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95% disagree with “Beyond Nuclear”. Let’s make it 99% by Rod Adams on October 14, 2011 in Antinuclear activist , Politics of Nuclear Energy , Unreliables , Wind energy Share0 One of the more powerful concepts that I studied in college was called “groupthink.” The curriculum developers in the history department at the US Naval Academy thought it was important for people in training to become leaders in the US Navy learn to seek counsel and advice from as broad a range of sources as possible. We were taught how to avoid the kind of bad decision making that can result by surrounding oneself with yes-men or fellow travelers. The case study I remember most was the ill fated Bay of Pigs invasion where virtually the entire Kennedy Administration cabinet thought that it would be a cakewalk . If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be. Aside: Don’t we live in an amazing world? I just typed “Bay of Pigs groupthink” into my browser search box and instantly hit on exactly the link I needed to support the statement above. It even cites the book we used when I was a plebe in 1977, more than 33 years ago. End Aside. Not everyone, however, has the benefit of early leadership lessons about the danger of believing that a small group of likeminded people can provide actionable advice. Some of the people who are most likely to be victims of groupthink are those who adamantly oppose the continued safe operation of emission-free nuclear power plants. The writers who exclusively quote members of that tiny community have also fallen into the groupthink trap.   On October 8, 2011, the Berkeley Patch, a New Jersey based journal that regularly posts negative stories about Oyster Creek, featured an article titled Petitioners to NRC: Shut Down All Fukushima-Like Nuclear Plants . Here is a snapshot of the masthead, the headline and the lede. The article is a diatribe that quotes people on the short list of frequently quoted antinuclear activists including Paul Gunter, Michael Mariotte, Kevin Kamps, Deb Katz and Dale Bridenbaugh. The author faithfully reproduces some of their best attempts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt using untruths about the actual events at Fukushima. For example, the article uses the following example of how antinuclear activists are still trying to spread the myth that the used fuel pools at Fukushima caught fire. Oyster Creek – the oldest nuclear plant in the United States – has generated over 700 tons of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuc

95% disagree with “Beyond Nuclear”. Let’s make it 99% by Rod Adams on October 14, 2011 in Antinuclear activist, Politics of Nuclear Energy, Unreliables, Wind energy Share0 One of the more powerful concepts that I studied in college was called “groupthink.” The curriculum developers in the history department at the US Naval Academy thought it was important for people in training to become leaders in the US Navy learn to seek counsel and advice from as broad a range of sources as possible. We were taught how to avoid the kind of bad decision making that can result by surrounding oneself with yes-men or fellow travelers. The case study I remember most was the ill fated Bay of Pigs invasion where virtually the entire Kennedy Administration cabinet thought that it would be a cakewalk. If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.Aside: Don’t we live in an amazing world? I just typed “Bay of Pigs groupthink” into my browser search box and instantly hit on exactly the link I needed to support the statement above. It even cites the book we used when I was a plebe in 1977, more than 33 years ago. End Aside. Not everyone, however, has the benefit of early leadership lessons about the danger of believing that a small group of likeminded people can provide actionable advice. Some of the people who are most likely to be victims of groupthink are those who adamantly oppose the continued safe operation of emission-free nuclear power plants. The writers who exclusively quote members of that tiny community have also fallen into the groupthink trap.  On October 8, 2011, the Berkeley Patch, a New Jersey based journal that regularly posts negative stories about Oyster Creek, featured an article titled Petitioners to NRC: Shut Down All Fukushima-Like Nuclear Plants . Here is a snapshot of the masthead, the headline and the lede. The article is a diatribe that quotes people on the short list of frequently quoted antinuclear activists including Paul Gunter, Michael Mariotte, Kevin Kamps, Deb Katz and Dale Bridenbaugh. The author faithfully reproduces some of their best attempts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt using untruths about the actual events at Fukushima. For example, the article uses the following example of how antinuclear activists are still trying to spread the myth that the used fuel pools at Fukushima caught fire. Oyster Creek – the oldest nuclear plant in the United States – has generated over 700 tons of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear said. “Granted that some of that has been moved into dry cast storage, but the pool remains full to its capacity,” Kamps said. “And this was a re-rack capacity. Much later in terms of quantity of high level radioactive waste than it was originally designed for.” This represents 125 million curies of radioactive cesium-137 and the NRC has reported that up to 100 percent of the hazardous material could be released from a pool fire, Kamps said. “I would like to point out that Fukushima Daiichi units one, two, three and four combined in terms of the inventory of high level radioactive waste in their storage pools does not match some of these reactors I mentioned in terms of how much waste is in these pools,” Kamps said. “So the risks are greater here for boil downs and the consequences of a radioactive fire in these pools.” Fortunately, the people who are not a part of the antinuclear community are finally beginning to recognize their own strength and to realize that they do not have to remain silent while the lies are being spread. Here is how a knowledgable commenter responded to the above segment of the article: If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.

On October 8, 2011, the Berkeley Patch, a New Jersey based journal that regularly posts negative stories about Oyster Creek, featured an article titled Petitioners to NRC: Shut Down All Fukushima-Like Nuclear Plants. Here is a snapshot of the masthead, the headline and the lede. The article is a diatribe that quotes people on the short list of frequently quoted antinuclear activists including Paul Gunter, Michael Mariotte, Kevin Kamps, Deb Katz and Dale Bridenbaugh. The author faithfully reproduces some of their best attempts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt using untruths about the actual events at Fukushima. For example, the article uses the following example of how antinuclear activists are still trying to spread the myth that the used fuel pools at Fukushima caught fire. Oyster Creek – the oldest nuclear plant in the United States – has generated over 700 tons of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear said. “Granted that some of that has been moved into dry cast storage, but the pool remains full to its capacity,” Kamps said. “And this was a re-rack capacity. Much later in terms of quantity of high level radioactive waste than it was originally designed for.” This represents 125 million curies of radioactive cesium-137 and the NRC has reported that up to 100 percent of the hazardous material could be released from a pool fire, Kamps said. “I would like to point out that Fukushima Daiichi units one, two, three and four combined in terms of the inventory of high level radioactive waste in their storage pools does not match some of these reactors I mentioned in terms of how much waste is in these pools,” Kamps said. “So the risks are greater here for boil downs and the consequences of a radioactive fire in these pools.”

After 44 years of operation, unit 1 of the UK's Oldbury nuclear power plant will be permanently shut down in February 2012, ten months earlier than expected, Magnox Ltd announced.

The company said that further operation of the 217 MWe Magnox reactor was "no longer economically viable." The decision to shut down the unit - the only operational reactor at the site - was taken "after careful consideration by operators Magnox and the site owners the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), in conjunction with independent regulators the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR)."   Built in the 1960s and among the first generation of UK reactors, both of the gas-cooled, graphite-moderated first generation reactors at Oldbury were originally scheduled to shut down at the end of 2008. However, the NDA requested permission from the regulator to operate beyond that date, earning revenue to help pay for decommissioning. While unit 2 was eventually shut down in June 2011, unit 1 was expected to close at the end of 2012. To date, the site has generated over 130 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity.  

Oldbury site director Phil Sprague said, "Oldbury's excellent generation history is a terrific success story, especially as the site was originally planned to close in 2008. As a result of excellent teamwork between Magnox, the NDA and ONR the site's operational life was extended until February 2012, and it is a testament to the skills and dedication of the workforce who have operated and maintained the reactors to such a high standard that it has been able to continue to generate safely."   Magnox Ltd noted that since their originally planned shut down date of 2008, the two units have generated an additional 7 TWh, worth an estimated £300 million ($478 million) to the British taxpayer. This extra generation, it added, also saved some six million tonnes of carbon from being released into the atmosphere.   NDA executive director for delivery Mark Lesinski commented: "The income from electricity sales has provided an important contribution to the funding for our decommissioning program. Magnox and NDA will now work with stakeholders to ensure a smooth transition into the next stage for the site which will involve defueling and subsequent decommissioning."

Collectively, Texas eats more energy than any other state, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. We’re fifth in the country when it comes to our per-capita energy intake — about 532 million British Thermal Units per year. A British Thermal Unit, or Btu, is like a little “bite” of energy. Imagine a wooden match burning and you’ve got a Btu on a stick. Of course, the consumption is with reason. Texas, home to a quarter of the U.S. domestic oil reserves, is also bulging with the second-highest population and a serious petrochemical industry. In recent years, we managed to turn ourselves into the country’s top producer of wind energy. Despite all the chest-thumping that goes on in these parts about those West Texas wind farms (hoist that foam finger!), we are still among the worst in how we use that energy. Though not technically “Southern,” Texans guzzle energy like true rednecks. Each of our homes use, on average, about 14,400 kilowatt hours per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It doesn’t all have to do with the A/C, either. Arizonans, generally agreed to be sharing the heat, typically use about 12,000 kWh a year; New Mexicans cruise in at an annual 7,200 kWh. Don’t even get me started on California’s mere 6,000 kWh/year figure.

Let’s break down that kilowatt-hour thing. A watt is the energy of one candle burning down. (You didn’t put those matches away, did you?) A kilowatt is a thousand burnin’ candles. And a kilowatt hour? I think you can take it from there. We’re wide about the middle in Bexar, too. The average CPS customer used 1,538 kilowatt hours this June when the state average was 1,149 kWh, according to ERCOT. Compare that with Austin residents’ 1,175 kWh and San Marcos residents’ 1,130 kWh, and you start to see something is wrong. So, we’re wasteful. So what? For one, we can’t afford to be. Maybe back when James Dean was lusting under a fountain of crude we had if not reason, an excuse. But in the 1990s Texas became a net importer of energy for the first time. It’s become a habit, putting us behind the curve when it comes to preparing for that tightening energy crush. We all know what happens when growing demand meets an increasingly scarce resource … costs go up. As the pressure drop hits San Anto, there are exactly two ways forward. One is to build another massively expensive power plant. The other is to transform the whole frickin’ city into a de-facto power plant, where energy is used as efficiently as possible and blackouts simply don’t occur.

Consider, South Texas Project Plants 1&2, which send us almost 40 percent of our power, were supposed to cost $974 million. The final cost on that pair ended up at $5.5 billion. If the planned STP expansion follows the same inflationary trajectory, the price tag would wind up over $30 billion. Applications for the Matagorda County plants were first filed with the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974. Building began two years later. However, in 1983 there was still no plant, and Austin, a minority partner in the project, sued Houston Power & Lighting for mismanagement in an attempt to get out of the deal. (Though they tried to sell their share several years ago, the city of Austin remains a 16-percent partner, though they have chosen not to commit to current expansion plans).

UPDATE: Nine Mile Point 2 nuclear facility shut down twice in 1 week due to a "higher than normal leak".  On August 8th the plant was shut down, then again on August 11th.  Nine Mile Point 2 is situated on Lake Ontario and was leaking into it.  Could that be the source of the extremely high radiation found in Toronto area rainwater? 9wsyr.com (WSYR-TV) -- The Nine Mile Nuclear Plant's unit two is back up and running. The plant needed to be shut down twice this week because of leaks, but Friday night all the repairs were complete.

Inspections have assured that there are no other issues and the unit is back up to about 24 percent power.   It will take a little more time to get the unit back up to 100 percent.   Representatives say the leaks were never a risk to the public, or to plant employees.

Nine Mile Point 2 shut down for second time in a weekAugust 11, 2011

Germany will be redirecting its economy towards renewable energy, because of the political decision to decommission its nuclear plants, triggered by the Fukushima event in Japan and subsequent public opposition to nuclear energy. Germany's decision would make achieving its 2020 CO2 emission reduction targets more difficult.   To achieve the CO2 emissions reduction targets and replace nuclear energy, renewable energy would need to scale up from 17% in 2010 to 57% of total electricity generation of 603 TWh in 2020, according to a study by The Breakthrough Institute. As electricity generation was 603 TWh in 2010, increased energy efficiency measures will be required to flat-line electricity production during the next 9 years.   Germany has 23 nuclear reactors (21.4 GW), 8 are permanently shut down (8.2 GW) and 15 (13.2 GW) will be shut down by 2022. Germany will be adding a net of 5 GW of coal plants, 5 GW of new CCGT plants and 1.4 GW of new biomass plants in future years. The CCGT plants will reduce the shortage of quick-ramping generation capacity for accommodating variable wind and solar energy to the grid.

Germany is planning a $14 billion build-out of transmission systems for onshore and future offshore wind energy in northern Germany and for augmented transmission with France for CO2-free hydro and nuclear energy imports to avoid any shortages.    Germany had fallen behind on transmission system construction in the north because of public opposition and is using the nuclear plant shutdown as leverage to reduce public opposition. Not only do people have to look at a multitude of 450-ft tall wind turbines, but also at thousands of 80 to 135 ft high steel structures and wires of the transmission facilities.   The $14 billion is just a minor down payment on the major grid reorganization required due to the decommissioning of the nuclear plants and the widely-dispersed build-outs of renewables. The exisitng grid is mostly large-central-plant based. 

This article includes the estimated capital costs of shutting down Germany's nuclear plants, reorganizing the grids of Germany and its neighbors, and building out renewables to replace the nuclear energy.    Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG) in 2000, guarantees investors above-market fees for solar power for 20 years from the point of installation. In 2010, German investments in  renewables was about $41.2 billion, of which about $36.1 billion in 7,400 MW of solar systems ($4,878/kW). In 2010, German incentives for all renewables was about $17.9 billion, of which about half was for solar systems.   The average subsidy in 2010 was about ($9 billion x 1 euro/1.4 $)/12 TWh = 53.6 eurocents/kWh; no wonder solar energy is so popular in Germany. These subsidies are rolled into electric rates as fees or taxes, and will ultimately make Germany less competitive in world markets.   http://thebreakthrough.org/blog//2011/06/analysis_germanys_plan_to_phas-print.html http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-31/merkel-faces-achilles-heel-in-grids-to-unplug-german-nuclear.html http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/829664/revealed_how_your_country_compares_on_renewable_investment.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany  

Tokyo Shinbun is a regional newspaper covering Kanto region of Japan. It has been reporting on the Fukushima accident and resultant radiation contamination in a more honest and comprehensive manner than any national newspaper. (Their only shortcoming is that their links don't seem to last for more than a week.)Their best coverage on the subject, though, is not available digitally but only in the printed version of the newspaper. But no worry, as there is always someone who transcribes the article and post it on the net for anyone to see.

In the 2nd half of the January 27 article, Tokyo Shinbun details what kind of workers are currently working at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant: migrant workers young (in their 20's) and not so young (in their 60's), untrained, $100 a day. Some of them cannot even read and write.

However, the workers voice concerns over the safety management. One of the subcontract workers told the newspaper:

Officials at the San Onofre nuclear power plant shut down one of the facility's two units Tuesday evening after a sensor detected a possible leak in a steam generator tube.The potential leak was detected about 4:30 p.m., and the unit was completely shut down about an hour later, Southern California Edison said. "The potential leak poses no imminent danger to the plant workers or the public," utility spokeswoman Jennifer Manfre told The Times. She said there were no evacuations and that crews were assessing the situation to determine if a leak had occurred.

Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake. "Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure. The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have.  Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building .... WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR

[This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters, to be released this Monday.  Click here to get the videos and the book.] Two senior nuclear plant engineers were spilling out their souls and files on our huge conference table, blowing away my government investigations team with the inside stuff about the construction of the Shoreham, New York, power station. The meeting was secret. Very secret. Their courage could destroy their careers: No engineering firm wants to hire a snitch, even one who has saved thousands of lives. They could lose their jobs; they could lose everything. They did. That’s what happens. Have a nice day.

Lucas W Hixson may have uncovered a major abuse of the public trust by the NRC. In late March 2011 the NRC issued a directive that allowed the nuclear industry lobbyist group NEI to supply radiation monitoring data to the NRC who would then forward it to the EPA. March 24th the NRC discussed handing over radiation monitoring to nuclear industry lobbyists, April 14th RadNet was shut down and went back to routine monitoring schedules. This meant no ongoing food,water and air filter testing. Only the radiation level monitors were left operating. The EPA claimed that levels were going down as the reason for shutting down the expanded monitoring, but places like Idaho did not have the decreases seen at other sites.

The NRC directive put commercial nuclear power plant owners in charge of voluntarily providing the public with radiation monitoring data but it would be run through their nuclear industry lobbyists before it would then be provided to the NRC. Raw data was not provided directly to the NRC. Considering the massive US nuclear industry offensive to flood the media with propaganda downplaying the Fukushima nuclear disaster, they are hardly a reliable source to tell the public what the radiation levels are.

RadNet itself had many problems, stations didn’t work, some were not calibrated before the disaster. Even more disturbing is that the EPA does not even handle their own radiation monitoring network. The important function falls to a former Bush administration appointee running a business out of a rundown storefront in New Mexico. Under a $238,000 no bid contract Environmental Dimensions supposedly manages, maintains and operates RadNet, the only tool the public has to see if we are being subjected to nuclear fallout. The blogger that broke this story states that Environmental Dimensions has tripled their revenue in recent years. The company cites a different address as their mailing address. This shows up as a tiny house in Albuquerque. EDI was also part of a 12 million dollar contract in 2010 along with a couple of other contractors. The contract provides environmental & remediation services to the US Corps of Engineers. EDI claims to have been in business since 1990 but owner, Ms. Bradshaw worked for the DoD in 2006.

Near the end of 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a summary of a report titled The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle as part of its MIT Energy Initiative. The complete report was released a few months ago. The conclusions published that report initiated a virtual firestorm of reaction among the members of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) Study group who strongly disagreed with the authors.

the following quote from the “Study Context” provides a good summary of why the fast reactor advocates were so dismayed by the report.

For decades, the discussion about future nuclear fuel cycles has been dominated by the expectation that a closed fuel cycle based on plutonium startup of fast reactors would eventually be deployed. However, this expectation is rooted in an out-of-date understanding about uranium scarcity. Our reexamination of fuel cycles suggests that there are many more viable fuel cycle options and that the optimum choice among them faces great uncertainty—some economic, such as the cost of advanced reactors, some technical such as implications for waste management, and some societal, such as the scale of nuclear power deployment and the management of nuclear proliferation risks. Greater clarity should emerge over the next few decades, assuming that the needed research is carried out for technological alternatives and that the global response to climate change risk mitigation comes together. A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by continuing with the open fuel cycle, implementing a system for managed LWR spent fuel storage, developing a geological repository, and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.

The switch — one that's tripped when Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station needs to safely shut down its reactor — was making an unusual buzzing sound.Plant engineers looked into it, made some repairs and overall didn't think it was a big deal.Turns out they didn't understand the problem as well as they thought they did. During a later test, the switch malfunctioned.

The kind of thinking that led to the switch failure at the nuclear power plant 19 miles north of Omaha has now landed the plant in some hot water with federal regulators. More than a mechanical failing, it suggests a culture that's out of step with the assume-nothing, take-no-chances, stay-on-top-of-things approach that's demanded when working with a technology where multiple errors and failures can cascade into very, very bad results. The switch issue came on the heels of another regulatory write-up Fort Calhoun had received for having inadequate plans for dealing with extremely massive flooding — flooding even greater than the historic high water levels seen at the plant this summer.

Fort Calhoun is one of only two out of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors currently on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's list of most-troubled plants, and one of only eight to land on it over the past decade.It's all caused a great deal of introspection within the plant's owner, the Omaha Public Power District. While the utility's top leaders say the plant remains a safe one, in hindsight they say the staff's safety focus had slipped."We had a slow, subtle decline,'' Gary Gates, OPPD's president and CEO, said in an interview during a plant visit last week. "This plant is used to running at a high level of performance. We're embarrassed to be in this situation. This is not how Fort Calhoun runs.

A nuclear reactor in Maryland has been shut down because of wind damage, while others were either taken offline or operating at reduced capacity as precautionary measures before the arrival of hurricane Irene on Sunday.A reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Lusby, Maryland, remained off-line on Sunday, after going into automatic shutdown when a piece of aluminum siding ripped from a nearby building damaged a transformer.Constellation Energy, which operates the Lusby plant, said the facility was safe and that a second reactor was operating at full capacity. No power outages were expected because of the shutdown.

Maryland state emergency agency said the plant would reopen after inspection. "Number one will stay offline until they have folks that will crawl over every inch of it," its spokesman, Quentin Banks said.It was the second complete shutdown caused by Irene, after authorities took a plant offline in New Jersey as a precaution before the storm.Exelon Corporation decided on Saturday afternoon to take its Oyster Creek generator offline as Irene blew in. "It's really as a precaution, a conservative action, because we do expect hurricane force winds," Marshall Murphy, an Exelon spokesman, told reporters.

Fourteen nuclear plants from North Carolina to New Hampshire were in Irene's path

UPDATE at 4:45 pm EST: USGS: Two magnitude 5.0+ quakes hit eastern Japan -- One in Ibaraki, one near Sendai UPDATE at 7:47pm EST: 4.9 quake hits Fukushima at 6:28p EST

Shallow M4.2 earthquake right under Fukushima plants, Fukushima Diary, Jan. 5, 2012: 21:41 1/5/2012 (JST) Magnitude 4.2 Epicenter is Fukushima Nakadori, where Fukushima plants are located It’s shallower than 10km No information about the plant is announced JNN Fukushima live camera got down immediately after

The probability of an accident due to a nuclear plant is one is to infinity and all atomic power plants in the country conform to safety standards, chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Srikumar Banerjee said on Thursday. “At least 1.75 lakh people die due to road accidents in a single year whereas there are nearly 14,000 nuclear plants in the world and the casualty rate till date is just 52,” Dr. Banerjee told reporters on the sidelines of the golden jubilee celebrations of Terminal Ballistic Research Laboratory (TBRL) at Ramgarh, near Chandigarh. Pointing out that no human activity can be risk-free, he said there was a definite need for creating awareness and programmes should to be intensified to convince the people in the neighbourhood of a proposed or existing nuclear plant. He said human body faces more radiation during a CT scan than working in a nuclear power plant.

Referring to the recent Fukushima nuclear accident, Dr. Banerjee said it happened after a gap of 25 years and the cause and effect of the accident was earthquake followed by a tsunami. “It was not a nuclear accident... immediately after the earthquake, the nuclear reactor shut down and nuclear chain reaction stopped,” he said adding it was a complete station blackout as the decay heat produced in the plant could not be taken out. He, however, said the total casualty due to the nuclear accident was zero. “The spread of radiation was not as high as it was projected,” he said talking about the nuclear accident in Japan. After a nuclear reactor is shut down the energy level comes down to around 2 per cent from 100 per cent due to heat decay, Dr. Banerjee said. He, however, exuded confidence all nuclear plants in the country are safe and conform to the standards of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and are taken care of by Nuclear Power Corporation. “India too experienced earthquakes and tsunami in the past but there was no nuclear accident as the nuclear plants had all the gadgets to give signal much in advance,” he said. Dr. Banerjee rejected that alarm bells had rung in India after the Japanese nuclear accident. “All steps needed for safety and security for nuclear plants have been taken by Nuclear Power Corporation,” he added.

He, however, stressed that it was necessary to strengthen the mechanism in the passive cooling system in nuclear plants in India. In the passive cooling system, heat can be taken out from the plant. Responding to a query regarding protests by habitants before setting up a nuclear plant in their neighbourhood, he said what is needed is to explain things to local people in simple local language and also convince them what actually the plant is. After land acquisition, a package must be given to the affected people and at all costs excellent relationship is needed with people living around the plant. He termed it as “baseless,” the allegation that nuclear radiation comes out from the nuclear plant. Besides, the plants along the coastal areas do not have any effect on the lives of fish, he added.

For the first time, record-breaking water temperatures in Long Island Sound have forced the shutdown of the Unit 2 nuclear reactor at the Millstone Power Station.

It appears to be the only nuclear power plant in the nation forced to shut down this summer due to high water temperatures, said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is the first time Unit 2 has been shut due to high water temperature since it began operations in 1975, according to Ken Holt, spokesman for Millstone owner Dominion.

TEPCO has just released "diaries" from early in the accident giving us a better view of the sequence of events from the operators point of view.

The bulk of the materials, distributed on discs with digital files, show reams of raw numerical data. They include photos of broadsheet computer printouts and other formatted charts with thousands of data points for measurements of reactor heat, pressure, water levels, fuel rod positions and the status of cooling pumps, among other functions. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, also released a smaller batch of more recent documents highlighting its various efforts to restore electric power to each of the reactors, a task that was achieved on April 26. But a series of what Tepco terms reactor "diaries" from the first 48 hours after the quake include the most visually arresting materials. These feature snapshots of whiteboards on which plant employees—11 of whom remained in each of the plant's three control rooms—jotted down status updates on the progress of the reactor shutdowns and steadily increasing radiation levels around the facility.

Using red, black or blue ink markers, the plant operators appear to have scribbled down the notes quickly. Many are smudged or illegible. Others depict complex diagrams and are peppered with technical jargon or acronyms such as SBO for "station blackout." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281504576329011846064194.html

Scriba, NY – The Nine Mile Point 2 nuclear station was shut down this morning after higher than normal leakage was detected in its drywell, the plant’s operator said. Constellation Energy Nuclear Group officials declared an “unusual event,” the lowest-level emergency, at 3:22 a.m. and began a controlled shutdown, Constellation officials said in a prepared statement. The leakage rate decreased as the reactor power declined, allowing plant officials to call off the unusual event at 11:27 a.m. Employees this afternoon continued to seek the cause of the leak. The plant will remain shut down so repairs can be made, Constellation officials said. The incident posed no risk to the public or plant employees, officials said.