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Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011   Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also   using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants. For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. Nuclear energy, as has become abundantly clear this year, has no future in Germany. For once the government, the parliament and the public all agree: Atomic reactors in the country will be history a decade from now. Before that can happen, however, the country has to find alternate power sources. In fact, amid concerns that supply shortages this winter could result in temporary blackouts, Germany's Federal Network Agency on Tuesday indicated that one of the seven reactors shut down in the immediate wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan could be restarted this winter to fill the gap . "The numbers that we currently have indicate that one of these nuclear energy plants will be needed," said agency head Matthias Kurth on Tuesday in Berlin. He said that ongoing analysis has indicated that fossil fuel-powered plants would not prove to be adequate as a backup.

Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011   Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also   using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants. For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. Nuclear energy, as has become abundantly clear this year, has no future in Germany. For once the government, the parliament and the public all agree: Atomic reactors in the country will be history a decade from now. Before that can happen, however, the country has to find alternate power sources. In fact, amid concerns that supply shortages this winter could result in temporary blackouts, Germany's Federal Network Agency on Tuesday indicated that one of the seven reactors shut down in the immediate wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan could be restarted this winter to fill the gap

Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011  Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants.

Arnie Gundersen, who lives here in Burlington, is Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates is a well-known authority on the subject, someone who has figured prominently in recent accounts of Vermont Yankee circumstances.

I think he exaggerated his responsibilities for projects at NU, 1972-6.

There are several exaggerations in that brief statement. Because he has been an expert witness, Mr. Gundersen has been required to provide an accurate resume to public bodies; you can find one such document at the end of the testimony that he provided in March 2006 to oppose the Public Service of Vermont’s decision to allow Entergy to increase the power output from Vermont Yankee.

Stars and Stripes reporters across Japan and the world are sending disaster dispatches as they gather new facts, updated in real time. All times are local Tokyo time.  Japan is 13 hours ahead of the East Coast. So for example, 8 a.m. EDT is 9 p.m. in Japan.

No increase in Yokota radiation levels   11 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeLatest advisory from Yokota’s Facebook page says base officials there just checked with emergency managers and they have confirmed that the radiation levels at Yokota remain at the same background levels we experience every day (even prior to the quake)."To ensure everyone's safety, we are scanning air samples repeatedly every day, we're checking the water daily and we are inspecting aircraft ... and vehicles as they arrive," the Facebook page says.-- Dave Ornauer

The latest on Navy support to Japan   10:20 p.m. Saturday, Tokyo timeU.S. 7th Fleet has 12,750 personnel, 20 ships, and 140 aircraft participating in Operation Tomodachi. Seventh Fleet forces have delivered 81 tons of relief supplies to date.USS Tortuga is in the vicinity of Hachinohe where she will serve as an afloat forward service base for helicopter operations. CH-53 Sea Stallion aircraft from attached to Tortuga delivered 13 tons of humanitarian aid cargo on Friday, including 5,000 pounds of water and 5,000 MREs, to Yamada Station, 80 miles south of Misawa.USS Essex, USS Harpers Ferry and USS Germantown with the embarked 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived off the coast of Akita prefecture Saturday. Marines of the 31st MEU have established a Forward Control Element in Matsushima to coordinate disaster aid planning with officials. They are scheduled to move to Sendai later Saturday.

Russia’s economy remains one of the world’s most energy-intensive.

Russia is an energy-dependent and energy-productive region.  Each unit of production in Russia is using roughly twice as much energy as it would in China and six times the amount in the United States, according to the U.K.’s Financial Times.  Bringing this number down would save the country billions while also creating big business for companies selling green technology. 

While it’s gotten a horrible rap in the months following the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated areas of Japan and killed thousands, damaging the nuclear power plant we all now know as Fukushima, from an environmental perspective, nuclear energy still can’t be beaten (and yes, it’d be good to build nuclear plants away from bodies of water in territories that aren’t plagued by tsunamis). 

Germany’s decision to close its reactors rejected as unrealistic

Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit the six TEPCO reactors at Fukushima Japan, anti-nuclear groups have been on a roll.  Germany’s panic attack which will result in closing 17 reactors accounting for a quarter of its electricity is widely touted as a bellwether example for other countries.   The goal of post-industrial visionaries is to get the mainstream media and the public to accept a scenario of the inevitable end to the use of nuclear energy in as many places as possible. But is this trend really taking place?  Recent developments indicate it is not.  Here are some examples.

China to lift ban on new projects By early 2012 China will resume approving the start of new nuclear energy projects following completion of a national nuclear safety plan.  According to wire services, the China Securities Journal is reporting that in August the government completed the inspection of its existing fleet of nuclear reactors which provide about 11 Gwe of power.  It said that plants under construction, including four from Westinghouse and two from Areva, were also part of the review.  In an unexpected move, the Journal said the government would offer greater transparency on nuclear safety issues by making the results of the safety reviews available for public inspection.

Transcript Excerpts A report from 1987 and it is entitled “NRC Coziness With Industry”. That is not my name for it, that is the congressional report’s name, “The NRC’s Coziness With Industry.” And it is written by the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of the United States Congress. In the 1990′s [...] I brought some safety concerns forward to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and they were ignored. And in the process, discovered a very cozy relationship between the regulator and the people that they were attempting to regulate. It went to congressional hearings with John Glenn and in the congressional hearings the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this: “It is true. Everything Mr. Gundersen said was absolutely right. He performed quite a service.” Nothing changed after that hearing. What he said to Congress had no affect on the way the agency was behaving. There is an excellent journalism piece out and it is in the Austin Chronicle. It is investigative journalism at its very best and it is called, “Will Shill For Nukes.” The author of it discovered that an industry group, NEI, the industry trade organization, was writing opinion pieces and they were then giving those opinion pieces to professors around the country and asking those professors of nuclear engineering at universities around the country, they were asking those professors to put those in the local newspapers. Well, quite a few professors obliged

KASHIWA, Chiba — A private facility to measure radiation levels in food and soil is scheduled to open on Oct. 11 in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, where relatively high levels of radiation have been detected in the wake of the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. The facility called “Bekumiru” in the shopping district on the east exit side of JR Kashiwa Station was founded by Motohiro Takamatsu, 47, who runs a computer software development firm. The facility will provide radiation measuring services at lower prices than those at other private inspection organizations because customers themselves operate the measuring devices at the facility. Many people have already been visiting the facility ahead of its official opening. End Extract http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/national/news/20111005p2a00m0na014000c.html

An internal audit has confirmed observers’ concerns that many of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation monitors were out of service at the height of the 2011 Fukushima power plant meltdown in Japan [...] RadNet consists of 124 stations scattered throughout U.S. territories and 40 deployable air monitors that can be sent to take readings anywhere, according to the IG report. [...] At the time of the Fukushima crisis, “this critical infrastructure asset” was impaired because many monitors were broken, while others had not undergone filter changes in so long that they could not be used to accurately detect real-time radiation levels, the IG report says.

“On March 11, 2011, at the time of the Japan nuclear incident, 25 of the 124 installed RadNet monitors, or 20 percent, were out of service for an average of 130 days,” the report says. “In addition, six of the 12 RadNet monitors we sampled (50 percent) had gone over eight weeks without a filter change, and two of those for over 300 days,” the report adds, noting that EPA policy calls on operators to change the filters twice per week. Currently, “EPA remains behind schedule for installing” radiation monitors and has not resolved contracting issues identified as causing similar problems with the system in a 2009 audit, the report says. “Until EPA improves contractor oversight, the agency’s ability to use RadNet data to protect human health and the environment, and meet requirements established in the National Response Framework for Radiological Incidents, is potentially impaired.” [...]

The Australian Government is committed to strengthening occupational health and safety requirements for individuals working at uranium mining and milling sites. The Australian Government is committed to strengthening occupational health and safety requirements for individuals working at uranium mining and milling sites.

The Australian National Radiation Dose Register (ANRDR) was established in 2010 to collect, store, manage and disseminate records of radiation doses received by workers in the course of their employment in a centralised database. The ANRDR has been open to receive dose records from operators since 1 July 2010. The ANRDR was officially launched in June 2011 following full development of the Register, including a system for workers to be able to request their individual dose history record.

The ANRDR is maintained and managed by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

With Poland evaluating two GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) reactor models for the country’s first nuclear power plant projects, GEH today announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Warsaw-based engineering firm Energoprojekt Warszawa, S.A. (EW) to discuss the feasibility of partnering on future reactor projects.

The MOU with Energoprojekt Warszawa is the latest in a series of preliminary agreements that GEH has signed with Polish suppliers as the government prepares to develop Poland’s first two nuclear generating stations to diversify the country’s energy supplies. Under the new MOU, both companies will explore how EW could provide specific engineering services to GEH for the potential development of new nuclear power plants in Poland.

“This initial action shows the future possibility of creating jobs and cooperation related not only to Polish suppliers of fixtures, construction and installation works, but to Polish planning and engineering during the plant’s construction process.”

Cap: The total carbon emissions are limited (capped) in a simple, no-nonsense way Share: The huge amounts of money involved are shared equally by the population

The primary fossil-fuel suppliers (e.g. oil companies) are required to acquire permits in order to introduce fossil fuels into the economy (by importing them or extracting them from the ground).

Next, the Share. Since the fossil fuel suppliers have to buy the permits, they will pass on this cost by increasing the fuel price. This flows through the economy (like a carbon tax), making carbon-intensive goods cost more.

Scottish & Southern Energy (LON:SSE) has taken its ball and glove and marched off the field leaving an alliance, called NuGen, with GDF Suez and Iberdrola to build new nuclear reactors in the U.K. The other two investors bought out Scottish & Southern's shares, worth 25% of the project, for an undisclosed price increasing their respective stakes to 50% each. SSE said would now focus on renewable energy projects and with natural gas plants fueled by North Sea fields to keep the transmission lines humming when the wind doesn't blow. This may be the utility's real comfort zone and some question whether it ever really had its heart in the effort to invest in the nuclear field.

According to a Bloomberg wire service report for Sept 22, Investec analyst Angelos Anastasiou said, "Renewables are their favored area and where they see themselves in the forefront. The nuclear side was always half-hearted." Cheers from the post-industrial greens

Meanwhile, in Scotland, post-industrial visionary green groups cheered SSE's decision. In widely reported rhetoric, Dan Barlow, a key figure at Scotland's World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said his organization welcomed SSE's abandonment of the nuclear project. And he went further calling on the remaining investors to give up their nuclear plans as well. The government in Scotland, like Germany, has a delusional vision that it can provide up to 80% of its electricity needs with offshore wind power. Scotland's energy minister Fergus Ewing echoed the statements of the WWF signaling perhaps a closer than expected relationship between green groups and the government. It raises the question of whether SSE made its decision to pull out based solely on financial risk or whether it was pushed into a retreat. Ewing claims that the decision by SSE to pull out of a consortium to build a nuclear reactors is a "vindication" of one of the Scottish Government's policies to promote renewable energy.

Sixteen tons and what you get is a nuclear catastrophe. The explosions that rocked the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant were more powerful than the combustion of hydrogen gas, as claimed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. The actual cause of the blasts, according to intelligence sources in Washington, was nuclear fission of. warhead cores illegally taken from America's sole nuclear-weapons assembly facility. Evaporation in the cooling pools used for spent fuel rods led to the detonation of stored weapons-grade plutonium and uranium.   The facts about clandestine American and Israeli support for Japan's nuclear armament are being suppressed in the biggest official cover-up in recent history. The timeline of events indicates the theft from America's strategic arsenal was authorized at the highest level under a three-way deal between the Bush-Cheney team, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Elhud Olmert's government in Tel Aviv.

Tokyo's Strangelove   In early 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney flew to Tokyo with his closest aides. Newspaper editorials noted the secrecy surrounding his visit - no press conferences, no handshakes with ordinary folks and, as diplomatic cables suggest, no briefing for U.S. Embassy staffers in Tokyo.   Cheney snubbed Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, who was shut out of confidential talks. The pretext was his criticism of President George Bush for claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The more immediate concern was that the defense minister might disclose bilateral secrets to the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were sure to oppose White House approval of Japan's nuclear program.

Abe has wide knowledge of esoteric technologies. His first job in the early 1980s was as a manager at Kobe Steel. One of the researchers there was astrophysicist Hideo Murai, who adapted Soviet electromagnetic technology to "cold mold" steel. Murai later became chief scientist for the Aum Shinrikyo sect, which recruited Soviet weapons technicians under the program initiated by Abe's father. After entering government service, Abe was posted to the U.S. branch of JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization). Its New York offices hosted computers used to crack databases at the Pentagon and major defense contractors to pilfer advanced technology. The hacker team was led by Tokyo University's top gamer, who had been recruited into Aum.   After the Tokyo subway gassing in 1995, Abe distanced himself from his father's Frankenstein cult with a publics-relations campaign. Fast forward a dozen years and Abe is at Camp David. After the successful talks with Bush, Abe flew to India to sell Cheney's quadrilateral pact to a Delhi skeptical about a new Cold War. Presumably, Cheney fulfilled his end of the deal. Soon thereafter Hurricane Katrina struck, wiping away the Abe visit from the public memory.

Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across America. Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard — sometimes at hundreds of times the limit.

While most leaks have been found within plant boundaries, some have migrated offsite. But none is known to have reached public water supplies. STORY: Regulators weaken safety standards for nuclear reactors At three sites — two in Illinois and one in Minnesota — leaks have contaminated drinking wells of nearby homes, the records show, but not at levels violating the drinking water standard. At a fourth site, in New Jersey, tritium has leaked into an aquifer and a discharge canal feeding picturesque Barnegat Bay off the Atlantic Ocean.

A senior U.S. Energy Department official on Wednesday disputed reports that the Obama administration has sought Mongolian support for construction of a storage site for international spent nuclear fuel in the Central Asian nation (see GSN, March 30).

The assertion -- made by a high-ranking official who asked not to be named in addressing a diplomatically sensitive issue -- directly countered remarks offered last spring by a veteran State Department official who leads U.S. nuclear trade pact negotiations. The diplomat, Richard Stratford, told a Washington audience in March that Energy Department leaders had made initial contacts with their counterparts in Ulaanbaatar about potential cooperation on a range of nuclear fuel services that Mongolia would like to develop for international buyers.

Among the possible features of a joint project, Stratford said, could be the creation of a repository for U.S.-origin fuel that has been used by Washington's partners in the region, potentially including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. If brought to fruition, the proposal would be "a very positive step forward," he said at the time, because no nation around the globe thus far has successfully built a long-term storage facility for dangerous nuclear waste. The Obama administration in 2009 shuttered plans for a U.S. storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada -- which would have been the world's only permanent repository -- after prolonged debate over potential environmental and health hazards (see GSN, Sept. 13).

As blogger on nuclear energy for the past five years, I realize I’m writing on a niche subject that isn’t going to pull in millions of readers. Unlike some entertainment blogs, a site on nuclear energy is never going to be able to link the words “reactor pressure vessel” with the antics of a Hollywood celebrity at a New York night club. So, what can be said about the use of social media and how it has evolved as a new communication tool in a mature industry?

EBR-1 chalkboard ~ the 1st known nuclear energy blog post 12/21/51 on the Arco desert of eastern Idaho

Evidence of acceptance of social media is widespread, with the most recent example being the launch of the Nuclear Information Center, a social media presence by Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK). Content written for the Nuclear Information Center by a team of the utility’s employees is clearly designed to reach out to the general public. This effort goes beyond the usual scope of a utility Web site, which includes things like how to pay your bill online, where to call when the lights go out, and so forth.

An unknown disease is killing or weakening scores of ringed seals along Alaska’s north coast, where the animals have been found with lesions on their hind flippers and inside their mouths. Ringed seals, the main prey of polar bears, and a species that rarely comes ashore, in late July began showing up on the Beaufort Sea coast outside Barrow with the lesions, patchy hair loss and skin irritation around the nose and eyes. The outbreak was reported first in the Alaska Dispatch.

Officials from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the North Slope Borough said Thursday that 107 animals were found stranded from late July through Sept. 29 and 99 appeared to have lesions. Nearly half died. “Forty-six of the animals were dead when found, or died shortly thereafter,” said Julie Speegle, spokeswoman for the National Marine Fisheries Service. Seals still alive were lethargic or showing labored breathing.Necropsies revealed lesions were not limited to skin of seals. Biologists studying the dead animals found lesions in the respiratory system, liver, lymphoid system, heart and brain, she said.

Wildlife authorities in Canada and Russia have reported similar incidents, she said. “We don’t know if they’re related, but they’re similar,” Speegle said.Linda Deger, a spokeswoman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said by email that ringed seals are the only species reported to be affected and the department and other agencies are investigating. “At this point, we don’t know exactly what is causing it,” Speegle said. “Laboratory findings have been inconclusive to date but samples have tested negative for pox virus, herpes virus, papillomavirus, morbillivirus and calicivirus.”

Florida Power & Light, a unit of NextEra Energy Inc , plans to complete work to increase the output at its 839-megawatt St. Lucie 1 nuclear reactor during an extended refueling outage set to begin next month, according to a state regulatory filing.The work is part of FP&L's larger effort, known as a nuclear "uprate," to add 450 MW in capacity at four existing reactors at the Turkey Point and St. Lucie stations by 2013.FP&L, the state's largest electric utility, recently adjusted some of the outage dates to minimize an overlap between the planned nuclear outages and non-nuclear outages, utility officials said.Adding the 450 MW is now estimated to cost $2.48 billion, the company said, compared with FP&L's initial 2007 estimate of $1.5 billion for an increase of 400 MW.

The increased output will supply 209,000 customers, save $4.8 billion in fuel costs over the project's lifetime and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the state, said NextEra spokesman Michael Waldron.On Monday, the Florida Public Service Commission approved FP&L's request to recover about $196 million from customers next year for the uprate costs, as well as costs to develop two new reactors at Turkey Point expected to begin service in 2022-2023."The vast majority of our request -- about 90 percent -- is dedicated to the uprate project," Waldron said.In the filing, FP&L said it plans to shut St. Lucie 1 on Nov. 26 to perform work to increase its output by 122 MW. The outage is expected to last 110 days, or until mid-to-late February.

On Feb. 6, 2012, FP&L plans to shut the 693-MW Turkey Point 3 reactor for 120 days to boost that unit's output by 109 MW, the utility said in the filing.St. Lucie 2, also rated at 893 MW, is set to shut June 27, 2012, for 95 days for uprate work. The unit was shut for an extended period earlier this year for work that increased output by 29 MW due to a more efficient low-pressure rotor, the filing said.The extra 29 MW is helping to save $1 million per month in fuel costs, Waldron said.Next fall, the 693-MW Turkey Point 4 reactor is scheduled to shut Oct. 1 for 120 days for work to increase output by 109 MW, FP&L told state regulators.