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Readiness Preparedness is an essential prerequisite for effective nuclear emergency management. International exercises are held systematically to determine whether the national systems in place are prepared and can respond swiftly and effectively. The USIE system is designed to support such exercises. "For the first time, this simple-to-use and effective system streamlines mechanisms for reporting and sharing information about incidents and emergencies in a secure information exchange channel," said Elena Buglova, the Head of the IAEA's Incident and Emergency Centre. This innovation strengthens international coordination, she noted, "which will improve the speed and effectiveness of the global response to nuclear and radiological emergencies of all types."

Background

Until the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, there was no information exchange system. Immediately following that accident, the IAEA's Member States negotiated the so-called Emergency Conventions to ensure that in the event of a nuclear accident, the country that suffers an accident would issue timely, authenticated information, while the Member States that could field technical support, would do so in a coordinated fashion, if such support is requested by the State concerned. When concerns regarding the malicious use of nuclear or radioactive materials grew, the IAEA established the IEC in 2005 to serve as a global focal point for emergency preparedness and response to nuclear and radiological incidents and emergencies. The IEC develops standards, guidelines and tools like USIE. The IEC staff provide support, training, global event reporting, information exchange and around-the-clock assistance to Member States dealing with nuclear and radiological events. Fundamentally, the IEC is a global coordinator for international expertise from the IAEA, as well as from other international organizations, such as the FAO, WHO, or WMO.

Before USIE's launch in June 2011, two secure websites were operated to provide emergency and support information: The Emergency Notification and Assistance Convention Website, or ENAC, was set up to exchange information on nuclear accidents or radiological emergencies. The Nuclear Event Web-based System, or NEWS, is a joint project of the IAEA, OECD/NEA and World Association of Nuclear Operators that provides authoritative information on nuclear and radiological events, using the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale, or INES. See Story Resources for more information.

On the technical end, it appears that the underlying cause of the three core meltdowns, the hydrogen explosions, and the subsequent release of radioactive material was the loss of coolant to the nuclear cores, which was ultimately due to the loss of electrical power to the reactors. Without power to circulate the water that cooled the fuel rods, nothing could have prevented the core meltdowns. In light of this failure, questions center on reactor design and handling of nuclear fuel. Can reactors be designed without a reliance on electrical power to maintain the proper core temperature? In the event of system failure, are there better alternatives to human intervention? Stronger safety designs have been proposed in the past -- ones that are more straightforward and less Rube Goldberg-like than the complicated systems currently used. Why haven't they been developed? Meanwhile, the handling of nuclear fuel continues to defy logic: Why is spent fuel still stored at power plants -- raising the odds of damage and the subsequent release of radioactive materials in accidents? What exactly are the obstacles to placing spent fuel in long-term storage repositories?

A second set of questions focuses on operations, regulation, and public knowledge about nuclear reactors. How can regulatory agencies maintain independence from the nuclear industry and enforce rigorous safety standards? What prevents the industry from being more transparent about operations, especially when leaks and mishaps occur? If existing regulatory arrangements appear inadequate, then could a different structure of economic incentives encourage utilities to make their nuclear power plants safer and more secure? In the United States, for example, current law limits industry liability in the event of an accident. Does the limit on legal liability in the event of an accident reduce firms' incentives not only to develop the safest designs possible but also to ensure the most rigorous oversight of maintenance and operations?

More broadly, how can societies and communities meet their energy needs with the least risk and the greatest payoff for economic development? Are there alternatives based on precautionary principles -- first do no harm -- that involve less peril to safety, health, and community than nuclear or fossil-fueled power? Are we locked into the current energy development path? How should we think about the trade-offs between injury and disruption from energy technologies and future injury and disruption from climate change?

But have we learned anything? These questions are difficult to answer and the trade-offs nearly impossible to calculate. Even harder, however, will be implementing policy recommendations in a world of vested interests tied to old technologies. Over the past 100 years or so, the world's "energy portfolio" did not diversify very much -- as electric and gas-fueled engines powered industrial development. Renewable energy technologies like wind, solar, and biofuels hold great potential, but require much more rapid development to substitute for fossil fuels and nuclear power in the near term. So it appears now that there are few good choices: Either warm the planet's atmosphere and oceans, with dire consequences for human societies as the climate rapidly changes, or place communities in jeopardy from nuclear plant accidents and releases of deadly radioactive materials. However, in January 2012, when the Bulletin deliberates about moving the hand of the Doomsday Clock, the most important question will be: What have governments, firms, and citizens learned from the Fukushima disaster about managing Earth-altering technologies? And will they act on what they have learned in time to avert future disaster?

Considering the capital involved in solar, wind and other power generation options, the viable option for the developing nations is nuclear energy which provides a feasible source of energy. The conference supports the establishment and implementation of national and international safety standards in the design, construction, operation, and decommissioning of nuclear facilities. The Conference enumerated various pro’s & con’s that could be brought about by Nuclear energy, for India, Nuclear power is foreseeable as there is no other viable option. Due to the lack of indigenous uranium, India has uniquely been developing and utilizing a nuclear fuel cycle to exploit its reserves of thorium. And now with foreign technology and funding, it is expected that India’s Nuclear Power programme will receive a considerable boost. Through the upcoming three day event from 29th September, 2011, the Indian Power & Energy Sector will be linked to global players providing efficient and innovative solutions to make India a world leader in nuclear technology in the future.

Dr. Srikumar Banerjee – Chairman, Atomic Energy Commision will deliver the Key Note Address at “India Nuclear Energy Summit 2011” on 29th September 2011. Mr. Pierre Lellouche, French Minister of State for Foreign Trade has confirmed to be Guest of Honor for India Nuclear Energy Summit 2011. “The event will see participation from leading companies like DAE, L&T, GMR, Areva, GE, Westinghouse, Alstom, HCC, JSL, REC, Power Grid Corporation of India, Nuvia India, Nuscale Power, Schiess, American Nuclear Society, UBI France, Rosatom, Infotech, Lisega, United to name a few. The event will highlight the participation from various countries like USA, France, Russia and individual companies from UK, Germany & Canada. The event will also host symposium of Indo-US Nuclear Energy safety summit on 30th September 2011 and Indo- French Seminar, organized by French Trade Commission on 1st October 2011. The event will also witness the presence of French Ambassador, Jean-Raphael PEYTREGNET-Consul General of France in Mumbai, US Ambassador, US Consul General in Mumbai. It will also open doors of opportunities for domestic & international companies to tap the unexploited market of the nuclear sector in India. The format of the event has been designed to offer an opportunity for best networking and business opportunities and provide an interactive platform for equipment, technology suppliers and end users.

Commitment to Continuous Learning, Safety

The U.S. industry—through its commitment to continuous learning and relentless pursuit of excellence in safe operations—has taken significant action to ensure that American reactors are operated safety and securely. This includes actions in the following areas: Command and control: key operational and response decisions remain with shift supervisor—Decision-making remains on site with licensed operators. Reactor operators drill on accident scenarios several times each year and are prepared to respond to a wide range of potential severe events.

Operator licensing and training—U.S. reactor operators are licensed by the NRC and must re-qualify for their license every two years. U.S. reactor operators spend one week out of six in simulator training, which is more continuous training than pilots and doctors. Safety culture—The industry’s safety culture is transparent and encourages and facilitates the reporting of problems or concerns by employees through several channels. A commitment to safety culture is evidenced by employees who embrace continuous learning and maintain a questioning attitude regarding safety. This attitude gives rise to tools like corrective actions programs.

Independent regulator that includes resident inspectors—The NRC is an independent agency whose sole mission is protection of public health and safety. NRC inspectors located at each of America’s nuclear energy facilities have unfettered access to workers and data as part of their daily inspections. Creation of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations—INPO was formed by the industry after the Three Mile Island accident to drive industry toward operational excellence and above and beyond NRC requirements. Post 9/11 security contingency measures—The NRC and industry took several actions after 9/11 to enhance security at America’s nuclear energy facilities. These features also would help mitigate extreme events, such as large fires or explosions.

(Also see NEI’s graphic: “Commitment to Continuous Learning, Safety.”)

The Brunswick Nuclear Plant has two boiling-water reactors that generate 1,875 megawatts of electricity. Each of the Brunswick reactors is refueled once every 24 months, usually in the spring when the demand for electricity is relatively low. At the Brunswick Plant, 1 million gallons of water per minute are pumped from the Cape Fear River where it passes through the plant’s cooling system and then drops approximately  15 feet to the head of the outflow canal.

Refueling procedures are elaborate and well documented procedures, and one of the biggest questions is why the proper procedures were not followed, or were carried out incorrectly. The bolts need to be tensioned in a specific Torque Pattern, which generally includes multiple passes.  Refueling procedures require a crew of  at least 6 engineers, and additional Quality Control inspectors.

The Tensioning Tool is inspected and maintained, and is also part of the QC checklist.  This is not a simple situation where someone didn’t torque down the bolts correctly, as multiple personnel would have had to check and confirm the status prior to restart. In fact, according to Progress Energy’s 35 day outage schedule, the reassembly and reactor test are the 9th, and 10th steps of the process, and one can’t help but wonder why this was not detected before the reactor was re-pressurized. Chris had some very good questions regarding the Brunswick event, that I felt were worth sharing.

What testing was performed to determine that the RPV Head was Tensioned properly? What caused the improper Tensioning ? Procedure, Skill of the Craft? Aggressive Schedule? What are the Acceptance Criteria in the procedure for a properly tensioned head” How do you know that you meet the Acceptance Criteria?

Not only are the procedures and QC process in question, but the event also impacts operations and reliability of reactor components.  Chris highlighted a few questions that he felt were critical to ensure safe restart and operation.

Could there have been Foreign Material on the RPV Head Flange? What damage to surrounding equipment in the Drywell was sustained by the Steam/Water Leak? What is the condition of the Refueling Seal, now that it has been sprayed with Steamy/Hot Water? Did Hot/Steamy water find its way on the Outside of the Containment such that Corrosion in the future will be a problem? Did the steam leakage affect the Reactor Vessel Head Studs and their Threaded Holes (in the Reactor Vessel Flange) such that they will fail at a future date? At this point, Progress Energy is keeping fairly quiet about the specifics, and initially only revealed information of a “possible leak at the top of the reactor vessel”.  Monday morning should prove eventful not only for the Utility, but also for regulators.

While tsunami are not foreseen as a problem in Europe, the plants have been obliged to consider other external and internal initiating events that could trigger a loss of safety functions.In France, a total of 150 nuclear facilities including operating reactors, reactors under construction, research reactors and other nuclear facilities are affected. In its progress report, French regulator Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) notes that the risk of similar phenomena to those that triggered the Fukushima accident is negligible and says that it prefers to submit a more comprehensive report for all of its affected installations later in the year. However, reports for the 80 facilities identified as priorities have been submitted and those for the country's 58 operating power reactors have already been published on the ASN's web site.

No fundamental weaknesses in the definition of design basis events or the safety systems to withstand them has been revealed for UK nuclear power plants from either the stress tests or from earlier national reviews, according to the progress report from the UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). However, lessons are being learnt about improving resilience for beyond-design-basis events and removing or reducing cliff-edges, and will be applied in a timely manner, the regulator says.

Measures under consideration in the UK include the provision of additional local flood protection to key equipment and the provision of further emergency back-up equipment to provide cooling and power, while EDF Energy, operator of the country's AGRs and single PWR plant, is preparing additional studies to reconsider flood modelling for specific sites and to review recent climate change information that arrived subsequent to recent routine ten-yearly safety reviews. The main focus for the country's Magnox reactors will be to improve the reliability of cooling systems in the face of a variety of beyond-design-basis faults to reduce or minimise the potential for cliff-edges. Evaluations of findings are still ongoing. Operators have up to 31 October to make their full report back to their national regulator, and regulators have until 31 December to make their full reports to the European Commission.

NOTHING happend to the fuel in the pools at Fukushima. I would like to see some evidence other than the word of an activist who frightens kids for a living to support Gunter’s rant about peices of fuel being ejected miles away. From the looks of that video, the fuel didn’t move an inch. There is also a poll associated with the article. The poll discloses that it is completely unscientific, since it allows anyone to vote and is not based on randomly selected participants. However, I think that the results as of 0315 this morning are pretty amusing since the antinuclear opinion piece has been posted for nearly a week.

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.

“It took a really extraordinary event for 95 percent of the people in the world to know about it,” he said. “If they know about Fukushima, they know about Mark 1 reactors exploding in the air and releasing toxic radiation across the world and they know that’s not a good thing. Something has to be done to make sure that never happens again.” I could not let that one pass without a comment; I am quite sure that Mariotte has once again fallen victim to the fact that he surrounds himself with people who echo his own prejudices. Here is my response.

Marriotte makes an interesting statement by he claiming that “95% of the people in the world” know about Fukushima. That statement might be true about the people in the United States, where advertiser-supported television news programs covered the events with breathless hype for several months. I am pretty sure that you would have a difficult time finding anyone in China, central Africa, the Asian subcontinent, South America or the Middle East who can even pronounce Fukushima, much less know anything about GE Mark 1 containments. Most of them would not even know that they should be worried about radiation because they have never been taught to be afraid of something that they cannot smell, feel, taste, or hear especially when it occurs at levels that have no chance of making them sick within their expected lifetime. Mariotte, Gunter, Kamps, Katz and Bridenbaugh are all members of a vocal, but tiny group of people who have been carrying the water of the fossil fuel industry for decades by opposing nuclear energy, the only real competitor it has. They are victims of groupthink who believe that their neighbors in Takoma Park are representative of the whole world.

Just before making this comment, I voted in the unscientific poll associated with the article. 95% say that Oyster Creek should keep on powering New Jersey homes and businesses. They are not impressed by the Beyond Nuclear FUD; they like clean electricity.

According to the USGS website, under the undated heading, “Can we cause earthquakes? Is there any way to prevent earthquakes?” the agency notes, “Earthquakes induced by human activity have been documented in a few locations in the United States, Japan, and Canada. The cause was injection of fluids into deep wells for waste disposal and secondary recovery of oil, and the use of reservoirs for water supplies. Most of these earthquakes were minor. The largest and most widely known resulted from fluid injection at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver, Colorado. In 1967, an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 followed a series of smaller earthquakes. Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established.” Note the phrase, “Once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established.” So both the U.S Army and the U.S. Geological Survey over fifty years of research confirm on a federal level that that “fluid injection” introduces subterranean instability and is a contributory factor in inducing increased seismic activity.” How about “causing significant seismic events?”

Fast forward to the present. Overseas, last month Britain’s Cuadrilla Resources announced that it has discovered huge underground deposits of natural gas in Lancashire, up to 200 trillion cubic feet of gas in all. On 2 November a report commissioned by Cuadrilla Resources acknowledged that hydraulic fracturing was responsible for two tremors which hit Lancashire and possibly as many as fifty separate earth tremors overall. The British Geological Survey also linked smaller quakes in the Blackpool area to fracking. BGS Dr. Brian Baptie said, “It seems quite likely that they are related,” noting, “We had a couple of instruments close to the site and they show that both events occurred near the site and at a shallow depth.” But, back to Oklahoma. Austin Holland’s August 2011 report, “Examination of Possibly Induced Seismicity from Hydraulic Fracturing in the Eola Field, Garvin County, Oklahoma” Oklahoma Geological Survey OF1-2011, studied 43 earthquakes that occurred on 18 January, ranging in intensity from 1.0 to 2.8 Md (milliDarcies.) While the report’s conclusions are understandably cautious, it does state, “Our analysis showed that shortly after hydraulic fracturing began small earthquakes started occurring, and more than 50 were identified, of which 43 were large enough to be located.”

Sensitized to the issue, the oil and natural gas industry has been quick to dismiss the charges and deluge the public with a plethora of televisions advertisements about how natural gas from shale deposits is not only America’s future, but provides jobs and energy companies are responsible custodians of the environment. It seems likely that Washington will eventually be forced to address the issue, as the U.S. Army and the USGS have noted a causal link between the forced injection of liquids underground and increased seismic activity. While the Oklahoma quake caused a deal of property damage, had lives been lost, the policy would most certainly have come under increased scrutiny from the legal community. While polluting a local community’s water supply is a local tragedy barely heard inside the Beltway, an earthquake ranging from Oklahoma to Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas is an issue that might yet shake voters out of their torpor, and national elections are slightly less than a year away.

How else is the Energy Department working to bring better information about energy, renewable energies and energy technology to the public? Here are a few examples.

1. Your MPG

The “Your MPG” feature on the site lets you upload data about your own vehicle’s fuel usage to your “cyber” garage and get a better picture of how your vehicle is doing in terms of energy consumption. The system also aggregates the personal car data from all of the site’s users anonymously so people can share their fuel economy estimates. “You can track your car’s fuel economy over time to see if your efforts to increase MPG are working,” says David Greene, research staffer at Oak Ridge National Lab. “Then you can compare your fuel data with others and see how you are doing relative to those who own the same vehicle.”

In the works for the site is a predictive tool you can use when you are in the market for a new or used vehicle to more accurately predict the kind of mileage any given car will give you, based on your particular driving style and conditions. The system, says Greene, reduces the +/- 7 mpg margin of error of standard EPA ratings by about 50% to give you a more accurate estimate of what your MPG will be.

Solar Decathlon

In response to the White House’s Startup America program supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, the Energy Department launched its own version — America’s Next Top Energy Innovator Challenge. The technology transfer program gives startups the chance to license Energy Department technologies developed at the 17 national laboratories across the country at an affordable price. Entrepreneurs can identify Energy Department technologies through the Energy Innovation Portal, where more than 15,000 patent and patent applications are listed along with more than 450 market summaries describing some of the technologies in layman’s terms.

2. America’s Next Top Energy Innovator

3. Products: Smarter Windows

DOE funding, along with private investments, supports a number of companies including the Michigan-based company Pleotint. Pleotint developed a specialized glass film that uses energy generated by the sun to limit the amount of heat and light going into a building or a home. The technology is called Sunlight Responsive Thermochromic (SRT™), and it involves a chemical reaction triggered by direct sunlight that lightens or darkens the window’s tint. Windows made from this glass technology are designed to change based on specific preset temperatures.

Another DOE-funded company, Sage ElectroChromics, created SageGlass®, electronically controlled windows that use small electric charges to switch between clear and tinted windows in response to environmental heat and light conditions. And Soladigm has an electronic tinted glass product that is currently undergoing durability testing.

Once a company selects the technology of interest to them, they fill out a short template to apply for an option — a precursor to an actual license of the patent — for $1,000. A company can license up to three patents on one technology from a single lab per transaction, and patent fees are deferred for two years. The program also connects entrepreneurs to venture capitalists as mentors.

Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon has challenged collegiate students to develop solar-powered, highly efficient houses. Student teams build modular houses on campus, dismantle them and then reassemble the structures on the National Mall. The competition has taken place biennially since 2005. Open to the public and free of charge, the next event will take place at the National Mall’s West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. from September 23 to October 2, 2011. There are 19 teams competing this year.

Teams spend nearly two years planning and constructing their houses, incorporating innovative technology to compete in 10 contests. Each contest is worth 100 points to the winner in the areas of Architecture, Market Appeal, Engineering, Communications, Affordability, Comfort Zone, Hot Water, Appliances, Home Entertainment and Energy Balance. The team with the most points at the end of the competition wins.

Since its inception, the Solar Decathlon has seen the majority of the 15,000 participants move on to jobs related to clean energy and sustainability. The DOE’s digital strategy for the Solar Decathlon includes the use of QR codes to provide a mobile interactive experience for visitors to the event in Washington, D.C., as well as Foursquare checkin locations for the event and for each participating house. Many of the teams are already blogging leading up to the event and there are virtual tours and computer animated video walkthroughs to share the Solar Decathlon experience with a global audience. There will be TweetChats using the hashtag #SD2011 and other activities on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

The Future

In terms of renewable energies, the DOE tries to stay on the cutting edge. Some of their forward-thinking projects include the Bioenergy Knowledge Discovery Framework (KDF), containing an interactive database toolkit for access to data relevant to anyone engaged with the biofuel, bioenergy and bioproduct industries. Another is an interactive database that maps the energy available from tidal streams in the United States. The database, developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology in cooperation with the Energy Department, is available online. The tidal database gives researchers a closer look at the potential of tidal energy, which is a “predictable” clean energy resource. As tides ebb and flow, transferring tidal current to turbines to become mechanical energy and then converting it to electricity. There are already a number of marine and hydrokinetic energy projects under development listed on the site.

nuc_11081201k.pdf 9.3 Order licensees to do the following until rulemaking is complete:Determine and implement the required staff to fill all necessary positions for responding to a multiunit event. Add guidance to the emergency plan that documents how to perform a multiunit dose assessment (including releases from spent fuel pools) using the licensee's site-specific dose assessment software and approach.Conduct periodic training and exercises for multiunit and prolonged SBO scenarios. Practice (simulate) the identification and acquisition of offsite resources, to the extent possible.Ensure that EP equipment and facilities are sufficient for dealing with multiunit and prolonged SBO scenarios. Provide a means to power communications equipment needed to communicate onsite (e.g., radios for response teams and between facilities) and offsite (e.g., cellular telephones, satellite telephones) during a prolonged SBO.Maintain ERDS capability throughout the accident.[p.57]

On June 7, there was a fire -- apparently unrelated to the flooding -- in an electrical switchgear room at Fort Calhoun. For about 90 minutes, the pool where spent fuel is stored had no power for cooling. OPPD reported that "offsite power remained available, as well as the emergency diesel generators if needed." But the incident was yet another reminder of the plant's potential vulnerability

And so, Fort Calhoun remains on emergency alert because of the flood -- which is expected to worsen by early next week. On June 9, the Army Corps of Engineers announced PDF that the Missouri River would crest at least two feet higher in Blair than previously anticipated

The Fort Calhoun plant has never experienced a flood like this before

this spring, heavy rains and high snowpack levels in Montana, northern Wyoming, and the western Dakotas have filled reservoirs to capacity, and unprecedented releases from the dams are now reaching Omaha and other cities in the Missouri River valley. Floodgates that haven't been opened in 50 years are spilling 150,000 cubic feet per second -- enough water to fill more than a hundred Olympic-size swimming pools in one minute. And Fort Calhoun isn't the only power plant affected by flooding on the Missouri: The much larger Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, Nebraska, sits below the Missouri's confluence with the Platte River -- which is also flooding. Workers at Cooper have constructed barriers and stockpiled fuel for the plant's three diesel generators while, like their colleagues at Fort Calhoun, they wait for the inevitable.

"Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it. My people have come to trust memory over history. Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable, while history serves only those who seek to control it. Those who would douse the flame of memory, in order to put out the dangerous fire of truth, beware of these men ... for they are dangerous themselves and unwise. Their false history is written in the blood of those who might remember ... and of those who seek the truth."

However, the city remained at the heart of Washington's drive to directly intervene in the Japanese debate on nuclear energy at a critical time in the relationship between the two nations and the Cold War. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan had been aggravated by the contamination of the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru by fallout from the Bikini Atoll nuclear test early in 1954.

The previous year, successful hydrogen bomb tests by the Soviet Union had prompted the United States to shift its policy from keeping close control of nuclear technology to bolstering relations with friendly countries by sharing its expertise. The campaign in Japan was just one part of an international effort to promote nuclear energy's peaceful use. Yuka Tsuchiya, a professor of Ehime University and an expert on U.S. public diplomacy, said the U.S. government decided acceptance by Hiroshima residents of peaceful nuclear use would have a major impact on Japanese and world public opinion.

Fotouhi, who was in charge of organizing the Hiroshima event, launched an intensive campaign to win over locals.

His daughter, who came to Japan with him in 1952 and went to a local elementary school in Hiroshima, said her father invited nearly 100 people to his house to explain its aims. He gathered the support of the city government, the prefectural government, Hiroshima University and local newspapers and managed to stop protests by convincing activists of the event's importance to the peaceful use of nuclear power

The exhibition attracted long lines. A remotely operated machine for handling hazardous materials, called Magic Hand, was among the most popular attractions. One 74-year-old woman who had been a victim of the 1945 bombing asked one of the exhibition staff if the machine posed any harm to human health. The staff member said nuclear power could be of great value to human life if used for the public good, according to the woman.

On June 18, 1956, the day after the Hiroshima event closed, the U.S. Embassy in Japan reported to Washington that 120,000 visitors had attended over its three-week run.

A senior official of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission said in another report that the event had swayed the Japanese public's views of nuclear energy. No other country was as supportive of U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's promotion of the peaceful use of nuclear power as Japan, the official said.

In total, 2.7 million people visited the exhibitions in the 11 major cities. A scaled-down version of the exhibition later toured rural areas of Japan.

Japan's first nuclear reactor, imported from the United States, began operating in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, in August 1957, the month before the end of the exhibition tour.