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Move is first step in long process before its restart* No reactors taken offline have been restarted since Fukushima crisis (Adds comment in paragraph 18-19)

Japan's Kansai Electric Power Co became the first utility to submit the result of a first-stage stress test on one of its nuclear reactors, the initial step in rebuilding public faith in atomic energy.No reactors taken offline for routine maintenance have been restarted since a massive earthquake and tsunami in March triggered reactor meltdowns and the world's worst radioactive material leakage in 25 years at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi station in the northeast.Japan's government, urged by industry, would like to get some reactors running again to support the ailing economy and minimise the risk of a power crunch this winter. It is reviewing its energy policy, including the role of nuclear power and guidelines on its safety.

Several other nuclear operators are also preparing to report on stress tests, with Shikoku Electric Power Co , another highly nuclear reliant utility in the west, seen among the next candidates to do so.Kansai Electric, the country's second-biggest utility, this morning submitted to the trade ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) the results of stress tests on the No.3 reactor at its Ohi plant in Fukui prefecture.The Osaka-based utility, which serves the flagship factories of big electronics firms including Panasonic Corp and Sharp Corp , has said meeting winter power demand would be tough without the restart of the 1,180 megawatt unit.

European regulators have been publishing progress reports on the program of stress tests being carried out at nuclear power plants in response to the Fukushima accident. In the weeks following the Fukushima accident, the European Council (EC) requested a review of safety at European nuclear power plants when faced by challenging situations. The criteria for the reviews, now known as stress tests, were produced for the European Commission by the European Nuclear Safety Regulatory Group (ENSREG). Progress reports were due to be submitted to the European Commission by 15 September, and many nuclear regulators and in some cases plant operators have published summaries, including regulators in Belgium, France, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

The reports vary from country to country, but the take-home story emerging from the reports is that Europe's nuclear plants are generally well placed to withstand beyond-design-basis events. Some plants have already put into practice initial measures to improve safety in response to Fukushima, and the tests are bringing to light more measures that need to be taken to improve resilience on a plant-by-plant basis.   Some measures that have already been identified are simple to put into place: for example, housekeeping routines have been changed to reduce the potential for seismic interactions (where non-safety related equipment could impact or fall onto seismically qualified equipment) at UK power plants.

stress tests focus on three areas highlighted by events in Japan: external threats from earthquake and flooding, specifically tsunami; the consequences of loss of safety functions, that is, a total loss of electricity supply (also referred to as station black-out, or SBO), the loss of ultimate heat sink (UHS), or both; and issues connected with the management of severe accidents. The UHS is a medium to which the residual heat from the reactor is transferred, for example the sea or a river.

Plant Status After a 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck offshore from Fukushima in the early hours of July 25, Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported there were no problems with any of the systems used to stabilize the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi and no injuries. TEPCO checked the systems for water and nitrogen injection into reactors 1, 2 and 3, the water treatment facility, and the used fuel pool cooling systems for reactors 2 and 3. The Japan Atomic Industry Forum said temperatures at the bottom of Fukushima Daiichi reactor 1 have remained below 100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) for six consecutive days through July 24. TEPCO says it achieved the lowered temperature by raising the amount of water injected into the reactor. The company has begun implementing step 2 of its recovery plan for the reactors, which includes maintaining temperatures at the bottom of reactors 1, 2 and 3 below 100 degrees Celsius. The stable operation of the circulatory water injection system is crucial to achieving that goal. TEPCO said a faulty circuit breaker was the cause of a five-hour loss of electrical power to reactors 3 and 4 July 22. Power for contaminated water treatment and for the reactors’ used fuel pool cooling was eventually restored via an alternate source. TEPCO says there was no major increase in the temperature of the pools

The company is working to improve switching systems among external power supplies. Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues A July 28 public Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting will focus on the agency’s near-term task force recommendations for safety enhancements at U.S. nuclear energy facilities after the Fukushima accident. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano today toured the Fukushima Daiichi site, where he met with TEPCO personnel and gave an interview on location describing his visit. Amano is to meet Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and government ministers to discuss the outcomes of the June IAEA ministerial conference on nuclear safety. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said it will take months to complete the first of two-stage “stress tests” it has ordered all Japanese nuclear power reactor operators to conduct before shutdown reactors can restart. NISA said it does not anticipate any of the 22 reactors that were halted for regular safety checks to resume operations this summer. The tests involve computer simulations of the reactors’ responses to emergencies such as earthquakes, tsunamis and loss of off-site power.

As TEPCO moves into the second stage of its recovery plan at Fukushima, the joint office it operates with the Japanese government to conduct and review its activities will be restructured. A new radiation and health management team will be established, and two other teams will be incorporated into a “medium-to-long term countermeasures” team. Media Highlights The New York Times editorialized on July 24 on the U.S. response to the Fukushima Daiichi accident. The opinion piece discussed steps taken by the nuclear energy industry and recommendations made by the NRC’s Fukushima-focused task force. Upcoming Events NEI will brief financial analysts in New [...] ...read more

The Japanese government has announced it is to carry out so-called stress tests on all of the country’s nuclear reactors.

A string of plants were shut down in the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear crisis in the country’s north-east.

Japanese Industry Minister Banri Kaieda told reporters: “We will refer to the criteria of the European Union’s expertise to reassure people about the safety of nuclear energy, and this must be done as quickly as possible.”

Swedish nuclear power plant operators will incorporate improvements highlighted by stress tests with a pre-existing program to standardise safety in earthquake scenarios. 

Some 34 countries are participating in a project led by the European Commission to put nuclear power plants through paper-based analyses where they are subjected to extreme circumstances and events such as natural disasters. The aim is to find the ultimate resilience of procedures and safety engineering and identify any 'cliff-edge' effects where the loss of a certain system may make a serious accident unavoidable.   On a common schedule, many of the countries have in recent days confirmed that their nuclear power plants are properly sited, designed and managed. However, a statement from the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM) frankly pointed out that: "What we can already see is that some plants do not fully meet requirements in the case of earthquakes. Here we will need to take action."   Jan Hanberg, SSM's head of radiation protection who led the stress test program, explained to World Nuclear News that there were no specific earthquake requirements in the early days of the Swedish nuclear program. The country relied on the intrinsic strength of each design in scenarios of strong earthquakes, which are highly unlikely due to Sweden's geology. Of the country's ten reactors, only Oskarshamn 3 and Forsmark 3 were licensed to specific earthquake resistance standards.

This potential gap in safety was addressed during 2005 by new earthquake-specific regulation imposed in a way that gave operators until 2013 to ensure their existing plants met requirements. Stress tests, however, had to be conducted based on the plant status as of 1 July this year. Hanberg told WNN that nuclear plant operators will continue to work towards the 2013 deadline, but may introduce additional safety measures in light of what has been learned through the stress tests. That may require a revision of the 2013 deadline, he said, depending on the programs of work agreed by SSM and the operators over the next month.   Some work will also be needed to ensure safety in scenarios involving a site with multiple reactors challenged simultaneously. SSM wants to be certain there will be sufficient command, control and fire-fighting capability.   Separately, SSM noted that Swedish nuclear power plants have excellent protection against radioactive release during accident scenarios. As part of learning from the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in the USA all Swedish nuclear power plants were required to have filters to reduce the amount of radioactive material that would be released in an accident.  

Nuclear supporters got some positive news from Europe last week. Although Germany has pulled its oldest plants out of operation and countries across the continent continue to debate the future of the industry in light of the Japanese reactor crisis, the European Parliament has excluded a moratorium on new reactors from nuclear safety legislation.

A construction moratorium failed in a vote Thursday, with 300 voting against the measure, 264 for it and 61 abstaining, according to Bulgarian newspaper Novinite

The moratorium would have been in effect at least until “stress tests” were conducted. The tests, approved earlier, will assess nuclear plants’ ability to withstand natural and man-made disasters. While some legislators argued the tests should be overseen at the European-Union level, the legislation directs regulators in individual EU countries to carry them out.

Earth's crust is pervasively fractured at depth by faults. These faults can sustain high stresses without slipping because natural "tectonic" stress and the weight of the overlying rock pushes the opposing fault blocks together, increasing the frictional resistance to fault slip. The injected wastewater counteracts the frictional forces on faults and, in effect, "pries them apart", thereby facilitating earthquake slip.

The Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident may be becoming a distant and inconvenient memory for many, including the governor of Hokkaido Harumi Takahashi, a former elite bureaucrat in what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.The Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident may be becoming a distant and inconvenient memory for many, including the governor of Hokkaido Harumi Takahashi, a former elite bureaucrat in what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. She has just approved the formal re-start of Tomari Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 3, despite the protest literally from all over the country. It will be the first re-start of any reactor that has been in maintenance or shut-down after the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident, and Tomari Reactor 3 will simply switch from the long (since March) post-maintenance test-run to full commercial run without undergoing the so-called "stress test"

The Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident may be becoming a distant and inconvenient memory for many, including the governor of Hokkaido Harumi Takahashi, a former elite bureaucrat in what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.The Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident may be becoming a distant and inconvenient memory for many, including the governor of Hokkaido Harumi Takahashi, a former elite bureaucrat in what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. She has just approved the formal re-start of Tomari Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 3, despite the protest literally from all over the country. It will be the first re-start of any reactor that has been in maintenance or shut-down after the Fukushima I Nuke Plant accident, and Tomari Reactor 3 will simply switch from the long (since March) post-maintenance test-run to full commercial run without undergoing the so-called "stress test"

A senior Iranian lawmaker stressed that Tehran will block its oil supplies to the European Union for the next 5 to 15 years as part of its strategy to punish the EU for its oil ban against Tehran.

"We will change the threat into an opportunity for Iran and cut Iran's oil supplies to the Europeans for five to 15 years," member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mohammad Karim Abedi told FNA on Sunday.

He pointed to a bill drafted in the parliament to cut oil exports to the EU, and noted, "We will not leave enemies' sanctions unanswered and we will impose other sanctions on them in addition to closing Iran's oil supplies to Europe." Abedi also said that Iran will use the banned oil in its refineries and petrochemical complexes to turn it into more valuable products.

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.

did you know that huge demonstrations have been taking place in Tokyo as well? We certainly didn't until a SOTT forum member posted a report on our forum. The general lack of awareness of the protests in Japan is probably due to the fact that there has been zero coverage of 'Occupy Tokyo' - which has grown out of the country's large (and growing) grassroots anti-nuclear movement - in Japan's mainstream media.

Several large demonstrations have taken place all over Japan in recent months, especially in Tokyo. The general mood is the same as elsewhere: ordinary people in Japan are fed up with their leaders' lies, particularly the lies told by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and how the government has handled the Fukushima disaster. Or rather, how it has avoided handling it. This should all be eerily familiar to Americans of course; BP's lies and the US government's enabling role from the moment the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010 has continued to this day, with the tragedy continuing to unfold in deathly silence. What is happening in Japan is almost a carbon copy; denial, smear campaigns, heavy-handed tactics and, of course, total media blackout. Up to one million people may have died as a result of Chernobyl, although we'll never really know the true death toll. Fukushima is many orders of magnitude worse...

People in Japan are very angry. Even though the Fukushima disaster is nowhere near ending (in fact, it is getting worse), Japanese media are simply not covering the fallout of the worst nuclear accident in history. Aftershocks from the Magnitude 9 earthquake which struck off the coast of Japan on March 11th are hardly mentioned in the Japanese media, but the fact is they are still ongoing and people are constantly stressed out by them. The economic aftershock is also beginning to take hold in a big way. The good news, says the SOTT forum member in Japan, is that people are now starting to wake up the fact that the Japanese government, TEPCO, and the media have been lying all this time and that more people are starting to take action to actually deal with the situation rather than wishfully think it will just blow away out into the Pacific Ocean.

I was reading this story and wanted to ask the experts in this forum about the claims:http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/08/03/japan-a-nuclear-gypsy%E2%80%99s-tale/In summary, a temporary worker doing a radiation job at Japan's Hamaoka plant received 180 mrem in a single job, and he claims to have felt nausea and other symptoms upon entering the radiation area, as a direct result of the radiation.  In addition to that, he talks about how the community of temp workers (with no education other than training for those jobs they do) shares many similar stories about people feeling immediate health effects directly from exposure to a radiation dose in those jobs.  They dramatize the stories far better than I ever could:

These sorts of stories are circulating widely around Japan due to the obvious public disposition toward nuclear power at the moment.  The past hiring practices of Japanese companies for nuclear plant outages certainly do not help either.  I know a lot of people who are interested in debunking anti-nuclear propaganda, but it's considerably more difficult to tell someone "no, you didn't feel this", although that is my expectation in this case.I'm willing to be proven wrong on that point - that no one can feel the effects of radiation below the levels conventionally accepted to have health effects, but only by people who know what they're talking about.  I'm almost sure that 180 mrem is not a level sufficient for someone to know they've been exposed at all.  I mean, if you put someone in an isolated room and gave them a radiation dose at an unspecified time and asked them to raise their hand at that moment, they would fail at that task.  To me, the obvious explanation is the powerful effects of hypochondria - convincing oneself that they are sick.  The mental connection between entering the scary plenum of a steam generator and feeling a headache is strong, so the mind can easily convince itself that it has those effects.What is the reality?  Can anyone here say what what dose rate is scientifically expected to produce a physical sensation that can be felt?  Obvious this does happen at high enough dose / dose rates, but the real question is the level it happens at.  Can anyone who has worked in the US industry claim to have felt effects from radiation exposure with any sort of veracity?

You're right. 180 would produce no acute results and a very small chance of somatic results. Here's my thoughts. Semi tropical atmosphere, no electricity, worked to the bone, stress,Lets see the effects of heat exhaustion :Symptoms of heat exhaustion include profuse sweating, weakness, nausea, vomiting, headache, lightheadedness, and muscle cramps.Effects of sleep deprivation :aching muscles, confusion, memory lapses or loss, depression, hallucinations, hand tremors, headaches,bloodshot eyesWhy radiation then? Easy answer : its there. Its a good scape goat, and something media fear mongers like that quack Dr. Kookoo (sic) can quickly resort to when asked.

Almost everyone in the alternative energy community is aware of Andrea Rossi's cold fusion based E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) technology. It is a game changer that allows vast amounts of energy to be produced by inducing a nuclear fusion process between small quantities of nickel powder and hydrogen gas. Instead of the reaction taking place in a gigantic multi-billion dollar experimental reactor, it takes place in a device that can fit on a table top. This technology seems to be everything to be hoped for in a revolutionary new source of energy to replace fossil fuels -- safe, cheap, environmentally friendly, and inexhaustible. 

It seems that as the launch of the technology approaches, the flow of information is accelerating. The information is coming from Defkalion Green Technologies Incorporated, Andrea Rossi himself, and from other sources. The following is a review of some of the breaking news.

A Self Sustaining One Megawatt Reactor

CBS News aired a short piece titled US heat wave causes new look at nuclear energy that is worth a look. Though it includes the obligatory appearance of a professional antinuclear activist – in this case, Dr. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists – the story provides some encouraging clips of the massive quantities of dirt being moved by thousands of workers who are making preparations for Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in eastern Georgia.

The story also reminds people why some of us are so interested in building new nuclear power plants – we know how vital reliable electricity is. That knowledge is reinforced when power grids are stressed and when people die due to complications associated with heat exposure. We know that nuclear plants have a far better chance of being available when needed than the wind turbines that were AWOL during the heat wave because, darn it, when the heat domes hover, the air is still and muggy. If there was a reliable breeze we would not be so dependent on our air conditioners!

a comment that I provided to CBS regarding their story:Nuclear power plants have proven that they are safe neighbors. In more than 50 years of commercial operation, the total number of deaths from exposure to radiation from nuclear power plants around the entire world is less than 100. In contrast, thousands of people die every year from exposure to the hazardous waste products that fossil fuel plants dump into our atmosphere as a routine part of their operation.I like having the ability to use electricity on demand. I like having clean air. I like the idea that building new nuclear plants that can operate reliably for 60-80 years is resulting in new jobs for thousands of American mechanics, electricians, construction workers, engineers and procedure writers. (Disclosure: I fall into that last category and am currently part of a large team that is designing another version of a reactor that can keep itself under control for at least three days without any sources of electricity.)

radiation from the damaged Fukushima power plant has been detected in Glasgow, the Evening Times reports. However, the paper notes: “The levels picked up in Glasgow are tiny and similar to those detected in other parts of Europe and officials stress there is no risk to public health.”

The head of the United Nations nuclear agency today stressed that all States must comply with their obligations under the international nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty, naming Iran, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Syria as countries that are not in full compliance. “My approach to nuclear verification since taking up office in December 2009 has been very straightforward – all safeguards agreements between Member States and the Agency, and other relevant obligations such as UN Security Council resolutions, should be implemented fully,” said Yukiya Amano, the Director General the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation to enable the agency to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities,” Mr. Amano said in his keynote address to the three-day 23rd UN Conference on Disarmament Issues in Matsumoto, Japan. He urged Iran to move towards the full implementation of all relevant obligations to build international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme.

TINY traces of radioactive iodine from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear reactor in Japan have been detected in Glasgow. The authorities have stressed there is no danger to public health.Very small traces of radioactive iodine were detected by an air sampler at a Health Protection Agency monitoring site in Glasgow picked up.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) later confirmed that this radiation was from the Japanese incident, but it said that the levels found were consistent with reports from other European countries such as Iceland and Switzerland.SEPA has released a statement in which it says the concentration of iodine is "extremely low" and "not of concern for the public or the environment".