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

*there, dammit

Move along, now.. Nothing to see here..

~




March 16th, 2011 – No matter what, it is vital that everyone stays on same page regarding the facts, even as the situation worsens in Japan
[link to enformable.com]

[snip]

Sent: Wed Mar 16 10:02:21 2011
Subject: RE: NICCL Call at 10:30am (eastern) Japanese reactor
Please make sure to get on this call as there seems to be some confusion over what folks can or should be doing.

No matter what, it is vital that everyone stays on same page regarding the facts, even as the situation worsens in Japan, the experts assure us that and I quote the NRC, “You just aren’t going to have any radiological material that, by the time it traveled those large distances, could present any risk to the American public.”

It is good for HHS and FEMA to say if there were a nuclear accident here, this is how we would respond and then walk press through that, but it is important to make sure that while doing this, it needs to be made clear that press understand we are talking about a hypothetical nuclear accident here, not any concerns whatsoever coming from Japan disaster to the US.

Nick

You vil haf zee nukleah powah.. unt you vil LIKE IT!
:wacko:



Editorial: Gov't should be fair in listening to public opinion on nuclear power
[link to mainichi.jp]

[snip]

One cannot help but wonder why electric power industry insiders were initially allowed to attend public hearings on atomic power policy. As long as members of the public doubt whether the government is serious about listening to their opinions, the government cannot ensure fairness of its policy-making process.

Questions also remain about the way such hearings are being held. Speakers express their own opinions, but nobody asks questions and no discussion is held. Since opinions expressed by speakers are not summarized by the organizer, how can they be reflected in the government's energy policy?

Biased opinions were expressed in some past symposia and other sessions on nuclear power policy organized by the government in a bid to manipulate public opinion, inviting public distrust.

UAE OKs 1st reactor plan after Fukushima accident
The United Arab Emirates has approved the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant. It is the first time since the Fukushima accident that any government has agreed to allow a new nuclear plant to be built.

The UAE's Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to the construction of 2 reactors. The plant is scheduled to begin operating by 2017.

The Middle Eastern oil-rich country will be the first Arab state to build a nuclear power plant. The country says it is taking the step to cope with rapid urbanization and population growth. It expects the country's electricity demand will increase 3 times by 2020.

A consortium including Japanese firms competed against a South Korean rival for the contract. But, in the end, the Korean group won with the help of top diplomacy in which President Lee Myung-bak himself visited the UAE.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]

I don't think the people in the Emirates are aware of the fact that they soon will have 2 reactors...
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Probe into fault beneath Oi plant ordered as No. 4 reactor restarted
The No. 4 reactor at the Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture was restarted early Thursday morning, even as fresh concerns surfaced about the unit’s positioning near a faultline.

However, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said on Wednesday it would order a reassessment of geological data after seismologists said there was a potentially active fault under Oi, measuring 900 meters
[link to www.japantoday.com]
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Japan Atomic Energy Commission to record all policy discussions
The Japan Atomic Energy Commission plans to record discussions when three or more of its five members meet to discuss policy matters, its acting chairman said Thursday.

Tatsujiro Suzuki unveiled the plan in an interview with Kyodo News after the panel in charge of the nation's basic nuclear energy policies came under fire for holding secret policy meetings on an off-the-record basis.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Court backs gov't decision not to exempt TEPCO over nuclear disaster
The Tokyo District Court ruled Thursday it was legitimate for the government not to apply an exemption, which relieves utilities of compensation payments over nuclear accidents caused by natural disasters, to Tokyo Electric Power Co. over last year's nuclear crisis.

In handing down the ruling, presiding Judge Masatoshi Murakami said, "The government's interpretation of the exemption in an extremely limited way was reasonable to some extent."
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Good point..

Black gold and nuclear technology..
They'll have it all.

Add a couple of solar power plants and they're good to go for another 50-60 years...
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TEPCO finishes trial removal of unused fuel from Fukushima No. 4 unit
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday it has finished the trial removal of two unused nuclear fuel assemblies from a fuel storage pool at the badly damaged No. 4 reactor unit of its Fukushima Daiichi power plant without any major trouble.

The operation is part of a process toward scrapping the damaged Nos. 1 to 4 units at the six-reactor plant. The utility will first remove fuel from the No. 4 unit, because its pool stores the largest number of fuel rods and its building has no roof due to a hydrogen explosion in March 2011.

The utility known as TEPCO will carry out a more detailed inspection of the two assemblies, which are bundles of fuel rods about 4 meters long and each weighing some 300 kilograms. But spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told a press conference that no major deformation or corrosion had been observed so far.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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thanks for thos info.!

LIMERICK - UNUSUAL EVENT DECLARED DUE TO FLASHOVER IN THE LOAD CENTER TRANSFORMER CABINET
An electrical transformer fault occurred resulting in a loss of both Recirc Pumps. The reactor was manually scrammed from 100% power as required by Plant Procedure OT-112.

"The electrical transformer was walked down by Operations supervisor. Licensee's assessment was that a flashover occurred, and was confined to the load center transformer cabinet. Based on observed damage, EAL declaration of HU3 was made."

HU3 is identified as an explosion within the Protected Area.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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India - Nuclear programme in take-off stage
July 18, 2012: Seven years ago, in July 2005, the Manmohan-Bush accord marked the beginning of the end of India’s nuclear isolation. India’s nuclear programme is now set for a boost in the months ahead, when Kudankulam-1 begins operations and adds 1,000 MWe of capacity.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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Four U.S. power reactors shut & NYC sweats during heat wave
Several nuclear plants on the U.S. East Coast shut down by early W ednesday and New York's Consolidated Edison power company reduced the voltage in parts of Manhattan as the obsessive heat wave stressed the region's power system.

Despite the shutdown of four giant nuclear reactors in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and South Carolina, the power systems delivered the juice needed by the regions' homes and businesses to keep air conditioners humming on the projected last day of a brutal heat wave.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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Sweden's Ringhals-2 nuclear reactor fails after restart
Sweden's Ringhals-2 nuclear reactor was shut down on Thursday morning, less than nine hours after being restarted, due to a technical glitch, the Nordic power exchange said in a market message.

The 865-megawatt (MW) pressurized water reactor's trip was caused by an elevated high-steam generator level after it was restarted at 1930 GMT on Wednesday, it added.

The reactor was previously shut a month ago due to oil leakage from a transformer, and was expected to be back in full operation after maintenance by Thursday evening.

Ringhals-2 is one of the four reactors at the plant south of Gothenburg, 70 percent owned by Swedish state energy group Vattenfall and 30 percent held by German E.ON .

Nuclear generators supply 40 percent of Sweden's power needs.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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Feds offer a pittance to 5 states for debris disposal

The agency announced that Oregon, Alaska, Washington, California and Hawaii will each receive up to $50,000 toward debris removal from its marine debris program. In Oregon, more than $50,000 has already been spent to dispose of a dock that had washed up on shore, and the state is seeking more federal aid, saying the dock alone will cost nearly 100,000 dollars to dispose of.
[link to enformable.com]

Doesn't that mean we can do away with them..?

Shouldn't japan be paying for that..? It's their debris, even 'tho tepco won't claim responsibility for anything that isn't on their property.. including the contamination..

And why don't they set log booms to intercept and gather the debris before it makes landfall..? Then tell japan to send all their whalers over to tow it back to japan for disposal.

It is only fair to return their property to them..

March 16th, 2011 – The RASCAL inputs withheld from States – Please do not share this information outside of NRC
[link to enformable.com]

[snip]

Jim and RSLOs,

The RASCAL inputs below are for your information. Please do not share this information outside of NRC.

Jim, would you please communicate to Cheryl Rogers that we are not able to share this information outside of the NRC at this time?

I’ve been advised by the Protective Measures Team that the following assumptions were made in RASCAL:

Unit #2: 33% core damage and containment leakage
Unit #3: damage to the spent fuel pool, 50% of fuel melted
Unit #4: spent fuel pool leaked and all of the fuel melted

I hope this provides the clarification that you were seeking.

This new Stanford study blows the WHO study out of the water..
Who[no pun intended]shall we believe..?
Will the next study render them both moot..?

~



Japan: Estimate of a Cancer Toll
[link to www.nytimes.com]

[snip]

A study by researchers at Stanford suggests that additional cancer-related deaths from radioactive materials released in last year’s accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could be as low as 15 cases and as high as 1,300.

An earlier World Health Organization study said the amount of radiation exposure fell below what it said were cancer-causing levels.

[Reactor4] Taken fuel assemblies were 100 times more radioactive than normal
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

[Dream technology] Fuel assemblies are hung up by human workers
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

[Reactor4] Photos and videos to take out the new fuel assemblies
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

Radioactive fallout landed in the Isle of Man
[link to www.iomtoday.co.im]

Everything you didn't want to know about Limerick..

[link to www.acereport.org]

Gov't to tap Shunichi Tanaka for new nuclear body chief
The government plans to appoint Shunichi Tanaka, an expert in radiation physics and a former member of the country's key panel involved in setting nuclear policy, as the head of the new nuclear regulation authority that it aims to launch in early September, sources close to the matter said Friday.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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TEPCO head baffled by criticism of utility's role in nuclear disaster
The new head of the company at the center of Japan’s nuclear disaster said on Thursday he was baffled by fierce criticism of the firm where he has worked nearly 40 years and hoped to rebuild public trust but offered no clear idea how to do so.

In a scathing report issued this month, an investigative panel appointed by the Diet concluded that the last year’s Fukushima disaster was preventable and resulted from “collusion” among Tokyo Electric Power Co, its regulators and the government.

"You can destroy trust in a single day but to rebuild it takes time," the 59-year-old Yale-educated president of TEPCO, Naomi Hirose, told a packed news conference of foreign and Japanese reporters.
[link to www.japantoday.com]
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Govt sets compensation rules for Fukushima
The Japanese government has compiled guidelines to speed up compensation for Fukushima residents forced to evacuate after last year's nuclear power plant accident.

The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, is already dealing with the compensation issues based on guidelines created by a government committee of experts. But payments have been delayed because of wide differences in claims between the residents and the utility.

The new guidelines have been compiled by the industry ministry, which oversees the utility. They say that people who evacuated after the nuclear disaster and cannot return home for 6 or more years should be compensated for the full value of their houses.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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US panel to study Fukushima nuclear accident
The US National Academy of Sciences has set up a committee to study the lessons from last year's accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

Representatives of the government's Nuclear Regulatory Commission, nuclear experts and officials of the US nuclear power industry took part in the first meeting in Washington on Thursday.

NRC officials said they took steps to ensure that nuclear plants have emergency power backup systems after the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001. They said the commission has intensified these measures since the Fukushima disaster in March last year.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Foreign visitors exceed pre-disaster level
Foreign tourists are coming back to Japan. The number of visitors rose 1.4 percent in June from the same month two years ago.

The Japan National Tourism Organization says an estimated 686,600 people visited Japan last month for tourism or business.

That's up 1.4 percent from June 2010, before the earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear accident in March last year.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Hatoyama joins Friday anti-nuke rally
Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has joined the weekly anti-nuclear power rally outside the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo.

Protesters have held rallies every Friday since late March. An increasing number of participants have joined the rallies through Twitter.

Hatoyama told the rally that anti-nuclear protesters' opinions should be reflected in politics and the stances of the government and the public on energy issues are too far apart.

The former prime minister said he will convey the protesters' views to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, adding that he wants to play a role in changing trends in politics.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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And a little more you don't want to know... lol...
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LIMERICK - REACTOR PROTECTION SIGNAL ACTUATION DUE TO CHANGING MODE SWITCH POSITION DURING SURVEILLANCE TESTING
During surveillance testing, the reactor mode switch was moved from the locked shutdown position and placed in the refuel position without the minimum required operable source range monitors per Limerick Generating Station Technical Specifications.

Upon discovery of the issue, the reactor mode switch was returned to the locked shutdown position causing an expected but valid RPS actuation.

No control rod motion occurred because all control rods were already inserted at the time of the event.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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