The resignation last week of the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is another demonstration of the bankrupt basis of the NRC. Gregory Jaczko repeatedly called for the NRC to apply “lessons learned” from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster in Japan.  And, for that, the nuclear industry—quite successfully—went after him fiercely.

The New York Times in an editorial over the weekend said that President Obama’s choice to replace Jaczko, Allison McFarlane, “will need to be as independent and aggressive as Dr. Jaczko.”

That misses the institutional point.

The NRC was created in 1974 when Congress abolished the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission after deciding that the AEC’s dual missions of promoting and at the same time regulating nuclear power were deemed a conflict of interest. The AEC was replaced by the NRC which was to regulate nuclear power, and a Department of Energy was later formed to advocate for it.

However, the same extreme pro-nuclear culture of the AEC continued on at the NRC. It has partnered with the DOE in promoting nuclear power.

Indeed, neither the AEC, in its more than 25 years, nor the NRC, in its nearly 30 years,  ever denied an application for a construction or operating license for a nuclear power plant anywhere, anytime in the United States.

The NRC is a rubberstamp for the nuclear industry. “NRC stands for Nuclear Rubberstamp Commission,” says Kevin Kamps of the organization Beyond Nuclear.

And it isn’t that Jaczko opposed nuclear power. “Greg is not anti-nuclear, but he’s pro-nuclear in a smart and considered way,” says Christopher Paine, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Since the Fukushima accident began last March 11, Jaczko, who has a Ph.D. in physics, has called on the NRC to recognize and incorporate in its rules and actions, the gravity of that catastrophe. As he declared as his four fellow NRC members approved the construction of two nuclear plants in Georgia in February—the first OK for new nuclear plants in the U.S. in years:

“I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima had never happened.”

“Greg has led a Sisyphean fight against some of the nuclear industry’s opponents of strong, lasting regulations, often serving as the lone vote,” commented Congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts after the Jaczko resignation.

The nuclear industry and promoters of nuclear power in government would have us believe that Fukushima means nothing. As the American Nuclear Society asserts on its website: “No public ill effects are expected from the Fukushima incident.”

In reality, the consequences—in Japan and all over the world—are expected to be enormous. They’ll be worse than the impacts of the Chernobyl disaster, says Dr. Alexey Yablokov, a biologist and lead scientist of the book published by the New York Academy of Science in 2009, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for the People and the Environment. It reported that now available medical data shows that that 985,000 people died worldwide between 1986, the year of the Chernobyl accident, and 2004 from the radioactivity  released.

“The Fukushima disaster will be worse than Chernobyl,” agrees Dr. Janette Sherman, a toxicologist and the book’s editor. That’s because Fukushima involves, she notes, not one but six  nuclear plants along with spent fuel pools, in a “far more populated” area than the Chernobyl plant, and the radioactive discharges from Fukushima have continued for months.

Importantly, a new report by a noted European science institute has determined that Chernobyl and Fukushima were not isolated occurrences. “Severe Nuclear Reactor Accidents Likely Every 10 to 20 Years,” was the headline of the article last week on the report in Science Daily.

“Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed,” said Science Daily, about the report by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. Based on “the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred,” they “calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years.”

And impacts would be global—like Chernobyl and Fukushima.Their computer analyses, said Science Daily, found for the leading radioactive poison discharged in a nuclear plant accident, Cesium-137, some 8%  can be expected to fall within 50 kilometers of the accident site, 50% beyond 1,000 kilometers and 25% beyond 2,000 kilometers. “These results underscore that reactor accidents are likely to cause radioactive contamination well beyond national borders,” said Science Daily. 

Science Daily, like Jaczko, can’t be decried as “anti-nuclear.”

But for the nuclear industry and nuclear promoters within government, including the NRC, denial is the watchword.

At the NRC in recent months a move has begun to negate what has been its benchmark analysis on the impacts of nuclear plant accidents. “Calculation Reactor Accident Consequences 2,” referred to as the CRAC-2 report.  Issued in 1982, it projects the impacts from a meltdown with a breach of containment at every nuclear plant in the U.S.

It divides the consequences into “Peak Early Fatalities,” “Peak Early Injuries,” “Peak Cancer Deaths” and “Scaled Costs” for property damage—and the numbers are chilling. For the Indian Point 3 nuclear plant 28 miles north of New York City, for instance, it projects  “Peak Early Fatalities” at 50,000, “Peak Early Injuries” at 167,000, “Peak Cancer Deaths” at 14,000 and “Scaled Costs” at $314 billion (in 1980 dollars).

The NRC in January issued a report it seeks to have replace CRAC-2, “State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequences Analyses” or SOARCA. SOARCA finds, according to the NRC, that the “risks of public health consequences from severe accidents” at a nuclear plant “are very small.” The “long-term risk” of a person dying from cancer from a nuclear plant accident is less than one-in-a billion. This is because “successful implementation of existing mitigation measures can prevent reactor core damage or delay or reduce offsite releases of radioactive material.”

Tell that to the people impacted by Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Meanwhile, the NRC has been busy extending the operating licenses of existing plants although nuclear plants were never seen as running for more than 40 years because of radioactivity embrittling the metal parts and otherwise causing problems affecting safety. Nevertheless, the NRC has now extended the licenses of 73 of the 104 nuclear plants in the U.S. to 60 years. And next Thursday, June 7, at its headquarters, the NRC is holding a meeting with DOE and the industry’s Electric Power Research Institute on extending licenses to 80 years. Consider the reliability of an 80-year old car.

A “Petition for Rulemaking to Improve Emergency Planning Regulations” was brought to the NRC in February by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and 37 safe-energy and environmental groups. It declared that “the real-world experience of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters…were more severe and affected a much larger geographical area than provided for in NRC regulations” and asked, among other things, for the NRC to expand its current 10-mile evacuation planning zone around nuclear plants. “Waiting to see how bad an emergency gets before expanding evacuation…is not a plan of action, it is a recipe for disaster and an abdication of responsibility.” The likely NRC response? No.

On that issue, the nuclear industry was extremely upset that Jaczko, after the Fukushima accident began, advised U.S. citizens within 50 miles of the exploding nuclear complex to evacuate. It sought to continue the myth that 10 miles were fine.

As for the proposed new chair of the NRC, Allison McFarlane, if she seeks to push safety, as the New York Times thinks she can, she would be crucified—just like Jaczko.

The solution?  Abolish the Nuclear Rubberstamp Commission—and shut down every nuclear power plant in the U.S. They provide just 20% of our electricity and this could be substituted for with electricity generated by safe, clean, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind—without the loss of lives.

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It has been a momentous week in the nuclear world. Last week’s announcement of the long-expected resignation of NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko seems to have set off a flurry of activity in the nuclear industry and its several lobbying and/or propaganda arms. Much of it apparently designed to distract attention from the international security threat posed by up to 15 power reactors at 5 nuclear stations damaged by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of last year off the northeastern coast of Japan, including 3 plants and 4 spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi.

Complicated by the ever-increasing costs of new nukes, the still unsolved issue of long term waste disposal, and all sorts of previously ‘secret’ documents that keep going out to individuals, investigative reporters and citizen groups in response to detailed FOIA filings and lawsuits.

Depending on where you get your news you can take an overtly biased ‘side’ in the debates based solely on what you’d most like to believe could be true. We are treated to articles from one side [UPI] about the precarious fragility of Daiichi’s spent fuel pools, while at the very same time being treated to industry lapdog IAEA’s pet public health propaganda arm WHO’s ridiculous dismissals of any possible long-term health effects – in Japan or elsewhere – no matter how much radioactive nastiness gets out. It can be downright confusing, to say the least.

Just two days after Jaczko’s announced retirement from the NRC, that agency and FEMA quietly overhauled emergency planning around this nation’s nuclear plants, cutting requirements for evacuations and emergency responder exercises. This diminished response flies in the face of the lessons that should have been learned from the disaster in Japan, even in the NRC’s own internal evaluations. The cut-backs coincided with a seriously flawed ‘new’ study released last week by a sometimes professor at the MIT nuclear department which is directly contradicted by previous MIT studies to the same subject as well as DOE’s ongoing low dose radiation research program.

Meanwhile, TEPCO itself reported last week that its latest estimates of radiation released from the Daiichi facility over the past 14 months amounts to 760,000 terabecquerels, including 400,000 Tbq of iodine-131 and 360,000 Tbq of cesium-137. 360,000 Tbq of 137 is 4 times the cesium-137 released by Chernobyl in 1986, which resulted in a 1600 square mile exclusion zone that remains unfit for human habitation today, more than 26 years later.

As costs for new nuclear plants keep rising along with the overt and hidden government subsidies without which the industry could not compete, the few plants ordered in the United States are running headlong into citizen groups and state utility commission resistance. Even without factoring future costs of decommissioning and long term waste disposal (which still doesn’t exist after half a century), nuclear weighs in at more than $10,800 per kilowatt hour and rising (as of 2009). That’s two to three times the cost of renewable alternatives, for which per-kilowatt costs are steadily falling. Forcing yet more dangerous nukes on income-strapped Americans struggling to make ends meet in the worst economy since the Great Depression makes no rational sense no matter how you parse the data.

As for those future costs the nuclear industry has studiously kept hidden for the entirety of its existence, the Government Accountability Office [GAO] found in a report released in April of this year that utility accounts toward future decommissioning costs are badly underfunded and at risk of losses. GAO made a series of recommendations to the NRC on how to strengthen the funds, but no one really expects the now consolidated Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do anything about it. Heck, nobody expected that much even during the nearly 7.5 years of Jaczko’s tenure on the commission.

This means there is not enough money in the funds to properly decommission any of the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors, so we can expect when the time comes that taxpayers will once again be tapped to pay far more than we ever bargained for. Should any of our nukes suffer serious accident, taxpayers will also foot the bill for damages and clean-up. Of course, the NRC has now publicly embraced a singular biased study to assert that radiation poses no danger to the public health, thus no one need be evacuated when multi-megawatt power reactors melt down, melt through, explode and/or burn.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure the economic damages to local residents and businesses can be zeroed out completely with a little help from the judicial system to dismiss individual and class action lawsuits filed by people who suspect their children’s cancers and early deaths might have been caused by significant amounts of radioactive contamination in the air, water and food supply.

It seems like right at the time when we should be actively planning for the total shut-down of the nuclear industry, we’re getting hit instead with the total insanity of nuclear expansion. The definition of insanity, after all, is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different outcome.

And just to illustrate the true magnitude of our precarious situation, scientists at the Max Planck institute have this past week reported that the likelihood of serious nuclear accidents is 200 times greater than previously thought. And they didn’t even factor newly revised seismic vulnerabilities to reach that figure.

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“You have to think big in today’s world,” said William Moore, chief executive officer of Deepwater Wind. The company is poised to do “some path-breaking things” in harvesting wind power east and south of Long Island.  Deepwater Wind intends to construct offshore wind farms—each consisting of as many as 200 six-megawatt wind turbines—in coming years.

In 2015 it plans to begin construction of one wind farm in waters starting 30 miles east of Montauk, south of Rhode Island. In 2018, in waters 20 to 40 miles south of western Long Island, off New Jersey, it hopes to embark on building a second wind farm.

Moore, who has been called the “Johnny Appleseed of Wind,” has demonstrated that when it comes to wind power, he not only thinks big but his ideas can become reality. An article in the environmental magazine Onearth tells of how “Moore, a broad-shouldered Yale man” with “a passion for renewable energy” who “owned a company, Atlantic Renewable” came to Lewis County, New York in 1999.  By 2007, 200 wind turbines stretched “as far as the eye can see” in that upstate county in what became “the nation’s largest new alternative energy project east of the Mississippi.”

In recent years, Moore has been focusing on offshore wind along the Northeast coast. “We have good wind here,” he was saying last week from the headquarters of Deepwater Wind in Providence, Rhode Island, “and lots of customers.”

Earlier this year, Moore addressed Long Island Metro Business Action on Deepwater Wind’s plans. Afterwards, Ernest Fazio, the organization’s chairman and its energy specialist, said they are “completely within the realm of the possible.”

Deepwater Wind is to put its wind turbines far out to sea avoiding the aesthetic objections the Long Island Power Authority faced when it advanced a scheme several years ago for wind turbines off Jones Beach.  Deepwater Wind’s turbines would mainly be 20 to 25 miles off-shore. They’d be in water 80 to 150 feet deep and this, says Moore, won’t constitute a problem because they’ll be on platforms similar to those used by offshore oil rigs, he said. As for storms, they’ll be able to withstand 150 mile-an-hour winds.

At six megawatts, they’ll have nearly twice the capacity of the turbines LIPA sought. This provides for economies of scale—“fewer turbines to install and fewer structures,” he said.

There is to be “integrated” multi-state distribution systems. The wind farm to Long Island’s east would serve the island along with Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. The cable sending electricity to Long Island would come in at Shoreham. The wind farm to Long Island’s south would serve it and other areas of downstate New York and New Jersey.

“Deepwater Wind believes that gaining energy independence is both a national priority and a practical, achievable goal,” the company says on its website. “The winds off our eastern seaboard are strong, unlimited, and reliable, and can be harnessed using today’s proven technology…We are developing utility-scale wind farms in deep water that will provide abundant clean energy.” As for financial backing, it speaks of investors with “more than $20 billion in assets.”

Wind power, comments Moore, will “significantly reduce our need to burn fossil fuels, improve local air quality, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions—problems that are especially acute in the densely populated Northeast.” And the cost will be “competitive” to other sources of electricity.

Continued on Page 2…

The national government has set aside approximately 1.15 trillion yen in taxpayers’ money to temporarily finance decontamination work from fiscal 2011 to 2013, but the amount does not include the expenses of building facilities to temporarily store soil contaminated with radioactive substances and other relevant costs.

Some officials fear that the decontamination-related costs could reach 5 trillion yen, even though the government has not exactly predicted how much such work will cost.

In a May 10 television program, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yukio Edano’s suggestion that the national government may partially bear the costs of decontaminating areas tainted with radioactive substances leaking from the tsunami-hit nuclear plant has created a stir within the Finance Ministry, in particular, fearing that the costs that the government is required to shoulder could snowball.

Edano commented, “It’s possible that the national government will bear the expenses to a certain extent as part of its responsibility.” The industry minister then said the government will choose between another raise in electricity charges, or use of taxpayers’ money to cover the costs.

“After having fully decontaminated affected areas, we’ll decide whether we’ll ask TEPCO customers to shoulder the costs or the nation as a whole to do so,” he said.

TEPCO’s rehabilitation plan, which the government has recently endorsed, makes no mention of who will bear the costs of decontamination. However, TEPCO will be forced to review the plan if it is required to fully cover the costs of decontamination, due to stiff opposition from the public to raising electricity charges and reactivating its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, which are prerequisites for its plan to improve its profitability.

Speculation is growing within the government that Edano deliberately made the controversial remarks to test public opinion on possible financial assistance to TEPCO.”I suspect that (the comment) is a trial balloon to explore the possibility of extending financial assistance to TEPCO in the future,” a government source said.

Source: Mainichi

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Wednesday May 23rd, at approximately 1700 hours, a beer bottle was discovered in a trash can inside the protected area at Waterford Nuclear Power plant.  The bottle was discovered during trash collection by housekeeping personnel who reported the discovery to their supervision.

The bottle was determined to contain remnants of moisture and had an odor of beer, constituting the potential presence of alcohol.

It was found in the Construction Support Building, not in a Vital Area. This has been entered into the Corrective Action Program and investigation has been in progress.

Source: NRC Event Notifications

A New Strategy for the Fukushima Daiichi Disaster

The Domino Theory (the Plausible Hypothetical Worst Case) is Not Any Longer Credibly Possible – Pages From ML12122A221

IAEA Activities in Response to TheFukushima Accident Report by the Director General

Science of Nuclear Safety Post-Fukushima

Nuclear Power in aPost-Fukushima World

Conditions of Fukush’Iima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 1(as o6f 7 00 April 22nd, 2011) – Pages From ML12122A221-6

COMGBJ-11-0002 – NRC Actions Following the Events in Japan – Pages From ML12122A221-7

Evacuation of Workers Due to 100 R-Hr Fields at What Appears to Be the Unit 2 Turbine Hall – Pages From ML12122A221-2

Fukushima Exceeds Authority of Stafford Act – FEMA Not in Lead – Pages From ML12122A221-3

Meeting Agenda on Small Modular Reactors – Pages From ML12122A221-4

HHS State-Territory 2011 Pacific Basin Earthquake-Tsunami Conference Call – Pages From ML12122A221-5

White House Briefing Call – Pages From ML12122A221-6

Agenda for Industry Consortium Daily Call (NOTE TIME CHANGE to 2000 HRS DAILY) – Pages From ML12122A221-7

Japan Distribution List – Pages From ML12122A221-8

Meeting Minutes Form 4-1-11 2000 Industry Consortium Call – Pages From ML12122A221-9

FYI – You Might Have Seen Those High Resolution Images Already – Pages From ML12122A221-10

Commercial RADIACS From INPO – Pages From ML12122A221-11

Typical Reverse Osmosis Systems and Their Ability to Filter Outradionuclides – Pages From ML12122A221-3

REVISED – In Preparation for 2000 Hour NRC Consortium Call for Japan – Pages From ML12122A221-4

Cooling Fukushima Daiichi Reactors Through the Steel Head of the Drywell – Pages From ML12122A221-6

NRC Staff Speculates That Part of the Unit 2 Core May Be Out of the Reactor Pressure Vessel – Pages From ML12122A221-7

ML111940514 – Fukushima and the NRC’sResponseJuly July 13, 2011

BoilingWaterReactor(BWR)Systems

Perspectives of A Commissioner in Times of A Historical EventNRC Commissioner William C. OstendorffApril 13, 2011

FYI – Information From Video Conference on 4 5 11 That May Be of Interest to the Consortium – Pages From ML12122A221

4-6-11 0300 EDT Call With Site Team – Pages From ML12122A221-2

We Need to Get a Better Understanding of the AMS Data From DOE – Pages From ML12122A221-3

TEPCO Daily Update Thursday April 7 – Pages From ML12122A221-4

ML12143A336 – Filtered Containment Venting Systems Advisory Committee on Reactor Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards Safeguards May 22, 2012

Fukushima Daiichi Reactor Diagrams

Ml12144a058 – Resilient Control for Critical Infrastructures And Systems

Reliability Estimation for a Digital Instrument And Control System

Ml12144a045 – Regulatory Commitment Issues Licensing Action Task Force May 10, 2012

English Translation of Investigations on Long Term Behaviour of Lead and Lead Alloys

From “Shelter” to New Safe Confinement

Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant

Ml12052a179 – Summary of Telephone Conference Call Held on July 19, 2011,, Concerning Requests for Additional Information Pertaining to The Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Statio

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station

LER 2012-002-00, Unit 3 Steam Generator Tube Degradation Indicated ByFailed in-Situ Pressure Testing San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), Unit 3

LER 2012-002-00, Emergency Diesel Generator Vibration Trip Not By Passed For Non-Accident Conditions San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), Units 2 and 3

2011 Annual Radio Logical Envi Ronmental Operating Repor tSan Onofre Nuclear Generating Station Uni Ts 1, 2 and 3 And Independent Spent Fuel Storage Faci l i Ty

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The traditional business model of “build plants, sell power” and its era are over;  the rapid changes underway require a more agile, many-faceted approach to meeting energy demand in a responsible manner.  Fukushima has exposed new previously-uncalculated risks to nuclear reactors which could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially.

The next nuclear disaster—and the world has been averaging one such disaster every 11 years—is likely to lead to even more decisive actions by politicians, perhaps including the closing down of nuclear plants that are still under construction or are relatively new.

However world’s largest utilities are found still stubbornly and tenaciously holding on to plans dominated by massive investments in new, risky and ever-more-costly nuclear plants, while they limit or reject offers of more solar electricity. Those utilities seem oblivious to the real trends in energy economics and technology that are occurring in competitive markets.

The nuclear industry has greatly succeeded in obtaining large subsidies and positive rhetoric (“safe, clean nuclear power”) from elected officials, but ultimately and overwhelmingly failed to live up their lofty claims.

Commercial nuclear power has been with us for more than forty years. If it is not a mature industry by now, consumers of electricity should ask whether it ever will be competitive without public subsidies. There are no projections that nuclear electricity costs will decline

The media has also been a cheerleader for the nuclear industry. Since the early 2000s, slews of media reports have predicted the “nuclear renaissance”, dismissing the unresolved economic, waste and safety problems of nuclear power.

What They Said Then –General Electric Advertisement, 1954

“We already know the kinds of plants which will be feasible, how they will operate, and we can estimate what their expenses will be.  In five years – certainly within 10 – a number of them will be operating at about the same cost as those using coal.  They will be privately financed, built without government subsidy.

What We Are Saying Now – The Energy Fair Group Report

“There is absolutely no case for subsidizing nuclear power” said Dr Gerry Wolff of the Energy Fair group, responding to the recently-published draft of the Energy Bill 2012. “The proposed ‘feed-in tariff with contracts for difference’ is a blank cheque to a nuclear industry that is already heavily subsidized.“

The group’s report on “The financial risks of investing in new nuclear power plants” shows that, by the time any new nuclear power plant may be built in the UK (2020 or later), much of the market for its electricity will be disappearing. The report is based on the UK market, but the same problems follow nuclear construction projects around the world.  In a world that is dominated by renewables, the idea that nuclear power is needed to provide ‘base load’ is out dated.

Despite the fact that all additional nuclear electricity since 1996 has been from existing reactors, most federal elected officials and media are focused on the construction of new reactors.

Yet nuclear power’s own myriad limitations will constrain its growth, it is hampered by a variety of problems that limit its viability as a climate strategy absent massive government subsidies and mandates, especially in the near term.

Continued On Page 2…

A year after the nuclear disaster, restrictions on freelance journalists remain stricter than those that apply to journalists affiliated to a news organization. The foreign media are still largely under-represented.

Only two Japanese freelances will be included among 40 accredited to the third media visit on 26 May to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, badly damaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Although some photographers and camera operators will be present, neither of the two freelances will be allowed to use still cameras or video equipment.

One of them, Hatakeyama Michiyoshi, told Reporters Without Borders that a quota of four video journalists and four photographers had been set for the visit but the two who were not affiliated to news organizations would not be allowed to take any equipment.

Reporters Without Borders denounces the discriminatory measures taken by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Japanese government against freelance journalists.

“Such overt discrimination is a hidden form of censorship and is unacceptable,” Reporters Without Borders said.

Source: Reporters Without Borders

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(a) Required reports. Each licensee and entity who is subject to this subpart shall inform the NRC of significant violations of the FFD policy, significant FFD program failures, and errors in drug and alcohol testing. These events must be reported under this section, rather than under the provisions of 10 CFR 73.71.

(b) Significant FFD policy violations or programmatic failures. The following significant FFD policy violations and programmatic failures must be reported to the NRC Operations Center by telephone within 24 hours after the licensee or other entity discovers the violation:

(1) The use, sale, distribution, possession, or presence of illegal drugs, or the consumption or presence of alcohol within a protected area;

(2) Any acts by any person licensed under 10 CFR part 55 to operate a power reactor, as well as any acts by SSNM transporters, FFD program personnel, or any supervisory personnel who are authorized under this part, if such acts—

(i) Involve the use, sale, or possession of a controlled substance;

(ii) Result in a determination that the individual has violated the licensee’s or other entity’s FFD policy (including subversion as defined in § 26.5); or

(iii) Involve the consumption of alcohol within a protected area or while performing the duties that require the individual to be subject to the FFD program;

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Source: NHK

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Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that catastrophic nuclear accidents may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past.

Currently, there are 440 nuclear reactors in operation, and 60 more are planned, however in view of their findings, the researchers call for an in-depth analysis and reassessment of the risks associated with nuclear power plants.

High human exposure risks occur around reactors in densely populated regions, notably in West Europe and South Asia, where a major reactor accident can subject around 30 million people to radioactive contamination. The recent decision by Germany to phase out its nuclear reactors will reduce the national risk, though a large risk will still remain from the reactors in neighbouring countries.

The Mainz researchers did not distinguish ages and types of reactors, or whether they are located in regions of enhanced risks, for example by earthquakes.

After all, nobody had anticipated the reactor catastrophe in Japan.

Their work found that Western Europe has the worldwide highest risk of radioactive contamination caused by major reactor accidents.

By using a global model of the atmosphere the researchers determined that on average, in the event of a major reactor accident of any nuclear power plant worldwide, more than 90 % of emitted Cesium-137 would be transported beyond 50 km and about 50 % beyond 1000 km distance before being deposited.

Their results show that Western Europe is likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40 kilobecquerel of caesium-137 per square meter.

To determine the likelihood of a nuclear meltdown, the researchers applied a simple calculation.

They divided the operating hours of all civilian nnuclear reactors in the world, from the commissioning of the first up to the present, by the number of reactor meltdowns that have actually occurred.

The total number of operating hours is 14,500 years, the number of reactor meltdowns comes to four — one in Chernobyl and three in Fukushima. This translates into one major accident, being defined according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), every 3,625 years.

Even if this result is conservatively rounded to one major accident every 5,000 reactor years, the risk is 200 times higher than the estimate for catastrophic, non-contained core meltdowns made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1990.

An accident risk assessment of nuclear power plants (NPPs) by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1975 estimated the probability of a core melt at 1 in 20 000 per year for a single reactor unit (NRC, 1975).

A follow-up report in 1990 adjusted this number and indicated that the core damage frequency is not a value that can be calculated with certainty, though an appendix presented the following likelihood of a catastrophic accident (NRC, 1990):

a. Probability of core melt 1 in 10 000 per year;

b. Probability of containment failure 1 in 100;

c. Probability of unfavourable wind direction 1 in 10;

d. Probability of meteorological inversion 1 in 10;

e. Probability of evacuation failure 1 in 10

The product of these possibilities is 1 in 1 billion per year for a single reactor (this assumes that factors (a)–(e) are independent, which is not the case, so that the actual risk of a catastrophic accident should be higher than this).

In light of the uncertainties, the simplicity of this calculation is appealing.

The researchers went on to add; “However, based on the evidence over the past decades one may conclude that the combined probabilities (a) and (b) have been underestimated. Furthermore, by using a state-ofthe-art global atmospheric model we can directly compute the anticipated dispersion of radionuclides, avoiding the need to guess the factors (c) and (d).

 In doing so, we find that the vast majority of the radioactivity is transported outside an area of 50 km radius, which can undermine evacuation measures, especially if concentrated deposition occurs at much greater distances from the accident, as was the case for Chernobyl in May 1986.

Furthermore, even if an evacuation is successful in terms of saving human lives, large areas around the reactors are made uninhabitable for decades afterwards.

Therefore, we argue that such events are catastrophic irrespective of evacuation failure or success, and exclude the factor (e).”

H/T – CaptD   –   Source: Atmos. Chem. Phys

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New analysis by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization has shown cooling water may be leaking from Unit 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. They say the water level of the reactor’s containment vessel is much shallower than previously thought.

JNES analyzed the internal pressure, water level, and other data based on the assumption that the primary container is filled with steam, which is created when water cools the fuel, and nitrogen, which is inserted to prevent hydrogen explosions. It assumed gas is leaking from the container’s upper part and the coolant water from the lower part.

They say the water in the vessel is about 40 centimeters deep, 160 centimeters shallower than previously estimated when TEPCO hypothesized that the water was at a depth of 2 meters.    In comparison in March, the utility used an endoscope to find that the water level inside the No.2 reactor was actually less than 60 centimeters.

JNES suggests that the water injected into the reactor may be leaking from a hole located in a section connecting the primary reactor pressure vessel and the suppression pool, leaving the container with water just 40 cm in depth.

The hole is believed to be about 2 cm in diameter.  TEPCO says that despite the low water level, they believe that the melted fuel is sufficiently cooled based on the temperature readings being recorded.

TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said Tuesday the company hopes to insert an endoscope into the reactor by the end of the year to determine the actual water level.

Source: NHK

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Recently the central Japanese government took control of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility at the center of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and agreed to the nation’s largest bailout since the rescue of the banking industry in the 1990s.

Tokyo Electric has asked the government to approve an average 10.28 percent hike in charges for the residential sector starting in July on condition that its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant restarts within the business year starting next April, but warned  the average hike could rise to 15.87 percent if the plant is unable to resume operation.

A panel was set up to screen an application by TEPCO to raise its household charges, to cover massive costs associated with the accident at the firm’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, found that Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has been found to have made most of its profits during a 5-year period from ordinary households rather than large businesses.

Government data on electricity-related profits for 5 years until 2010 showed that the average proportion of the utilities’ profits from households was 69 percent, even though they used only 38 percent of the firms’ electricity.

The findings show their dependence on sales to residential districts, in which power charges are higher and more regulated than the corporate sector where electricity charges for businesses have been deregulated and are negotiated between utilities and corporate customers, but those in the residential sector are still subject to government approval.

TEPCO is the most reliant on the households, having earned 91 percent of its profits from households, and 9 percent from large-lot customers including companies.  The data showed Okinawa Electric Power Co. at 90 percent and Chugoku Electric Power Co. at 77 percent.

Okinawa Electric Power Co. at 90 percent and Chugoku Electric Power Co. at 77 percent, according to the data.

Source: NHK

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METI intends to revise the Electricity Business Act during the ordinary session in 2013 at the earliest and enforce the act as early as possible. Some sources say, however, that “it will take a few years” to enforce the act in view of designing the details of the system and the time required to inform the customers.

Currently, only the electricity market of customers with a contract demand of 50 kW or more is liberalized. After the full deregulation, low-voltage customers with a contract demand of less than 50 kW and residential customers will be able to choose electricity suppliers.

Source: The Denki Shimbun

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