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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Dan R.D.

Dan R.D.

Report: Journalist gets inside Fukushima plant, says Reactor No. 4 Spent Fuel Pool is c... - 0 views

  • Nov. 9 — “A journalist of Shukan Asahi, Mr.Imanishi was invited to go into the site by an actual Fukushima worker,” reports Mochizuki. The journalist reported that “the spent fuel pool of reactor 4 is completely ‘exposed’,” Mochizuki writes. For the video below Mochizuki summarizes Imanishi’s comments: The wall and ceiling of Reactor No. 4′s building was completely blown off by “some explosion” “The spent fuel pool is totally left outside, out of control so what you can even see it from out of the reactor” “The wall of the reactors are about 1m thick of huge concrete mass. It is blown off.” “It shows how much the explosion(s) were more massive that they were announced by the government.”
Dan R.D.

Mexico Scrapping Plans to Build as Many as 10 Nuclear Plants [04Nov11] - 0 views

  • Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Mexico, one of three Latin American nations that uses nuclear power, is abandoning plans to build as many as 10 new reactors and will focus on natural gas-fired electricity plants after boosting discoveries of the fuel.
  • The country, which found evidence of trillions of cubic feet of gas in the past year, is “changing all its decisions, amid the very abundant existence of natural-gas deposits,” Energy Minister Jordy Herrera said in a Nov. 1 interview. Mexico will seek private investment of about $10 billion during five years to expand its natural gas pipeline network, he said.
  • “This is a very good decision by the Mexican government,” said James Williams, an economist at WTRG Economics, an energy research firm in London, Arkansas. With a power generation project based on gas “you can build multiple plants at a much lower cost and much faster pace than a nuclear facility.”
Dan R.D.

CNN: Tepco's claim of 'spontaneous' fission is an "improbable phenomenon" says nuke pro... - 0 views

  • Nov. 3 — “A rare type of radioactive decay, not a renewed chain reaction, appears to have produced the radioactive xenon gas,” reports CNN.
  • According to the report, on Thursday Tepco said “it believed the gases were produced by ‘spontaneous fission’ of uranium, since the shorter-lived isotope persisted after the use of boric acid”.
  • Gary Was, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Michigan, told CNN that ‘spontaneous’ fission occurs when an element like uranium splits on its own, though it’s an “improbable phenomenon”.
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  • Professor Was noted that the detection of xenon happened less than a week after Japan began taking new gas samples from the reactors. It is highly coincidental that so soon after the sampling began an “improbable phenomenon” like ‘spontaneous’ fission would occur.
Dan R.D.

Fukushima Reactor Isn't in Critical State: Tepco - Bloomberg [03Nov11] - 0 views

  • Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the No. 2 reactor at its destroyed Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station isn’t in a critical state after the company detected signs of nuclear fission.
  • The discovery of xenon, announced yesterday, at the plant was caused by “natural” nuclear fission, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the company known as Tepco, said today at a press briefing in Tokyo.
  • The occurrence of the gas, which is associated with nuclear fission, was confirmed yesterday by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency. No increase in radiation was found at the site and the situation is under control, officials said.
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  • Tepco may not be able to achieve its goal of stabilizing Fukushima by the end of this year, the Mainichi newspaper reported today, without citing anybody. The incident won’t affect the schedule, Matsumoto said yesterday.
  • Eight months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami wrecked the station, causing a loss of cooling and the meltdowns of three reactors, Tepco is trying to prevent further leakage of radiation that has spread across the world.
  • Fissioning involves the splitting of atoms, which, in the case of certain uranium isotopes, can lead to an uncontrolled reaction and emittance of radiation.
  • Shares of Tepco declined 2.6 percent to close at 302 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday. Today is a public holiday in Japan. The shares have fallen 86 percent since the disaster.
Dan R.D.

Bursts of Fission Detected at Fukushima Reactor in Japan - NYTimes.com [02Nov11] - 0 views

  • TOKYO — Nuclear workers at the crippled Fukushima power plant raced to inject boric acid into the plant’s No. 2 reactor early Wednesday after telltale radioactive elements were detected there, and the plant’s owner admitted for the first time that fuel deep inside three stricken plants was probably continuing to experience bursts of fission.
  • The unexpected bursts — something akin to flare-ups after a major fire — are extremely unlikely to presage a large-scale nuclear reaction with the resulting large-scale production of heat and radiation. But they threaten to increase the amount of dangerous radioactive elements leaking from the complex and complicate cleanup efforts, raising startling questions about how much remains uncertain at the plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The Japanese government has said that it aims to bring the reactors to a stable state known as a “cold shutdown” by the end of the year.
  • On Wednesday, the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said that measurements of gas from inside Reactor No. 2 indicated the presence of radioactive xenon and other substances that could be the byproduct of nuclear fission. The presence of xenon 135 in particular, which has a half-life of just nine hours, seemed to indicate that fission took place very recently.
Dan R.D.

1 MW E-Cat Cold Fusion Device Test Successful [28Oct11] - 0 views

  • Well, the big day has come and gone. Andrea Rossi's one-megawatt-capable E-Cat cold fusion device has been tested in Bologna, Italy; and the unknown customer, who ran the test, is apparently happy.
  • There were some issues, so it couldn't be run at full power in self-looped mode, but what it did do was plenty impressive.
  • It ran for 5.5 hours producing 479 kW, while in self-looped mode. That means no substantial external energy was required to make it run, because it kept itself running, even while producing an excess of nearly half a megawatt. Rossi explained the reasons for this in the presentation he gave, which I videotaped and will be posting later.
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  • That's half the rated capacity, but it is still a major accomplishment for the device that was completed earlier this week -- the first of its kind on the planet.
Dan R.D.

Village goes to high court over radioactive waste | Environment | guardian.co.uk [02Nov11] - 0 views

  • The residents of a picturesque village in the south of England will on Wednesday go to the high court in a last ditch attempt to prevent thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste being dumped into a nearby landfill site.
  • The case is being brought in the name of Louise Bowen-West on behalf of the King's Cliffe community near Peterborough against secretary of state for communities and local government, Eric Pickles.
  • The minister ruled in May in favour of a plan drawn up by waste management company, Augean, to allow 250,000 tonnes of nuclear materials to be placed in the East Northamptonshire Resource Management Facility.
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  • He argued the "risk of actual harm from the development would be very low" but the villagers have brought in Richard Buxton, a Cambridge law firm that specialises in environmental and public law.
  • "Obviously the wider background is that the government is desperate to get this cheap dumping going ahead of the next lot of nuclear power stations coming online," said Clare Langan, a local villager and member of the King's Cliffe Waste Watchers campaign group.
  • Critics say the government wants to rush through the Augean plans aware that the the UK's only purpose-built low level waste repositary at Drigg in Cumbria is rapidly filling up.
  • The residents of King's Cliffe say it is unfair that their village would be the first to take radioactive material from the nuclear industry given they are 90 miles away from any power stations. They claim an underground water source runs from below the landfill site and that a number of springs, pools and streams in the village – mentioned in the Domesday Book – could be contaminated.
Dan R.D.

Japan winter power enough despite nuclear lack: government | Reuters - 0 views

  • (Reuters) - Japanese utilities will largely avoid power shortages this winter despite prolonged reactor shutdowns amid public concerns over nuclear safety, but hurdles remain for next summer, the government said on Tuesday.
  • It also unveiled ways to bridge the gap next summer, when peak-hour demand is expected to exceed supply by 16,560 megawatts, compared with the biggest gap this winter of 2,530 MW in one area, if no reactors restart by then.
  • Utilities plan to secure additional fossil-fuel capacity of 4,090 MW by next summer, but other plans depend on how far policy initiatives, such as fiscal spending, can encourage energy conservation and the use of solar and wind power, leaving the risk of rolling blackouts.
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  • Using gas and oil to make up for the loss of all nuclear power reactors will cost more than 3 trillion yen ($38 billion) a year, based on imported fuel prices and utilization rates in 2009, the government has estimated.
  • "Even if no reactors are restarted by next summer, the government would like to do its utmost through policy efforts to ensure we can meet peak-hour demand and avoid a rise in costs for energy," Trade Minister Yukio Edano said at a news conference after he and other ministers discussed chances of power shortages this winter and next summer.
  • The ongoing radiation crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co's Fukushima Daiichi plant, triggered by the March earthquake and tsunami, has shaken public confidence in nuclear safety, forcing watchdogs to set stricter regulations for restarting reactors closed for regular checks.
Dan R.D.

Reactor in Japan Restarts, a First Since the Tsunami - NYTimes.com [01Nov11] - 0 views

  • Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that set off the nuclear disaster, a popular backlash against nuclear power has halted the reopening of reactors closed because of damage at the time or unrelated glitches, or for routine inspections. Regulations require reactors to close at least every 13 months for checks, meaning more and more reactors have gone out of service, with none allowed to restart — until Tuesday.
  • Only 10 of Japan’s 54 reactors are now generating electricity, a sharp reduction for an industry that once supplied 30 percent of the country’s electricity. The shortfall in supply forced the Tokyo Electric Power Company to tell companies to slash energy use by 15 percent this summer.
  • The government has been keen to soothe local jitters about nuclear energy and enable reactor restarts. But power companies must submit results of “stress tests” that evaluate a reactor’s defenses against earthquakes, tsunamis, station blackouts and the loss of water for cooling — and they must get a go-ahead from local the government.
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  • Yasushi Furukawa, the governor of Saga Prefecture, has wavered on whether to allow restarting two idle reactors at the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant. Seen as a bellwether for the rest of Japan, Mr. Furukawa had appeared to be moving toward allowing two of the reactors to restart but his decision was put off after revelations of a scandal over faked supportive e-mails sent by employees of the local Kyushu Electric Power Company posing as pro-nuclear citizens.
  • Then early last month, a third reactor shut down at Genkai after a worker mistakenly pulled out a cable from the unit’s condenser vacuum, causing the turbine to stop. The full details of the case have not been made public.
  • Kyushu Electric called it a small error and said that the automatic shutdown it triggered had gone smoothly. But some critics warned that the episode constituted a serious safety lapse and pointed to a more widespread problem at other plants. Since then, however, the utility has submitted — and Japan’s nuclear regulators have checked and approved — operation manuals for that reactor, paving the way for a restart. “If this is a decision reached by the central government after ample checks, we accept,” Mr. Furukawa told reporters Tuesday before the restart. The reactor at the Genkai plant was started up around 11 p.m. local time and was set to reach 100 percent generating capacity on Wednesday, Kyushu Electric said. But the reactor’s run will be brief: the same reactor must be stopped in mid-December for routine maintenance.
Dan R.D.

Canadian regulators declare their nuclear plants safe in Post-Fukushima report [31Oct11] - 0 views

  • On Friday Canadian regulators published their post-Fukushima Daiichi report on nuclear safety, concluding the country’s reactors could stand up safely to the conditions that triggered the crisis in Japan. As in the United States, the Canadian government ordered inspections of its operating nuclear plants and a review of their accident preparedness in response to the March station blackout that severely damaged three reactors. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s Fukushima Task Force Report “concludes that Canadian nuclear power plants are safe and pose a very small risk to the health and safety of Canadians or to the environment.” The report identified no gaps in emergency planning or regulatory oversight related to severe accidents. Further, the CNSC said in a release the country’s reactors can “withstand conditions similar to those that triggered the Fukushima event.”
Dan R.D.

India should move ahead with nuclear energy plan: IEA | The Nuclear N-Former [31Oct11] - 0 views

  • Global energy advisory body, the International Energy Agency (IEA), says that India should not get influenced by countries that have announced changes in their nuclear energy plans in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. “India should go ahead and implement its civil
  • nuclear power plans,” Richard Jones, American diplomat and the deputy executive director of IEA told the Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview. “Of the countries like Germany, Italy and few others that have announced changes in their nuclear policy, we were not expecting them to do much in nuclear anyway.”
  • Jones said while India must “take a lesson from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and adequately address its security and safety concerns,” but should not slow down its nuclear capacity addition plans as switching to alternate fuels like gas for power generation.
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  • “China has decided to go ahead with its nuclear power plans but there still seem to be concerns in India over adding nuclear capacities using large imported reactors,” said Jones.
Dan R.D.

Vietnam, Japan nuclear project intact despite Fukushima | Reuters - 0 views

  • (Reuters) - Japan and Vietnam on Monday reaffirmed their plan to build a nuclear power plant in the Southeast Asian country using Japanese technology, even as Tokyo still struggles to put the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years under control.
  • Last October, energy-hungry Vietnam accepted Japan as a partner in the construction of two nuclear reactors in Ninh Thuan province in central Vietnam.
  • But in March, a massive earthquake and tsunami knocked out the cooling functions at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, 240 km (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, triggering fuel rod meltdowns, explosions and radiation leakage.
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  • "The Vietnamese side, welcoming such Japan's efforts, ... expressed its strong desire for the provisions of nuclear technologies from Japan," the statement said.
  • A joint statement, released after Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda met with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Tan Dung, said Japan was committed to enhance nuclear safety by sharing lessons learnt from the Fukushima accident.
  • "The Japanese side expressed its intention to provide Vietnam with the technologies that represent the world's highest level of nuclear safety," it added.
Dan R.D.

Devastating Earthquake in Eastern Turkey Fails to Shake Ankara's Nuclear Plans : TreeHu... - 0 views

  • Devastating news from eastern Turkey has riveted the country this week -- more than 500 killed and thousands left homeless by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Van province.
  • The earthquake in Van left investors in Korea worried that Turkey would call off its plans to build a nuclear power plant in the Black Sea province of Sinop, a project for which Korean firms hoped to win the construction bid, news agency dongA reported Tuesday. "The nuclear plant deal with Turkey has become very tough," it quoted an anonymous source from the Korean nuclear-power industry as saying, and added, without attribution, that the industry "expects the project to be scrapped in the wake of Sunday's powerful earthquake."
Dan R.D.

Fukushima towns struggle to store radioactive waste | Reuters [29Oct11] - 0 views

  • (Reuters) - Japanese officials in towns around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant reacted guardedly to plans announced on Saturday to build facilities to store radioactive waste from the clean-up around the plant within three years.
  • Japan aims to halve radiation over two years in places contaminated by the crisis. To do so, it may have to remove and dispose of massive amounts of radioactive soil, possibly enough to fill 23 baseball stadiums.
  • Towns near the crippled nuclear plant have barely been able to start cleaning up until now because they have been unable to convince residents about where to store the radioactive waste.
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  • "The biggest problem is whether we can win the residents' consensus," said Kazuhiro Shiga, an official working on decontamination at Minami Soma city, about 25 km (15 miles)northwest of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
  • The government has so far raised 220 billion yen ($2.9 billion) for decontamination work and the environment ministry has requested about another 460 billion yen in the budget for the fiscal year from next April. Some experts say the cleanup will cost trillions of yen.
  • The U.N. atomic watchdog suggested this month that Japan should be less conservative in cleaning up vast contaminated areas, saying that there are cleanup methods that do not require storage.
Dan R.D.

BBC News - Surprise 'critical' warning raises nuclear fears [16Mar11] - 0 views

  • Over the last few days there have been reports suggesting water levels were low and the water "boiling"; and now the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has a team of 11 experts advising in Japan, says the pool is completely dry.
  • This means the fuel rods are exposed to the air. Without water, they will get much hotter, allowing radioactive material to escape.
  • More remarkably, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), which owns the power station, has warned: "The possibility of re-criticality is not zero". If you are in any doubt as to what this means, it is that in the company's view, it is possible that enough fissile uranium is present in the cooling pond in enough density to form a critical mass - meaning that a nuclear fission chain reaction could start.
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  • The moment when fuel rods are covered with water, the situation is basically stabilised” End Quote Jasmina Vujic University of California
  • The pool lies outside the containment chamber. So if it happened, it would lead to the enhanced and sustained release of radioactive materials - though not to a nuclear explosion - with nothing to stop the radioactive particles escaping.
Dan R.D.

Decommissioning Fukushima reactors to take over 30 yrs: gov't panel - The Mainichi Dail... - 0 views

  • TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Removing the melted nuclear fuel from the crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant should start within 10 years after the plant's cold shutdown, and decommissioning is likely to take 30 years or more, a government panel projected in a draft report released Friday.
  • "We set a goal to start taking out the (core) debris within a 10-year period...and it is estimated that it would take 30 years or more (after the cold shutdown) to finish decommissioning," the draft said.
Dan R.D.

Genkai No.4 nuclear reactor stops operation [05Oct11] - 0 views

  • A reactor at the Genkai nuclear power plant in western Japan was shut down automatically on Tuesday, following a technical glitch with the unit's cooling system. Kyushu Electric Power Company, the plant's operator, says no one was hurt and there have been no changes in radiation levels monitored near the plant. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says the Number 4 reactor at the plant stopped operations at around 1:40 PM on Tuesday, after abnormalities in the steam condenser of its cooling system were signaled by equipment. Tuesday's suspension has left the utility with only one of its 6 nuclear reactors in operation. Tuesday, October 04, 2011 18:55 +0900 (JST)
Dan R.D.

TEPCO aims to stabilize Fukushima plant in six months - RT [17Apr11] - 0 views

  • The operator of Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant aims to restore the cooling systems of the reactors at the troubled facility within three months and achieve “cold shutdown” of the plant in six to nine months.
  • ''We will do our utmost to curb the release of radioactive materials by achieving a stable cooling state at the reactors and spent fuel pools,'' said TEPCO’s Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata at a news conference on Sunday, as cited by Kyodo news agency.
  • The water, which has been pumped into the reactors to cool them down, started leaking into the basements of the facility’s buildings through the cracks that appeared as a result of the earthquake. The level of water reached 85cm below ground level on Sunday in reactor 2 and threatens to overflow into the ocean. It happened despite the efforts to decant some of the water to a condenser tank at the premises of the reactor.
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  • In a week’s time, the company plans to transfer the contaminated water from reactor 2 to a nuclear waste facility that can store some 30,000 tons of such water.
Dan R.D.

Tepco President Resigns After Record $15 Billion Loss From Nuclear Crisis - Bloomberg [... - 0 views

  • Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s president was forced to resign as the Fukushima nuclear crisis triggered a loss of 1.25 trillion yen ($15 billion), the biggest for a non- financial Japanese company.
  • Shares in the company, which reported a 133.8 billion yen profit in the year ended March 31, 2010, rose 2.5 percent to 367 yen today. The stock is down 83 percent since the day before the quake and tsunami.
  • Tepco has lost 2.9 trillion yen of its market value since the March 11 quake and tsunami crippled its Dai-Ichi nuclear plant north of Tokyo. Costs for the disaster may reach as much as 11 trillion yen, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The government may need to take control, said an asset manager.
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  • “Without state support, it will be difficult for Tepco to remain as a publicly-traded company,” said Junichi Misawa, head of equity investment at Tokyo-based STB Asset Management Co., which oversees about $17 billion. “This loss can’t be a one-off event for this year as it will have to continue paying compensation.”
  • The utility known as Tepco said Managing Director Toshio Nishizawa, 60, who has been with the company 36 years, will replace Masataka Shimizu, 66, as president. He’ll lead a drive to raise 600 billion yen from selling assets and complete a restructuring plan by the end of the year. The utility booked a 1.1 trillion yen charge related to costs for the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.
  • Radiation Leaks On May 15, more than two months after the disaster at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, Tepco said conditions were worse than believed in reactor No. 1 where all the uranium fuel rods had melted.
  • Radiation leaks forcing about 50,000 families near the plant to evacuate and more than 10 million liters (2.6 million gallons) of radiation-contaminated water have leaked or been released into the sea.
  • Millions of liters of radiated water is sloshing around basements and trenches at the station from leaking reactor vessels and piping.
  • Japan’s government in April raised the severity rating of the Fukushima crisis to the highest on an international scale, the same level as the Chernobyl disaster.
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