The restart of Japan’s nuclear power reactors is “critical” to the success of the country’s energy policy, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). However, it says nuclear power can only be restored provided that the highest safety standards can be met and public trust regained. world-nuclear-news.org

With partisan politics casting a shadow over the process, India is reportedly negotiating with the U.S. government’s Export-Import Bank for a loan of up to $9 billion in order to help finance a six-unit nuclear build that involves Westinghouse Electric’s AP1000 technology. nulearstreet.com

The House Ways and Means Committee voted Wednesday to remove a key deadline for a nuclear power plant tax credit. The legislation from Reps. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) would remove the requirement that newly-built nuclear power plants be in service by 2020 in order to receive a tax credit for producing power. thehill.com

SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. has struck an agreement in principle for a joint venture with two major Chinese companies to build a new generation of nuclear reactors. Montreal-based SNC said on Thursday it will join forces with state-owned atomic power and weapons company China National Nuclear Corp. and manufacturing giant Shanghai Electric Group Co. Ltd. to design, market and build the Advanced Fuel Candu reactor (AFCR). theglobeandmail.com

       I have often blogged about the dangers of radiation to human health. In addition to cancers being caused by radioactive materials, there are a variety of other serious illnesses that can be caused by exposure to radiation. It is true that we are all exposed to what is called background radiation from naturally occurring uranium, radium and radon. However, the linear, no-threshold model of radiation health effects states that there is no safe level of radiation when it comes to health. Metastudies of epidemiological patterns indicate a correlation between radiation related illnesses and the level of natural background radiation. Major nuclear accidents and the detonation of nuclear weapons can increase the background radiation levels over broad areas and increase health risk. With increasing levels of cancers in human populations, radiation treatments are another place where normal people are exposed to more radiation than in the past.

        I have mentioned in previous blogs that there are organisms such as the bacteria named Deinococcus Radiodurans  that have extremely high tolerance for radiation because of their protein repair mechanisms. Naked mole rats also have a mechanism for insuring the integrity of their proteins that would confer some resistance to the damage caused by radiation. They do not get cancer. Now scientists have found that a tiny creature called a tardigrade also has built in radiation resistance.

      Tardigrades are tiny creatures about a millimeter long that feed on moss. They are incredibly hardy and can survive conditions that would kill almost any other living creature. They can survive temperatures from near absolute zero to a hundred degrees Centigrade. If they become dehydrated, they can lose up to ninety seven percent of their water and enter a dormant stage. When they are rehydrated, they come back to life. They can survive the vacuum of space. They can survive pressures much greater than the deepest parts of the world’s oceans. Now it has been found that they can survive what should be lethal doses of radiation.

       Their radiation resistance is based on a protein that is called “damage suppressor” or Dsup for short. The Dsup protein encloses the tardigrade DNA and protects it. The Dsup does not interfere with the normal function of the DNA. It is also possible that the Dsup helps to remove what are called reactive oxygen species which could damage DNA.

        The researchers manipulated the genes for human kidney cells to produce Dsup. They found that the Dsup in the human cells also protected the human DNA. When subjected to X-rays, the Dsup protection reduced the damage by up to fifty percent over unprotected kidney cells. It is possible that incorporating Dsup into all the cells in an animal or a human being could confer radiation protection for the whole organism. However, this would be much more difficult than working with cultures of individual cell types.

        With the development of these gene-editing technologies, it may be possible to give human beings the ability to resist radiation damage from environmental and medical radiation. Such resistance would also be useful to help protect astronauts on space missions.

Tardigrade: 

An operating licence was issued yesterday for the new interim used fuel storage at the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania, the State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate (Vatesi) announced today. The licence permits commissioning of the facility, known as the ISFSF B1 Project, and the start of hot trials with ten new design casks. ISFSF B1 Project is located in Visaginas municipality. world-nuclear-news.org

The leader of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party policy committee said Wednesday that it was time to make a “concrete decision” concerning the country’s Monju sodium-cooled fast-breeder reactor that has been plagued with problems, including an accident in 1995 that limited its time in operation. nuclearstreet.com

South Korea and the United States will conduct a mock attack on a nuclear facility next month, an official with the South Korean Defense Department told CNN. cnn.com

Ukraine’s military intelligence claims Russia’s nuclear forces have begun training, simulating the conditions of a large-scale conflict. newsweek.com

       I have often mentioned my concerns with how conscientious the nuclear industry has been and will be with respect to maintenance at nuclear power plants. The situation in the U.S. was so bad in the 1980s that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) decided that they had to take action. Sloppy maintenance was actually causing new problems and increasing the risks to public safety.

      The NRC had regulations in place that required plant owners to find and fix safety problems at their facilities in a timely and efficient manner. NRC regulations mandated that nuclear plant owners file what are called Licensee Event Reports (LER) with respect to safety problems related to poor maintenance practices. The number of LERs being reported rose during the 1980s and the NRC decided that current regulations for safety maintenance at nuclear power plants was not sufficient.

        The NRC went through a public rule making process to develop Section 50.65, “Requirements for Monitoring the Effectiveness of Maintenance at Nuclear Power Plants.” This is called the Maintenance Rule. This rule goes beyond regulations that apply to the specifics of maintenance. It requires plant owners to periodically review just how effective their maintenance policies are in practice to insure that safety equipment will function properly as intended.

       In response to this new rule, the nuclear industry developed an industry standard for a process to monitor maintenance procedures to insure that they comply with the new NRC rule. This industry standard is called NEWMARC 83-01 which has been formally approved by the NRC. Nuclear plant owners have the option of developing their own procedures but then they would have to seek approval of the NRC.

       The NRC won praise for going beyond the expected response to worsening maintenance problems which would have been to call out violations and violators and demand that they follow existing NRC regulations. Instead the NRC stepped back and took a broader view of their regulatory mandate.

       The new Maintenance Rule has helped nuclear plant owners to better evaluate their maintenance programs and the effectiveness of their safety equipment. The new rule requires the plant owners to periodically check all their maintenance equipment as opposed to only attending to equipment that has been associated with a reported problem. This periodic checking helps locate possible problems before they become actual problems. Proactive procedures such as these lead to more effective and cheaper maintenance and enhance safety.

       Serious nuclear plant accidents have resulted from the conjunction of three causal factors. First, there is some event that starts the causal chain such as an earthquake, flood or fire. Then there is some design deficiency that prevents the problem from being dealt with by normal procedures and equipment. And finally, there is the human factor that may involve incompetence in the control room or may include the failure of a maintenance worker or procedure that should have prevent the accident from becoming catastrophic. The new rule from the NRC is intended to mitigate or remove entirely the second and third factors from the chain and to prevent accidents from becoming disasters.

The estimated cost of decommissioning Soviet-designed, first-generation nuclear power reactors in  Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia will be at least €5.7 billion ($6.4 billion), according to the European Court of Auditors. However, it warns this could double if the cost of disposing of high-level radioactive waste is included. world-nuclear-news.org

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that an environmental review of the Enrico Fermi’s Unit 2 reactor license application revealed no causes why the plant could not be granted a 20-year extension on its operating permit, which is due to expire on May 20, 2025. nuclearstreet.com

China’s Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council has drafted new rules for nuclear plant development that would have companies clear their projects through local stakeholders. nuclearstreet.com

Risks of a nuclear disaster have been significantly underestimated, scientists have warned just days after the Government approved plans for the £18billion Hinkley Point C reactor. Experts from the UK and Switzerland said that the true cost of the project could be much higher because of the underestimated risks. dailymail.co.uk

       On August 27th, a huge sink hole appeared under a gypsum stack at a plant operated by the Mosaic company that manufactures fertilizer in Mulberry, Florida which is about thirty miles east of Tampa, Florida. The hole is forty five feet in diameter. An estimated two hundred and sixty million gallons of waste water in the retention pond flowed down through the sinkhole which is believed to reach into the Floridian aquifer which is beneath the whole state. The porous rock layer extends under southern Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, supplying groundwater to the cities of Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Gainesville, Orlando, Daytona Beach, Tampa, and St Petersburg. Thousands of wells for domestic, industrial and irrigation also draw water from the Floridian aquifer.

        The waste water contains a chemical called phosphogypsum which is a byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer production process  This chemical contains uranium and radium that occurs naturally in soil.

        When the sinkhole was discovered, Mosaic began diverting the water in the retention pond into another holding pond in order to reduce the quantity of polluted water that was flowing into the sinkhole. The water that had flowed underground was being recovered by being pumped from wells that are used to obtain water for the production of fertilizer.

         A mosaic spokesperson said that “ground water moves very slowly.” He said that “We have an extensive monitoring system. It’s already indicating that it’s recovering the material, but it will take some time for that process to complete.” He added that the incident would not affect production at the plant. He claims that there is no threat to public health but that the company would offer free water testing for any Floridians concerned about the incident.

        The Florida director of the Center for Biological Diversity was not comforted by the Mosaic announcement. She said pointed out the fact that the incident was not reported to the general public until September 16th which was three weeks after it happened. Mosaic only released a statement to the public after stories about the sinkhole and waste water drainage appeared in the media. This does not inspire confidence in Mosaic’s credibility.

        The fertilizer industry in Florida has a bad record of polluting bodies of water and soil with byproducts from their production process. Less than one year ago, Mosaic settled an environmental lawsuit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Mosaic agreed to spend almost two billion dollars improving and cleaning up its plants.

         A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) said that, “Along with reviewing daily reports, DEP is performing frequent site visits to make sure timely and appropriate response continues in order to safeguard public health and the environment. While monitoring to date indicates that the process water is being successfully contained, groundwater monitoring will continue to ensure there are no offsite or long-term effects.” It is estimated that the cost of dealing with the sinkhole and waste water will be between twenty million and fifty million dollars.

Mosaic fertilizer plant in Mulberry, Florida: