France gets about seventy five percent of its electricity from fifty eight nuclear power reactors located at nineteen power plants around the nation. Recently, these power stations became targets for national strikes called to protest unpopular labor reforms being promoted by the conservative French government.

         Eleven nuclear power stations in France reported lowered production of electricity today due to strikes and protests. Total nuclear operating capacity was reduced by six percent. EDF is a state-controlled company and is mandated by law to maintain a minimum output from the nuclear power reactors that they manage during any strike. French authorities are confident that in spite of the reduced nuclear production, there will not be power blackouts in France. The strike will raised costs for EDF because they will have to start up coal and gas fired power plants which cost more to operate. They will also have to buy more expensive electricity from other nations. Frances import of electricity quadrupled from the day before the strike.

        Members of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union at the EDF utility that operates all the nuclear power plants in France joined the national strike Thursday. The striking workers constitute about ten percent of the EDF workforce. Workers at the Gravelines nuclear power station in northern France burned tires and handed out flyers critical of the labor reforms. Workers at the Nogent-sur-Seine nuclear station set fire to barricades blocking two roads that lead to the plant. Employees of the Tricastin nuclear power plant in southern France picketed outside of the plant.

        The French Prime Minister insists that the strikes and protests will not stop the proposed labor reforms from being implemented. The package of reforms will now go before the French senate where a right-wing majority will insure its passage. In a conciliatory gesture, the Prime Minister said that there was always room for modifications and improvements. The fact that a month long international soccer tournament is scheduled to start in two weeks in placing increased pressure on the Prime Minister. Serious fuel and power outages might interfere with the tournament which would be bad publicity for France.

       During the investigation following the terrorist attacks in Paris last fall, Belgian police discovered that some of the perpetrators had been videotaping the movements of an official at a nuclear installation in Brussels. There was a fear that the terrorists may have been planning an attack to obtain nuclear materials for a dirty bomb. A couple of years ago, two workers at a Belgian nuclear power plant went to Syria to train with ISIS. A few years ago, someone, never identified, opened a single valve at a Belgian nuclear power plant and drained seventy five thousand gallons of oil used to lubricate the turbines. The resulting damage at the plant forced its closure for months while repairs were carried out. Nuclear power plants are prime targets for terrorism and sabotage. With the social and political turbulence at French nuclear power plants caused by the strikes, the French authorities have to be worried that there is a significant danger that the confusion and chaos caused by the national strike at least eleven of the nineteen French nuclear plants might be used as cover for an attack or sabotage.

General Confederation of Labor logo:

On the eve of his historic trip to Hiroshima, President Barack Obama is defending the vigor of his efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He says he will use his visit to the Japanese memorial site on Friday to underscore “the sense of urgency that we all should have.” abcnews.go.com

The U.S. nuclear weapons system still runs on a 1970s-era computing system that uses 8-inch floppy disks, according to a newly released report from the Government Accountability Office. npr.org

Iranian and Russian officials are discussing building several new nuclear power plants in Iran, according to an article published Thursday by the news agency Trend. dailycaller.com

The Fusioneers: Forget cars, these guys build nuclear reactors in their back yards. washingtonpost.com

 

        France gets about seventy five percent of its electricity from fifty eight operating nuclear power reactors at nineteen plants There is a serious debate going on in France about its reliance on nuclear power. Its neighbor, Germany, decided to shut down all of its nuclear power reactors after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March of 2011. France is seriously considering substantially reducing the amount of electricity generated by nuclear power. Now French nuclear power has become involved in a national dispute over unpopular labor reforms.

        The conservative French government has proposed a series of labor reforms that have caused over a million French citizens to take to the streets in widespread protests. The proposed reforms include making it easier to fire employees, reducing pensions and unemployment compensation, lowering payroll taxes, lowering wages and benefits, and reducing of the power of labor unions. The French government says that these reforms are necessary to combat unemployment and make France more competitive in the global market. Economic data from other nations suggests that the arguments offered by the French government for these reforms are not supported by research.

         National strikes in France began a few days ago and one of the first victims was the French refining industry. Sixteen hundred gas stations are out of fuel and six out of eight refineries are blocked. There are already gasoline shortages and rationing. The French government expressed confidence that their strategic fuel reserves would allow them to ride out the interruptions in refinery operation and gasoline distribution. The reserves are sufficient to satisfy the demand for fuel for at least three months.

        Some unions accept the reforms but other unions are adamantly opposed. Two of the biggest unions, the CGT and the CFDT are fighting for influence and they have refused to call for strikes. Opponents of the strikes hope that the lack of participation by these two big unions will diminish the impact of the national strikes.

       There is a month long international soccer tournament scheduled to begin in France on June 10th. A majority of the French people are afraid that the strikes and protests may disrupt the tournament, especially in view of the tight security that has been planned because of the terrorist attacks in Paris.

         A strike has been called for tomorrow at all nineteen of the French nuclear power plants. There are laws about how much impact a strike at nuclear power plants is allowed to have on the supply of electricity. Some experts in the power sector of the French economy say that they do not believe that there will be blackouts because of the strikes. Other analysts say that blackouts are likely despite what the law says. When a nuclear power reactor is shut down, it takes from three to five days to restart it.  

        Centralized power generation systems such as large nuclear power plants are especially vulnerable to disruptions such as strikes and protests. There is also the possibility that strikes and protests could provide cover for terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants or internal sabotage by disgruntled employees.

Map of French nuclear power plants (operating plants in blue):

Environmentalists urged US nuclear regulators Tuesday to shut down a nuclear plant near New York after inspections showed an unusually high number of degraded bolts in a reactor. phys.org

The operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has revealed that 600 tons of reactor fuel melted during the disaster, and that the exact location of the highly radioactive blobs remains a mystery. abc.net.au

Fukushima radiation may be eating holes in people’s brains. enenews.com

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday that it would go ahead with amending its regulations to establish separate regulatory fees for light-water small modular reactors. The agency said it was establishing a separate fee structure because it anticipated it will soon receive SMR license applications.  nuclearstreet.com

 

 

        I have blogged before about the ninety six spent nuclear fuel cooling pools at the operating nuclear power reactors in the U.S. These pools are almost full and there is no permanent geological repository in the U.S. available to take the spent fuel assemblies. There is not expected to be a permanent repository until at least 2050. In the meantime, unless the spent fuel rods in the pools are moved, reactors will have to shut down. Spent fuel assemblies can be stored temporarily in dry casks at reactor sites but the nuclear fuel industry is resisting this interim solution because it may cost over four billion dollars. Now a new report claims that U.S. nuclear regulators are ignoring some of the risks that are associated with storing the spent fuel rods in the cooling pools.

        The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has just released a report titled “Lessons learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident for Improving Safety and Security of U.S. Nuclear Plants” that is critical of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s risk assessment of the spent nuclear fuel pools. A report by the NRC states that if the water in a filled nuclear fuel pool was drained due to accident or terrorism, the resulting fire in the exposed rods would result in a massive release of radioactive material that could contaminate an area larger than the state of New Jersey. If the fire occured in a densely populated area, as many as three and a half million people might have to evacuated. The cost of such a disaster could rise to over seven hundred billion dollars.

       In reviewing the NRC risk assessment of spent nuclear fuel pools conducted after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March of 2011, the new report found that the NRC did not include terrorism or internal sabotage in their risk assessment. In their study of Fukushima, the NRC said that because there was no way to estimate the probability of a terrorist attack or internal sabotage on a spent fuel pool, there was no need to include such concerns in their study because they believed that security at nuclear power reactor sites was adequate.

       The new NASEM report calls a new federal assessment of the safety and financial risks of a spent fuel fire. It also calls for a new review of the benefits of removing the spent fuel from the cooling pools and storing them in dry casks. The report pointed out that the NRC had promised over a decade ago to carry out an independent study on nuclear industry spent fuel surveillance and security procedures. The NASEM report went on to say that the NRC ” did not provide the NASEM committee with a technical analysis to support its assertion that security requirements are being effectively addressed in its regulatory program.”

       The NRC responded to the NASEM report by saying that “even with the recommendations that the Academies’ board has put together, we continue to conclude that spent fuel is being stored safely and securely in the U.S. Nothing in the report causes immediate concern.” A spokesman for the U.S. nuclear industry said that the risks associated with spent fuel pools were “teensy” and suggested that it would not be good use of money to spend more on spent pool fuel security.

       The NASEM is highly critical of the position of the NRC and the nuclear industry with respect to the security of spent nuclear fuel in reactor cooling pools and says that the risks are much greater than the NRC and industry estimate. Hopefully, the NASEM report will put pressure on the NRC and nuclear industry to seriously address threats that have been ignored.

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) newest nuclear reactor, Watts Bar unit 2, has reached first criticality. The 1165 MWe (net) pressurized water reactor is the first nuclear unit to start up in the USA since Watts Bar 1 in 1996. world-nuclear-news.org

China and Sudan have signed a framework agreement for the construction of the east African country’s first nuclear power plant.  world-nuclear-news.org

A U.S. State Department official assured lawmakers on Tuesday that India has addressed concerns over liability that had for years kept U.S. corporations from signing nuclear power contracts in the country. reuters.com

Following the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Greenpeace USA released a new report Tuesday on the 166 near misses at U.S. nuclear power plants over the past decade.  ecowatch.com

 

 

 

       A huge unsolved problem with nuclear power is the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The cooling pools of the U.S. nuclear power reactor fleet are filling up with spent nuclear fuel and there is no permanent geological repository. The federal government was suppose to have one build by 1999. They were working on one in Nevada at Yucca Mountain but the project was cancelled in 2009 and now it will be at least 2050  before the U.S. has one that is operational. Some countries, such as Australia, are considering the construction of such a repository that could take spent nuclear fuel from other nations but nothing tangible has been done to date. Other methods of disposing of spent nuclear fuel are also being considered.

       One possible solution to the disposal problem is to drill a well five miles deep in solid stable and insert spent fuel assemblies up to about three miles below the surface. The  hole can then be filled with concrete, crushed rock and/or asphalt up to the surface. The rock around the sequestered fuel assemblies would be impermeable to ground water and the waste would be safely and permanently isolated from the environment. Much of the eastern half of the U.S. which contains most of the power reactors is sitting on the proper kind of rock for the proposed wells. Drilling rigs could be moved around to different reactor sites and used to drill down and dispose of the spent fuel from the reactor(s) on the site. This could be done over time and the cost would be reasonable and spread out.

       Battelle, a non-profit research organization based in Ohio has a thirty four million dollar contract with the Department of Energy to drill a test well. The Deep Borehole Field Test calls for drilling a narrow-diameter hole three miles down into solid granite. If successful, then a wide-diameter hole would be drilled. The locate for the test wells is in Spink County, South Dakota.

      Unfortunately, despite promises to the contrary, many citizens of Spink County simply do not believe that the government is going to spent millions of dollars on test wells and then just close them up without storing any nuclear waste in them. Citizens for a Non-Nuclear South Dakota is just one of the grass roots organizations which have sprung up to stop the drilling project before it even begins. One of the objections raised is that the project is located in farming country. There is great fear in the area that the tests and any possible storage of spent fuel could contaminate the ground water used for drinking and farming. The wells would have to be drilled through two aquifers but proponents said that steel pipes would seal the wells off from the aquifers.

        To allay fears that radioactive material will be involved in the test drilling project, Battelle has offered to sign a pledge to the citizens of Spink County that no such materials will be used in the project. Battelle promises that it will drill the holes, close the holes and leave Spink County permanently when the project is done. They also offer to have a third-party inspector chosen by the county come and monitor the site to insure that no radioactive materials are ever used. If the tests are successful, any such waste disposal will not be undertaken for at least a decade and will be hundreds of miles from the proposed project site.

        The state government supports the project. The ultimate decision will be up to the Spink County government which will have to issue a special permit for the project. An earlier proposal to drill a test well in Pierce County, North Dakota was rejected by their county government.

Spink County, South Dakota: