Open Intelligence / Energy

As we continue to learn about and understand the implications of the Fukushima event, here are five realities that are sometimes lost in the debate:Eliminating nuclear energy is not realistic if we want to maintain our quality of life.

omes from nuclear energy, while about 68 percent comes from greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels like coal. Nuclear plants continuously produce large amounts of electricity and make up about 70 percent of America's emissions-free generation. Wind and solar make up 8 percent and .01 percent, respectively. Solar, wind and nuclear energy all play a valuable role in our energy mix, but currently, nuclear plants are the only large sources of emissions-free generation that can provide the amount of power we need to keep our homes and businesses running 24 hours per day.Nuclear energy also helps keep electricity costs low. Including the costs of operations, maintenance and fuel, nuclear energy has the lowest production cost of any major energy source. For the past 15 years, the cost of nuclear fuel has remained steadily lower than oil, natural gas and even coal. Of course, these savings, and the benefits of being non-emitting, are realized by utility customers.

Day-to-day activities present a greater health threat than a local nuclear plant.The anti-nuclear activists often invoke perceived "dangers" associated with nuclear plants. A review of the facts, however, tells a vastly different story regarding actual risk.In 2010, almost 34,000 people in the United States died in auto accidents. That's about one death every 15 minutes. In the past 60 years, while nuclear energy supplied American electricity, annual fatalities from aircraft crashes ranged from a high of 3,214 deaths in 1972 to a low of 771 deaths in 2004.

Countries with atomic power plants would be encouraged to host international safety review missions, under a draft U.N. action plan that may disappoint those who had hoped for strong measures to prevent a repeat of Japan's nuclear crisis.

Seeking the middle ground between states advocating more binding global rules and others wanting to keep safety as a strictly national responsibility, the U.N. nuclear agency appears to have gradually watered down its own proposals.The document from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the third draft presented to IAEA member states over the last few weeks, outlines a series of steps to help improve nuclear safety after the Fukushima accident almost six months ago.

The latest version puts increased emphasis on the voluntary nature of the proposals, highlighting resistance among many countries against any move toward mandatory outside inspections of their nuclear energy installations.The changes were made following feedback from member state diplomats of the Vienna-based U.N. body. The 35-nation board of the IAEA is expected to debate the final proposal at a September 12-16 meeting in the Austrian capital.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is sending more inspectors to a Virginia nuclear power plant to further review what damage last week's 5.8 magnitude earthquake may have caused.

North Anna station near Louisa, Va., about 40 miles northwest from plant operator's Dominion's Richmond headquarters. The plant is less than six miles from the August 23 earthquake's epicenter in Mineral, Va.

The NRC stressed that the expanded investigation does not necessarily mean the plant is any less safe, but they have formed an Augmented Inspection Team to conduct the investigation. According to the NRC, an AIT is formed by the NRC "to review more significant events or issues at NRC-licensed facilities." This is an additional investigation after the NRC initially sent a seismic expert and another structural expert, according to an NRC statement released Monday, to "assist the agency's resident inspectors on site."

just how far did the radioactive plume travel? On the 27 March Romul Mărgineanu, from the Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH) in Romania, and colleagues, began to collect samples of rainwater from Braşov and Slănic-Prahova. And on 5 April they also started to collect samples of sheep and goat's milk from the same regions. The samples were all taken to the IFIN-HH's underground laboratory at the Unirea salt mine in Slănic-Prahova, for analysis. Inside this ultra-low radiation environment the levels of iodine131 and caesium137 were measured, using a high resolution gamma-ray spectrometer.

None of the samples contained caesium137 at detectable levels. However, iodine131 was present at up to 0.75 Bq per litre in rainwater, and up to 5.2 Bq per litre in milk. "The level of I-131 in sheep and goat milk was higher than in rain water due to bioaccumulation," explains Mărgineanu. "Bioaccumulation occurs when an organism absorbs a toxic substance – chemical or radioactive – at a rate greater than that at which the substance is lost."

Such levels were two to three orders of magnitude below any intervention limits, for example the limit set for drinking water in Japan was 300 Bq per litre for adults and children and 100 Bq per litre for infants. In this case weather conditions played a role in keeping the radiation levels low. In the weeks following the accident Romania only experienced very light rain; had the rain been heavier more radiation may have been precipitated out. The results are published in Environmental Research Letters.

As Canadians learned about dangerous radiation falling on them in rain on Tuesday as far east as Toronto registered at 20,000 CPM, equivalent to the highly targeted dose of radiation for cancer radiotherapy,  the Fukushima catastrophe escalated even higher Wednesday with evidence that the ground is cracking under the crippled nuclear power plant, causing radioactive steam to escape, "very serious and alarming" according to Anissa Naouai's guest on Russia Today, Dr. Robert Jacobs, Professor of nuclear history at Hiroshima Peace Institute. 

Fukushima nuclear plant workers have reported that the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is already escaping through the cracks that Dr. Jacobs says is very serious and alarming development because it has happened after two large earthquakes over the past few weeks according to Russia Today. (See embedded Russia Today interviewing Dr. Jacobs on Youtube video on this page left.) "There was a 6.4 earthquake on the 31st of July and a 6.0 earthquake on August 12th," Dr. Jacobs told Russia Today's Naoiai.

"What this indicates is there may have been some breaking of the pipes and some of the structures underground that happened during these earthquakes," he said. "There could be radioactive water that is venting into the soil and what's more, as cracks are opening, the steam and radioactivity is working its way up," he said.

UPDATE: Nine Mile Point 2 nuclear facility shut down twice in 1 week due to a "higher than normal leak".  On August 8th the plant was shut down, then again on August 11th.  Nine Mile Point 2 is situated on Lake Ontario and was leaking into it.  Could that be the source of the extremely high radiation found in Toronto area rainwater? 9wsyr.com (WSYR-TV) -- The Nine Mile Nuclear Plant's unit two is back up and running. The plant needed to be shut down twice this week because of leaks, but Friday night all the repairs were complete.

Inspections have assured that there are no other issues and the unit is back up to about 24 percent power.   It will take a little more time to get the unit back up to 100 percent.   Representatives say the leaks were never a risk to the public, or to plant employees.

Nine Mile Point 2 shut down for second time in a weekAugust 11, 2011

After the nuclear catastrophe that followed the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last spring, some Central Virginia activists cautioned that a similar nightmare could unfold right here at the Dominion-operated North Anna nuclear generating plant in Louisa County. Despite Dominion's assurances that the plant made it through the August 23 earthquake unscathed, activists contend that the quake, which measured 5.8 on the Richter Scale and had an epicenter just eleven miles from the plant, may have been more catastrophic than anyone is admitting. New information bolsters their fears.

On Monday, August 29, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that the quake may, in fact, have produced force that exceeded the North Anna plant's specifications and that the Commission is sending a special Augmented Inspection Team to assess the damage.

Initial reviews determined the plant may have exceeded the ground motion for which it was designed," says the release, which also assures that "no significant damage to safety systems has been identified."

High levels of cesium isotopes are cropping up in dust at 42 incineration plants in seven prefectures, including Chiba and Iwate, an Environment Ministry survey of the Kanto and Tohoku regions shows.

According to the report, released late Saturday, the highest cesium levels in the dust ranged from 95,300 becquerels in Fukushima Prefecture and 70,800 becquerels in Chiba Prefecture to 30,000 becquerels in Iwate Prefecture.

But even the lower levels in the dust exceeded 8,000 becquerels per kilogram in Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Tokyo. The 16-prefecture survey covered 469 incinerator operators in Tohoku and Kanto from late June, and was reported to a panel of experts at the ministry that is discussing how to safely bury incinerator ash and dust with cesium levels above 8,000 becquerels per kilogram.

The earthquake last Tuesday in Virginia may have produced stronger shaking at the North Anna nuclear plant than the reactors were designed to withstand, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sent additional inspectors to determine what steps are needed to determine if there is damage. No significant damage has been identified so far.

The plant owner, Dominion, reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday that the plant was in an “unanalyzed condition” because preliminary laboratory analysis of a mechanical sensor called a scratch plate showed that the ground motion “potentially exceeded” the level for which the plant was designed.

James W. Norvelle, a Dominion spokesman, said an initial “walkdown” had found some thermal insulation shaken off pipes carrying steam or hot water and damage to some electrical conductors on top of a transformer, but no other damage. Plant personnel are now a quarter of the way through a detailed inspection of plant systems, and a third of the way through inspection of walls, floors and other structures, and have yet to find damage. Initial walkdowns were done immediately after the earthquake and found nothing.

Construction of an underground barrier at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant to prevent leaking radioactive materials from reaching ground water will begin this year and be completed in about two years, plans released on Aug. 31 revealed.

The plans, announced by plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), include use of a workboat and a temporary pier by the plant to speed up construction. According to the utility, the barrier will be built of between 600 and 700 22-meter-long steel sheet piles driven into the ground and stretch some 800 meters. The approximate 10-meter space between the steel barrier and the existing dike will also be filled with concrete.

Simulations conducted using benign substances that mimic the properties of radioactive materials showed the barrier at the coastal plant would stop the dangerous materials from reaching the ocean. The barrier is expected to last for 30 years.

France's CEREA has the simulation map of ground deposition of cesium-137 from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident on its "Fukushima" page. It not only shows Japan but also the entire northern Pacific Rim, from Russian Siberia to Alaska to the West Coast of the US to the entire US. According to the map, the US, particularly the West Coast and particularly California, may be more contaminated with radioactive cesium than the western half of Japan or Hokkaido. It looks more contaminated than South Korea or China. Canada doesn't look too well either, particularly along the border with US on the western half.

From CEREA's Fukushima page: Atmospheric dispersion of radionuclides from the Fukushima-Daichii nuclear power plant CEREA, joint laboratory École des Ponts ParisTech and EdF R&D Victor Winiarek, Marc Bocquet, Yelva Roustan, Camille Birman, Pierre Tran Map of ground deposition of caesium-137 for the Fukushima-Daichii accident. The simulation was performed with a specific version of the numerical atmospheric chemistry and transport model Polyphemus/Polair3D. The parametrisations used for the transport and physical removal of the radionuclides are described in [1,2,3,4]. The magnitude of the deposition field is uncertain and the simulated values of deposited radionuclides could be significantly different from the actual deposition. In particular, the source term remains uncertain. Therefore, these results should be seen as preliminary and they are likely to be revised as new information become available to better constrain the source term and when radionuclides data can be used to evaluate the model simulation results.

The page also has the animated simulation of cesium-137 dispersion from March 11 to April 6, 2011. If the Japanese think they are the only ones who have the radiation and radioactive fallout from the accident, they are very much mistaken, if the simulation is accurate. (Meteorological institutes and bureaus in Austria, Germany, and Norway all had similar simulation maps.) Radioactive materials spewed out of Fukushima I Nuke Plant went up and away on the jet stream, reaching the other side of the Pacific. When the fallout from explosions (March 14, 15) reached the US West Coast, it came with an unusually heavy rainfall in California.

Environmental experts in Japan are warning of new fallout from the country's nuclear crisis. Radioactive waste is piling up at several sewerage plants, well away from the crippled Fukushima reactor. Months after the tsunami and earthquake that triggered the nuclear meltdown, the government still has no policy on what to do with the waste.

A strong aftershock emanating from the Mineral area shook up Central Virginians at about 5 a.m. today. There now have been about 15 aftershocks of varying severity since the magnitude 5.8 quake based in Louisa County on Tuesday damaged homes, led to the shutdown of two county schools and sparked close scrutiny of the North Anna nuclear station.

The aftershocks following the Aug. 23 temblor ranged from magnitude 2.2 to 4.2 until a 4.5 early Aug. 25 that prompted authorities to go back and re-examine some buildings that had already been inspected after the 5.8. Thursday's 5 a.m. aftershock was estimated at magnitude 3.4. Louisa officials released new, higher damage estimates this week, but it's not known if this morning's aftershock caused any further problems.

In another indication of the power of last week's magnitude-5.8 earthquake, officials at North Anna Power Station said yesterday that 25 of 27 vertical steel casks that hold highly radioactive spent fuel shifted on their pads.

The rods are bundled together in 8-inch by 14-foot fuel assemblies. There are 157 fuel assemblies in each reactor.

Other newer steel and concrete casks that sit horizontally on pads sustained some minor "cosmetic" damage, Zuercher said. "Everything there is intact and easily fixable." Thirteen of those casks also contain spent fuel. The fuel for North Anna's two reactors is enriched uranium dioxide, compressed into small ceramic pellets and stacked in metal-alloy tubes called fuel rods.

Remember the time when the TEPCO/government complex pretended that it would fill the Containment Vessels of Reactors 1, 2 and 3 with water to cool the Reactor Pressure Vessels inside? It was late April, TEPCO started to pour an enormous amount of water in the RPV of Reactor 1 to fill the Vessel (as the water would leak into the CV). The operation was dubbed "water entombment".

We know how it quickly ended. TEPCO finally managed to actually measure the water level inside the CV and RPV of Reactor 1, and found that there was hardly any water in either of them - i.e. both the CV and the RPV of Reactor 1 were broken, kaput. Of 10,000 tonnes of water that TEPCO poured into the CV of Reactor 1, 3,000 tonnes were discovered in the basement.

But now, the water entombment is back in discussion in conjunction with decommissioning the reactors at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, according to Mainichi Shinbun (8/31/2011).

WASHINGTON (AP) — The risk that an earthquake would cause a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is greater than previously thought, 24 times as high in one case, according to an AP analysis of preliminary government data. The nation's nuclear regulator believes a quarter of America's reactors may need modifications to make them safer.The threat came into sharp focus last week, when shaking from the largest earthquake to hit Virginia in 117 years appeared to exceed what the North Anna nuclear power plant northwest of Richmond was built to sustain.

The two North Anna reactors are among 27 in the eastern and central U.S. that a preliminary Nuclear Regulatory Commission review has said may need upgrades. That's because those plants are more likely to get hit with an earthquake larger than the one their design was based on. Just how many nuclear power plants are more vulnerable won't be determined until all operators recalculate their own seismic risk based on new assessments by geologists, something the agency plans to request later this year. The NRC on Thursday issued a draft of that request for public comment.

The review, launched well before the East Coast quake and the Japan nuclear disaster in March, marks the first complete update to seismic risk in years for the nation's 104 existing reactors, despite research showing greater hazards

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will carry oil from tar sands in Canada across the entire midwestern United States to Port Arthur, Texas. It could eventually transport 900,000 barrels of oil a day and without government funding of any kind has the potential to create 20,000 jobs starting early in 2012. The greens want President Obama to kill it of course; the political blindness and the wishful thinking that so frequently vitiates green policy proposals is fully on display.

I will only point to a study by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers: “Oil sands crude is six per cent more GHG intensive than the U.S. crude supply average on a wells-to-wheels basis.” Only 6 percent. Yes, that study comes from the oil industry; the green studies and the oil company studies are both suspect and need outside review.

the Washington Post want to throw the greens under the bus on this one. “Tar sands crude is not appealing; it is low-grade, it is hard to extract, it is difficult to refine and it produces a lot of carbon emissions. But if it is to be burned anyway, there’s little reason for America to reject it, as long as Keystone XL can transport it across the plains safely.”

Dominion Says Crack Found at North Anna Containment Building, Bloomberg, September 2, 2011:

Dominion Resources Inc. found a small crack on a wall with “no safety significance” in a room of a containment building at the North Anna nuclear plant [...] Dominion discovered a “cosmetic” crack in a horizontal construction joint on a wall that is in the containment building, [Dan Stoddard, the Dominion's senior vice president for nuclear operations] said. [...] Dominion invited reporters to tour the plant’s control room, transformer and generator areas. Company officials didn’t take the group into the reactor containment structure or the building that houses a cooling pool for spent fuel because that would have been “more complex and more time-consuming,” Stoddard said. [...]

Using the supercomputer program called SPRINTARS, researchers at Kyushu University and Tokyo University created the simulation of how radioactive materials from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant may have dispersed throughout the northern hemisphere. The researcher say their simulation fit the actual measurements. It was published in the Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere (SOLA) under the title "A numerical simulation of global transport of atmospheric particles emitted from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant" in June. You can read the paper at this link (PDF file). You can also view the animation, here, and the press release in Japanese here.

Their simulation also shows, like France's CEREA, radioactive materials from March 14/15 release reached the west coast of North America on March 18. The researchers attribute the rapid dispersion of radioactive materials from Fukushima to the unusually strong jet stream. Also, on March 14/15, there was a low pressure on the east cost of Japan, which created a strong updraft that lifted the radioactive materials to the jet stream. The relative scale is set with the density of radioactive materials at Fukushima I Nuke Plant as 1. By the time it reached North America, it was between 0.000001 and 0.00000001.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB) - Tip calls and e-mails to our newsroom spawned a probe into contaminated soil in Niagara County. Now, a state lawmaker is calling for an investigation, and one expert in radioactive waste management is expressing concern. The controversy involves radioactive road fill in Niagara Falls and there are still lots of questions.

Contractor David Pfeiffer, who owns Man O' Trees Contracting, dropped a bombshell on the reconstruction of Lewiston Road in Niagara Falls. "The truth is there is a health hazard on that project and it's not being properly cleaned up," said Pfeiffer.

He tells News 4 that he's learned that radiation levels, in some spots, are 10 times higher than the normal background levels for that area. Pfeiffer said, "We were told not to chase the radiation, although it is on all of the people's lawns."