Open Intelligence / Energy

The request is being treated pursuant to Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations Section 2.206 of the Commission's regulations. The request has been referred to the Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR). As provided by Section 2.206, appropriate action will be taken on this petition within a reasonable time. The NRR Petition Review Board (PRB) held two recorded teleconferences on April 14 and May 25, 2011, with the petitioner, during which the petitioner supplemented and clarified the petition. The results of those discussions were considered in the PRB's determination regarding the petitioner's request for immediate action and in establishing the schedule for the review of the petition. As a result, the PRB acknowledged the petitioner's concern about the impact of a Fukushima- type earthquake and tsunami on U.S. nuclear plants, noting that this concern is consistent with the NRC's mission of protecting public health and safety. Currently, the NRC's monitoring of the events that unfolded at Fukushima has resulted in the Commission establishing a senior-level task force to conduct a methodical and systematic review to evaluate currently available technical and operational information from the Fukushima events. This will allow the NRC to determine whether it should take certain near-term operational or regulatory actions potentially affecting all 104 operating reactors in the United States. In as much as this task force charge encompasses the petitioner's request, which has been interpreted by the PRB to be a determination if additional regulatory action is needed to protect public health and safety in the event of earthquake damage and loss-of-coolant accidents similar to those experienced by the nuclear power reactors in Japan resulting in dire consequences, the NRC is accepting the petition in part, and as described in this paragraph.

A copy of the petition, and the transcripts of the April 14 and May 25, 2011, teleconferences are available for inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O1 F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available documents created or received at the NRC are accessible electronically through the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) in the NRC Library at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.

The next step is to develop a card reader to reveal the radiation dose measured by the Citizen’s Dosimeter. In the event of a nuclear incident, first responders equipped with a card reader would immediately be able to measure radiation exposure for anyone carrying the Citizen’s Dosimeter. While it will be years before a card and reader can be prototyped, tested, certified and wallet-ready, NUSTL has lined up a team to support the effort, including:Engineers at StorCard, a California-based group that has previously developed a prototype credit-card floppy disk and readerNomadics, an Oklahoma engineering firmRadiation detection experts at Landauer and Oklahoma State University The Citizen’s Dosimeter represents a technological breakthrough and the next generation in radiation detection. It also demonstrates how public-private partnerships can work to produce life-saving solutions – in this case, protecting the nation from radiation resulting from an act of terrorism or natural disaster.

In SECY-08-0134, the staff discussed the shift in its approach to developing the regulatory framework for commercial reprocessing facilities. The staff noted that it would defer additional work on regulatory framework development efforts for advanced recycling reactors and focus on the framework revisions necessary to license a commercial reprocessing facility. As a result of this shift, an additional review of the initial gap analysis was warranted. The NRC staff further refined the regulatory gap analysis by focusing on commercial reprocessing and recycling using existing reactor technology. The staff summarized this analysis in SECY-09-0082. The staff's gap analysis identified 14 ``high'' priority gaps that must be resolved to establish an effective and efficient regulatory framework. The NRC staff's regulatory gap analysis considered several documents in its analysis, including: NUREG-1909, a white paper authored by the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials, titled ``Background, Status and Issues Related to the Regulation of Advanced Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycle Facilities,'' issued June 2008; correspondence from the Union of Concerned Scientists titled, ``Revising the Rules for Materials Protection, Control and Accounting;'' and a Nuclear Energy Institute white [[Page 34009]] paper titled, ``Regulatory Framework for an NRC Licensed Recycling Facility.''

We have to run when we go by the stack to enter Reactor 1. That's hard work. My legs hurt already from climbing up and down the stairs in the reactor building. Now I appreciate elevators!

All the elevators inside the reactor buildings at Fukushima I Nuke Plant are broken.

As to the worker who measured the radiation with the survey meter attached to a stick, Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University says he must have spent only 1 or 2 seconds near the stack to get 4 millisieverts radiation.Let's see. 2.78 millisieverts for one second, if the radiation was 10 sieverts/hr.

Koide thinks the radiation level is impossibly high to be coming from inside the duct or stack. He suspects there is a piece or two of the spent fuel blown out of the Spent Fuel Pool when Reactor 1 and Reactor 3 had hydrogen explosions.He also says the protection suits that workers wear do nothing to protect them from gamma rays, unless they wear lead vests, but even then only marginally.

(For more of his comment, there's a transcript of the radio program that he appeared in, in Japanese.)

Probably an ad by a subcontractor of a subcontractor of a subcontractor .... many degrees removed from TEPCO.

Niobium-95Tellurium-129Tellurium-129mTellurium-132Silver-110mCesium-136Lantanium-140Barium-140They look to be the nuclides coming out of melted fuel rods. No plutonium, strontium or uranium are mentioned.

The level of radioactive iodine (131) and cesium (134, 137) is also markedly high in Kanto. It is particularly high in Tochigi and Ibaraki Prefectures, and it is higher in Tokyo than in Saitama or Chiba. The area with the elevated level of radioactive fallout includes Shizuoka and Nagano Prefectures. For details for other prefectures, please go to the Ministry of Education website.

"We cannot associate low levels of Strontium-90 in fish in the Connecticut River with Vermont Yankee-related radioactive materials without other supporting evidence," the report said. MORE ANALYSIS NEEDED The Health Department asked for additional analysis on the fish obtained on June 9, 2010 that contained the strontium-90 and also on other fish samples. These analyses will take weeks to complete, the Health Department said, noting it is working to obtain additional fish for testing much farther upstream in the Connecticut River. The Connecticut River divides Vermont and New Hampshire before running through Massachusetts and Connecticut. Vermont Yankee is located in Vernon, Vermont, near the border between Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts about 110 miles northwest of Boston.

Strontium-90 and other human made radioactive materials come from the fairly constant release of very low quantities from medical and industrial users of radioactive materials, and from infrequent releases such as above-ground nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s, and the nuclear reactor accidents at Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011. Radioactive materials are nothing new for Vermont Yankee. In January 2010, Entergy said it discovered a radioactive tritium leak at the plant. The company stopped that leak in March 2010 but not before the state Senate, which was then led by now Governor Shumlin, voted to block the state from allowing the plant to run beyond March 2012.

According to Kyodo News Japanese, the room is called the "train room" by TEPCO.

She (I think it is she) had heard rumors that the radiation was high near the pile of leaf compost bags in the center, so she went there with a personal survey meter and a camera, and uploaded the video on Youtube. That was in late June. Then, more citizens went to garden centers in other prefectures to measure the radiation, and alerted the municipal governments. And the governments had to act.

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.

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.

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.

2. America’s Next Top Energy Innovator

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.

The NDA denied there were any repercussions for the troubled Thorp reprocessing plant, although Thorp is also involved in generating Mox fuel, which is made from plutonium and uranium.Tony Fountain, chief executive of the NDA, told workers on Wednesday morning: "The reason for this [closure] is directly related to the tragic events in Japan following the tsunami and its ongoing impact on the power markets. As a consequence we no longer have a customer for this facility, or funding."

He admitted that the plant had suffered "many years of disappointing performance" that has been funded by the taxpayer. He said the key to attempts to save the plant in recent years had been the commitment of Japanese utilities to reusing nuclear fuel, and their support for the UK as a "centre of excellence". But with the crisis in the Japanese nuclear industry, that route is no longer viable.