South Korea is preparing for full-scale war with North Korea by developing missiles that could destroy North Korea nuclear and missile facilities in the event of a conflict. Upi.com

CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Thursday that North Korea is months away from perfecting its nuclear weapons capabilities. Sfgate.com

Missouri’s only nuclear power plant is undergoing a nearly $130 million repair project that includes the first overhaul of its main generator since the plant began operating in 1984. Usnews.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin says that a global ban on nuclear weapons can be achieved in the future.Putin said Thursday at the Valdai forum for international policy experts that total nuclear disarmament is a possibility that Russia would welcome. He said Russia would “want it and will be striving to achieve that.” Abcnews.go.com

       “The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created as an independent agency by Congress in 1974 to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials for beneficial civilian purposes while protecting people and the environment. The NRC regulates commercial nuclear power plants and other uses of nuclear materials, such as in nuclear medicine, through licensing, inspection and enforcement of its requirements.” NRC website.

       In 2000, the NRC changed its process for inspecting nuclear power plants. The new process was referred to as the Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) and is much better than previous oversight processes. The NRC decided that the refinement of the ROP would be an ongoing process with periodic reviews and revisions. This year the NRC carried out a formal review of the ROP. One recommendation that came out of the review was to change the ROP so that the same number of items could be inspected with fewer actual visits to the power plants.

       The nuclear industry had its own recommendations about how to change the ROP to make it more effective and efficient. Industry groups suggested that the NRC engineering inspection visits be eliminated. In place of NRC visits, the nuclear industry suggested that the operators of power plants carry out the necessary inspections themselves and send reports to the NRC.

       The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a civic watch-dog group, carried out their own comparison of the number of engineering problems turned up by self-review with the number of engineering problems turned up by NRC inspections. The USC concluded that “that the NRC’s engineering inspections are necessary for nuclear safety and that public health and safety will be compromised by replacing them with self-assessments by industry.” This finding is consistent with the fact that there have been many instances of operators of nuclear power plants failing to follow government regulations in the construction and/or operation of nuclear power plants. In addition, they have lied and falsified records in order to hide their violations.

       One big concern about government regulation of industries is the possibility that the agency that should be in charge of guaranteeing that companies obey government regulations is actually working with the company to the detriment of the public. There have been many cases where a regulatory agency colluded with a regulated company to conceal violation of regulations. While there are some regulations that are unnecessary and burdensome, many regulations were put in place explicitly because companies violated good business practices and posed a threat to public health and safety.

       Of all the regulations that should be rigorously followed by commercial enterprises in the U.S., the nuclear regulations are some of the most critical. Failure to follow regulations could lead to a major accident at a nuclear power plant that could threaten the well-being of millions of citizens.

       The NRC has a mediocre record with respect to enforcement of regulations at nuclear power plants. It is absolutely critical that the NRC carry out periodic and thorough inspections at every operation nuclear power plant in the U.S. The companies that operate those plants cannot be trusted to honestly report all the problems that they may be aware of at their plants. In addition, the NRC itself must be subjected to periodic inspections to prevent detect, halt and prevent regulatory capture.

Federal regulators will give Duke Energy’s Catawba nuclear power plant on Lake Wylie increased oversight after an electrical component of an emergency generator failed a test. Charlotteobserver.com

South Africa cannot afford more nuclear power, says former Eskom CEO. Citizen.co.za

Activists Raised Alarms about South Carolina Nuclear Project from the Start free-times.com

U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette on Wednesday expressed his country’s intention to extend the current nuclear cooperation agreement with Japan, which is due to expire next summer, without renegotiating it. Asoa.nikkei.com

       When I drew up a list of problems with nuclear power, one of the items on the list was the fact that you cannot trust corporations to follow laws and regulations. Over the years I have pointed out some of the misbehavior of members of the nuclear industry. A few years ago, it was discovered that Le Creusot, a French foundry, had been forging quality control reports for nuclear reactor components for decades. At first, nuclear plant owners around the world refused to admit whether or not their reactors contained parts manufactured by Le Creusot. Eventually, at-risk reactors were identified and the suspect parts were checked. This scandal sent shockwaves through the nuclear industry. Now another company has been accused of similar behavior.

       Kobe Steel, Ltd. is a major manufacturer of steel products with headquarters in Kobe, Japan. It does business worldwide under the trade name of Kobelco. Founded in 1905, it is one of Kobe’s oldest industrial companies. It has hundreds of subsidiaries and dozens of affiliated companies around the globe. Kobe Steel is a member of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group keiretsu, a type of informal association of companies.

        In October of this year, Kobe steel officials admitted that the company had falsified data on the strength and durability of its aluminum, copper and steel products for over ten years. It was also found that Kobe Steel had falsified quality information for its iron ore powder. Testing on components used in bullet trains found that over three hundred steel parts from Kobe Steel were sub-standard. Car parts and airplane parts supplied by Kobe Steel were also found to be sub-standard. Kobe Steel has admitted that they supplied sub-standard parts to over five hundred companies. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, a company that builds and services nuclear reactors, was one of those companies supplied with suspect Kobe parts.

      This scandal has dealt a blow to the reputation of Japan as a source of high quality parts for manufacturing. Part of the blame is on Japanese culture which discourages criticism from inside or outside companies. It is estimated that only about a half of the parts exported from Japan are inspected for quality.

       So far, Kobe Steel has been reluctant to supply much detail on which components are sub-standard and what exactly are the problems with those components. Any nuclear power plant that contains components from Kobe Steel now has to be considered at risk for problems until all the parts from Kobe Steel are located and tested. This will be an added expense for an industry that often fails to deliver its product within original cost estimates. Unfortunately new expenses incurred by checking Kobe Steel components will most likely be paid by the customers for the electricity generated by the nuclear power plants.

       Nuclear power is already having problems competing in the international electricity marketplace. In the U.S. nuclear power plants are being closed because they cannot compete with cheap fossil fuels and renewable energy sources. This new scandal will make nuclear power even less competitive and reduce the interest of investors in building new nuclear power plants. Now that two big suppliers of nuclear components have been found to be lying about the quality of their products, I wonder what would be found if other nuclear component suppliers were investigated.

Despite widespread opposition to the proposal to build new nuclear energy capacity in SA, from academia, civil society, labor unions, economists, corporate SA and just about everyone aside from some in government and the usual industry insiders, the Department of Environmental Affairs has quietly approved the construction of up to three new nuclear reactors at the Koeberg site. Businesslive.co.za

A conservative think tank is raising concerns about a Department of Energy plan to help boost coal and nuclear power. Thehill.com

Although the delay in receiving the construction licence for the Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant will not affect the cost of the project, its impact on the commissioning schedule will become clearer later this year, Fennovoima CEO Toni Hemminki told journalists last week. The company began excavation work at the site in Pyhäjoki in northern Finland in January last year. World-nuclear-news.org

An International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team leader commended the Institute for Energy Technology’s (IFE) commitment to safety at the JEEP II 2000 kW reactor 20 miles north of Oslo, Norway, but also noted that further improvements were needed at the research plant. Nuclearstreet.com

 

       North Korea has been conducting underground tests of nuclear bombs recently. N.K. detonated its biggest underground test last month. The device that was detonated was rated at equivalent to about one hundred and forty kilotons of TNT. This is about ten times the size of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 at the end of World War II. Now it seems that N.K. may have worn out its underground test location.

        The South Korean Korea Meteorological Administration has detected four earthquakes in the area where N.K. has been testing since the last test. The most recent quake was about two point seven magnitude. The epicenter of the quake was thirty miles northwest of the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site. It was not caused by human activity and apparently resulted in no damage. Experts concluded that the four quakes were the result of damage to the tectonic stability under the test area. Earthquakes don’t normally occur in that area and none were seen after a series of smaller detonations conducted by N.K. in 2006. S.K. officials did not speculate about how the recent tests may have affected the area where the tests were carried out.

        On the other hand, civilian geologists are concerned that that test area is now too geologically unstable to safely conduct any more tests. It has been the practice of N.K. to steadily increase the yield of test devices. It is unlikely that they would waste resources testing weaker nuclear devices. If they detonate a much more powerful device at the same test location, the results could be catastrophic. Destructive quakes could be triggered and wreck havoc in the area.

       According to Kune Yull Suh, a professor of nuclear engineering at Seoul National University, a powerful nuclear detonation in the test area could cause an eruption at Mount Paektu which, in addition to being a sacred North Korean mountain, is also an active volcano. Mount Paektu is only sixty miles away from the test area.

       There have also been fears expressed by other experts that further tests could cause landslides in the area and/or collapse tunnels and buildings. Du Hyeogn Cha, a visiting scholar at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, has expressed similar concerns about further tests in the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site.

       Tensions between the U.S. and N.K. have been steadily increasing in the past year. U.S President Trump and N.K. Dictator Kim Jong Un have been hurling insults and threats at each other for months. The threat of open warfare is more possible now than at any time in years.

       Last month, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said that N.K. may conduct a test of a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean. There is speculation that this may be because the N.K. know they cannot risk another underground test. “It’s likely that North Korea will conduct its next nuclear test in the stratosphere, or about 100 to 300 kilometers (60 to 185 miles) from the ground, where it will be able to conduct more powerful detonations,” Suh said.

Mount Paektu relief map:

It seems like we learn more every week about how Santee Cooper tried to prod a reluctant SCE&G to stem the bleeding at their deteriorating nuclear construction project — and how SCE&G refused to act. Thestate.com

A suspicious package was found at the The Cruas Nuclear Power Station, in France today. The cardboard box was located at the entrance of the site – in the non-nuclear part of the facilities. All employees within 200 meters of the office were evacuated. Dailystar.co.uk

Kansai Electric Power Co. has decided to close two large, aging nuclear reactors at a power plant in Fukui Prefecture in light of rising safety costs that make restarting such facilities financially untenable.  Asia.nikkei.com

NATO countries on Monday kicked off its annual nuclear drill at two bases in Western Europe — part of a three-week event to test defenses. Upi.com