Open Intelligence / Energy

The magnitude-5.8 earthquake last month in Virginia caused about twice as much ground shaking as a nearby nuclear power plant was designed to withstand, according to a preliminary federal analysis.

Parts of the North Anna Power Station in Mineral, Va., 11 miles from its epicenter, endured jolts equal to 26% of the force of gravity (0.26g) from some of the higher-frequency vibrations unleashed by the quake, said Scott Burnell, spokesman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

An NRC document says the reactors' containment structure was built to withstand 12% of the force of gravity (0.12g.) Dominion, the power company that operates the plant, says parts of the plant can handle up to 0.18g.STORY: Quake readiness of nuclear power plants unclear

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.

: Dr. Helen Caldicott

All areas of Japan should be tested to assess how radioactive the soil and water are because the winds can blow the radioactive pollution hundreds of miles from the point source at Fukushima. Under no circumstances should radioactive rubbish and debris be incinerated as this simply spreads the isotopes far and wide to re-concentrate in food and fish. All batches of food must be adequately tested for specific radioactive elements using spectrometers. No radioactive food must be sold or consumed, nor must radioactive food be diluted for sale with non-radioactive food as radioactive elements re-concentrate in various bodily organs. All water used for human consumption should be tested weekly. All fish caught off the east coast must be tested for years to come. All people, particularly children, pregnant women and women of childbearing age still living in high radiation zones should be immediately evacuated to non-radioactive areas of Japan. All people who have been exposed to radiation from Fukushima – particularly babies, children, immunosuppressed, old people and others — must be medically thoroughly and routinely examined for malignancy, bone marrow suppression, diabetes, thyroid abnormalities, heart disease, premature aging, and cataracts for the rest of their lives and appropriate treatment instituted. Leukemia will start to manifest within the next couple of years, peak at five years and solid cancers will start appearing 10 to 15 years post-accident and will continue to increase in frequency in this generation over the next 70 to 90 years. All physicians and medical care providers in Japan must read and examine Chernobyl–Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment by the New York Academy of Sciences to understand the true medical gravity of the situation they face. I also suggest with humility that doctors in particular but also politicians and the general public refer to my web page, nuclearfreeplanet.org for more information, that they listen to the interviews related to Fukushima and Chernobyl on my radio program at ifyoulovethisplanet.org and they read my book NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER. The international medical community and in particular the WHO must be mobilized immediately to assist the Japanese medical profession and politicians to implement this massive task outlined above. The Japanese government must be willing to accept international advice and help. As a matter of extreme urgency Japan must request and receive international advice and help from the IAEA and the NRC in the U.S., and nuclear specialists from Canada, Europe, etc., to prevent the collapse of Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit 4 and the spent fuel pool if there was an earthquake greater than 7 on the Richter scale.As the fuel pool crashed to earth it would heat and burn causing a massive radioactive release 10 times larger than the release from Chernobyl. There is no time to spare and at the moment the world community sits passively by waiting for catastrophe to happen. The international and Japanese media must immediately start reporting the facts from Japan as outlined above. Not to do so is courting global disaster.

After Fukushima, the Chinese governement have decided to finance the development of the much safer Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactor - this way of producing energy is far safer than Pressure Water Reactor - it does not need pressure and there is no meltdown possibility at all. Further Thorium reactors cannot be used to make nuclear bombs.

Thorium is as common as lead, and should have been chosen after the war.At the end of the 2nd World War war plutonium was needed to make nuclear bombs, and this was the main reason for taking the PWR route, because Thorium reactors cannot. Edward Teller - the designer of the atomic bomb - on his death bed - said that a Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactor was a safer design and that the basic Thorium fuel more available than Uranium. He was working on a paper for this type of reactor at his death (see below).

It would cost about 1 billion to design a Thorium reactor (Twitter is valued at 7 billion).

Babcock has been awarded a contract by Magnox for an intermediate-level waste (ILW) retrieval and processing project at the Berkeley site in the UK.

The contract has been awarded under the Magnox ILW Management Program, for which a framework contract was awarded to Babcock by Magnox in February 2011. ILW comprises a range of material including debris from the fuel elements, resins, sludges and graphite.

Under the new contract, Babcock will be undertaking ILW retrieval and processing of the fuel element debris from the Active Waste Vault 2 at the Berkeley site. The £14 million ($23 million) project will take some four years to complete.   Babcock said that key areas to be addressed under the contract include the fuel element debris retrieval from Vault 2 and the waste transfer module which will facilitate the transport of the waste to the sorting module, where low-level waste (LLW) and ILW can be separated. The waste can then be prepared for packaging in containers.

London, England (CNN) -- Paving slabs that convert energy from people's footsteps into electricity are set to help power Europe's largest urban mall, at the 2012 London Olympics site.

The recycled rubber "PaveGen" paving slabs harvest kinetic energy from the impact of people stepping on them and instantly deliver tiny bursts of electricity to nearby appliances. The slabs can also store energy for up to three days in an on-board battery, according to its creator.

The young inventor envisages PaveGen systems being used to power off-grid appliances such as public lighting, illuminated street maps and advertising, and to be installed in areas of dense human traffic such as city centers, underground stations and school corridors

Nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania are preparing to cope with flooding, but none has declared a state of emergency, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said Thursday. All the Pennsylvania nuclear plants that could potentially be affected by flooding are in close communication with NRC, and with state and local officials, and the agency has resident inspectors at each plant who are monitoring the situation, Sheehan said. The plants were all operating at full power early Thursday, according to NRC data, except for Exelon Nuclear's Peach Bottom-3, which was at 88% power and has been gradually reducing its output for several days ahead of refueling outage.

Emergency diesel generators and their fuel tanks at those plants are "located at a higher elevation, in buildings designed to keep them dry," Sheehan said. Exelon Nuclear's Three Mile Island-1, located along the Susquehanna River, 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, began its abnormal operating procedure for river flooding early Wednesday, Sheehan said. The river peaked at 291 feet above sea level Wednesday and was at 288 feet above sea level early Thursday. It is expected to crest Thursday at about 297 feet above sea level, he said.

If the river reaches 300 feet above sea level, then the plant would have to declare an unusual event, the least significant of NRC's four emergency levels, Sheehan said. If the river reaches 302 feet above sea level, the plant would need to shut and an alert, the next highest level of emergency, would need to be declared. "Important equipment" at Three Mile Island-1 is protected against flooding up to about 315 feet above sea level, Sheehan said.

Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher said on Monday, September 19, 2011, that high-level nuclear waste once destined for the Yucca Mountain repository will be sent, instead, to the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site.

The decision to use the Savannah River Site in South Carolina as a permanent storage facility is controversial. It is the most radioactive site in the United States. Aiken County, in which part of the site is located, sued the Department of Energy unsuccessfully when the Obama Administration decided not to use the multi-billion-dollar Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada for high-level nuclear waste storage that was supposed to be removed from SRS. Currently, millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste are stored in 49 leaking tanks on the site as well as huge amounts of surplus plutonium. Deadly chemicals and radiation will contaminate the facility for thousands of years. “The Bomb Plant,” as locals refer to the site, is uniquely unsuitable for a permanent nuclear waste repository, according to leading geologists. It sits on an earthquake fault and one of the most important aquifers in the South. The sandy soil and swampy conditions make it highly vulnerable to waste seepage.

The Obama Administration has spent more than $1 billion in Stimulus Act funds cleaning up legacy Cold War nuclear and chemical waste at the site. Despite this effort, there is now more radioactive waste at SRS than when the clean-up started. The idea of bringing nuclear reactor waste and surplus weapons plutonium from around the world to SRS only exacerbates already chronic problems. The 312 square mile site near Aiken, South Carolina, was once the home of five reactors that churned out nuclear materials for H-bombs. The last reactor at SRS had to be shuttered for safety reasons during the Reagan Administration. Tritium, which is needed for nuclear weapons, is produced by Tennessee Valley Authority reactors and processed into gas for nuclear weapons at SRS.

An unstoppable tide of radioactive trash and chemical waste from Fukushima is pushing ever closer to North America. An estimated 20 million tons of smashed timber, capsized boats and industrial wreckage is more than halfway across the ocean, based on sightings off Midway by a Russian ship's crew. Safe disposal of the solid waste will be monumental task, but the greater threat lies in the invisible chemical stew mixed with sea water.

This new triple disaster floating from northeast Japan is an unprecedented nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) contamination event. Radioactive isotopes cesium and strontium are by now in the marine food chain, moving up the bio-ladder from plankton to invertebrates like squid and then into fish like salmon and halibut. Sea animals are also exposed to the millions of tons of biological waste from pig farms and untreated sludge from tsunami-engulfed coast of Japan, transporting pathogens including the avian influenza virus, which is known to infect fish and turtles. The chemical contamination, either liquid or leached out of plastic and painted metal, will likely have the most immediate effects of harming human health and exterminating marine animals.

Many chemical compounds are volatile and can evaporate with water to form clouds, which will eventually precipitate as rainfall across Canada and the northern United States. The long-term threat extends far inland to the Rockies and beyond, affecting agriculture, rivers, reservoirs and, eventually, aquifers and well water.   Falsifying Oceanography

First it was reported that "over 10,000 ppm" or over 1% of hydrogen gas was detected at 2 locations in the pipe that connects to the Containment Vessel of Reactor 1 at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Then it was allegedly "over 40,000 ppm" or 4%.According to Jiji Tsushin, TEPCO thinks the hydrogen gas concentration in the pipe may be 100%. 1,000,000 ppm.

Still, TEPCO says possibility of explosion is not necessarily high because there is no source nearby that could cause sparks. (Never mind that they were going to use blow torches to cut the pipes...)

Jiji Tsushin (12:28PM JST 6/24/2011):

A manufacturer of dozens of boiling water nuclear reactors in the country, including many on the East Coast, warned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year and reiterated last week that earthquakes could hinder its reactors from shutting down. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, which manufactured the boiling water reactors at Oyster Creek, Hope Creek and two plants in Pennsylvania, said that an earthquake could prevent rods that cool the reactor from being inserted. The rods cool the reactor down because they contain boron, which attracts neutrons. Without the rods, boron would be injected, a messier emergency solution.

"Earlier this week, they submitted the results of this evaluation they did and they found that friction that could result from an earthquake could impact the ability of control rods to insert all the way," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan Friday. "They serve a very important function and if there was a change of alignment in an earthquake and they could not insert all the way, it would be a problem." It’s not ideal to have a shutdown system fail at a moment of emergency, Sheehan said. "In a significant event like an earthquake, you would want to stop that from happening," Sheehan said, "because your safety systems could be challenged at the same time."

A spokesman for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy said that when plants start up and shut down which amounts to about 1 percent of the time they run, added shaking from an earthquake could stop rods from easily sliding into the core. "There’s some friction," said spokesman Michael Tetuan. "They still insert, it’s just more friction than there would normally be." Last week’s NRC filing identified more than a dozen plants around the country that could be vulnerable, including Oyster Creek, Hope Creek and Limerick and Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania. Those plants were notified by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and recommended to participate in a surveillance program.

TEPCO announced on June 18 that it stopped the water treatment system for the highly contaminated water at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant at 12:54AM on June 18.

ted water at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant at 12:54AM on Jun

The stoppage was not due to system malfunction, TEPCO explained. The company stopped the system when the radiation level of the cesium absorption subsystem [by Kurion] had reached the set limit earlier than expected. TEPCO had planned to start the cooling water circulation system whereby the treated water is injected back into the Reactor Pressure Vessels on June 18, but it is not clear whether it will start as scheduled.

The financial meltdown has amplified the already profound risks of investment in new nuclear reactors. The nuclear industry - recognizing this - is chasing potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees and taxpayer subsidies. Read the White Paper and the Fact Sheet synopsis

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rules are a patchwork that needs to be reorganized and integrated into a new structure to improve safety, the agency’s staff told the five members of the commission on Tuesday at a meeting.The session was called to consider reforms after a tsunami caused the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. But how speedily the commission will take up the recommendations is not clear.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, the nuclear industry agreed to bring in assorted extra equipment, including batteries and generators, to cope with circumstances beyond what the plants were designed for. Such preparations are among the reasons that the commission has suggested that American reactors are better protected than Fukushima was. But back then, because their focus was on a potential terrorist attack, much of that equipment was located in spots that were not protected against floods, staff officials said.

“The insight that we drew from that is that if you make these decisions in a more holistic way, and you are more cognizant of what kinds of protections you are trying to foster, perhaps you can do them in a more useful way,’’ Gary Holahan, a member of the staff task force that reported to the commission, said on Tuesday. Another likely area of restructuring is to review the distinction that the commission makes between “design basis” and “beyond design basis” accidents. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the commission and a predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, issued construction permits for the 104 commercial reactors now running, they established requirements for hardware and training based on the safety factors arising from the characteristics of each site, including its vulnerability to flood or earthquake. Those are known as design-basis accidents.A variety of additional requirements involving potential problems that would be more severe but less likely (beyond design-basis accidents) have been added over the years.

French energy group Areva has entered tentative talks with the Tennessee Valley Authority that could pave the way for TVA’s nuclear plants to use fuel made from retired weapons. On Friday, the company announced it signed a letter of intent with TVA to initiate discussions on the use of fuel from the Department of Energy’s Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. While it would not obligate TVA to use the fuel, the letter highlights the agency’s ongoing relationship with DOE in evaluating the fuel-from-weapons program

Scheduled to begin operating in 2016, the mixed-oxide facility at DOE’s Savannah River site in South Carolina will blend plutonium from disassembled weapons with depleted uranium oxide, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. Using the fuel in commercial reactors would make the plutonium unfit for explosives and help meet a commitment made by the United States and Russia in 2000 to dispose of 68 metric tons of surplus plutonium. Shaw Areva MOX Services Llc. holds the contract to build and operate the South Carolina facility

According to NNSA, more than 30 commercial reactors currently use mixed-oxide fuel, including at plants in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety, Institute for Southern Studies by Sue Sturgis, April 3, 2009:

TEPCO has just released "diaries" from early in the accident giving us a better view of the sequence of events from the operators point of view.

The bulk of the materials, distributed on discs with digital files, show reams of raw numerical data. They include photos of broadsheet computer printouts and other formatted charts with thousands of data points for measurements of reactor heat, pressure, water levels, fuel rod positions and the status of cooling pumps, among other functions. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, also released a smaller batch of more recent documents highlighting its various efforts to restore electric power to each of the reactors, a task that was achieved on April 26. But a series of what Tepco terms reactor "diaries" from the first 48 hours after the quake include the most visually arresting materials. These feature snapshots of whiteboards on which plant employees—11 of whom remained in each of the plant's three control rooms—jotted down status updates on the progress of the reactor shutdowns and steadily increasing radiation levels around the facility.

Using red, black or blue ink markers, the plant operators appear to have scribbled down the notes quickly. Many are smudged or illegible. Others depict complex diagrams and are peppered with technical jargon or acronyms such as SBO for "station blackout." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281504576329011846064194.html

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Falcyone.seesaa.net%2Farticle%2F218011433.html&act=url  Perhaps a better Japanese translation is available for paragraphs like this: The first crack to expand premises Fukushima If released into the atmosphere as steam began to black biennial magma underground, dozens of days, until it could cause radioactive contamination of large magnitude I think strong. The other people on campus would not have started already. Again can not even approach. It can only be death from exposure. 

http://youtu.be/9RrwDxS9S8E 

Most of them are still unwilling to admit that it’s happening, yet it has. The jig is up, the noose is out….

Dutch energy executive Peter Terium is the most likely successor to RWE chief executive Jürgen Grossmann, according to company insiders cited in German news reports. Grossmann, whose contract expires at the end of September 2012, defended RWE's investments in nuclear power plants vigorously but unsuccessfully against government plans to phase out atomic energy by 2022. The 59-year-old's lobbying earned him the nickname "Atom-Rambo" and even prompted Germany's Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union to award him the dubious title of "Dinosaur of the Year 2010."

News that Peter Terium, 47, is likely to be the fresh face to replace Grossmann surprised many observers. But the dark-horse candidate has been with RWE since 2003. He first RWE Supply & Trading and later oversaw the takeover of Dutch energy company Essent, which he currently heads.

Other potential successors to Grossmann are RWE chief commercial officer Leonhard Birnbaum and chief operating officer Rolf Martin Schmitz. Whoever lands the top job is likely to face a turbulent time. "One large challenge will be the task of bringing RWE's image - and the image of other energy companies - back into a positive light," a labor union representative told Reuters. "We expect a new orientation towards international and national energy politics from the new RWE chief."

Some 100,000 people are still living as evacuees away from their homes in the wake of the severe accidents at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. Kyodo News has reported that some 17,000 children in Fukushima Prefecture have changed schools or kindergartens because of radiation fears. Of these children, some 8,000 moved out of the prefecture.

Given this situation, it is imperative that the central government vigorously push the work of decontaminating areas contaminated with radioactive substances released from the nuclear power reactors. The central and local governments also should provide psychological care to both children who moved to new schools or kindergartens and children who have remained at their schools and kindergartens.

The Diet is expected to soon enact a special law under which the central government will be responsible for disposing of highly radioactive rubble and sludge, and decontaminating radioactive soil. In some cases, the central and local governments will carry out decontamination work together. The cost will be shouldered by Tepco.