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

More dumbassery..



'Rustbucket' fears over Dounreay nuclear cargo boat
[link to www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk]

FACTBOX-Polonium: lethal, invisible poison
A Swiss institute said on Thursday that it agreed to a request from the Palestinian Authority to help exhume the body of its former leader Yasser Arafat and determine whether he was poisoned, but time is running out.

Once inside someone's body, polonium-210 is not easily detectable from outside, although an individual's urine or faeces would show traces of alpha radiation. The intense alpha radiation within tissues would destroy living cells, leading to a rapid decline in health and eventual death from multiple organ failure.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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Nuclear plant returning to full power
The Palisades nuclear plant in southwestern Michigan returned to service Thursday following a shutdown that began Aug. 12 because of a minor steam leak.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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EDF's 915-MW Cruas 4 nuclear reactor stopped for an unplanned outage
The fourth reactor of the Cruas nuclear plant, located near the Rhone river, had been in a planned outage since March 24 and was expected to return to the grid on Friday.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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NRC denies license for 3rd reactor in Maryland
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission can't issue a license to a French company to build a new nuclear power plant in Maryland as long as the company is completely foreign owned, a panel of judges ruled Thursday.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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DOE confirms 2nd leak at Hanford as state threatens legal action
[link to www.king5.com]

NRC Finalizes Guidance Documents for Post-Fukushima Requirements

PDF

[link to www.nrc.gov]

IAEA to help Fukushima conduct health checks
The International Atomic Energy Agency will help Fukushima Prefecture implement decontamination measures and conduct health checks on local residents.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano met Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato at the agency's headquarters in Vienna on Friday.

Sato asked for help with efforts to deal with the damage from last year's nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Nuclear meeting calls for more effort for safety
An international conference on nuclear safety has ended with an appeal for countries to do more to improve safety of their nuclear power plants, based on lessons from the Fukushima disaster.

The 5-day meeting at International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna adopted a president's summary on Friday. The countries are party to the Convention on Nuclear Safety.

The summary calls for countries to enhance independence of their nuclear regulators through such measures as legislation.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Post-Fukushima meeting calls for more work on nuclear safety
VIENNA — A major international conference reviewing the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March 2011 wrapped up Friday calling for more to be done to improve nuclear safety.

“We have made headway in the current stage in drawing lessons from the Fukushima accident through this meeting,” said China’s Li Ganjie, president of the Convention on Nuclear Safety meeting, in closing remarks.
[link to www.japantoday.com]
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TEPCO raises household electricity rates by 8.46%
Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Saturday raised electricity rates for households by an average 8.46 percent in response to the heavy financial burden stemming from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster last year.

About 28.7 million contracts with households, small offices and stores in its service area including Tokyo are subject to the rate hike. For a standard household using 290 kilowatt hours per month under a 30 ampere contract, the monthly power bill will rise by 347 yen, or 4.82 percent, from August to 7,548 yen.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]

Now people have to pay an extra fee for beeing irradiated...
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TEPCO facing difficulties in water injection at Daiichi plant
The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Friday continued to face difficulties in controlling the amount of water being injected into the three crippled reactors at the plant, which is critical to keeping the melted fuel inside cool.

The amount of water injected into the reactors dropped below the minimum required level twice on the previous day. Workers have operated valves to increase the coolant, but the water flow is falling from time to time compared with the initially set level.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Won't hear this on CNN...

Pipeline breaks near contaminated soil site at Hanford
[link to www.tri-cityherald.com]


[snip]

The 324 Building just north of Richland has large hot cells where research was done with high level radioactive waste and materials. In 2010, Hanford officials discovered that cesium and strontium had leaked into the soil beneath the building from a newly discovered crack in the sump at the bottom of one of the building's hot cells.

Radioactivity has been measured at 8,900 rad per hour in the soil. Direct exposure for a few minutes would be fatal, according to Washington Closure.

Nice to know the feds have top-notch security to protect us from grandmothers in wheelchairs and children in diapers at airports, tho..
Idiots..





Weapons Plant Security Issues Are Described in U.S. Audit
[link to www.nytimes.com]

[snip]

WASHINGTON — The contractors in charge of guarding the national stockpile of bomb-grade uranium in Tennessee knew well before an 82-year-old nun and two other pacifists broke through three barriers this summer that a lot of the security equipment was broken, and government managers knew it too, according to an internal audit of Energy Department operations at the weapons facility. The inspector general’s investigation found “troubling displays of ineptitude.”

Thats right,. make the consumer pay the price of your failure and posioning of the country.

hehehehehehehehe.

Got to love coporate monopolys on basic human needs.

Civil disobedience
[link to www.thebulletin.org]

[snip]

Before we too go gently into that good night, perhaps Cold War boomers should make sure nuclear weapons go with us to the grave. For those of us in our 60s and 70s, still active and with time on our hands, the abolition of nuclear weapons is a worthy goal. We claim to have ended the Vietnam War with our protests and our marches. Perhaps we have one last act of social justice in us. Perhaps we could bring about the end of nuclear weapons and remove the prospect of nuclear war for our children and grandchildren.

It Could Have Been Worse
[link to www.fairewinds.com]

Might help if Tepco and jap .gov divulged the pertinent information instead of hiding everything..



Fukushima could happen again, investigators say, as insufficient lessons learned
[link to ajw.asahi.com]

[snip]

Hatamura cited plant engineers' failure to notice that water-level gauges were malfunctioning early in the crisis. He said that error, by employees of plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., showed the need for a study into why such mistakes were made.

Ecosystem Conservation Society-Japan “People from Fukushima to Kanagawa should not marry”
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

Cobalt 58 was detected in Gunma, half-life is 71days, “Possibile recriticality around after April”
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

Black substance found at Harajuku station in Tokyo, “21,346 Bq/Kg”
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

Another mass death of goby was found in Shizuoka, close to Mt. Fuji.
[link to fukushima-diary.com]

Tepco struggling to control the coolant system, “Adjusted the valves 7 times for 2 days”
[link to fukushima-diary.com]



I have a feeling we'll see a major event soon if they don't get the cooling under control...

Judges hold rethink on nuke safety
[link to www.japantimes.co.jp]

[snip]

Courts have routinely rejected appeals made in cases involving nuclear plants, but now they are debating whether the government itself is taking appropriate safety procedures.

Kawai said. "The opinions of the judges clearly show that their reliance on regulators and bureaucrats is losing ground."

Environment ministry to check Fukushima residents' DNA for radiation damage
[link to mainichi.jp]

Control is their mantra...

Startup NuScale holds its own in game of nuclear giants
Nuclear power startup NuScale Power LLC is competing against some of the biggest names in the business for a U.S. federal grant to develop the next generation of nuclear reactors -- and it is playing the safety card.

The smart money may be on Babcock & Wilcox Co, a long-time provider of reactors for U.S. submarines, in the competition to be one of two companies to split a $452 million grant, according to industry experts.

But NuScale is trumpeting the safety aspects of its new technology, and has found helpful supporters including U.S. engineering giant Fluor Corp, which bought a majority stake in the 5-year-old company last October.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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Southern Expects First Nuclear Milestone After NRC Review
Southern Co. (SO) expects to pour the first “nuclear concrete” for its $14 billion atomic construction project in October, a milestone it can reach only if federal regulators condense into two months a license amendment review that normally takes about a year.

Southern, based in Atlanta, Georgia, told the Georgia Public Service Commission in a report today that it “has a high degree of confidence” the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will approve a change the company sought earlier earlier this year to its construction license at Plant Vogtle, 26 miles (42 kilometers) southeast of Augusta, Georgia.
[link to www.businessweek.com]
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Calvert Cliffs nuclear power project facing 60-day deadline
Once promoted as the vanguard of a "nuclear renaissance," a proposed new reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland now faces a major new roadblock, with federal regulators threatening to shelve the troubled $9.6 billion project unless the French-controlled developer comes up with a U.S. partner in the next two months.

The ruling Thursday by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board was not unexpected, as the board's parent Nuclear Regulatory Commission had warned Unistar Nuclear Energy more than a year ago that it could not get a license for the Maryland reactor without a U.S. partner. Federal law prohibits foreign ownership or control of a U.S. nuclear plant, and Unistar is owned by the French energy group EDF.
[link to www.baltimoresun.com]
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Nuclear accident settlement procedure slow
Saturday marks one year since a government arbitration body began accepting damages files from victims of last year's nuclear accident. However, arbitration officials say only one seventh of the filed damages cases have reached legal settlements in the past year.

The Japanese government set up the arbitration body to mediate settlements between victims and Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The arbitrators say that of 3,793 cases they have accepted by Friday, only 520 have been settled.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Noda's Cabinet to study zero nuclear energy policy Sun.
Japan's Cabinet will hold a meeting Sunday to study the country's nuclear energy policy, including likely challenges in the event that the country's reliance on nuclear power is reduced to zero, government officials said Friday.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and all Cabinet members will take part in the meeting, at a time when the government is working on compiling a new energy and environment strategy, and considering the possible decommissioning of all nuclear plants as a medium- to long-term goal.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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UAE Has an Ambitious Nuclear Program
DUBAI (IDN) – Nearly one year after the launch of a nuclear fuel procurement competition in July 2011, the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) has started an ambitious atomic power program. The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec) has awarded six contracts related to the supply of natural uranium concentrates, conversion and enrichment services, and the purchase of enriched uranium product.
[link to axisoflogic.com]
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Iran says reactor at Bushehr nuclear plant has reached full capacity
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's sole operational nuclear power reactor has reached full capacity, a senior official said Saturday.

Iran's deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Ahmadian, said the reactor at the Bushehr power plant was brought to its "full capacity of 1,000 megawatts" Friday evening. The reactor went into operation for the first time last year at minimum capacity.
[link to news.yahoo.com]
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