Part One of Four Parts

          In my last several posts, I have been covering ten problems with nuclear power and ten dangerous misconceptions about nuclear power and radiation. Today, I am going to cover my own list of nuclear problems that do not get as much attention as the items on the other two lists but do deserve to be discussed.

1) Insurance issues: Potential liability for nuclear accidents is a very big issue worldwide. In the United States, the nuclear industry would not be possible without the Price-Anderson Act which limits amount of money that the owners of nuclear power plants can be charged for nuclear accidents. It is likely that in the event of a major nuclear accident in the U.S., the cost of the accident will exceed the amount that the owners will have to pay with the rest being passed along to the taxpayers. There was a scandal in South African recently because a secret deal with Russia for a nuclear reactor contained a provision that Russian nuclear technology suppliers not be liable for damages caused by an accident involving their equipment. India is having problems with nuclear technology imports because they have very stringent liability laws for the manufacturers of equipment involved in industrial accidents. The potential cost of a major nuclear accident is difficult to estimate but it may cost far more than any insurance coverage will pay for.

2) Emissions from operating reactors during refueling: Up until recently, nuclear power plants in the U.S. were allowed to report radioactive steam and gases emissions levels in terms of the emissions averaged over a year. However, critics of the reporting system have pressured regulators to have nuclear power plants report the daily releases of radioactive steam and gases. It has been revealed that while the average annual releases are well within what are considered to be safe levels, whenever the containment vessel is opened for refueling, there is a serious spike in emissions that rises well above safe levels posing a threat to people who live down wind of the plant. This is a danger not related to an accident but present whenever a nuclear reactor is refueled during normal, supposedly safe, operation.

3) Deficiency of dry cask design: The cooling pools at nuclear reactors in the U.S. are rapidly filling up. If some of the spent fuel in the pools is not removed, all operating reactors will have to be shut down when it comes time to refuel because there will be no place to put the spent fuel. The current plan is for spent fuel to be placed in steel and concrete containers called “dry casks” either at the reactor site or at a temporary storage facility offsite. The problem with this plan is the fact that the current design for commercial dry casks does not include a way to monitor dangerous gas build up in the casks that might cause an explosion. The massive cask building program that will be necessary to take the existing spent fuel will increase the odds of the rupture of a cask and the release of nuclear contamination. New casks are being developed but they will have to be tested and licensed before being available commercially. This will probably take at least five years and the existing spent fuel will have to be moved before then to prevent nuclear plant shutdowns. In addition, a massive amount of concrete will have to be used for all the new dry casks which will release additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

(See Part Two)

Refueling a reactor core:

After a recent Islamic State English magazine article claimed that the terrorist group could buy nuclear arms from Pakistan, India’s defense minister warned last weekend that ISIS does have the connections and resources needed to purchase nuclear weapons from Pakistan. christianpost.com

A magnitude-4.4 earthquake jolted a sparsely populated district some 110 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Bushehr, Iran, Monday morning, rattling a region home to the Islamic Republic’s only operational nuclear power plant. timesofisrael.com

Russia emphasized that it retains the right to deploy nuclear weapons anywhere on its territory, including Crimea. nationalinterest.org

At first-ever conference, UN takes aim at cyber-threats against nuclear safety. un.org

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

       Yesterday, I posted the first part of my comments on comments on a list of misconceptions about nuclear power. Today I finish my comments on the list. This list was published on the listverse.com website.

5) The radiation risks from cell phone use are well understood and publicized.  There has been a long debate over whether or not cell phones pose a threat to human health. Scientific studies suggest that they might depending on the amount of radiation exposure. The FCC in the U.S. has published standards for the maximum radiation that a cell phone should emit based on the specific absorption rate (SAR) of a human head next to a cell phone. Manufacturers are supposed to measure the radiation of their specific models of phones and put that information in their manuals. The problem with this approach is that many manufactures recommend holding the phone much farther away from the ear than most people do in practice. People who read the published SAR ratings do not understand that the SAR rating system of the FCC is based on holding the phones in a very specific way at a specific distance that may not used when the manufactures test their phone. Users cannot rely on the SAR numbers published in their user manuals to assess the relative risk of the use of that particular model of cell phone.

4) There is a type of energy production originally called “cold fusion” that could provide safe and cheap energy. Around twenty years ago, a couple of scientists claimed that they had developed a device that produced more energy than was fed into it by a process they dubbed “cold fusion.” Subsequent experiments failed to duplicate the process and cold fusion was dismissed as a fraud. As more time passed, some researchers were able to produce some energy in their labs with similar approaches to the original experiments but the results were ambiguous and difficult to replicate. No generally accepted theory has been advanced that could account for the successful new experiments. Currently, there is a company in Italy which is claiming that they have a reliable way to produce energy with this mysterious process and that it will be on the market soon. Skeptics are still not convinced that there is anything to these claims.

3) Prolonged exposure to low levels of radiation are not harmful. There is an ongoing debate about whether or not low levels of radiation are harmful. There is naturally occurring background radiation from uranium and cosmic rays every where on Earth that varies from place to place. Experiments and studies have yielded different results. Some scientists think that not only is the natural background radiation not harmful but that it may have beneficial health effects. Other scientists feel that there is no level of radiation exposure that is totally safe, especially in the long term. A recent metastudy of health problems and natural radiation levels seemed to indicate that there was a direct relationship between radiation levels in the environment and a host of health problems. This study appears to validate the idea that any radiation exposure may cause damage to human health but some people may be unaffected.

2) Environmental increases in radioactivity are mainly the result of nuclear accidents. People assume that the increase in radioactivity in the natural environment in the past 60 years is due to major nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Actually, the overwhelming additional radioactive materials in the natural environment caused by human activity can be attributed to fallout from the more than two thousand nuclear bombs that have been exploded since the beginning of the nuclear age in the 1940s.

1) North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is not a serious threat to the world. When North Korea embarked on its quest to create nuclear weapons, the world was skeptical that such a backward country could have the scientific knowledge and equipment to be successful. Over the years, the North Koreans have continued to surprise the world as they did develop and test nuclear bombs. They are also making progress on missile technology and the miniaturization of their bombs to make warheads. Recently, an article was published that claimed that North Korea may soon have missiles with nuclear warheads that could reach the west coast of the United States. Obviously the skeptics were wrong and North Korea does pose a serious threat to the world.

The operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant says it has found record-high levels of radioactive water in the facility’s port. enenews.com

A government panel in Japan on Monday stuck to a nuclear power target of 20-22 percent two days after 12 people were injured during a massive earthquake that shook buildings in Tokyo. nuclearnews.com

Uranium Energy Corporation (UEC) has been granted regulatory approval to advance its Yuty in-situ leach uranium project in south-east Paraguay from the exploration phase to the exploitation phase. world-nuclear-news.org

Two nuclear power giants in China, the State Nuclear Power Technology Company and the China Power Investment Corporation, have announced their merger, which sent stock prices for CPIC up 13 percent Monday. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

Earthquake measuring 8.5 magnitude shakes most of Japan. theguardian.com

Angela Ortiz would like to see Tohoku contributing to Japan and the world. japantimes.co.jp

EOn and Vattenfall have signed an agreement to cooperate in the decommissioning and dismantling of their jointly owned nuclear power plants in Germany. world-nuclear-news.org

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said a possible nuclear deal with Iran risks sparking a nuclear arms race in the Middle East unless the agreement grants international inspectors access to Iranian military sites and other secret facilities. wsj.com

Two-thirds of Japanese companies want and expect a lesser role for nuclear power than the government is targeting, a Reuters survey showed, reflecting persistent concerns about safety four years after the Fukushima disaster. nuclear-news.net

Melted fuel most likely burned through containment at Fukushima reactors. enenews.com

Russian power engineering company Atomenergomash is moving towards the complete supply of nuclear and turbine island equipment for its customers, the company’s CEO, Andrey Nikipelov, said in an interview with industry journal Vestnik Atompromapublished today. world-nuclear-news.org

Some 11 tonnes of “breeder” material that had been in storage at the Dounreay site in Scotland has now been transported to the Sellafield site in northern England. world-nuclear-news.org