*** Fukushima *** and other nuclear-----updates and links

What do you think, Swede..?


Nuclear Fusion Now a Viable Energy Source, Claims Scientist
[link to www.energytribune.com]


Energy generated through nuclear fusion could be available in the next decade, according to a world authority on the subject.

Prof Steven Cowley, chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, believes the world’s first nuclear fusion power plant in France could be producing viable electricity in the 2020s.

Ex-Fukushima Worker: High risk they’ll break fuel rods in Unit 4 pool — Gundersen: Moving fuel risks nuclear chain reaction; You can’t stop it, no control rods to control it — Consultants: World’s most serious radiological disaster by far is possible
[link to enenews.com]

Tepco: “Significant density” of Alpha radiation leaking from Unit 3 at Fukushima — Steam seen at reactor building “likely to be leaked” from containment vessel
[link to enenews.com]

Nuclear Expert: Xenon detections in S. Korea may be from Fukushima reactors — Criticality or ‘spontaneous fission of curium’ to blame?
[link to enenews.com]

Bloomberg: Much more than 300 tons of contaminated water a day entering Pacific from Fukushima? Data’s been “cooked” all along — It’s polluting North Asia — Oceans have no boundary
[link to enenews.com]

Paper: Navy sailor’s health melted down after exposure to Fukushima fallout — Now a shaking, withering patient unable to walk by himself — Lives of younger service members “at stake as well” — Doctors won’t give a diagnosis (PHOTOS)
[link to enenews.com]

Nuclear Experts: One century before Japan tries to deal with Fukushima’s melted cores? — “More likely what’s left of reactors will be left in situ for 100 years or more” (VIDEO)
[link to enenews.com]



‘Beyond the Cloud’ Yanaoshi 3.11, June 3, 2013 – French nuclear engineer Gérard Aleton (at 3:30 in): When a nuclear power plant is built [...] workers can access all building parts, including the tank — But dismantling is another story. […] There’s no longer a conventional access to those parts of the building. No human can enter those tanks and radioactive areas. We then must use teleoperation, or robotic equipment. I’m not even talking about damaged power plants. Those are so problematic, and heavy to handle that I do not think we know how to treat them today. To address this issue would take 50 years, or maybe one century. And the living proof today is Chernobyl. It is still buried under concrete which now starts leaking. There is the need to pour more concrete to seal it, and we still cannot access the melted core.

Ignoring this won't make it go away..



TV: Many U.S. sailors are suffering serious symptoms of radiation sickness after being contaminated during Fukushima nuclear disaster — USS Ronald Reagan was as close as a mile away as reactors melted down (VIDEO)
[link to enenews.com]


Jed Boal, KSL 5 News Reporter: [The USS Ronald Reagan] sat off the shore, as close as a mile away, as the Fukushima nuclear reactors melted down […]

Navy Lt. j.g. Steve Simmons, served on board the USS Ronald Reagan during 3/11 response: I just want somebody to acknowledge that there is an issue, that maybe we did do something wrong. [...]

We've been within "10 to 20 years of functional nuclear fusion" for about 50 years... even if they can get it working as a continious process will it be an economically viable solution?... if the vessel can't withstand the extremly high temperature and has to be replaced many times during the plants lifetime it will still remain a future dream... I doubt I'll see a commercial tokamak in my lifetime, but who knows?... I'm not a professor with an agenda... lol...

"ITER is based on the 'tokamak' concept of magnetic confinement, in which the plasma is contained in a doughnut-shaped vacuum vessel. The fuel—a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen—is heated to temperatures in excess of 150 million°C, forming a hot plasma. Strong magnetic fields are used to keep the plasma away from the walls; these are produced by superconducting coils surrounding the vessel, and by an electrical current driven through the plasma."
[link to www.iter.org]

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"The ITER project confronts numerous technically challenging issues. French Nobel laureate in physics, Pierre-Gilles de Gennes said of nuclear fusion, "We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don't know how to make the box."[36]

A technical concern is that the 14 MeV neutrons produced by the fusion reactions will damage the materials from which the reactor is built.[37] Research is in progress to determine how and/or if reactor walls can be designed to last long enough to make a commercial power plant economically viable in the presence of the intense neutron bombardment. The damage is primarily caused by high energy neutrons knocking atoms out of their normal position in the crystal lattice. A related problem for a future commercial fusion power plant is that the neutron bombardment will induce radioactivity in the reactor material itself.[38]

Maintaining and decommissioning a commercial reactor may thus be difficult and expensive. Another problem is that superconducting magnets are damaged by neutron fluxes. A new special research facility, IFMIF, is planned to investigate this problem."

Scroll down to "Criticism"...
[link to en.wikipedia.org (secure)]
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TEPCO begins pumping up contaminated groundwater

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant began pumping up radioactive groundwater on a larger scale on Thursday to minimize leakage into the ocean.

The government says some 300 tons of contaminated water may be flowing into the sea every day.

Tokyo Electric Power Company has created an underground wall by injecting soil-hardening chemicals into the ground near the most heavily contaminated reactors -- No.1 and No.2 -- to prevent tainted water from leaking. It caused the level of groundwater to continue to rise.

TEPCO began pumping up the contaminated water as an emergency measure on Friday.

The firm has also been installing nearly 30 pipes, each 5 meters long, into the ground on the near side of the underground barrier to increase the volume of water that it can draw up.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Fukushima high school students visit Philippine nuclear power plant

Ten senior high school students, accompanied by three teachers, from Japan's disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture visited Wednesday the Philippines's mothballed and only nuclear power plant located in this town north of Manila.

The visit, which is part of the groups' weeklong trip in the country sponsored by the Japanese Red Cross Society, is a rare opportunity for residents of Fukushima to see the interior of a nuclear power plant.

"If we were in Japan, we can't enter the nuclear power plants there. So this is the only nuclear power plant we can visit and see everything in it," Hisashi Azuma, one of the accompanying teachers, told Kyodo News.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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[link to www.sunnewsnetwork.ca]

FUKUSHIMA RADIATION LEAK NOT A CONCERN TO CANADA, OFFICIALS SAY


VANCOUVER -- Increased levels of radiation pouring into the Pacific Ocean from the fractured Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan do not concern Canadian officials.
The nuclear plant, battered in the catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's west coast, has been leaking radiation since the disaster.

In recent weeks the situation has worsened and been declared an emergency. An estimated 300 tons of radioactive water is pouring into the ocean each day.

But in Canada, officials said they don't believe there are any concerns with the increased levels of radiation.

B.C. provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall said radiation from across the Pacific would have dissipated in the ocean before it reached B.C.'s coastline.

"The radiation is in the water that is being released and it's clearly an issue for the Japanese," Kendall said. "We don't believe there's any radiation being carried across the Pacific."

Health Canada also said it doesn't consider the radiation a threat, pointing out it has been monitoring ocean water and will continue to do so.

Kendall said the chances of finding any radiation in B.C. is minimal.

"You would have to be producing food or catching fish that were exposed to radiation and somehow weren't being subject to regulatory controls and were being imported here," he said. "I think it would have to be relatively much, much larger escape of radioactivity into the air or into the water for a bloom of any sort of health significance to reach us."

Meanwhile, health officials in Hawaii, about 1,500 km closer to Japan than B.C., told QMI Agency they have not detected any radiation from the Fukushima plant.

WHo you gonna believe on this damn thing?

Just imagine the projects extra costs for this operation... money makes the world go around...

AP1000 pumps China-bound again

The first two main coolant pumps for the Sanmen AP1000 plant are on their way back to China after repair work and re-testing, China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp (SNPTC) has announced.

Each AP1000 employs four main reactor coolant pumps, which circulate reactor coolant through the core, loop piping and steam generators. The pumps were manufactured by Curtiss-Wright and initially passed qualification testing in June 2012 at Curtiss-Wright Flow Control business segment's Electro-Mechanical Division (CW-EMD) facility in Cheswick, Pennsylvania. However, final testing of a similar pump in January 2013 revealed potential quality problems.

As a result of the problems, SNPTC decided to ship three of the four main pumps it had already received from CW-EMD back to the USA for replacement of components including the impeller and guide vanes and factory re-testing. That work has now been completed on the first two main pumps. SNPTC expects the re-shipped components to reach Shanghai in early October.

Westinghouse is currently constructing four AP1000 units in China, two each at Sanmen in Zhejiang province and Haiyang in Shandong. Curtiss-Wright was awarded a contract by Westinghouse to produce 16 reactor coolant pumps for the units in 2007. Sanmen unit 1 is currently expected to begin generating electricity in 2014; it is not clear what effect - if any - the coolant pump issue will have on the construction schedule.
[link to www.world-nuclear-news.org]
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PILGRIM STATION: Can Entergy afford Pilgrim

PLYMOUTH — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review a petition alleging that Pilgrim-owner Entergy no longer meets the NRC’s minimum financial standards for safely operating nuclear power plants.
[link to www.wickedlocal.com]
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Court: Vt. Can't Use Law to Close Nuclear Plant

Vermont's attempts to close its lone nuclear power plant were deceptive and misleading, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in largely upholding a lower-court ruling against the state.

State legislators passed laws in 2005, 2006 and 2008 making it harder for the Vermont Yankee plant to win permission to operate for another 20 years. They were concerned about the plant's safety but tried to hide that because they were aware that nuclear safety is the sole province of the U.S. government under federal law, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.
[link to abcnews.go.com]
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BWRPLUS Formed to Leverage Synergy between Westinghouse and Toshiba

Westinghouse Electric Company and Toshiba Corporation have announced the formation of BWRPLUS, a new joint marketing organization for operating nuclear power plants in North America that will leverage the synergies between Westinghouse and Toshiba.
[link to www.nuclearpowerdaily.com]
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HARRIS: OFFSITE NOTIFICATION DUE TO A LOW LEVEL TRITIUM SPILL

During a routine plant inspection, plant personnel discovered a leak from a pipe on plant property on Tuesday, August 13, [2013]. An isolation valve, 3WN-38, leaked causing approximately 9,900 gallons of water containing low levels of tritium (5,780 picocuries per liter) to leak onto the surrounding soil.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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Thanks. What I suspected.
Gotta go with the MIT LSR.

There are some indications..


Nuclear lobby blasts renewable power
[link to www.thestar.com]

Fairewinds on Nuclear Disaster Oddities: “Noise that sounds like rain when it’s not raining” — Family had 5 pets die within hours, all found with ‘milky white’ eyes — Woman engulfed in wave of heat, later told kidney ‘died’ (AUDIO)
[link to enenews.com]



This week’s podcast features the testimonies of people living near the Three Mile Island nuclear plant at the time of the accident in 1979. [...] These powerful testimonies are available in the NRC archives, but buried under thousands of other documents they rarely see the light of day. [...]

^^^yeh, nothing greater comes from fire, or the imagination -especially when trying to destroy Creation in the process.
rp : )

ooops, that was ment to be refered to swedes and wb post above sorry! rp

Ouch.. Pay me now... and later.


San Onofre removal may cost $4.1 billion
[link to mail.thebusinessjournal.com]


Operators of the San Onofre nuclear power plant say it may cost $4.1 billion and take 15 years to tear down the troubled plant and restore the Southern California coastal site to its pristine condition.

Edison is seeking to recover some shutdown costs from insurers and the tube manufacturer but has indicated ratepayers may have to cough up hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

Those damned old pipes...



Tritium leak found at Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant
[link to enformable.com]


While conducting a site investigation at the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant in North Carolina, workers found that a pipe on the site property was leaking onto the soil. The leaking isolation valve, 3WN-38, allowed nearly 10,000 gallons of water to escape onto the surrounding area. The water contained some 5,780 picocuries per liter of radioactive tritium. The valve was secured and the leak was stopped, but not before over 800,000 becquerels of radiation were released.

Appeals Court Blocks Attempt by Vermont to Close a Nuclear Plant
[link to www.nytimes.com]


WASHINGTON — States cannot shut down nuclear plants over safety worries, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on Wednesday, upholding a lower court’s decision that allowed the Vermont Yankee plant to keep running despite a seven-year effort by the Vermont Legislature to close it.

Study: Nuclear leak would force Cape Cod to evacuate
[link to www.wwlp.com]


- A new report says a radiation leak from Plymouth's Pilgrim nuclear power plant would prompt about half of Cape Cod's permanent residents to flee, a situation activists and officials say would cause monumental traffic jams.

Nuclear Reactors in U.S. Seen at Risk of Terrorist Attack
[link to www.bloomberg.com]

The Post-Fukushima Nuclear Industry: A Case Study in Institutional Self-Deception
[link to fukushimaupdate.com]

Insight: Japan's nuclear clean-up: costly, complex and at risk of failing
[link to www.planetark.org]


The most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted has proved costly, complex and time-consuming since the Japanese government began it more than two years in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. It may also fail.

Doubts are mounting that the effort to decontaminate hotspots in an area the size of Connecticut will succeed in its ultimate aim - luring more than 100,000 nuclear evacuees back home.

If thousands of former residents cannot or will not return, parts of the farming and fishing region could remain an abandoned wilderness for decades.

In many areas, radiation remains well above targeted levels because of bureaucratic delays and ineffective work on the ground. As a result, some experts fears the $15 billion allocated to the scheme so far will be largely squandered.