor support services in the US and Europe, agreed to pay a eight million eight hundred thousand dollar fine for bribing officials at a Lithuanian nuclear power plant. The bribes were paid in order to obtain contracts for design, installation and support of instrumentation at the Lithuanian plant. The U.S. Department of Justice objected to a clear pattern of illegal activity that extended over years.

          Some of these cases are excused by the industry on the grounds that they are rare and did not endanger the public. Unfortunately, they are not all that rare and it is difficult if not impossible to know how much they may have endangered the operational integrity of commercial reactors. I remember hearing a lecture by Robert McChesney in which he said that it was common knowledge in the media industry that it was not safe to write about corporate corruption. The unspoken rule was that if you had to write about it then you always said that the problems were related to “a few bad apples” and were not fundamental to the system.

From Nuclear-News.net:

           I have covered Fukushima extensively in these posts but I have just come across something that I had not seen before. There have been recent articles lately about the involvement of the Yakuza in the Japanese nuclear industry and the presence of members of the Yakuza at the Fukushima nuclear plant that suffered the catastrophe in March of 2011.

         The Yakuza are a Japanese criminal syndicate with extensive ties to business and politics in Japan. They are acknowledged and regulated by the government. Their money comes from “extortion, blackmail, construction, real estate, collection services, financial market manipulation, protection rackets, fraud and a labyrinth of front companies including labor dispatch services and private detective agencies. They do the work that no one else will do or find the workers for jobs no one wants.” One Yakuza member said that when a woman reaches the bottom, the only work left is the sex trade. When a man reaches the bottom, the only work left is at nuclear reactors.

          TEPCO, the company that owns the Fukushima plant, has a long history of scandals, corruption, unreported safety problems, doctored documents, altered photographs, etc. A book titled “The Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry,” was recently published in Japan. The author claims that TEPCO was not an anomaly but part of a nuclear industry rife with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, lax regulation, bribery, lobbyists and unscrupulous companies. And the book claims that the Yakuza was right in the middle of all this.

         With their ties to construction, real estate and the financial industry, it should come as no surprise that the Yakuza were involved in the construction and staffing of many of Japans nuclear plants. The author says that subcontractors paid the Yakuza to get construction contracts at Fukushima and that money intended for construction was funneled to the Yakuza.

        When the author went undercover to work at Fukushima, he found that there was a two tier system of employees. The lower tier supplied by the Yakuza consisted of homeless men, unemployable men, men who owed the Yakuza money and even mentally handicapped individuals. Unlike the upper tier of employees who had good radiation protection gear and monitoring, the lower tier got poorer equipment and was not monitored as carefully for radiation exposure. There were reports from Fukushima that some employees were told to cover their radiation badges to reduce exposure readings. This all ties in with older reports I have read where homeless and older poor people were hired to clean up a nuclear spill. They were given mops and bucket and were not told how dangerous the work was.

        In general, the working conditions were horrible with non-functioning temperature monitors and suits that made going to the bathroom or drinking water almost impossible. People often passed out from the heat. The masks did not filter out all of the radiation in the air and were often ill-fitting. If they went to the TEPCO staff doctors, they were given cold medicine. Anyone who complained was fired.

         Many of the workers fled when the tsunami hit Fukushima. A few men stayed behind to try to deal with the disaster and it is claimed that some of them were Yakuza. After the disaster, the government raised the level of acceptable exposure and then even stopped monitoring radiation at all in some parts of the plant. The Yakuza was enlisted to find emergency workers. They went all over Japan to find people, saying “Bring us the living dead, the people that no one will miss.” The workers were poorly prepared and some were threatened when they tried to quit. If TEPCO didn’t know what the workers were going through, they should have. Now that the Yakuza involvement has been revealed, TEPCO claims that they are telling their subcontractors to cut ties to organized crime.

         However questionable the involvement of the Yakuza at Fukushima, the real criminals are the politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen who, through a combination of greed, corruption and incompetence, allowed a preventable disaster to occur which could ultimate threaten human civilization.

Yakuza member  from Jorgo/Open access:

          Several days ago I wrote a post about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on nuclear reactors on in the East Coast of the United States. With respect to a particular reactor, I wrote:

          “Public Service Enterprise Group manually shut down its Salem Unit 1 reactor near Wilmington, Delaware because four of the six pumps that circulate cooling water were no longer functioning.  A lot of grass and debris were brought in by the storm and could have clogged the water circulation system.”

          I concluded that post by saying that the nuclear plant operators had the situation under control and that there was no risk to the public. Since then, I have seen and posted links that call that assessment, especially with respect to the Salem reactors, into question.

          There have been several reports since that post that suggest that there may be problems with the spent fuel pools at the Salem nuclear plant.. Five of the six pumps that circulate cooling water for the Unit 1 reactors were damaged and had to be shut down. One of the cooling pumps for the Unit 2 reactor lost power and shut down.

          When power is lost at nuclear plants or the coolant pumps are damaged, there can be problems with cooling the fuel rods being stored in the fuel rod pool. Without pumps to circulate the coolant in the pool, the temperature rises. If it gets hot enough to boil off the water in the pool, the rods will be exposed to the air and may begin to burn, releasing toxic smoke and particulates into the atmosphere.

          This is a great concern at Fukushima because of the spent fuel pool on the fourth floor of the damaged Unit 4 reactor building. If there is another quake or hurricane and the building collapses, the rods will burn and release huge amounts of radioactivity into the atmosphere. The winds will carry the plume around the planet, threatening everyone in the Northern Hemisphere.

          Salem Unit 2 reactor was in refueling mode with most of the fuel rods in the pool and lost power to one of its cooling pumps. The pump has been repaired and the reactor is back in service. The reports of dangers to the spent fuel rods pool at Salem Unit 21 claim that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was aware of the potential danger but that neither the NRC or the company that operates the plant released that information to the national media.

          . The Salem Unit 1was operating at 100% when the storm hit. Some of the reactor operators on the East Coast choose to reduce the power output of their reactors or to shut them down entirely as Hurricane Sandy approached. Continuing to run at one hundred percent power as a hurricane is approaching is probably not a good idea.

             With the increase in extreme weather events and the experience of problems with the Fukushima tsunami and the flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy, it would be a good idea for the NRC to review its recommended procedures in case of storms and flooding for nuclear plant operators. Information on potential dangers resulting from storm and flood damage need to be communicated to the public in a timely fashion. If we are going to continue to make use of nuclear power for generating electricity, then the government and the industry are going to have to have the confidence of the public.

Salem Nuclear Power Plant:

          I have covered different aspect of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in past blog posts. My sister blog http://www.Radiationrelations.com presents four link every day about radioactivity and nuclear issues, often dealing with Fukushima. I thought that I should explain why I dwell on Fukushima so much. Nuclear power is an important source of electric power generation in the world today. As the responses to and the repercussions of Fukushima have unfolded, they have illustrated many of the problems with the use of nuclear power.

         The first problem is the vulnerability of nuclear reactors to things like earthquakes and tsunamis. A number of design weaknesses were revealed at Fukushima. The reactors were located so close together that an explosion in one reactor building severely damaged another reactor building. Placing the spent fuel pools on the upper levels of the reactors buildings was shown to be dangerous if the buildings were seriously damaged. Locating emergency generators in basements is a bad idea because of possible flooding.

          A second problem is radiation from the disaster making its way into the environment and food chain by contaminating the air, soil, and the ocean water. Contaminated crops and meats have been rejected for import by some countries. Radioactivity has been found in fish as far away as the Pacific Coast of the United States. The cloud of radioactive gases and particulates continues to circulate the globe in the Northern Hemisphere.

          A third problem is misbehavior on the part of the company running the Fukushima reactors. They made unreported design changes, failed to make changes that were mandated by the government, lied about their actions, failed to report serious design flaws that they knew about, exposed their workers to dangerous levels of radiation, and, in general, failed to run the reactors in a responsible, professional, safe and transparent way.

         A fourth problem has to do with the government response. The government was slow to respond to the disaster and to tell the people of Japan just exactly what was happening and what the danger was and is. There has been government propaganda downplaying the risks of the radiation release.

        A fifth problem is the physical and psychological impact of the disaster on the people of Japan. A number of different health problems have been developing in the Japanese population that may have been caused by the radiation released at Fukushima. There is widespread anxiety and depression among the Japanese, especially in the Fukushima region. Some people have fled, even leaving Japan altogether. Other people are trying to decide if they should have children, given the danger.

        Finally, Japan is resource poor. They do not have much in the way of fossil fuels to power their society. Nuclear power seemed a good choice but now that choice is not looking so good. The government is struggling with the fact that the economy needs power to function but the people have been so frightened by the Fukushima disaster that there is growing political pressure to shut down all the nuclear reactors in Japan permanently.

         The Fukushima disaster was triggered by a natural event that could not be prevented. However, design flaws, corporate competence and honesty, and government oversight could have been handled much better which would have mitigated the problems caused by the tsunami that hit Fukushima. Nuclear power can be a safe source of energy but only if it is handled correctly. Fukushima has been a very good example of what happens when it is not.

Fukushima nuclear power plant – from Micarox.com:

         The first commercial power plant in the United Kingdom and the world went into operation in 1956 at Calder Hill but the main reason for the reactor being built was to produce weapons grade plutonium. and the last plant built in the UK was put into operation in 1995. By 1997, nuclear reactors generated about twenty five percent of the UK’s electricity but the nuclear proportion has declined since then to about sixteen percent of the UK’s electricity being generated from 16 nuclear reactors today. Most of the reactors in the UK are advanced gas-cooled type. 10 reactors have been retired and decommissioned. Uranium for UK reactors is purchased on the world uranium market from such places as Canada, Australia, Niger, Namibia and Uzbekistan

         The development of nuclear power in the UK has been complicated by the mixed reasons for building the early reactors including commercial power generation, research and weapons development. There is strong conflict between proponents and opponents of nuclear power and no long term, consistent guidance from the government. After the year 2000, protests and opposition increased because of a reported link between cancers and nuclear power plants. There is a high level of support for renewable energy sources as an alternative to nuclear power. It is estimated that the Fukushima nuclear disaster caused a twelve percent drop in UK public support for nuclear power.

          There have been a few major accidents in the UK where large amounts of radioactivity have been released into the environment. No deaths were directly attributable to the accidents but there are estimates of over 100 additional deaths from cancers cause by the radioactive materials released. The estimated cost of the major accidents is somewhere in the range of one hundred and fifty million US dollars. Although there is the potential for earthquakes and coastal flooding in the UK, the government is confident that current safety measures will be sufficient to deal with any threats from these events.

          There are plans to build new nuclear reactors in the UK but the government wants to turn over construction and operation to private firms. The high cost of nuclear plant construction will be one of the problems with gaining private involvement. There will have to be some incentives to encourage new construction but no long term government subsidies are planned. Scotland and Wales have strong anti-nuclear sentiments and have voted to prevent any new reactors from being built in Scotland or Wales.

          There is been no program for permanent nuclear waste disposal in the UK so currently some of the spent fuel is reprocessed and some is in temporary storage. The cost of waste disposal will be borne by the private firms for future reactors. The UK government currently runs the waste storage facility at Sellafield where most of the high-level radioactive waste is now stored. There is wide-spread public concern about the disposal of nuclear waste.

          The UK nuclear program has been run efficiently and delivered a useful fraction of the UK electrical demand over the years. Going forward, the rising costs of construction, the public opposition, and the problem of waste disposal may prevent or seriously delay the constructions of more reactors in the UK.

Seal of the United Kingdom:

          I have discussed the fact that nuclear reactors require an enormous amount of water to cool them in previous posts. This means that they have to be located near major sources of water such big rivers, big lakes or the ocean. Since many big cities are near large bodies of water, this makes such locations convenient for major power plants that supply electricity to cities. Unfortunately this also makes the reactors vulnerable to flooding. It was the flood waters from a tsunami that caused the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

          Several different meteorological phenomena converged recently to create one of the worst storms to hit the New England states in a century. Hurricane Sandyhas taken at least thirty lives and wracked havoc from Virginia to Maine. The ferocious winds have blown down buildings and brought down trees. The pounding waves have flooded coastal communities and left million of people without power. The storm is weakening but the damage and flooding will take weeks to deal with.

           The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent out teams to monitor nuclear reactors in the path of the storm. These are some of the power plants that were affected by the storm.

            Public Service Enterprise Group manually shut down its Salem Unit 1 reactor near Wilmington, Delaware because four of the six pumps that circulate cooling water were no longer functioning.  A lot of grass and debris were brought in by the storm and could have clogged the water circulation system.

            The CENG owned Nine Mile Point reactor near Scriba, New York shut down automatically because there was a power disruption in a switchyard.

             Entergy Corporation’s Indian Point 3 nuclear plant in New York shut down automatically because there were problems with the power grid caused by the storm. The 911 hijackers flew right over Indian Point and could have crashed into it but they thought that it was protected by anti-aircraft missiles.

             Exelon Corporation’s Oyster Creek nuclear plant north of Atlantic City, New Jersey declared an alert because of rising water levels in its water intake system. There was also a disruption in the switch yard. Three reactors were shut down as a precaution. Oyster Creek is the oldest operating commercial reactor in the United States.

             These events illustrate some of the types of problems that extreme weather events can cause nuclear power plants. Interruption of cooling water systems and problems with the electrical grid at two of the most important. The response to this storm was swift and professional. There has been no indication that there was any danger to the public or the environment from the reactors in the path of the storm.  

           There were twenty six nuclear power plants that could have been impacted by the storm. With global climate change, we can expect more extreme weather events in the future. Following the clean up from Hurricane Sandy, it would be a good idea to review that extreme weather events pose for nuclear reactors and the response systems in place to deal with them.

Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant:

          Seventy percent of Finland’s power comes from coal, gas, hydro and biofuels. Some power is imported from Russia. Coal is imported from Poland and Russia. All imported gas comes from Russia. Finland has four operating nuclear reactors that supply about thirty percent of their electrical power. When the annual rainfall is low, there is a power shortfall and more electricity must be imported. Finland is working to be more energy independent.

          Two boiling water reactors were purchased from a Swedish company and brought on line in 1978.  They were originally rated at generating about six hundred and fifty Megawatts of electricity but were eventually upgraded by thirty percent to eight hundred and sixty Megawatts. There are plans to upgrade them to one thousand Megawatts each. Their lifespans have been extended from forty years to sixty years and their status will be reviewed every decade. The other two reactors were purchased from a Russian company, had Western control systems installed and then put into operation around 1980. They have also had their power output upgraded and life spans extended from thirty years to fifty years. The Finnish reactors have an excellent record of maintenance, stable output and safety. They have an average capacity factor over the last ten years of over eighty five percent.

        The fuel supply for the two Swedish reactors illustrate the global nature of the nuclear industry. Uranium for the two reactors has been purchased from Canada, Australia and Africa. The uranium was converted to UF6 in Canada and France and the Russians enriched it. The fuel rods have been fabricated Germany, Sweden and Spain.  At least nine countries located all over the globe have been involved in providing fuel for the two Swedish reactors. This makes those reactors especially vulnerable to any events that interfere with international trade and/or global transportation networks. The operators of the two Russian reactors contracted with Russia for a complete fuel service. This makes the fuel supply less vulnerable to global problems but makes it more vulnerable to interruption if there are any problems in Russia.

       Finland started working on spent nuclear fuel disposal in 1983. A fund was established to accumulate funds for final disposal and it now contains over two billion Euros. The companies operating the reactors are responsible for handling and storing waste until it is moved to permanent storage facilities. There are already permanent repositories for low–level waste and they are being upgraded to eventually take spent nuclear fuel rods. In 2010, a Finnish mining company announced plans to recover uranium from nickel and zinc mining operations.

       Plans have been approved for the construction of a fifth reactor. This reactor is the first new reactor project in ten years in Western Europe. There are additional discussions and planning for the construction of a sixth and seventh reactor in Finland. Finland is an example of a country that has proceeded with an efficient, safe and responsible implementation of nuclear power for generation of electricity.

Seal of Finland:

            The Fukushima nuclear disaster was partly caused by the tsunami triggered by the nearby earthquake. The generator room that supplied power for monitoring and cooling was located in a basement which flooded. Without monitoring and cooling , several of the reactors overheated and generated gases which exploded causing major damage to the reactor buildings. There is some evidence that the cores of several of the reactors may have melted through the bottom of the containment vessels and penetrated into the earth, threatening the ground water.

            Researchers from Penn State University presented a new idea for nuclear reactor monitoring at the Annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in late October. They suggest the creation of something they call a thermoacoustic standing wave engine inside a fuel rod. Sound is created by variations in air pressure when the air pressure rises and falls in a repeating pattern. Thermoacoustics has to do with the interaction of sound and heat. In a thermoacoustic system, there are variations of heat in a repeating pattern in some material that is related to sound waves traveling through the material. It is possible to create heating systems, cooling systems and engines which generate sound from heat differences with the thermoacoustic effect. One benefit of a thermoacoustic device is that it can be built with no moving parts.

           The Penn State researchers created a nuclear fuel rod that incorporates a thermoelectric engine. The engine would resonate at a frequency based on the temperature of the fuel rod. In addition, heat would be distributed more evenly in the fuel rod which would make it more efficient as an energy source. The device was constructed from a stack of ceramic plate full of a parallel pores that was originally made for catalytic converters in car exhaust systems.  The stack transfers heat to a resonator full of gas and sound is generated by temperature differences. With this device, the temperature of the fuel rod is measured and signaled without the need for external power making the whole system less vulnerable to accidents.

          The thermoacoustic effect will circulate gas between the fuel and the steel shell of the rod and transfer heat out into the surrounding liquid increasing efficiency. The sound generated by the thermoacoustic engine in the fuel rod will travel out of the rod and into the surround fluid. The sound can then be detected by microphones that are some distance from the rod.

           The Idaho Nuclear Laboratory has been working in conjunction with the Penn State researchers to extend the use of the thermoelectric effect to monitor microstructural changes in the fuel rods, measure the composition of gas mixtures and to act as a failsafe device in case of emergencies.

         Hopefully, utilization of such advanced techniques as thermoacoustic engines can help make future generations of nuclear reactors safer, simpler and more efficient.

Diagram of Penn State Thermoacoustic standing wave engine:

           Muons are elementary particles similar to electrons. They were discovered in 1936 by Carl Anderson and Seth Neddermeyer at Caltech in 1936. They have a negative charge and are two hundred times as heavy as an electron. They occur naturally as a result of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere of the Earth. About ten thousand muons hit every square meter of the Earth’s surface every minute of every day. They decay in about two millions of a second into an electron and some neutrinos.

          Muons do not interact as much with ordinary matter as electrons and are not influenced as much as electrons by magnetic fields. They tend to pass through ordinary matter and penetrate deep into the earth. Muon detectors have been placed between one of the great pyramids in Egypt to detect hidden chambers. The muon images look a lot like x-rays and will show the shadows that map out different densities of matter and cavities.

         Muons are strongly affected by passing through uranium and plutonium because they are so dense. Scientists have speculated that muons might be useful in detecting these elements in buried repositories. The problem is that the shadow muon “x-ray” is two dimensional and not very good for identifying the exact position of things.

         Recently, scientists led by Guy Jonkmans at Atomic Energy of Canada in their Chalk River Laboratories nuclear lab in Ontario, Canada, have announced a method for generating a three dimension image from a muon scan. By placing muon detectors above and below repositories, the trajectory of muons passing through the repository can be tracked. With this information, computer image processing can build up a three dimensional image.

         This muon scanning technique could be very useful in identifying the presence and location of uranium and plutonium in buried waste repositories. Jonkmans and associates have tested their new technique and verified that it works. Now they have to work on creating a practical system that can be deployed to the field. Working with buried radioactive materials will make such work difficult and dangerous.

         There are buried nuclear waste materials at various sites which are not well documented. It is not know exactly what is buried and where. The Hanford site in Washington State is an example of a waste disposal site with a lot of uncertainty about many casks of liquid and solid waste buried over a wide area. Many of them are wearing out and leaking into the ground water. This new technique developed by Jonkmans and associates would be very valuable in identifying locations and types of nuclear waste.

          This new technique will not be easy to develop but it is critical that we find some way to deal with these buried nuclear waste depositories that are threatening the environment in many different places.

The Berkeley Lab Cosmic Ray Telescope Project: