Open Intelligence / Energy

Reverse osmosis has been identified by EPA as a “best available technology” (BAT) and Small System Compliance Technology (SSCT) for uranium, radium, gross alpha, and beta particles and photon emitters. It can remove up to 99 percent of these radionuclides, as well as many other contaminants (e.g., arsenic, nitrate, and microbial contaminants). Reverse osmosis units can be automated and compact making them appropriate for small systems. via EPA, Radionuclides in Drinking Water

However, EPA designed its recommendations for the contaminants typically found in municipal water systems, so it doesn’t specify Iodine-131 by name. The same document goes on to say, “Reverse osmosis does not remove gaseous contaminants such as carbon dioxide and radon.” Iodine-131 escapes from damaged nuclear plants as a gas, and this is why it disperses so quickly through the atmosphere. It is captured as a gas in atmospheric water, falls to the earth in rain and enters the water supply.

Dissolved gases and materials that readily turn into gases also can easily pass through most reverse osmosis membranes,” according to the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For this reason, “many reverse osmosis units have an activated carbon unit to remove or reduce the concentration of most organic compounds.” Activated Carbon

That raises the next question: does activated carbon remove iodine-131? There is some evidence that it does. Scientists have used activated carbon to remove iodine-131 from the liquid fuel for nuclear solution reactors. And Carbon air filtration is used by employees of Perkin Elmer, a leading environmental monitoring and health safety firm, when they work with iodine-131 in closed quarters. At least one university has adopted Perkin Elmer’s procedures. Activated carbon works by absorbing contaminants, and fixing them, as water passes through it. It has a disadvantage, however: it eventually reaches a load capacity and ceases to absorb new contaminants.

Ion Exchange The EPA also recommends ion exchange for removing radioactive compounds from drinking water. The process used in water softeners, ion exchange removes contaminants when water passes through resins that contain sodium ions. The sodium ions readily exchange with contaminants.

Ion exchange is particularly recommended for removing Cesium-137, which has been found in rain samples in the U.S., but not yet in drinking water here. Some resins have been specifically designed for capturing Cesium-137, and ion exchange was used to clean up legacy nuclear waste from an old reactor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site (pdf).

I worked at Hamaoka nuclear plant for a little over 5 years, but it was not the only time I’d worked at a power plant. Before Hamaoka, I spent my 30s working at a nearby nuclear plant for about 10 years in the 1980’s. At that time, I did not work at just one site but was moving from one plant to another to do regular maintenance work. Recently, that kind of people are called “Nuclear gypsies” with a bit of contempt and in that period I was living as one of those. Two years after I began the wandering life of a gypsy, I entered for the first time the core container of a steam generator. At the time I was working at the Genkai Nuclear Power Plant in Saga Prefecture. [Editor's note: In brief, there is a containment building within the plant. This houses the core and the steam generator.] The core is the part of the reactor where uranium fuel undergoes nuclear fission. It generates heat which is then passed to The steam generator which produces the steam to power the turbines which turn the generators elsewhere in the plant . The level of radioactivity in the containment building is very high compared to elsewhere [in the plant]. My job involved entering [the generator] and installing a robot monitor that would enable examination of whether there was any damage in the steam generator.

Actually what happened on the day was that another person replaced me and entered the steam generator to install the robot. After the installation was completed, there was a problem in that the robot wouldn’t respond and thus could not be operated from outside. There are many small holes in the walls of the central part of the steam generator and the six (I believe there were six) ‘legs’ of a robot, operated via a remote control, should be able to survey it through those holes. The employees in charge of supervising the installation concluded that there had been a problem in properly positioning the robot’s legs.

If the ‘legs’ are not completely inserted and the robot is left in that position, it could fall down at any time. If that happens, it spells the loss of a precision machine that's said to be worth several hundred million yen. That’s why I was sent in to enter the generator, on very short notice, to replace the robot back to its correct operating position before that happened. I started putting on the gear to enter the housing at a spot near the steam generator. Two workers helped me put it on. I was already wearing two layers of work clothes, and on top of those, I put on Tyvek protective gear made of paper and vinyl, and an airline respirator. Plus, I wrapped a lot of vinyl tape around my neck, my wrists and my ankles, to block even the slightest opening.

Once I finished putting on the protective gear — which honestly looks like an astronaut suit — I headed toward the housing. When I arrived at the area near the housing, two workers were waiting. They were employees of a company called the Japanese Society for Non-Destructive Inspection [JSNDI] and, to my surprise, despite the area being highly radioactive, they were wearing nothing but plain working clothes. They weren’t even wearing masks. The person who appeared to be in charge invited me over and, after a look at my eyes inside the mask, nodded his head a few times. I guess just looking into my eyes he was able to determine that I’d be able to handle working in the core.

He and I went to the steam generator together.

The base of the steam generator more or less reached my shoulder, at slightly less than 1.5m. At the bottom, there was a manhole. The manhole was open, and I immediately realized I would have to climb up into it.

The JSNDI employee in charge put his arm around me and together we approached the manhole. We looked over the edge and peered in. Inside was dark, and the air was dense and stagnant. It felt as though something sinister was living inside. My expression glazed over. A slight sensation of dread came over me. As I approached the manhole, I noticed a ringing in my ears and felt reluctant to go in. When I looked inside, I saw that the robot was attached to the wall indicated by the [JSNDI] employee. It was not properly attached, which is why I had been sent in.

The robot was square-shaped, 40 cm on each side and 20 cm deep. It was called a ‘spider robot’. The JSNDI employee put his face at the edge of the manhole, a third of his face peering in, and diligently explained what I had to do. There was little awareness at the time of the dangers to workers of radiation exposure, but even so I was concerned about the bold act of the employee, who looked inside the housing with me. He continued looking inside, unfazed, and I remember wondering why he wasn’t scared. I was almost completely covered while he wasn’t even wearing a mask. […]

I stood up, climbed the ladder, and pushed my upper body through the manhole. In that second, something grabbed at my head and squeezed hard. A pounding in my ear started right away.

One worker said that right after he entered a nuclear reactor he heard a noise like a moving crab. “zawa,zawa,zawa…” He said that he could still hear this noise after he finished the work. Even after the inspection work, when he went back home, he couldn’t forget that noise. The man ended up having a nervous breakdown. A writer who heard this story spoke to this man and wrote a mystery novel based on that experience. The title of the book is “The crab of the nuclear reactor”. It was published in 1981 and was very popular among us.

I never heard such a crab-like noise but I had the feeling that my head was being tightly constricted and deep in my ears I heard very high-tempo echoes like a sutra “gan, gan, gan”. When I entered the steam generator I stood up all of a sudden and my helmet hit the ceiling. So I had to bend my neck and hold both the arms of the robot in the darkish room. “OK” I screamed. So the robot was unlocked and its feet jumped out of the hole. The entire robot was not as heavy as I had thought. After I matched its feet position in the holes I gave them another OK sign and so it was positioned in the hole. In the dark, when I verified that all the feet had entered into the holes I gave them another OK and jumped out of the manhole. […]

Once outside,] I was almost in shock but looked at the alarm meter and saw that it had recorded a value equal to 180, when the maximum it can record is 200. In only 15 seconds, I was exposed to an unbelievably high level of radiation, 180 millirem. At that time the unit ‘millirem' was used while now it’s different. Now everybody uses sievert. That time I was in charge of an inspection work that lasted about 1 month. After that I worked in another nuclear reactor but even on the second time I couldn’t get through the fear and experienced the same creepy noise.

Gollnick use to have a story about two policemen who found a package labeled Radioactive Material. the two officers started to exhibit symptoms of acute radiation sickness, but when the package was monitored and opened it was found to be empty.

4. Brief Overview of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing (from June 16 hearing charter)  Nuclear reactors generate about 20 percent of the electricity used in the U.S. No new nuclear plants have been ordered in the U.S. since 1973, but there is renewed interest in nuclear energy both because it could reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and because it produces no greenhouse gas emissions.  One of the barriers to increased use of nuclear energy is concern about nuclear waste. Every nuclear power reactor produces approximately 20 tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste every year. Today, that waste is stored on-site at the nuclear reactors in water-filled cooling pools or, at some sites, after sufficient cooling, in dry casks above ground. About 50,000 metric tons of commercial spent fuel is being stored at 73 sites in 33 states. A recent report issued by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that this stored waste could be vulnerable to terrorist attacks.

Under the current plan for long-term disposal of nuclear waste, the waste from around the country would be moved to a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which is now scheduled to open around 2012. The Yucca Mountain facility continues to be a subject of controversy. But even if it opened and functioned as planned, it would have only enough space to store the nuclear waste the U.S. is expected to generate by about 2010.  Consequently, there is growing interest in finding ways to reduce the quantity of nuclear waste. A number of other nations, most notably France and Japan, ''reprocess'' their nuclear waste. Reprocessing involves separating out the various components of nuclear waste so that a portion of the waste can be recycled and used again as nuclear fuel (instead of disposing of all of it). In addition to reducing the quantity of high-level nuclear waste, reprocessing makes it possible to use nuclear fuel more efficiently. With reprocessing, the same amount of nuclear fuel can generate more electricity because some components of it can be used as fuel more than once.

The greatest drawback of reprocessing is that current reprocessing technologies produce weapons-grade plutonium (which is one of the components of the spent fuel). Any activity that increases the availability of plutonium increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.  Because of proliferation concerns, the U.S. decided in the 1970s not to engage in reprocessing. (The policy decision was reversed the following decade, but the U.S. still did not move toward reprocessing.) But the Department of Energy (DOE) has continued to fund research and development (R&D) on nuclear reprocessing technologies, including new technologies that their proponents claim would reduce the risk of proliferation from reprocessing.

The report accompanying H.R. 2419, the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2006, which the House passed in May, directed DOE to focus research in its Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative program on improving nuclear reprocessing technologies. The report went on to state, ''The Department shall accelerate this research in order to make a specific technology recommendation, not later than the end of fiscal year 2007, to the President and Congress on a particular reprocessing technology that should be implemented in the United States. In addition, the Department shall prepare an integrated spent fuel recycling plan for implementation beginning in fiscal year 2007, including recommendation of an advanced reprocessing technology and a competitive process to select one or more sites to develop integrated spent fuel recycling facilities.''

During floor debate on H.R. 2419, the House defeated an amendment that would have cut funding for research on reprocessing. In arguing for the amendment, its sponsor, Mr. Markey, explicitly raised the risks of weapons proliferation. Specifically, the amendment would have cut funding for reprocessing activities and interim storage programs by $15.5 million and shifted the funds to energy efficiency activities, effectively repudiating the report language. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 110–312.

But nuclear reprocessing remains controversial, even within the scientific community. In May 2005, the American Physical Society (APS) Panel on Public Affairs, issued a report, Nuclear Power and Proliferation Resistance: Securing Benefits, Limiting Risk. APS, which is the leading organization of the Nation's physicists, is on record as strongly supporting nuclear power. But the APS report takes the opposite tack of the Appropriations report, stating, ''There is no urgent need for the U.S. to initiate reprocessing or to develop additional national repositories. DOE programs should be aligned accordingly: shift the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative R&D away from an objective of laying the basis for a near-term reprocessing decision; increase support for proliferation-resistance R&D and technical support for institutional measures for the entire fuel cycle.''  Technological as well as policy questions remain regarding reprocessing. It is not clear whether the new reprocessing technologies that DOE is funding will be developed sufficiently by 2007 to allow the U.S. to select a technology to pursue. There is also debate about the extent to which new technologies can truly reduce the risks of proliferation.

 It is also unclear how selecting a reprocessing technology might relate to other pending technology decisions regarding nuclear energy. For example, the U.S. is in the midst of developing new designs for nuclear reactors under DOE's Generation IV program. Some of the potential new reactors would produce types of nuclear waste that could not be reprocessed using some of the technologies now being developed with DOE funding.

5. Brief Overview of Economics of Reprocessing

The economics of reprocessing are hard to predict with any certainty because there are few examples around the world on which economists might base a generalized model.  Some of the major factors influencing the economic competitiveness of reprocessing are: the availability and cost of uranium, costs associated with interim storage and long-term disposal in a geologic repository, reprocessing plant construction and operating costs, and costs associated with transmutation, the process by which certain parts of the spent fuel are actively reduced in toxicity to address long-term waste management.

Costs associated with reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-powered plants could help make nuclear power, including reprocessing, economically competitive with other sources of electricity in a free market.

 It is not clear who would pay for reprocessing in the U.S.

Three recent studies have examined the economics of nuclear power. In a study completed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003, The Future of Nuclear Power, an interdisciplinary panel, including Professor Richard Lester, looked at all aspects of nuclear power from waste management to economics to public perception. In a study requested by the Department of Energy and conducted at the University of Chicago in 2004, The Economic Future of Nuclear Power, economist Dr. Donald Jones and his colleague compared costs of future nuclear power to other sources, and briefly looked at the incremental costs of an advanced fuel cycle. In a 2003 study conducted by a panel including Matthew Bunn (a witness at the June 16 hearing) and Professor Steve Fetter, The Economics of Reprocessing vs. Direct Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel, the authors took a detailed look at the costs associated with an advanced fuel cycle. All three studies seem more or less to agree on cost estimates: the incremental cost of nuclear electricity to the consumer, with reprocessing, could be modest—on the order of 1–2 mills/kWh (0.1–0.2 cents per kilowatt-hour); on the other hand, this increase represents an approximate doubling (at least) of the costs attributable to spent fuel management, compared to the current fuel cycle (no reprocessing). Where they strongly disagree is on how large an impact this incremental cost will have on the competitiveness of nuclear power. The University of Chicago authors conclude that the cost of reprocessing is negligible in the big picture, where capital costs of new plants dominate all economic analyses. The other two studies take a more skeptical view—because new nuclear power would already be facing tough competition in the current market, any additional cost would further hinder the nuclear power industry, or become an unacceptable and unnecessary financial burden on the government.

6. Background

Enter Rostam Ghasemi. While that might not be breaking news to some, the appointment of Ghasemi (who was also Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s chief) as OPEC’s new president is sure to rock the boat

It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Ghasemi might spill the beans as to what Saudi Arabia’s actual crude oil reserves are, hence sending the energy-hungry West into damage-control.

Ghasemi is currently subject to US, EU and Australian sanctions and his assets have been blacklisted by US Treasury and western powers. After all, this man belongs to the wing of the Iranian military which threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if Iran is threatened by a foreign power (ie. Israel or the United States). It’s worthwhile to note that 40% of the world’s oil is shipped through that strait. Heres the kicker. Most of that oil comes from Saudi Arabia. War or no war, it seems that supplies are going to dry up regardless due to increased domestic consumption levels. Just last year alone, the Saudi’s consumed more than 2.4 million barrels of oil a day. That’s a 50% increase just within the last seven years. Yep, it’s going fast.

"There have been massive radiation spikes in Canada because of Fukushima," said Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. "The authorities don't want people to have an understanding of this. The government of Canada tends to pooh-pooh the dangers of nuclear power because it is a promoter of nuclear energy and uranium sales."

Meanwhile, government officials claimed there was nothing to worry about. "The quantities of radioactive materials reaching Canada as a result of the Japanese nuclear incident are very small and do not pose any health risk to Canadians," Health Canada says on its website. "The very slight increases in radiation across the country have been smaller than the normal day-to-day fluctuations from background radiation." In fact, Health Canada's own data shows this isn't true. The iodine-131 level in the air in Sidney peaked at 3.6 millibecquerels per cubic metre on March 20. That's more than 300 times higher than the background level, which is 0.01 or fewer millibecquerels per cubic metre.

Edwards has advised the federal auditor-general's office and the Ontario government on nuclear-power issues and is a math professor at Montreal's Vanier College.

It's not the risk to an individual that's the problem but how much society is at risk. When you are exposing millions of people to an insult, even if the average dose is quite small, we are going to see fatal health effects," he said.

nowhere in the report does the company say anything about melted fuel, broken reactors, water in the basements, or extremely high radiation at certain locations in the plant.But the report goes on to describe the elaborate backup pump system and power system as if what they are dealing with is normal (i.e. without cracks or holes at the bottom) reactors with intact fuel rods inside the RPVs with control rods safely deployed in a clean nuclear power plant, and all they need to worry is how they can continue the cooling; or as if the salt-encrusted molten mess of everything that was inside the RPV behaves just the same as normal fuel rods in a normal reactor.

Why was TEPCO asked by NISA to submit this report to begin with? So that the national government can begin the discussion with the local municipalities within the 20-kilometer radius evacuation zone for the return of the residents to their towns and villages. The discussion is to begin this month, and TEPCO's report will be used to reassure the residents that Fukushima I Nuke Plant is so stable now with the solid plans (to be approved by NISA, which no doubt will happen very soon) to cool the fuels in the reactors even in case of an emergency.

Remember the mayor of Naraha-machi, where Fukushima II Nuclear Power Plant is located? He wants TEPCO to restart the plant so that 5,000 jobs will return to the town. He also wanted to invite the government to build the final processing plant of spent nuclear fuels in his town. He would be the first one to highly approve of the report so that his town can continue to prosper with nuclear money.

"We are aware of the need to show our policy," a NISA official said. However, the agency does not appear to be close to deciding on where the contaminated waste will end up.

That delay has led to the secrecy among municipal officials. "It would be difficult to gain the consent of residents when we try to secure a waste disposal site," a Fukushima municipal official said. "The national government does not mention anything about how we can specifically cope with the situation under such circumstances." The situation is expected to worsen.

At 8:15 a.m. the atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima. It killed 70,000 people instantly. As the bell tolled Saturday, most people froze, closed their eyes and put their hands together to pray. Cicadas roared in the trees overhead. Prime Minister Naoto Kan remembered the dead from long ago, then he spoke of Japan's most recent atomic tragedy.

One group of activists peeled off and headed to the Chugoku Electric Power Co. The company has been trying to build a plant 50 miles from Hiroshima for the past three decades. Local resident have been fighting the whole time. Saturday, they shook their fists at the granite walls of the company's headquarters. Toshiyasu Shimizu is on the Kaminoseki town council. He says fighting the plant has felt lonely at times.

People, including those in the neighboring town, were not interested. But now they see nuclear power as their own problem, so there has been a dramatic difference," he says. After all these years, Shimizu says, he feels like the most of the country is beginning to agree with him.