Some 150 people who worked at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant whose cumulative radiation dose exceeded 100 millisieverts will be able to return to the facility starting April 1.  japantimews.co.jp

The state of Wisconsin has lifted a moratorium that had prevented it from considering applications to build new nuclear power plants. Governor Scott Walker signed Assembly Bill 384 into law at a ceremony held at the Wisconsin Energy Institute on 1 April, elifting the moratorium imposed in 1983. world-nuclear-new.org

KazAtomProm and ConverDyn have signed an agreement whereby the world’s largest uranium producer and the “leading provider” of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) conversion services will jointly and immediately offer uranium in the form of natural UF6 to global utilities. UF6 is the natural uranium feedstock for the enrichment step in the nuclear fuel cycle. world-nuclear-new.org

Ohio’s electrical rate deal approved last week by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) provides for rate stability that will “keep a diverse set of fuel sources available to generate electricity, rather than risking more plant closures,” FirstEnergy Corp. said. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

Unit 4 of the Hongyanhe nuclear power plant in China’s Liaoning province today began supplying electricity to the grid. The reactor is expected to enter commercial operation later this year. world-nuclear-news.org

GE Hitatchi (GEH) said that the company’s new, high-tech water filter system called the Feedwater Debris Strainer (FWDS) has been successfully installed at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Forsmark, Sweden. nuclearsteet.com

An anti-nuclear test agency installs a key part of a hydroacoustic monitoring system on the remote French-administered Crozet Islands. Edward Baran reports. scientificamerican.com

The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination stunned Japan and South Korea, two of America’s strongest allies, with the suggestion that the U.S. military would be withdrawn from their shores, with nuclear weapons replacing them.  edition.cnn.com

        The possibility of nuclear terrorism has been capturing the headlines lately. Theories are circulating that the terrorists who attacked an airport and subway in Brussels, Belgium were originally planning an attack on a nuclear power plant or nuclear research facility. In my previous post, I blogged about several different types of nuclear terrorism. Yesterday, the international 2016 Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) was convened in Washington, D.C. hosted by the U.S. President. Members of the nuclear industry held their own conference on nuclear security the day before the NSS began. They drafted a joint statement to be presented at the NSS.

         The nuclear industry representative opened their statement with a promise to continue their cooperation with national governments to secure radioactive materials, insure that the industry members followed regulatory standards, invest in training staff and to generally promote a culture of safety at nuclear installations. They continued with a long list of pledges that fleshed out their general statement of support for best security practices.

        At the top of the list was a promise to “effectively secure all nuclear and radiological materials in industrial facilities and applications, at a minimum by complying with national regulations.” They also promised to continuously improve their security practices, work to enhance public and stakeholder practices, promote a security culture including “encouraging employees to report suspicious behavior.” They promised to work on improving security against cyberattacks, support the improvement of global nuclear security and improving radiological security.

      The nuclear industry statement ended with the recognition that “highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium require special precautions and that it is of great importance that they be appropriately secured, consolidated and accounted for,” and the comment that they “are encouraged by States to continue to minimize stocks of highly enriched uranium and to keep stockpiles of separated plutonium to the minimum level, both as consistent with national requirements.”

        It is nice to have this definitive statement on the part of the nuclear industry with respect to nuclear security. However, I have a problem with believing that the industry will follow through with their promises. Their record to date with respect to nuclear security is problematic to say the least. National regulatory agencies have often been tasked with both promoting nuclear power and regulating it. Regulatory capture has resulted in lax enforcement of regulations. National regulatory agencies and national governments have often been reluctant to tell their citizens about the accidental release of nuclear materials and threats to public health and the environment. In cases where accidents involved nuclear weapons, this lack of transparency has often been excused on national security grounds. Corporations are primarily focused on profits and when following security and safety regulations becomes expensive, they have been known to ignore regulations, fail to make mandated changes in their security, lie to regulatory agencies or fail to report problems altogether.

       If the world is seriously concerned about nuclear security ( and it should be), then national governments are going to have to separate regulatory agencies from the promotion of nuclear power, give them more enforcement power and insure that they rigorously enforce security and safety regulations. If there is a major incident of nuclear terrorism, you can be sure that the public call for better nuclear security will put increasing pressure on the nuclear industry and regulatory agencies to improve security practices.

Training exercises at the U.S. Office of Defense Nuclear Security which develops and implements NNSA security programs to protect, control, and account for materials, information, and facilities across the nuclear security enterprise: 

A ceremony was held on 30 March to inaugurate a new centre in Fukushima prefecture for the development and testing of remote-controlled equipment for use in decommissioning the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. world-nuclear-news.org

Areva, EDF and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) have launched a tripartite consultative body to “best confront the profound changes currently under way in the highly-competitive nuclear sector”. world-nuclear-news.org

Julie Bishop, the Australian foreign minister, yesterday signed an agreement with Ukrainian energy and coal industry minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn that clears the way for Australia to export uranium to Ukraine. world-nuclear-news.org

 AREVA Inc. and NuScale Power announced today that the modified AREVA HTP-2 fuel design for NuScale’s small modular reactor (SMR) technology will be named NuFuel HTP2TM. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

 

 

 

When nuclear power was promoted in the 1950s, there were enthusiasts who said that it would be so cheap that they might not even bother metering it. Unfortunately, this early prediction turned out not to be true. Nuclear power plants are extremely complex and expensive to build. Nuclear fuel has to be mined, refined and disposed of when spent. Nuclear power has been competitive with other sources in the past but those days may be ending.

        The availability of very cheap oil and natural gas, as well as the arrival of competitive alternative energy sources such as wind and solar has lowered the price for electricity to around two cents per kilowatt hour. Currently, nuclear power sources needs about three cents per kilowatt hour to break even. Since 2012, four U.S. nuclear power plants have been shut down and slated for decommissioning because they were no longer competitive in the energy market.

        This situation leads to calls for subsidies for nuclear power because it is a low-carbon power source. There are also areas where there is a high demand for energy and other sources are not sufficient. These factors causes intense political squabbling over such subsidies. And even if subsidies are handed out, they are always vulnerable to shifting political winds.

        Given the serious competition and political uncertainties, there is great pressure to keep the cost of building nuclear power plants and operating them as low as possible. Some critics of nuclear power are concerned that cost may be lowered at the expense of safety. Three quarters of the nuclear power plants in the U.S. have reports leaks of radioactive materials. There have also been fires, and explosions as well as corrosion and embrittlement of metal components and structures. Although many national nuclear regulatory agencies around world  passed stricter safety standards following the March 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory has actually been weakening U.S. regulatory safety standards to make it cheaper for nuclear plant operators to comply.

      The cost of nuclear power plant construction has fallen a little since 2012. In December of 2015, the Nation Energy Institute, a nuclear industry trade group, announced an initiative called Delivering the Nuclear Promise. This new initiative is billed as a program to reduce the cost of nuclear plant construction by as much as thirty percent. There are five new nuclear power plants being built in the U.S. which will be the first new nuclear power sources to be connected to the U.S. grid since 1996.

      Nuclear power supplies about twenty percent of the electricity for the U.S. At three cents per kilowatt hour, nuclear power is still relatively cheap. However, rising construction costs, rising operation costs, intense competition, problems with disposal of spent nuclear fuel and other factors do not inspire confidence among investors in the future viability of nuclear power in the U.S. Although nuclear power may be a low carbon power source, there are other low carbon power sources such as wind and solar. Unlike nuclear power, these sources are becoming cheaper and more competitive. The days of nuclear power generation as a major source of electricity in the U.S. may be numbered.

Status of U.S. nuclear power plants as of 2013:

The Fukushima District Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on March 29 that it will not prosecute Tokyo Electric Power Co. or its executives for violating an environmental pollution law at Fukushima. ajw.asahi.com

Nuclear regulators gave their approval Wednesday to start freezing soil around damaged reactor buildings at the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 power plant to prevent groundwater from entering the highly contaminated facilities. japantimes.com

China General Nuclear (CGN) announced today that it has signed memoranda of understanding with Czech engineering companies to cooperate in nuclear energy. world-nuclear-news.org

Some 700 kg of British high-enriched uranium (HEU) will be transported to America in return for a form of the fuel that can be used in research reactors that create isotopes for life-saving diagnosis and treatment. world-nuclear-news