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

Contractor discounted Hanford leak evidence for a year
[link to www.king5.com]

[snip]

The press release said the leak was found “during a regularly scheduled” inspection of AY-102 in August.

But the KING 5 Investigators found that the first evidence that AY-102 was leaking came nearly a year earlier, in October 2011.

Why it took DOE and the private company hired to oversee the tank a full year to conduct a thorough investigation into signs of a leak of highly radioactive waste raises a larger question about the clean-up effort at Hanford – a 586 square mile patch of Central Washington that’s the most contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere.

That question: How effective is the oversight of the private contractors doing much of the complicated work at Hanford?

[....]
“It looked like tank waste to me,” said another source who asked to remain anonymous. “All the managers did not want that tank to have a leak.”

“This is evidence that the company was bending over backward to not find the bad news,” said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group based in Seattle. “This is the mindset at the Hanford site -- of denial.”

I'd watch this one.
Turning away the fire department is suspicious.
Claiming damage is not related is also suspicious.

No outside interference allowed.


Texas Nuclear Reactor Restarts, Four Months After Fire
[link to www.texastribune.org]

[snip]

“We’re bringing the unit back up,” said Buddy Eller, a spokesman for the South Texas Project, the enormous Bay City nuclear plant where the problems have occurred.

The fire department in Bay City headed to the scene, but plant officials turned them back, saying they had the fire under control and did not need additional help, according to a representative of the Bay City Police Department.

No one was injured in the fire, according to Eller, who said that reports of 50-foot flames were “incorrect.”

It was the second major incident for STP 2 in two years. In November 2011, the reactor went down for five months after it tripped, or shut down, while it was at 100 percent power, according to an NRC web report. The cause was a malfunction of the main generator, due to a ground fault.

In neither incident was there any danger of radioactive material leaking, Eller said.

Over the past four months, STP has taken apart the turbine generator and inspected it thoroughly, Eller said. The generator — which had been refurbished in 2012 — was fine, he said, but “we had to replace a number of the turbine blades.” The two incidents were not causally connected, he said.

The picture says it all...

A monster flood could knock out the power in this essential raw cooling water building at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant, so TVA has added new conduit seals and door seals for added protection. In other plant areas, concrete and steel barriers protect more critical equipment and some parts, like deisel generator fill pipes, have been elevated.


TVA admits mistakes to NRC in calculating flood, natural disaster risks
[link to www.timesfreepress.com]

[snip]

TVA officials were squirming a bit Monday and a few cheeks glowed pink at times as directors and inspectors with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission plied them with questions about protecting Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants from a future monster flood.

TVA spent much of the five-hour Atlanta meeting with NRC acknowledging the utility's mistakes in making flooding calculations and owning up to a culture of complacency about potential natural disasters.

TVA officials said the continuing heartbreak of Fukushima gave them new resolve to harden safety at Watts Bar and Sequoyah, where new weather and flooding models show a monster flood could send water nearly two and a half feet higher than expected at Sequoyah Nuclear Plant and more than four feet higher at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. Such a rise could threaten electric connections for critical reactor cooling equipment.

China: N.Korea may conduct 4th test

A top-ranking Chinese military officer has suggested that North Korea may conduct another nuclear test.

The Chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, Fang Fenghui, met the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, in Beijing on Monday.

Fang expressed China's concern that North Korea may conduct a 4th nuclear test.

He said China would work with the United States and other countries to resolve the nuclear stand-off.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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I'm sure the management will get their bonuses as usual...

Tohoku Electric not to pay bonuses to employees this summer

Tohoku Electric Power Co. said Tuesday it has agreed with its labor union that bonuses will not be paid to employees this summer as part of streamlining associated with its request to the government to raise household electricity rates.

It is the first time for the regional utility serving northeastern Japan not to pay bonuses since its establishment in 1951. The company will discuss with the labor union how to handle the bonuses for winter, its officials said.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Playing with fire... I hope they won't burn themselves...

Japan may see nuclear reactors resume operating from fall: Motegi

Industry minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Tuesday that some of the country's idled nuclear reactors might resume operating this autumn at the earliest after undergoing a new safety assessment process.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority plans to introduce new safety requirements for nuclear power plants in mid-July, opening the door for utilities to apply for permits to put their reactors back online.

Motegi told reporters the new requirements will take effect "in the summer," so the schedule for the resumption of reactors will be "autumn at the earliest."
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Insane solution in a country with so many earthquakes... good luck...

Japan to mull ways to make progress on final radioactive waste site

The Japanese government said Tuesday that it plans to start next month discussing ways to push forward the process of selecting a permanent disposal site for high-level radioactive waste generated by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

Under the current plan, vitrified high-level radioactive waste is to be placed at a final disposal site more than 300 meters underground. But no local government has agreed to host the site.

"The issue has not made progress over these 10 years....We need to create a framework that will make things move," Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said during a ministry panel created to devise the country's new medium- to long-term energy plan in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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How can they even entertain that idea without the geologists/scientists of the world condemning and ridiculing it..?

Well, they ARE Japanese... real kamikaze pilots... lol..
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TEPCO still obviously affected by organizational overconfidence

TEPCO officials have been flushed and squirming lately. There are serious leaks from previously undisclosed underground pits and on three separate occasions TEPCO workers have been forced to shut down critical cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi in response to invasions by small rodents and mice.

The utility has also had to acknowledge its own mistakes in preparing for tsunamis and its crippling culture of complacency related to other potential natural disasters.  While TEPCO argues that the mistakes have been fixed and the complacency eradicated, they are still habitually slow to respond whenever their preparedness is questioned, leading many to believe that they are still very much affected by overconfidence.

Additionally, TEPCO still is refusing to pay over ten-and-a-half billion yen for decontamination work around the Fukushima Daiichi site. They have continually argued that they are under no legal obligation and assume the costs are covered by taxpayers by the special measures law.
[link to enformable.com]
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Texas Nuclear Reactor Restarts, Four Months After Fire

Four months after a fire in January, one of Texas’ four nuclear reactor units is being restarted, bringing to an end the unit's second prolonged shutdown in two years.

“We’re bringing the unit back up,” said Buddy Eller, a spokesman for the South Texas Project, the enormous Bay City nuclear plant where the problems have occurred. The 1,350-megawatt reactor unit, known as STP Unit 2, should be producing 100 percent power by sometime Tuesday, according to Eller, who spoke with the Tribune on Monday afternoon.
[link to www.texastribune.org]
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NRC finds construction issues at Scana nuclear plant

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it has found what appears to be improper construction at a reactor being built at the V. C. Summer Nuclear Station near Jenkinsville, S.C.

It has summoned S.C. Electric & Gas, the Scana Corp. subsidiary that is the plant’s principal owner, to a meeting next week in Atlanta to discuss the findings and determine the safety significance.

The NRC says there appear to be problems with anchors and the spacing of the rebar set to reinforce the concrete floor and walls of the reactor under construction.
Similar problems with the rebar reinforcement at the Southern Co.’s Plant Vogtle, the other new domestic nuclear plant under construction, delayed that project for several months last year.

Both projects involve the construction of Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. The construction is being done by a division of Chicago Bridge & Iron based in Charlotte — the former Shaw Power Group.
[link to www.bizjournals.com]
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Southern Company subsidiary acquires 139-megawatt solar plant and more than doubles solar generating capacity

ATLANTA, April 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern Company (NYSE: SO) today announced the acquisition of the company's largest solar installation – the 139-megawatt (MW) Campo Verde Solar Project – by subsidiary Southern Power and Turner Renewable Energy from First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR). The Southern Power-Turner Renewable Energy partnership's fifth solar acquisition and its first solar project in California, the Campo Verde Solar Project will more than double Southern Company's solar capacity and is expected to generate enough electricity to power nearly 48,000 homes.
[link to www.nuclearpowerdaily.com]
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Japan to review nuclear waste disposal policy

Japanese government officials say they will fundamentally review the country's nuclear waste disposal policy amid stalled efforts to find a site for high-level radioactive waste.

An expert panel of the industry ministry will start discussions next month to seek concrete measures to break the impasse.

The government decided in 2000 to bury highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants underground, where it would remain for tens of thousands of years. The government then began selecting disposal sites but have yet to decide on a single one.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Citizens file suit against operation of new reactor in Shimane Pref.

A group of citizens on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Chugoku Electric Power Co., demanding the utility not begin operating a new reactor in Shimane Prefecture whose construction is close to completion.

A total of 428 plaintiffs -- residents of Tottori and Shimane prefectures, western Japan, and supporters from across the nation -- also filed a lawsuit with the Matsue District Court against the state, seeking nullification of its earlier approval to build the No. 3 reactor of the Shimane nuclear power station in the city of Matsue.

The Shimane complex is the only nuclear power plant in the nation located in a prefectural capital, and about 469,000 people live within 30 kilometers of the plant, according to the plaintiffs.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Panel to finalize in May judgment on fault below Tsuruga nuclear plant

A panel under the Nuclear Regulation Authority plans to finalize in May a report which would conclude that a geologic fault running directly underneath a reactor in western Japan is likely to be active, officials of the authority suggested Wednesday.

The panel, which has been set up to study faults existing under Japan Atomic Power Co.'s Tsuruga plant in Fukui Prefecture, has maintained a view from December that the No. 2 reactor sits above an active fault, an assessment that could leave the company with no option but to scrap the unit.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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It doesn't matter where the nuclear site is located, the officials all behave badly.

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Yep, close to home. I spent a few years up in Portland. This site has been a "what not to do" for years.

GOOGLE EARTH = ugly......

46°31'13.80" N 119°31'25.08" W

What is amazing about that satellite picture is how barren the surrounding land looks. Washington is really green and full of trees, you wouldn't know by that picture.

i know.. look at all the crop circles around it..... hope our kids think the way we do.....

Japan to strike nuclear deals with Turkey, UAE

Japan is set to conclude agreements with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to transfer its nuclear power technology.

Japan is set to sign nuclear cooperation pacts with the 2 Middle East countries during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to the region between late April and early May.

The nuclear cooperation deals will be the first to be concluded since the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March, 2011.

A consortium of Japanese and French firms are expected to jointly receive an order to construct a nuclear power plant in Turkey.

Japan and the United Arab Emirates also reached a deal after coordinating terms on technological cooperation.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Radioactive materials from N.Korea's test detected

An international monitoring agency says radioactive materials from a North Korean nuclear test in February leaked into the atmosphere.

The Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization announced on Tuesday that an observatory for atmospheric radioactive materials in Gunma Prefecture, central Japan, detected radioactive xenon in the air on April 8th and 9th. The agency said the xenon likely came from North Korea's 3rd nuclear test on February 12.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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TEPCO gears up to restart reactors by self-developing equipment

Tokyo Electric Power Co. will equip its idled nuclear reactors with filtered venting systems developed on its own as part of its efforts to swiftly seek their restart, company sources said Thursday.

Japanese utilities are trying to install the system because it will become one of the new safety requirements for reactors from July as a measure to deal with severe accidents, but it is rare to self-develop the system. Other utilities have outsourced the equipment to companies such as heavy electric machinery makers.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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S. Korea, US extend nuclear pact

South Korea and the United States have agreed on a two-year extension to a civilian nuclear pact that Seoul wants amended to allow it to produce its own nuclear fuel, officials said Wednesday.

The current pact, signed in 1974, had been due to expire next year. The extension was agreed to allow more negotiations on the heated topic of allowing the South to reprocess spent fuel rods.
[link to www.nuclearpowerdaily.com]
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Japan, France set to win Turkish nuclear plant deal: report

A consortium of Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France's Areva are on track to win a deal to build a $20 billion nuclear power station in Turkey, a report said on Wednesday.
[link to www.nuclearpowerdaily.com]
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Good luck...

NRC expanding social outreach efforts with new live chat next week

In 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum to executive agencies which outlined guidance for the use of social media to increase outreach efforts.  In January 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission launched its first official blog.  Over the course of the last few years, the NRC has been working to expand their social media impact.

This week the agency announced that they will be working to expand its social media outreach by launching a new live chat discussion platform on April 30th, which is geared to increase the NRC’s presence on the internet.  The chat is similar to the existing NRC blog, but will feature moderated discussion with NRC experts responding to approved questions.  Questions can be submitted early by sending them to [email protected]. Please put CHAT in the subject line.
[link to enformable.com]
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