Government Shills Hide Fukushima’s High Cancer Rate japantimes.co.jp

Nuclear energy is not worth the risk. johnsoncitypress.com

US utility Exelon will defer any decision about the future operations of its Clinton nuclear power plant for a year after the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) regional transmission organization acknowledged the need for changes to the design of the southern Illinois electricity market. world-nuclear-news.org

Georgia Power Co. said this week that it had settled lawsuits with Westinghouse Electric and Chicago Bridge and Iron (CB&I) over delays at the Vogtle nuclear plant construction project with included protections that prevent future lawsuits dealing with engineering, material procurement and construction. nuclearstreet.com

Part One of Two Parts       

        China has been getting a lot of press lately about their aggressive plans to build over a hundred nuclear power reactors in the next fifteen years. Forbes magazine recently published an article saying that “China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” The article went on to say that there should be over four hundred new nuclear reactors in China by 2050 generating more than 350 gigawatts of electricity as a result of over a trillion dollars of investment in nuclear infrastructure. Critics of China’s bold plans point out that history has shown that the world can expect about one major nuclear accident for every three thousand years of nuclear power reactor operation. This means that four hundred reactors operating for eight years should generate at least one major accident by global averages.

       If China had a record of safety and competence in its construction industry, then perhaps it would take longer than eight years for a major accident to happen. But this is not the case. China has a horrible record of corruption, lack of regulation, lack of competence, etc. that has resulted in many deaths related to collapse of buildings due to poor construction. Recently there were huge explosions and fires at the port of Tianjin. They were a result of corruption, greed, failure to follow regulations, etc. Hazardous wastes with explosive potential were stored near residential areas and regulations about spacing of storage and amounts of waste permitted were ignored. Recent major wrecks on bullet train lines have been attributed by government investigators to “design flaws and sloppy management.” With respect to nuclear reactor construction, one of the biggest nuclear reactor construction companies in China left out a lot of protective steel in the foundation of a reactor building at the Daya Bay nuclear power plant near Hong Kong in 1987 because the construction crew misread the blueprints.

       Currently China has multiple reactor projects with different new designs all being built simultaneously. So none of these reactor designs has any history of operation. The Chinese government is deeply involved in the nuclear industry in China and maintains a great deal of secrecy with respect to the design,  cost and construction of nuclear reactors. Obviously, this is an invitation for the industry to ignore regulations and cut corners wherever possible, especially when there is heavy pressure to move quickly. It is quite possible that there would be more frequent major accidents than the global average if China carries through with its ambitious plans.

       With respect to the low announced cost of the planned Chinese reactors, some critics are skeptical of the numbers quoted in the Forbes article. Six reactors are being built at Yangjiang for a projected cost of about twelve billion dollars. This amounts to about two billion dollars per reactor as opposed to the current cost of about six billion dollars per reactor in the West. Two reactors being built on Hainan Island are supposed to cost about three billion dollars. This is even less than the optimistic two billion dollars per reactors for Yangjiang. All of these new reactors are supposed to take about five years to construct which is much faster than actual reactor construction time required in the developed world.

Please read Part Two

Daya Bay nuclear power plant:

TEPCO said Thursday that radiation levels of up to 9.4 Sieverts per hour have been detected outside a reactor containment vessel at the meltdown accident-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.  jen.jiji.com

Fire erupts at another U.S. nuclear site near major city with flames coming within feet of radioactive waste. enenews.com

The government is moving forward with new cybersecurity requirements for nuclear power plants. thehill.com

North Korea is digging a new tunnel at its nuclear test site with an eye to conducting more tests of atomic devices in the future, a South Korean news report said on Friday, two days before the leaders of the South, Japan and China meet in Seoul. reuters.com

        A company called U.S. Ecology Inc. (formerly called Nuclear Engineering Co.) maintained a dump for radioactive wastes near Beatty, Nevada about a hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas for decades. The dump was opened in 1962 as the first federally licensed low-level radioactive waste dump. Contaminated tools and laboratory equipment, protective clothing, machine parts, medical isotopes and other materials from nuclear reactors were accepted by the dump. The dump also received other hazardous waste including chemicals and old transformers containing polychlorinated biphenyls. Twenty two trenches were dug on the site up to one hundred feet deep and eight hundred feet long. They were capped with up to ten feet of clay and dirt.

        The dump had been plagued by many problems such as leaky shipments and staff taking contaminated tools and building materials out of the dump for personal use. The operating license for the dump was temporarily suspended in the 1970s for the mishandling of shipments. Federal documents indicate that forty million seven hundred thousand cubic feet of radioactive materials were buried at the dump before 1992 when the dump was closed. The Federal government mandated that individual states had to maintain their own nuclear waste dumps or use dumps maintained by an association of states. The company lost its license and had to close the dump. The dump was part of eighty acres that were turned over to the state in 1997 to be administered by the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.

        On Sunday, October 18, there was an underground fire in Trench 14 of the dump. Trench 14 is a pit in which containers of low-level radioactive waste were buried. White smoke poured out of the ground and then multiple underground explosions occurred which spewed more smoke and debris in the air, leaving a crater twenty feet by thirty feet. Water and heavily corroded fifty five gallon metal drums were found in the crater. Debris from the blast was spread almost two hundred feet. Several metal drums were found outside of the facility fence.

        Nevada authorities are not sure exactly what is in Trench 14 that caught fire but they said that it burned “very hot.” Gamma radiation detectors were flown over the site but did not record elevated levels of radiation. Radiation detectors were carried up to the edge of the location of the fire and explosions by National Guard soldiers wearing protective gear to see if heavier radioactive particles had been blown out of the hole but also recorded no abnormal radiation. There is some concern that recent wet weather might have caused water to penetrate the ground. State records of the contents of the site are being checked to see if any known contents of Trench 14 could have reacted with water to cause the fire and explosions.  

       The state was supposed to be monitoring and maintaining the dump but investigative reporters found out that the state legislature took five hundred thousand dollars out of the fund for monitoring and risk mitigation at the Beatty dump and put it in the general fund to help balance the state budget. Despite the fire and explosions and the withdrawal of funds by the legislature, the state lawmakers insist that the site monitoring fund is sufficient. My question is sufficient for what? This is a chronically troubled site that just suffered an accident that might have been prevented. I suggest the Nevada legislature restore the pilfered money and choose a less dangerous way to balance the state budget.

Old U.S. Ecology nuclear waste dump, ten miles southeast of Beatty, Nevada:  

  

Bing Maps

Former World Health Organization official says that the  Fukushima plant is dumping nuclear waste into ocean on a daily basis,  there is no foreseeable end to it and nobody has any good ideas on how to stop it. enenews.com

Robot star illuminates human themes in Japanese nuclear disaster film news.yahoo.com

Nuclear power plants in the United States are safe to continue operating but need to conduct an in-depth analysis where appropriate, as far as earthquake hazards are concerned, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said on Tuesday. news.yahoo.com

A services organization in Britain with its roots in maritime regulations, engineering and science, Lloyd’s Register Energy, said it had signed an agreement with the Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC) to assist with the development of a floating small modular reactor (SMR). nuclearstreet.com

Part Two of Two Parts (Please read Part One first.)

       Money was collected from ratepayers who used nuclear power for the purpose of eventually dismantling old reactors, removing radioactive components and materials and restoring the land where the reactors had been located. That money was never intended to be used to pay for the indefinite storage of spent nuclear fuel rods on the site of the reactors but that is what is happening as the decommissioning funds are being raided.

       Critics of temporary onsite spent fuel storage point out that while nuclear power plants are located near bodies of water that is use for cooling the reactors, spent nuclear fuel is best stored as far away from bodies of water as possible to prevent possible contamination in case that storage containers leak. Storing spent fuel in stable underground repositories is best.

        Because of the failure of the U.S. government to complete the promised underground repository at Yucca Mountain as mentioned above, nuclear plant owners have resorted to redesigning the racks in cooling pools to accommodate more rods. It has been estimated that all the cooling pools for spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. will be full within five years unless some of the rods are removed.

       The only choice for external storage without a permanent repository is to construct concrete and steel dry casks on site or at a central interim facility to contain the spent fuel. There are nuclear plant locations where the plant was decommissioned and removed decades ago but dry casks with spent fuel rods still remain and are guarded twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. Some plants have been mothballed for up to sixty years in the hopes that there will be money available for decommissioning by then.

       Vermont is the only state in the U.S. which is trying to prevent the raiding of decommissioning funds to build dry casks for temporary storage of spent fuel. Just recently, Vermont received a ruling from a NRC board that Entergy, the company that operates a nuclear power plant in Vermont, will have to notify the state government of any withdrawals from the decommissioning fund and exactly what the money is used for.

       The nuclear industry is adamant that the blame for the raiding of decommissioning funds should not be placed on the industry, the NRC or even the Department of Energy. They say that the U.S. Congress is responsible for the current situation because it has failed to create the promised permanent underground repository. This is an interesting situation because the nuclear industry has “captured” the NRC and gets away with a lot of violations of regulations. They have spent millions in lobbying Congress but have not succeeded in get Congress to move forward swiftly in the creation of a permanent repository. The reason that they have failed is that there is great fear among the public of radioactive waste and for good reason.

        The industry and the U.S. government have a horrible record of dealing with radioactive waste. Local political pressure has made it difficult for the U.S. government to find a site willing to host a permanent spent nuclear fuel repository. And every story about nuclear accidents makes the public more reluctant. Alternative sustainable energy should replace nuclear power as quickly as possible. We cannot even properly dispose of the spent nuclear fuel rods that exist. We should not be make and use more.

In this video Luke Rudkowski and Tim Pool give you a brief recap of their trip inside the Fukushima exclusion zone that is still closed down. youtube.com

Did TEPCO Make Workers Go Into Dangerous Radiation Areas? fukuleaks.org

Areva SA is seeking further clarity from India on its nuclear liability law before the French company can move ahead with its plan to build the South Asian nation’s biggest nuclear plant. bloomberg.com

Republicans are looking for a side door to open the nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, after President Obama scrapped the project in his first term. washingtonexaminer.com