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

1,400 sue makers of Fukushima nuke reactors

Hundreds of people filed a group action lawsuit Jan. 30 against the manufacturers of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to apportion blame for the accident that occurred there in March 2011.

In their quest for compensation at the Tokyo District Court, the 1,400 plaintiffs argued that the companies bear responsibility for the emotional distress they suffered after the reactor meltdowns.

The plaintiffs include evacuees from the Fukushima disaster caused by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. They are suing General Electric Japan, Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp., which produced the reactors used at the facility, even though the nuclear damage compensation facilitation law stipulates that only facility operators have an obligation to pay reparations in the event of an accident.
[link to ajw.asahi.com]
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Fission Uranium drills 'one of the very best holes' in Athabasca basin

Fission Uranium Corp (CVE:FCU) jumped as much as 6% on Monday on massive volumes after announcing a fresh set of off-scale mineralization from the first five holes of its $12 million winter drilling program at its PLS property in Saskatchewan abutting the Athabasca Basin.

By early afternoon the Vancouver-based explorer retreated from its highs reached in morning trade to change hands at $1.23, up 3.4% on the Toronto venture board.
[link to www.mining.com]
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Westinghouse To Build Three AP1000 Nuclear Reactors In UK With Nugen

Westinghouse Electric Company has announced that Toshiba Corporation has agreed in principle to buy a 60 percent share in the NuGeneration Limited (NuGen) Moorside project in West Cumbria, U.K., and they intend to move forward with the AP1000 new-build project in partnership with GDF SUEZ.

The agreement provides that three Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of 3.4 GW will be built on the U.K. site. The first unit is expected to be online in 2024, helping to support the U.K. government's low carbon and energy security objectives at a time when existing power plants are retiring and low-carbon generation is required to meet national and international commitments.
[link to www.nuclearpowerdaily.com]
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Seoul gives green light to two nuclear reactors

The South Korean government has granted final approval to build two new nuclear reactors at the Shin Kori Nuclear Power Plant in Ulsan, about 255 miles southeast of Seoul.

Construction on the $7.09 billion project is scheduled for September, with completion slated for December 2020, Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday. Each reactor will have a generation capacity of 1.4 million kilowatts.
[link to www.nuclearpowerdaily.com]
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Completion status of transfer from Unit 4 to Common Pool

220 of 1533 assemblies transferred...
[link to www.tepco.co.jp]
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Cameco to leave Bruce Power

The largest shareholder in Bruce Power, uranium mining firm Cameco, has announced it has agreed to sell its 31.6% stake to consortium member Borealis, the investment arm of OMERS, a Canadian pension fund.

The CAN $450 million ($404 million) sale would increase Borealis's stake in Bruce Power from 24.5% to as much as 56.1%. The final figure depends on the decision of other consortium partners, TransCanada Pipelines, a power infrastructure company, the Power Workers' Union and the Society of Energy Professionals, on whether or not to exercise options to purchase part of Cameco's stake for themselves.

"We believe the best option for our shareholders is to sell our interest in Bruce Power and continue to reinvest in our core uranium business where we see strong potential for growth," said Tim Gitzel, Cameco's president and CEO.
[link to www.neimagazine.com]
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REFILE-UPDATE 5-British nuclear plant says radiation alert due to natural radon gas

Sellafield tells non-essential staff to stay at home

* Britain says no danger to the public or workers

* State nuclear body says source of radiation unclear

By Kate Holton and Costas Pitas

LONDON, Jan 31 - Britain's Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing plant ordered all non-essential staff to stay at home on Friday while it investigated an elevated radiation reading onsite, which it later concluded was caused by naturally occurring radon gas.

No link provided... Reuxxxs... Google is your friend...
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NHK falls prey to Streisand Effect

The Streisand Effect describes a situation where an attempt to suppress, censor, or remove information brings more attention to it. It is named after Barbra Streisand, who unsuccessfully sued a photographer and a website in order to remove an aerial photograph of Streisand’s mansion from a collection of publicly available California coastline photographs. Prior to the filing of the lawsuit, the photograph of Streisand’s house had only been viewed 4 times, as a result of the lawsuit, nearly half a million viewers looked at the photograph in the next month alone.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK has also apparently fallen into the Streisand Effect this week, and the story is going viral internationally.

If NHK does not want to lose credibility with its viewers both at home and abroad internationally, it should remember that the main job of the press is to educate the public, not to play a part of information management in order to produce a desired outcome at the expense of truth.
[link to enformable.com]
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What a joke... should be $100 billion... but that would kill the nuclear business...

Canada set to raise liability for nuclear operators from $75 million to $1 billion

Officials in Canada are preparing to introduce new legislation what would increase the liability for civilian damages for nuclear operators from $75 million to $1 billion.
[link to enformable.com]
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MILLSTONE 3: SECONDARY CONTAINMENT BOUNDARY WAS TEMPORARILY BLOCKED OPEN

Title: Door Opened Under Administrative Control Could Have Prevented Fulfillment of Safety Functions to Control the Release of Radioactive Material and Mitigate the Consequences of an Accident

On January 29, 2014, it was determined a door credited as a Secondary Containment Boundary was temporarily blocked opened multiple times since January 25, 2014 under administrative control. Technical Specification 3.6.6.2 'Secondary Containment' is applicable and requires the system to be restored to operable status within 24 hours. In each instance where the door was blocked open, the requirements of Technical Specification 3.6.6.2 were entered and complied with.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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How the Fukushima Ice Barrier Will Block Radioactive Groundwater
[link to www.technologyreview.com]

Can an Ice Wall Stop Radioactive Water Leaks from Fukushima?
[link to news.nationalgeographic.com]

Fukushima's $470 Million Ice Wall Could Actually Work
[link to motherboard.vice.com]

I don't think an ice wall wiil work in Fukushima...
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How to Build an Ice Wall Around a Leaking Nuclear Reactor

The Fukushima plant is not even the largest ice wall ever attempted. Sopko, Andersland's last PhD student at Michigan State, told me that in the 1990s, he'd designed and installed a 3.5 kilometer perimeter wall that required 1,950 pipes, 159,000 meters of drilling, and eight 1,500 horsepower compressors for the Aquarius gold mine in Ontario, Canada. Unfortunately, while the pipes were being installed, the price of gold plummeted and the system was never switched on.
[link to www.theatlantic.com]

BTW, the freezing technique is old...

In 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission disposed of over 6,800 kilograms of radioactively contaminated material at the Project Chariot site in northwestern Alaska. The burial mound situated in naturally occurring frozen soil, permafrost, at the site was deemed to be the perfect containment medium (Vandegraft 1993). Indeed, upon remediation in 1995, it was found that virtually no transport of radionuclides into the permafrost had occurred (Dasher 1993). Thermosyphons were first commercially used in 1960 to maintain permafrost and have been used since 1990 to either create or maintain permafrost barriers.
[link to www.containment.fsu.edu]

Maybe a new "Project Iceworm"... lol... Google it...
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Beats project Baby Diaper. I still do not understand why the best minds in the world have not come together to find a solution to the Worlds Largest Steaming Turd.

There's no solution using current technology... 3 genie's (coriums) out of the bottle and no one knows where they are...
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Fukushima I NPP: Painstakingly Slow Cleanup, One Vehicle at a Time

After almost three years since the start of the nuclear accident on March 11, 2011, cleanup efforts continue extremely slowly (and probably manually by human workers). Here are some before-and-after photos taken by TEPCO, but most of them are close-ups. You do not get much sense of how the plant has been de-cluttered overall (if at all).
[link to ex-skf.blogspot.jp]
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MILLSTONE: TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION REQUIRED SHUTDOWN DUE TO DEGRADATION OF THE PRESSURIZER PROPORTIONAL HEATERS GROUP 1

Operators commenced a Technical Specification required shutdown due a 480 volt supply breaker trip resulting in degradation of the Pressurizer Proportional Heaters Group 1. The licensee plans on making a containment entry to investigate the cause of the breaker trip.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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SimplyInfo.Org Zeolite Plan To Be Tested At Fukushima Daiichi

January 31st, 2014 | Add a Comment

NHK is reporting that the government task force and TEPCO will implement one of our submitted ideas at the plant. The underground zeolite wall strategy we submitted to IRID will be given a trial near the waste water tanks on the hill that have been leaking high amounts of strontium 90.
[link to www.fukuleaks.org]

SimplyInfo.org Submits 3 Proposals On Fukushima Fuel Removal

January 30th, 2014 | Add a Comment
Our research team has submitted three novel proposals to IRID related to the fuel location and removal challenges at Fukushima Daiichi.

We previously submitted a series of proposals during the call for solutions to the contaminated water issues at the disaster site.

[link to www.fukuleaks.org]


These folks have been on Fukushima from the start.

NRA sets up new rules on evacuation

Japanese nuclear regulators have introduced new rules for monitoring radiation in the event of a nuclear accident to decide whether to evacuate people.

After the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011, officials at the Nuclear Regulation Authority decided to introduce a new plan of disaster management around plants. They said they would collect monitored data on radiation levels within 30 kilometers before deciding whether to issue an evacuation order. They also said they would evacuate all residents up to 5 kilometers unconditionally.
[link to www3.nhk.or.jp]
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Sludge designated radioactive waste for 1st time in Kanagawa

The Environment Ministry has classified 2.9 tons of sludge from Kanagawa Prefecture as radioactive waste derived from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the first such designation for the prefecture on the southern border of Tokyo.

The designation, made in December, means the ministry is responsible for disposing of the radioactive sludge.

The ministry on Jan. 31 stopped short of disclosing the origins of the waste, but Yokohama city government officials said the designation covers sludge from rain collection and storage facilities at 17 municipal elementary, junior high and other schools.
[link to ajw.asahi.com]
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US steam generator replacement a winner

As the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant prepares to begin work to replace its steam generators, the plant's operator is highlighting the benefits to the local economy from the operation.

Davis-Besse operator FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (Fenoc) claims the imminent project to replace the plant's two steam generators will boost the local economy by over $108 million. The 908 MWe unit's current operating licence expires in 2017, but Fenoc has applied for a licence extension to 2037. The $600 million steam generator replacement project will help to ensure that the reactor can continue operations well into the future.
[link to www.world-nuclear-news.org]
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Tokyo governor race kicks off with focus on nuclear power

The race to become the next governor of Tokyo kicked off Thursday in an election widely seen as a referendum on Japan's energy policy, almost three years after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

Observers say the election on February 9 will be a two-horse race between the anti-nuclear former prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa and Yoichi Masuzoe, an academic and former health minister, who served as a member of a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government.

"We have to stop (the policy of) restarting nuclear plants as soon as possible and adapt to a new era," Hosokawa said on the campaign trail Thursday.
[link to www.nuclearpowerdaily.com]
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Salem Unit 2 nuclear reactor shut down after control rod issue

Salem Unit 2 was manually taken offline by control room operators at 10:01 a.m. Friday, according to Joe Delmar, spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, after an issue with one of the control rods.

During the monthly testing, one of the control rods dropped out of its expected position, he said. At this time, the expected cause of the control rod mispositioning is believed to be a blown fuse with a more detailed investigation under way.

In a pressurized water reactor like Salem, the control rods are inserted into the top of the fuel assemblies. There are 193 nuclear fuel assemblies inside the Salem reactor core and 53 control rods.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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DoD Nuclear Weapon System Safety Program Manual
[link to cryptome.org]
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Cheating Accusations Among Officers Overseeing Nuclear Arms

WASHINGTON — The Air Force said on Wednesday that 34 officers responsible for launching the nation’s nuclear missiles had been suspended, and their security clearances revoked, for cheating on monthly proficiency tests that assess their knowledge of how to operate the warheads.
[link to www.nytimes.com]
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Who are they trying to fool?...

Gov't seeks approval for dumping Fukushima plant groundwater into sea

The government on Monday sought approval of a nationwide fisheries federation to dump groundwater at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex into the sea on condition that the water's contamination level is far below the legal limit.

During talks with the head of the National Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations, industry ministry officials explained that they plan to set "strict" operational procedures for the pump system to allay the concerns of fishermen who think the move could deal a blow to their business.

Groundwater will be pumped out before it gets mixed with highly radioactive water accumulating at the basement of reactor buildings, and will be directed to the adjacent Pacific Ocean.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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50 Reasons We Should Fear the Worst from Fukushima
[link to ecowatch.com]
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Fuel loading begins at fast reactor

The first fuel is being loaded into Russia's newest fast breeder reactor, Beloyarsk 4, in preparation for startup of the unit within months.

Fuel loading began on 2 February and will continue over the next three months. It is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2013, when the reactor was filled with its sodium coolant and received the necessary permits from Russian nuclear regulator Rostechnadzor to begin the fuel loading and pre-startup tests. The reactor is expected to reach first criticality in April.

Beloyarsk is one of Russia's oldest nuclear power plant sites. Two prototypes of the RBMK light water graphite-moderated reactors operated at the site from the 1960s until the end of the 1980s, and are now being decommissioned. Beloyarsk 3, a 560 MWe BN-600 fast reactor, has been in commercial operation since 1981.
[link to www.world-nuclear-news.org]
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Westinghouse backs out of Small Modular Reactor market

Danny Roderick, President and CEO of Westinghouse announced that the nuclear firm is backing off of research and development of their Small Modular Reactor design. The Westinghouse design is a scaled down version of the AP1000 reactor, designed to produce 225 MWe, which could power 45,000 residential houses.

Roderick clarified the issue and noted that it was not the deployment of the technology that posed the biggest problem – it was that there were no customers. “The worst thing to do is get ahead of the market,” he added.
[link to enformable.com]
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SALEM EVENT REPORT: MANUAL REACTOR TRIP (REACTIVITY CONTROL)

This 4-hour notification is being made to report that Salem Unit 2 has performed an unplanned manual reactor trip. The trip was initiated due to reactor coolant temperature approaching the minimum temperature for criticality, 543 degree F, due to boration to achieve shutdown margin requirements following identification of a misaligned control rod.

"All control rods inserted on the reactor trip. All ECCS [Emergency Core Cooling System] and ESF [Engineered Safety Features] systems functioned as expected with no equipment actuated. The 21 safety injection pump was out of service for scheduled maintenance during the event as was the 2R41 plant vent radiation monitor.

"Salem Unit 2 is currently in Mode 3. Reactor coolant system pressure is at 2235 psig and temperature is 547 degrees F with decay heat removal via the main steam dump and auxiliary feedwater systems. Unit 2 has no active shutdown technical specification action statements in effect.
[link to www.nucpros.com]
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