One of the biggest problems with nuclear power is disposing of the spent nuclear fuel rods. All of the cooing pools in all the U.S. reactors are filling rapidly and many will be full in a few years. There is a movement for temporary dry cask storage onsite at the nuclear power stations but this will require a massive investment. In addition the current design of dry casks needs to be improved. The U.S. does not have a permanent geological repository for spent nuclear fuel since the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain project in 2009. Other nuclear power nations have the same problem with a lack of permanent geological repositories for their spent nuclear fuel. Finland is moving ahead with plans for a permanent repository of their own.

        Posiva is a waste management firm that is owned by two Finnish utilities which operate nuclear power reactors. In 2001, a possible repository site was indentified in Olkiluoto in the city of Eurajoki was selected. The Finnish government issue a “decision in principle” in 2001 for the creation of a repository. In December of 2012, Posiva submitted an application to the Finnish Ministry of Employment and the Economy for the creation of a permanent geological repository for the spent nuclear fuel generated by the two utilities that own Posiva. The Finnish government agency that regulated radiation and nuclear safety (STUK) is backing the new waste disposal facility.

        STUK Inspector Jussi Heinonen said “We have already assessed that the operational and long-term safety of the nuclear waste facility are on a sufficiently high level for granting the construction licence. This is a new type of facility, which is why the appropriate approach is to progress in phases and, at the same time, assess and elaborate the designing of the facility on the basis of the accumulated knowledge. For example, we will gain more detailed knowledge about the local characteristics of rock at the final disposal depth once the construction of the facility begins.”

        Svensk Karnbranslehantering AB (SKB) is a Swedish spent nuclear fuel management company. SKB commented favorably on the Posiva project, saying that the plan was similar to a geological repository that SKB is working on. The SKB President said that SKB and Posiva are working closely together on their repository projects.

         The Finnish government will make a final decision on the Posiva waste encapsulation facility and geological repository construction license after considering comment from STUK and other stakeholders. Posiva noted that strong support from STUK will help them get a license for construction. They will also need to get a license for operating the facility before they can begin to sequester spent nuclear fuel underground. They expect to be ready to apply for an operating license around 2020. Posiva hopes to operate the facility for at least a century with little danger of radioactive materials escaping.

         I hope that the Finnish repository project is successful and that they are able to dispose of their spent nuclear fuel. I think that a century is far too long for reasonable projects about energy needs and energy technology. It is likely that sustainable terrestrial sources will be widely available and inexpensive. Nuclear fusion and/or solar energy from satellites may be available. Power from nuclear fission is not a safe, easy or cheap way to generate electricity and should be retired throughout the world as quickly as possible.

Artist’s concept of Olkiluoto repository:

 Japan’s export of agricultural products in 2014 grew to highest since 1955  with the U.S. as the second largest importer. fukushima-diary.com

A second mobile strontium 90 filtration system is in service at Fukushima Daiichi after initial testing.  fukuleaks.com

The Vermont Health Department says for the first time it has found the radioactive isotope Strontium-90 in ground water at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon. digitals.vpr.net

Cape Town – South Africa expects the first of six new mini-nuclear plants to come on stream by the year 2023 “just in time for Eskom to retire part of its aging power plants”, said President Jacob Zuma. fin24.com

         The future of the nuclear industry in the United States is a topic of considerable debate. On one hand, cheap natural gas is threatening the economic viability of nuclear power. On the other hand, some supporters are hailing the construction of the first new U.S. nuclear power reactors as a sign of a “nuclear renaissance.”

          Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, recently delivered a speech to the Nuclear Energy Institute. The mission of the Nuclear Energy Institute in their own words is “to foster the beneficial uses of nuclear technology before Congress, the White House and executive branch agencies, federal regulators, and state policy forums; proactively communicate accurate and timely information; and provide a unified industry voice on the global importance of nuclear energy and nuclear technology.” Unsurprisingly, Alexander’s speech was in support of U.S. nuclear power.

         The title of the speech was “The United States without nuclear power.” He made reference to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies which said that up to twenty five of the ninety nine operating U.S. nuclear power reactors could be closed by 2020. Alexander claimed that a closure of nuclear plants in the U.S. was a “real threat to our economy and way of life.” Alexander is on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee which will be devoting time to considering the role of nuclear power in the U.S. energy system.

         Alexander pointed out that when Japan closed all of its nuclear reactors after the Fukushima disaster, the cost of electricity rose by over fifty percent. Germany will be paying over a trillion dollars to abandon nuclear power and may have to buy power from other countries, raising energy costs. In contrast, he mentioned the United Arab Emirates which is currently constructing four nuclear power reactors. These reactors are supposed to be finished and operational by 2027 when they will generated about a quarter of UAE’s electricity.

         Alexander calls for the U.S. to build one hundred new reactors to replace the generating capacity of the nuclear power reactors being closed by 2020 as well as the twenty percent of existing U.S. coal power plants that will be closed by then. He wants to end what he calls the “nuclear waste stalemate” that has resulted from the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. He says that the U.S. must reduce excessive regulation, avoid picking winners and losers with subsidies, double energy research, and encourage energy diversity.

        With respect to Alexander’s international references, Japan should not restart about a third of their reactors because they are over active fault lines. There is widespread corruption and violation of regulations in the Japanese nuclear industry. Germany is moving strongly in the direction alternative energy sources. The UAE will be fortunate to bring any of those four new reactors on time and on budget. The nuclear industry has a terrible record of delays and cost overruns. And they are fighting serious corruption in the UAE which raises concerns about construction and operation of nuclear power plants.

        Building a hundred nuclear reactors in the next ten years is a recipe for disaster in the U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is failing in its job of regulation of the nuclear industry. It is not excessive regulation that is the problem. The nuclear industry is guilty of negligence, incompetence and corruption. Nuclear power is having trouble competing in the market place for energy. As far as subsides are concerned, alternative sustainable energy is becoming competitive without subsides and nuclear power will not be able to compete without subsides.

       I agree that we need more energy research on different sources. Tying up hundreds of billions of dollars in new nuclear reactors will prevent money being spent on other sources such as renewables. And, finally, given the problems in the Waste Isolation Plant in New Mexico which is in an old salt mine like the proposed Yucca Mountain repository, it may not be viable storage facility for nuclear waste. There will be no “nuclear renaissance” in the U.S.

Cement is not stopping highly contaminated nuclear waste from flowing out of reactor buildings at Fukushima. enenews.com

Unit 2 of the four-unit Tricastin nuclear power plant in southern France has been given approval by the French nuclear regulator to operate for a further ten years. world-nuclear-news.org

The Czech Republic and Jordan have agreed to cooperate in the peaceful development of nuclear power with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) during Czech President Miloš Zeman’s visit to the Middle Eastern country. world-nuclear-news.org

The bulk of the excavation work has been finalised and more than 1,900 cubic metres of concrete poured as the ground floor of Australia’s new $168 million (129 million US dollars, 114 million euros) nuclear medicine manufacturing facility near Sydney takes shape, with operation on schedule for 2016, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) said. nucnet.org

         In 2006, Southern Nuclear applied for an Early Site Permit for the construction of two new power reactors at the Vogtle power plant in Georgia to join the two existing reactors. In 2008, Southern Nuclear applied for a Combined Construction and Operating License for the two new reactors. Shortly thereafter, the Georgia Power Company (GP) signed a contract with Westinghouse to build two AP1000 reactors on the Vogtle site. The Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) approved the application in March of 2009. The Vogtle reactors will be among the first to be constructed in the United States in decades. Many hailed the deal as a sign of a “nuclear renaissance.”

        In August of 2009, an Early Site Permit and a Limited Work Authorization was issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the new reactors at Vogtle. Unit 3 was due to be operational in 2016 and Unit 4 would follow in 2017. The projected cost for both reactors was fourteen billion dollars. Georgia Power’s was going to pay about six billion with the rest split between several other companies.

        In early 2010, the U.S. government announced that it would create over eight billion dollars in federal loan guarantees for the project. In 2012, the NRC approved the construction license for the two new reactors at Vogtle. Because of the disaster at Fukushima in early 2011, critics of the Vogtle project said that the problems at Fukushima should be considered before the reactors were built. Some critics filed a lawsuit to stop construction but the suit was thrown out in mid-2012.

       In March of 2013, the first concrete was poured for Units 3 and 4 at Vogtle. By June of 2013, the project was behind schedule by fourteen months. In early 2014, the U.S. Department of Energy approved a six and one half billion dollar loan guarantee but waive some of the usual fees for such a guarantee. Westinghouse refused to give GP and the GPSC a firm date for project completion until January 2015 when they said that the project would be delayed by another eighteen months. Now Unit 3 would be operation in mid-2019 and Unit 4 in 2020.

        GP has estimated that the cost of the delay would be about seven hundred million dollars. In addition to that, GP and Westinghouse had been arguing since 2012 about who would pay the billion dollar cost of previous delays and problems. GP has not agreed with the new schedule yet. GP says that it is skeptical that Westinghouse has done everything it could have done to prevent the new delay. The cost of the new delay will probably wind up being added to the ongoing lawsuits. Westinghouse says the delays were caused by design changes required by the NRC. GP says that the delays were caused by “ongoing issues with modules and overall contractor performance.”

        The new Units at Vogtle are using new designs, new materials and new components. There are new regulatory and licensing procedures. Delays and cost overruns in nuclear construction projects are so common that the GPSC is constantly updating the cost of potential delays for up to four years in the future. It was hoped that the Vogtle project would demonstrate that constructing new nuclear power reactors would be economical even with the flood of cheap natural gas and the lower cost of gas fired power plants in the U.S. Unfortunately for nuclear supporters, the delays and cost overruns at Vogtle may be doing just the opposite.

Vogtle construction site:

In an effort to not panic the public about the dangers of Fukushima, many institutions or experts have possibly gone too far the other direction. rense.com

New data shows Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl. enenews.com

Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, which has operated a low-level radioactive waste storage facility in West Texas since 2012, said it would pursue permits to build a high-level waste storage facility that could be open by 2020. nuclearstreet.com

The presidents of Egypt and Russia on Tuesday said the two countries would build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant together and boost natural gas trade and other ties. news.yahoo.com

         I have written numerous posts about nuclear safety on the blog. One point that I keep coming back to is the idea governments are failing in their duties to protect their citizens because of what is called regulatory capture. This occurs when the industry being regulated exerts political pressure to avoid being held accountable for violating regulations. But in order for this to happen, there has to be regulation in the first place. Often, industries will lobby against new or existing regulations. This is a more direct route. You cannot violate a regulation that does not exist.

         The Swiss have been pushing for more stringent international regulation of nuclear power plants to prevent nuclear meltdowns. They have been strong supporters of an European Union initiative to modify and strengthen existing international reactor safety standards since the horrible nuclear disaster in Fukushima Japan in March of 2011. Both the United States and Russia have been strong opponents of changing the safety regulations. The E.U. coalition was going to present a formal amendment to safety standards for a vote at the February 2015 International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Convention on Nuclear Safety. However, intense lobbying by the U.S. delegation to the Convention resulted in the plans for the formal presentation to be cancelled. Instead, the E.U. coalition will present a statement that has not voted upon and does not make any changes to existing safety standards.

        Officially, the U.S. delegation stated that they were not opposing the call for safety upgrades to nuclear reactors because it would increase costs to the nuclear industry and result in a loss of market share. However, there are people in the U.S. Congress that doubt that statement. Senators Edward J. Markey (Dem/MA) and Barbara Boxer (Dem/CA) sent a letter to the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December of last year. The NRC head, Allison Macfarlane, resigned her post at the end of 2014. In the letter, the senators detailed the reasons for their opinion that the NRC helped to undermine the proposed changes safety standards in spite of a statement by Macfarlane that cost of upgrades to nuclear power plants was not a factor in U.S. opposition.

       There is precedence for the Senator’s concerns. The NRC Japanese Learning Task Force was charged with learning what lessons could be learned from the Fukushima disaster. The JPTF recommended that all U.S. power reactors with the same design as Fukushima (GE Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors) “install high capacity external radiation filters for hardened vents on the vulnerable containment systems.” The JPTF said that such filters were “a cost-benefited substantial safety enhancement.” The new filters would vent extreme heat, high pressure and explosive gases while at the same time preventing the release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. An international energy investment bank predicted that the NRC would reject the call for the new filters because “added stress this places on the incumbent’s portfolio and the fragile state of affairs of their licensees’ financial and economic condition.” While Europe and Japan have made it a practice to install such filters, the third of the U.S. power reactors that share the Fukushima design are not required to install them.

       Basically, it appears that the rejection of the new safety standards at the Convention were a result of the NRC and the U.S. government protecting the nuclear industry in the U.S. from having to pay the substantial cost of upgrading their power reactors. Adding insult to injury, when pressed, the U.S. government lied when it said that nuclear industry costs were behind rejection of the new standards.

 IAEA Convention on Nuclear Safety: