Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"The search for the source of the radioactive isotope tritium that seeped into groundwater at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant has led to the discovery of the isotope in a second monitoring well. An e-mail from Rob Williams, spokesman for Entergy Vermont Yankee, said the search team "received sampling results that showed an elevated level of 9,540 picocuries per liter in a second tritium monitoring well adjacent to the first well. A second confirmatory sample has been drawn from that well and is being analyzed." "

"After it was revealed that Tepco had falsified inspection reports at three of its nuclear power plants for years (see WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 573.5436, "Japan: whistleblowing turns into tornado"), other utilities began to investigate if they too had failed to mention defects in reports. Soon, two utilities, Chubu Electric and Tokohu Electric, reported that they too had left out details of faults in their inspection records. Chubu Chubu is Japan's third largest power company, and halted all its reactors after admitting it had failed to report signs of cracking in water pipes of reactors 1 and 3 at its Hamaoka plant to the authorities. The largest of these, in Hamaoka-3, was 60 millimeters long and 3 millimeters deep, in a pipe around 40 millimeters thick. The failure of Chubu to notify the authorities of the crack indications in water pipes is all the more worrying because of recent incidents involving pipes at Hamaoka. Last year, a water pipe at Hamaoka-1 exploded, releasing radioactive steam into the containment building (see WISE News Communique 558.5339, "Japan: a 'grave situation' at Hamaoka BWR"). This year, sixteen workers were irradiated after a water pipe leak at Hamaoka-2 (see WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor 569.5411, "Japan: More problems at Hamaoka")."

"Entergy Corporation today announced it has identified and stopped the source of tritium leakage at its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and has begun initial work to support the remediation of soil and groundwater at the plant site. The successful effort to identify the source of the leakage, fix the problem and prevent a recurrence capped an intense and rigorous effort by Entergy with the oversight of state and federal regulators that began in January when elevated levels of the radionuclide tritium were detected in monitoring wells built for that purpose. In a special briefing for key stakeholders, Entergy's Executive Vice President, Operations Mark Savoff expressed regret that the leak occurred. At the same time, Savoff announced that the company has embarked on a six-point, fleet-wide initiative to become an industry leader in tritium leak prevention, detection, and mitigation. The six-point initiative includes benchmarking industry best practices, prioritizing structures, systems and components, improved inspection techniques, and improved strategies for prevention, monitoring and mitigation of leakage."

"Vietnam and the United States agreed Friday to set up radiation monitoring equipment in the Asian nation's major container port, federal officials said. The National Nuclear Security Agency said the goal is to bar the smuggling of nuclear material through the port of Cai Mep in the province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau. "Our partnership with Vietnam will greatly strengthen our capability to prevent nuclear and radiological smuggling through the maritime system in a key, strategic region of the world," said Kenneth Baker, a top official with the agency. "We appreciate Vietnam's efforts and commitment to keeping these dangerous materials out of the hands of terrorists, smugglers and proliferators.""

"An anti-nuclear group will get another chance to prove calculations performed by Vermont Yankee engineers are not within safety margins to operate for another 20 years. The Petition Review Board for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reversed a 2009 decision by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board which was tasked with re-examining an earlier finding by the commission that the plant's plans to manage aging equipment were "acceptable." The ruling allows the New England Coalition to submit a revised contention that proves Entergy does not have accurate information about whether or not their equipment will fail. "This is next chapter in the nearly four-year battle," Clay Turnbull, New England Coalition staff member said. "Entergy still hasn't shown they can monitor and manage the effect of aging due to metal fatigue." The contention filed by the New England Coalition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2007, argued that Entergy, which owns and operates the nuclear power plant, does not include an adequate plan to monitor and manage the effects of aging equipment due to metal fatigue. "

Airborne uranium levels will be measured by an Army contractor at three monitoring stations at Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island over the next 12 months, Col. Howard Killian told the Public Works Committee of the Hawaii County Council yesterday. On the Net: » www.imcom.pac.army.mil/du The $150,000 testing is being done because the Army discovered in 2007 that uranium "spotting rounds" were used at Pohakuloa in the 1960s. Radiation monitoring from the Girl Scout camp near Pohakuloa to Konawaena High School nearly 30 miles to the southwest has not found any radiation above background level, Killian said.

Scientists have puzzled for years about why uranium contamination in groundwater continues to exceed drinking water standards in an area located at the south end of the Hanford Site. The Department of Energy wants answers to why the uranium persists. Now, an innovative system has been installed for field experiments to better understand this complex site and to support future cleanup decisions. The site is one of three Integrated Field Research Challenge, or IFRC, locations supported by DOE's Office of Science to investigate fundamental science issues important to contaminant transport and groundwater remediation. New insights may offer scientific advances in environmental cleanup beyond Hanford.

On Wednesday, July 23, 2008, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dennis R. Spurgeon will deliver keynote remarks at the 2nd Annual Nuclear Fuel Cycle Monitor Global Nuclear Renaissance Summit hosted by Exchange Monitor Publications and Forums. Assistant Secretary Spurgeon is expected to discuss the Department's role in spurring nuclear expansion domestically with a nuclear energy policy that is technologically robust, economically sound, and publically acceptable.

After 10 years of sifting through thousands of pages of classified records and overcoming secrecy obstacles at the nuclear weapons lab, independent investigators have provided the first rough estimates of radioactive and toxic releases from Los Alamos National Laboratory dating back to its earliest operations and the potential health impact of the nation's first atomic bomb blast on ranchers and other nearby residents in New Mexico. Investigators for the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA) project released a draft final report in late June that-while far from definitive in its conclusions-said there was persuasive evidence from spotty, decades-old emissions monitoring data that radioactive releases during Los Alamos' early years were so significant that they could dwarf the cumulative releases from all of the Energy Department's other early nuclear weapons production sites. In particular, the researchers said that although the lab did not monitor emissions from many of its earliest plutonium processing facilities, fragmentary records-especially "industrial hygiene," or worker safety, reports from 1955 and 1956-suggest plutonium releases in the late 1940s and early 1950s were much higher than has been acknowledged by the government to date.

A PROBE is under way after the discovery of radioactive contamination at the site earmarked for Dounreay's new low-level waste (LLW) dump. advertising Two hot spots were detected by a monitoring team in a field just over 200 metres from the perimeter fence to the east of the former experimental fast reactor complex. More finds could hit the schedule for the ?110 million dump which is designed to take all the LLW produced by the plant and the neighbouring MOD site at Vulcan. The hot spots also raise question marks about the possible spread inland of contamination from historic operations at Dounreay. The site's multi-million-pound drive to deal with off-site pollution is focused on the seabed immediately off the plant and stretches of the surrounding coastline. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) this week called on the site operators to review its monitoring regime in light of the latest finds. The contamination was picked up on Thursday of last week during a scheduled month-long survey of the 44-hectare site zoned for the LLW dump, which was given planning consent in April.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission manned Incident Response Centers in Atlanta and Rockville, Md., Wednesday night, dispatched its resident inspector and called in criticality safety experts to monitor an alert declared at B&W Nuclear Operations Group in Lynchburg, Va. An alert is the lowest level of NRC emergency classifications for fuel facilities such as B&W. The NRC staff continued to monitor the incident, which began at 7:45 p.m. Wednesday until its successful resolution at 12:35 a.m. Thursday. B&W staff activated the facility's Emergency Operations Center after identifying a potential criticality issue in the Uranium Recovery area. A criticality can occur when highly enriched uranium comes together in sufficient quantity or in a container of correct shape to initiate a chain reaction resulting in either a "burst" or a sustained release of radiation.

Israel recently asked the United States to assist in the establishment of a nuclear power plant in the southern Negev desert, Yedioth Aharonoth reported Friday. For the time being, no response was received from Washington. The government needs America's approval so it can build an internationally monitored civilian reactor while avoiding monitoring of Israel's other nuclear capabilities.

Federal investigators say the government's next generation radiation detectors are only marginally better at detecting hidden nuclear material than monitors already at U.S. ports, but would cost more than twice as much. The machines are intended to prevent terrorists or criminals from smuggling into the U.S. a nuclear bomb or its explosive components hidden in a cargo container. The monitors now in use can detect the presence of radiation, but they cannot distinguish between threatening and nonthreatening material. Radioactive material can be found naturally in ceramics and kitty litter, but would be of no use in making a bomb, for instance.

A tritium leak was found during routine monitoring of Exelon Corp.'s nuclear power plant, but contaminated water was contained to the property and did not pose a public health threat, company officials said Monday. Testing at the Dresden plant, near the town of Morris about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, found tritium levels of 3.2 million picocuries per liter of water in a monitoring well, storm drains and concrete vault. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's limit for drinking water is 20,000 picocuries per liter.

Although Cameco reports it did not exceed any Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) action levels in the last quarter of 2008, elevated fence line gamma was reported at station 20 at the Dorset Street East warehouse, Rebecca Peters, superintendent of compliance and licensing for the Port Hope conversion facility, told Port Hope council last week. "The levels were below the CNSC limit. Cameco investigated these results and determined that movement of drums within the building caused this increase," Peters said. "In the future, site radiation protection staff will be directly involved with the movement of materials at this site to prevent future reoccurrence of this type of increase. Additional monitoring has indicated that the levels have dropped. This monitoring will continue until Cameco is confident that gamma levels at station 20 have re-stabilized." There were four issues in that quarter as described by Peters.

THE federal government has frowned at illegal trans-shipment of nuclear materials in and out of the country, just as it unveiled plans to checkmate the menace by installing radiation monitoring facilities across national boarders. The Presidential Adviser on Petroleum Matters, Emmanuel Egbogah, who disclosed this at the official commissioning of the first Radiation Portal Monitor in Nigeria, at the export wing of Muritala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, over the weekend, said, although Nigeria has a nascent nuclear power programme, it has a matured, robust and rapidly growing peaceful nuclear non-power application. Egbogah however noted the federal government would no longer tolerate illegal and mishandle of radioactive materials in the country, as serious sanctions await defaulters.

"According to the TV program What Happened?, broadcast on NBC earlier this year (3/16/93), "the system worked" during the 1979 nu­clear accident at Three Mile Island (TMI). Although there were problems with "communication," the show re­ported, with the undamaged unit of TMI back in operation, most people in the area now live happily with the TMI facility. "Today in Harrisburg life goes on, the incident is now in the past and most peo­ple are comfortable that it could never be repeated," the narrator of the pro­gram, produced by Hearst Entertain­ment for NBC, declares. Then local resi­dent Debbie Baker says, "I'm not as afraid of it as I used to be." But that isn't all Baker said to the show's producers. "What they did was horrible," she told Extra!. "I can under­stand editing, but here the most crucial statements were edited out to make it look like everything was hunky dory." She said her full statement was that she is not as afraid since the Three Mile Island Citizens Monitoring Network, a group she works with, had set up an ex­tensive network of radiation monitors around the plant. Baker said that the crew from What Happened? was well aware that she remains extremely un­comfortable with TMI."

"The Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth could be leaking radioactive substances and should be required to perform more extensive testing to monitor the situation, Gov. Deval Patrick said. In a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Patrick also calls for a stay on further consideration of relicensing the plant or approving a proposed spin-off of the plant by its owner, Entergy Corp. Patrick is the most recent New England governor to ask the federal commission to take action against a local plant. Buried piping at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant - also owned by Entergy Corp. - has been leaking radioactive tritium that state health officials said Wednesday has reached the Connecticut River. Governors in Vermont and New Hampshire have called for an investigation by the NRC. But the difference between the Yankee and Pilgrim plants is that officials at the Vermont facility agree there's a leak. Their monitoring wells detected tritium levels that exceed federal standards for drinking water."

"THE Ministry of Defence has put a blanket ban on turbines being built within 31 miles of a nuclear test monitoring station, The Scotsman has learned. The decision by the MoD could scupper plans for major wind farms in the Borders, as well as making it impossible for individuals to put turbines up at their homes and farms. The Eskdalemuir seismological recording station, between Moffat and Hawick in the Borders, is used to monitor underground nuclear testing across the world. "

"Officials at a Vermont nuclear plant said Friday they are investigating the possibility that a leak in an underground pipe connected to a sump pit may be responsible for a radioactive substance turning up in groundwater monitoring wells, while new groundwater tests found levels more than 40 times higher than a federal safe drinking water limit. Vermont Yankee plant officials said they found levels of tritium in a sump pit at the plant that far exceeded those recently found in groundwater monitoring wells. The discovery suggested that an underground pipe connected to the pit might be the source of the leak, and officials said they planned to investigate that possibility over the weekend. They said the 2.7 million picocuries per liter found in the sump sample was near the maximum that could be reached at the plant; water that passes through the reactor has readings close to 3 million picocuries per liter."