As the fifth anniversary approaches of the earthquake and tsunami disaster that unleashed the nuclear catastrophe, the stricken facility is fast running out of space to position the tanks holding highly contaminated radioactive water.  As of Feb. 12, there were 1,106 massive water tanks on the premises. ajw.asahi.com

News of the tritium water leak at the Indian Point nuclear power plant has rekindled concerns about the 40-year-old plant among the local residents, public health experts and environmentalists. rt.com

 In the early years of the Obama administration, the United States developed an elaborate plan for a cyberattack on Iran in case the diplomatic effort to limit its nuclear program failed and led to a military conflict, according to a forthcoming documentary film and interviews with military and intelligence officials involved in the effort. nytimes.com

Final legislative action will likely come Tuesday on a bill ending Wisconsin’s moratorium on new nuclear power plants. The issue is drawing national attention, even though it would likely be years before any new plant would be seen here — if ever. wpr.org

Environment Minister Tamayo Marukawa on Friday withdrew remarks she reportedly made about the government’s radiation decontamination target following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. japantimes.co.jp

The US will drill a borehole more than 16,000 feet (4.8km) into rock in North Dakota to test a new method proposed by UK researchers for storing radioactive waste. globalconstructionreview.com

Leak of tritium “getting worse” at Indian Point nuclear plant near NYC.  enenews.com

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on Friday said it would not pursue building two additional reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in northeast Alabama that already has two mothballed reactor projects on site. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

 

 

       This is blog post number one thousand. It has been very interesting but also very disturbing to learn this much about nuclear issues. One of the things that has become obvious to me over the course of the last two years is that there are many issues surrounding nuclear power that are not being discussed much if at all. Considering all the problems that surround the use of nuclear energy to boil water to generate electricity, it is pretty obvious to me that nuclear power is a bad idea. Every other power source has its pros and cons. Nuclear power shares some of these. But there are so many additional problems unique to nuclear power that I think it would be best for the future of the human race to give up on nuclear power entirely.

        Over the past few weeks, I have blogged several lists of problems associated with nuclear power. Today, to mark the milestone of one thousand blog posts, I thought that I would offer a combined list of some of the reasons I am against nuclear power. All of these issues are covered in more detail in previous blog posts.

General:

1.     Nuclear power is not carbon free. It requires fossil fuels to mine, refine and transport uranium fuel. The cooling towers require huge amounts of concrete which exhales carbon dioxide as it sets.

2.     About eight square miles are required for a nuclear power station, its exclusion zone, its enrichment plant, ore processing and supporting infrastructure. The location has to be near a huge source of cooling water and away from areas with large population and/or risk of natural disasters. Such locations are getting harder to find.

3.     It is already difficult and, sometimes impossible, to find replacement parts for worn components in old reactors.

4.     Nuclear power reactors are licensed for forty to sixty years. They have to be decommissioned after that because neutron bombardment makes the metal in the plant brittle.

5.     A variety of exotic metals are used in the construction of a nuclear reactor and its containment vessel. There are competing uses and dwindling supplies of some of these metals.

6.     Nuclear power reactors are opened up for refueling. The lifespan of a set of fuel rods is between twelve and eighteen months. Each time a reactor is opened for refueling, there is a spike in steam and gas emissions that can be a health threat down wind.

Institutional:

7.      Nuclear reactors in the U.S. can take up to ten years to plan, license and construct. Other countries have similar timelines.

8.      The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the regulatory commissions of other nations have been less than rigorous in ensuring adherence to regulations on the part of the global nuclear industry.

9.      The nuclear industry has often put profits above proper construction, safety, training and maintenance at nuclear power plants in the U.S. and other countries.

10.    The public is especially skeptical of nuclear power because of the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March of 2011. Accident rates for current world population of about four hundred reactors is about one very serious accident every ten years. As more and more are built, serious accidents will be more frequent. There will be widespread rejection of nuclear power by the public after more serious accidents.

11.    Nuclear nations are pushing the sale of nuclear reactors to third world countries where regulation is more lax than in developed countries and corruption is more severe and widespread increasing the probability of serious accidents.

12.    Uncertainty in the nuclear industry and aging of the nuclear workforce may signal a shortage of trained technicians to operating nuclear power plants in the not too distant future.

13.    Some national governments censor news about nuclear power projects and accidents. When the truth inevitably comes out, the public trust in those governments is eroded.

14.    Some governments have lied to their people about the dangers of radioactive materials released into the environment which erodes trust in those government.

15.   There is so much money involved in nuclear power projects that they can be caught up in national politics and trigger bitter and costly debates between supporters and opponents.

Cost:

16.   The cost of nuclear power keeps rising and the cost of renewables keeps falling making nuclear power less and less competitive.

17.   It is very common for nuclear power projects to run way behind schedule and way over budget.

18.   It is becoming difficult to find investors to support the construction of nuclear power plants.

19.   The cost of nuclear power projects is so high that there is great temptation for fraud and corruption in promoting them.

20.   When a lot of money has been spent on a nuclear power project, it is difficult to shut one down that is behind schedule and over budget.

21.   The funds for decommissioning nuclear power plants are not adequate in the U.S. and other countries.

22.   Insurance programs for covering the damages of nuclear accidents are inadequate.

23.   In the U.S., the NRC requires that nuclear power plant operators must show that they are making a profit on a nuclear power plant or they lose their license and the plant has to be shut down. This is already beginning to happen to some U.S. nuclear power plants.

Water:

24.   Many nuclear power plants are located near ocean coasts where there is danger from hurricanes and tsunamis.

25.   At least twenty nuclear reactors in the U.S. are down-stream from dams. If dams break, the reactors could be flooded.

26.   Recently several nuclear power plants have already had to be shut down temporarily because the bodies of water that they drew cooling water from became too warm for cooling purposes.

27.   Reactors that draw their water from lakes, rivers and reservoirs with falling water levels may find that there will not be sufficient water to cool the reactors and they will have to be shut down and decommissioned.

28.   The population of jellyfish is expanding rapidly in the world’s oceans due to climate change. Jellyfish can clog cooling water intakes and shut down nuclear power plants. This has already forced the temporary shutdown of some nuclear power reactors.

29.   Thermal pollution from the hot water leaving a nuclear power plant cooling system has a serious ecological impact on aquatic life downstream from the nuclear power plant.

Waste:

30.   Spent nuclear fuel is piling up around the world at reactors and there are no permanent geological repositories for spent nuclear fuel although a few are under construction and more are being planned.

31.   If permanent geological repositories are not available in the near future, temporary storage in dry casks at reactor sites will be expensive.

32.   Improperly disposed of nuclear waste around the world is leaking into the soil and water and poses a threat to health and the environment.

33.   Criminals and even national governments are contracting with nuclear power plant operators to illegally and unsafely dispose of nuclear wastes.

34.   Geological repositories have been built in underground salt deposits on the assumption that ground water will not penetrate the formations and carry radioactive materials out of the repository. Experience with actual repositories and research on the behavior of ground water in salt formations has disproven this assumption.

35.   Some of the radioactive isotopes in nuclear waste can be dangerous for thousands of years. It will be difficult to warn future generations of the dangers of nuclear waste dumps.

36.   When a permanent geological repository is constructed, the waste currently at nuclear power plants in the spent fuel pool or in dry casks will have to be transported to the repository. The process will be expensive and dangerous. Some waste may have to travel over a thousand miles.

Military:

37.   Nuclear power plants produce plutonium which can be used to make nuclear weapons.

38.   Nuclear power plants are great targets for terrorists.

39.   Radioactive materials such as spent nuclear fuel can be used to construct “dirty bombs” by packing such materials around a core of conventional explosives.

40.   In time of war, nuclear power stations make great targets. Destroying them would both deprive an enemy of power and spread radioactive materials over a wide area, threatening the lives of millions of people. They would also be great targets to hold hostage and they might accidentally be hit during bombardment.

The nation’s nuclear watchdog has put the kibosh on plans by Tokyo Electric Power Co. to start freezing underground soil at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant–a stunningly expensive project intended to solve the crisis of accumulating radioactive groundwater at the site. ajw.asahi.com

Plans for the decommissioning of three nuclear power units in Japan’s Fukui Prefecture have been submitted to the country’s nuclear regulator for approval. Mihama units 1 and 2 and unit 1 of the Tsuruga plant were among five reactors officially taken out of service last April. world-nuclear-news.org

Chinese scientists have managed to create a hydrogen gas that is three times hotter than the sun. uk.news.yahoo.com

Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corporation said Thursday that it had been awarded a $1.4 billion, five year contract from the U.S. Department of Energy focused on the cleanup mission at the so-called Idaho Site under the Idaho Cleanup Project. nuclearstreet.com

        The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a federal nuclear reservation on the banks of the Savannah River, twenty five miles from Augusta, Georgia. It is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by the Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC. It was built during the 1950s to refine nuclear materials to make nuclear weapons. It has four reactors but none of them are operating at this time. The site contains the Savannah River National Laboratory and the only operational radiochemical separations facility in the U.S. It is the sole source of tritium needed for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

        In 2000, the site was selected as the location for a mixed oxide fuel (MOX) manufacturing plant called for by a nuclear non-proliferation treaty that the U.S. signed with Russia. The National Nuclear Security Administration is in charge of construction of the MOX facility which would the only such plant in the U.S. when completed. The MOX facility was intended to be used to convert excess weapons grade plutonium into a fuel that can be burned in commercial power reactors in the U.S. They expected to be able to process as much as three and a half tons of plutonium oxide per year. Construction of the MOX facility officially began in August of 2007. The projected cost of the facility was almost five billion dollars. It was hoped that the project could be completed by 2015.

        As of 2016, four and a half billion dollars has already been spent and the MOX facility is only half done. It is now estimated that it will cost from ten to twenty billion dollars more to complete the facility. In 2015, the company constructing the MOX plant asked for a ten year extension of its construction authorization to 2025.  Considering the additional costs of operation of the facility, the total additional cost of the project could be as high as thirty billion dollars. Annual operating costs have been estimated at as much as a billion dollars.

         It now appears that the Obama administration is preparing to cancel the unfinished MOX project and is only asking for sufficient funding to accomplish an orderly shutdown. Sending the plutonium to storage in the troubled WIPP facility in New Mexico would only cost about three hundred and fifty million dollars a year as opposed to a billion dollars a year for the MOX processing. (The WIPP facility had to be shut down two years ago because of an accident involving the release of radioactive materials but is rescheduled to reopen soon.)

        Critics of the project supporting its cancellation point to the long delays and the huge cost overruns. Several analyses of the project claim that it will cost even more and take even longer than now estimated. However, there is political pressure to keep the MOX project going because of the seventeen hundred high paying construction jobs required to build the facility. In addition to domestic backlash, if the MOX project is cancelled, then the U.S. will have to renegotiate with the Russians. Both countries were supposed to dispose of thirty four tons of plutonium under the terms of the non-proliferation treaty.

        While I applaud the choice to cancel the project, the WIPP facility will have to be monitored closely to insure that management problems have been solved to prevent future accidents.

Savannah River MOX construction site:

 

The installation of the equipment required for forming a wall of frozen soil at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to prevent groundwater entering the reactor buildings has been completed. Approval from the Japanese regulator must be sought before the creation of the wall itself can begin. world-nuclear-news.org

New measurements at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in upstate New York show levels of radioactive tritium 80 percent higher than reported last week. Plant operator insists the spill is not dangerous, as state officials call for a safety probe. rt.com

French utility EDF will need to spend some €100 billion ($113 billion) on upgrading its fleet of 58 nuclear power reactors by 2030, the country’s state audit office has said. The upgrades are needed to meet new safety requirements and to extend the lives of the units beyond 40 years. world-nuclear-news.org

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget proposal for the fiscal year 2017 continues to reflect the diminishing role of the U.S. nuclear power industry, which requires a smaller agency to regulate it. nuclearstreet.com