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March. 31, 2011

UPI.com

TOKYO, March 31 (UPI) — The bodies of earthquake and tsunami victims haven’t been collected near Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant for fear of radiation, police said Thursday.

One authority said the nearly 1,000 bodies were "exposed to high levels of radiation after death," a comment supported by the detection of elevated radiation levels on a body found in Okuma, less than a mile from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Kyodo News reported.

Officials are now trying to figure out how to collect the bodies, taking into account the fear that emergency personnel, morgue workers, doctors and families may be exposed to radiation, sources told the news agency.

"Measures that can be taken vary depending on the level of radiation, so there need to be professionals who can control radiation," said an expert on radiation exposure. "One option is to take decontamination vehicles there and decontaminate the bodies one by one."

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands of people, left as many missing, and caused horrendous economic losses, estimated up to $300 billion in the seven of the worst-hit prefectures.

Residents within a 12-mile zone of the Fukushima plant have been forced to leave since the nuclear disaster began. The Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant, rocked by explosions and fires triggered by the natural disasters, is leaking radioactive materials as efforts continue to restore cooling systems for its reactors and nuclear spent-fuel rod pools.

Officials reported radiation levels rose Thursday in ocean water near the damaged nuclear facility. Tests of Pacific Ocean water collected Wednesday indicated radiation levels caused by iodine-131, suspected to be from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, jumped to 4,385 times the legal limit, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

The plant is so heavily damaged that Tokyo Electric Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said four of the plant’s six reactors will be decommissioned.

CNN said utility and government agencies had not determined whether the iodine-131 came from the atmosphere or through seepage from the plant. Officials have stressed radiation levels do not yet pose a health risk to humans through seafood because fishing is not allowed within 12 miles of the plant.

Kyodo News reported a new a problem Thursday. Engineers spotted water containing low-level radiation at a building designed for radioactive waste disposal at the plant, and where the trench water is meant to be transferred.

Sources told Yomiuri Shimbun the government may consider spraying resin into the disabled plant to stop the spread of radioactive materials. Resin could minimize the release of radioactivity, which would allow the restoration work to continue. Using helicopters to spray chemicals and building temporary structures to store contaminated water also were being considered.

"We have to end the crisis at the nuclear plant, minimize radioactive contamination of surrounding areas and prevent any health damage," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Wednesday. "To accomplish that, we have experts in various fields working on a variety of plans, including possibly covering (the buildings at the plant)."

In Tokyo, Japanese and French leaders agreed Thursday that the two countries will cooperate in drafting international nuclear safety standards by the end of the year, Kyodo said.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said during a joint news conference that nuclear issues would be the main agenda item when Group of Eight ministers gather in France in May. Sarkozy, the G8 chairman, said he will try to release a communication on nuclear safety during the summit.

© 2011 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Mar 31, 2011

ABC News – ABC.net.au

As dangerously high levels of radiation spread beyond the Fukushima exclusion zone in Japan, there are fears the race to contain the nuclear crisis has been lost and meltdown has already taken place.

Radiation measured at a village 40 kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear plant now exceeds a criterion for evacuation, the UN nuclear watchdog said.

And a Japanese nuclear expert has warned crews may have to keep pouring cooling water onto the stricken reactors for years.

The radiation finding increases pressure on Japan’s government to extend the exclusion zone beyond 20 kilometres around the plant, which was hit by a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11, knocking out the cooling system of the plant’s six reactors and setting off explosions and fires.

Prime minister Naoto Kan says he is considering enlarging the evacuation area to force 130,000 people to move in addition to the 70,000 already displaced.

The indications are the most serious nuclear crisis in 25 years is getting worse.

Richard Lahey, head of safety research for this type of reactor at General Electric, which installed the reactors at Fukushima in the 1970s, says workers at the site appear to have lost the race to save the crippled No. 2 reactor.

The Guardian newspaper quotes him as saying he believes the reactor core has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel and at least some of it is down on the concrete floor beneath.

This would mean in simple terms the accident is no longer a matter of melting fuel rods, but of meltdown.

That situation is reminiscent of Chernobyl where the plant needed to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus to seal it off.

However Dr Lahey says there is no danger of a Chernobyl-style catastrophe because in that case the plant exploded releasing a massive amount of radioactive steam.

The situation in Japan would still be immense environmental damage in the localised area.

Hiroto Sakashita, a nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics professor at Hokkaido University, says the other reactors and cooling ponds will take years to cool.

"They will just have to keep on pouring and pouring but contaminated water will keep leaking out," he told The New York Times.

Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency has confirmed radioactive iodine in the sea near Fukushima at 3,355 times the normal level.

Workers at the nuclear plant are planning to spray the grounds with a special resin designed to block radioactive materials from spreading into the soil, the sea and into the air.

Officials at the stricken plant are also planning to cover three badly damaged outer reactor buildings with special fabric caps and fit air filters to limit the release of radiation.

Another plan is to anchor an empty tanker off the No. 2 reactor so workers can pump huge volumes of radioactive water into its hull.

Japan, which has more than 50 reactors, has ordered an immediate check of them all to ensure there can be no repeat of the Fukushima crisis.

Industry minister Banri Kaieda has written to the CEOs of every nuclear power operator demanding they carry out drills to prepare staff for emergencies and urging them to ensure their plants have reliable back-up power for their cooling systems.

Meanwhile, IAEA head of nuclear safety and security Denis Flory says he has heard there might be "recriticality" at the Fukushima plant, in which a nuclear chain reaction would resume, even though the reactors were automatically shut down at the time of the quake.

He says this could lead to more radiation releases but it would not be "the end of the world".

"Recriticality does not mean that the reactor is going to blow up," he said.

"It may be something really local. We might not even see it if it happens."

– ABC/Reuters

By RYAN NAKASHIMA and MARI YAMAGUCHI
Huffington Post

TOKYO — Engineers pinned their hopes on chemicals, sawdust and shredded newspaper to stop highly radioactive water pouring into the ocean from Japan’s tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant Sunday as officials said it will take several months to bring the crisis under control, the first time they have provided a timetable.

Concrete already failed to stop the tainted water spewing from a crack in a maintenance pit, and the new mixture did not appear to be working either, but engineers said they were not abandoning it.

The Fukushima Da-ichi plant has been leaking radioactivity since the March 11 tsunami carved a path of destruction along Japan’s northeastern coast, killing as many as 25,000 people and knocking out key cooling systems that kept it from overheating. People living within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant have been forced to abandon their homes.

The government said Sunday it will be several months before the radiation stops and permanent cooling systems are restored. Even after that happens, there will be years of work ahead to clean up the area around the complex and figure out what to do with it.

"It would take a few months until we finally get things under control and have a better idea about the future," said Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama. "We’ll face a crucial turning point within the next few months, but that is not the end."

His agency said the timetable is based on the first step, pumping radioactive water into tanks, being completed quickly and the second, restoring cooling systems, being done within a matter of weeks or months.

Every day brings some new problem at the plant, where workers have often been forced to retreat from repair efforts because of high radiation levels. On Sunday, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced it had found the bodies of two workers missing since the tsunami.

Radiation, debris and explosions kept workers from finding them until Wednesday, and then the announcement was delayed several days out of respect for their families.

TEPCO officials said they believed the workers ran down to a basement to check equipment after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake that preceded the tsunami. They were there when the massive wave swept over the plant.

04/ 3/11

Minimal Impact to the Global Supply Chain?

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it has become fashionable for some in the global business community to believe that the economic impact of Japan’s earthquake will be minimal. No one can truly know the ultimate impact because the world has never experienced such a severe natural disaster in an economy so critical to the global supply chain: This is not Indonesia, New Zealand, Chile or Pakistan — which have also experienced recent severe earthquakes — this is Japan.

For the past three weeks, the world’s third largest economy has been plagued by chronic power shortages and supply chain disruptions — the ‘new normal,’ which is likely to continue for years. Although much of Japan’s heaviest manufacturing occurs in its south, which was largely undamaged as a result of the quake and tsunami, the ability to ship components to these facilities has in some cases been severely impacted, and ongoing power supply disruptions threaten to introduce long-term interruption into the production process.

Japan produces approximately 60% of the world’s silicon, used to produce semiconductor chips. Shortages in these chips are only now being felt, as manufacturers had a 2-to-3 week surplus of chips prior to the quake. Japanese manufacturers are expected to lose up to $60 billion as a result of interruption in production capability this year due to power disruptions. For manufacturing organizations outside Japan, the long-term impact is more difficult to assess, but businesses as diverse as auto manufacturers, and video game, LCD, and laptop producers, have already been affected.

Businesses throughout Japan have reported difficulty obtaining raw materials and transporting workers. Given that the timing of rolling brownouts is unpredictable, the ‘new normal’ for businesses involves flexible office hour scheduling and inconsistent transportation links, which are subject to change on short notice. All indications are that this is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, and will become acute during peak usage seasons during the winter and summer. If so, expect a more significant impact on the global supply chain in due course.

The Importance of Chernobyl’s Radiation Legacy

Chernobyl resulted in 400 times more radiation being released than was released in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but compared with the amount of radiation released during the atomic testing of the 1950s and 1960s, Chernobyl was a small fraction of that amount. Current estimates of the nature of radioactive contamination in the area surrounding the Fukushima plant downplay the significance of a problem. According to an April 2nd New York Times article, and based on a variety of sources of information it gathered, air and food was only considered to be harmful at the plant “after a short period of time”, while air, soil, water and food was considered to be “possibly harmful after a longer period” near the plant. Only food was considered to be “possibly harmful” elsewhere in Japan, though most of the prefectures in northeast Honshu had detected radiation in food above the legal limit in Japan. According to the report, there is no current cause for concern elsewhere in the world.

If Chernobyl is any guide for Japan with respect to radiation contamination, this information is in stark contrast with the facts 10 years after Chernobyl. Vast areas of Belarus and the Ukraine remained contaminated.

According to a study released in 2006 by the IAEA, a combination of human activity and precipitation reduced the negative impact of radioactivity on populated areas near Chernobyl, but resulted in the contamination of sewage systems. The main pathways for radiation to impact people was from radionuclides deposited on the ground and the ingestion of contaminated terrestrial food products. The ingestion of drinking water, fish, and products contaminated with irrigation water were considered to be minor pathways toward contamination.

Due to the short half-life of radioactive iodine (just 8 days), the contamination of milk, which was the most immediate concern in the food chain, only remained a real concern for about two months following the period when radiation from Chernobyl was stopped. Contamination of various crops, including green leafy vegetables, was also a concern for about two months, though the longer-term impacts have been difficult to quantify. Longer-term concern with respect to human ingestion of foods were most notable in milk, meat, and vegetables. Japan should expect to need to monitor its food supply, and possibly rely on external sources of these foods, for a long time to come.

Why the Japanese Government Needs to Move Quickly

The focus of much of the press since the quake and tsunami has been on levels of radioactive iodine that has been released into the environment, but cesium-137 is a much greater health concern and has been linked to cancer deaths nine times greater than radioactive iodine, with a half life of 30 years. Last week, for the first time, the Japanese science ministry began to release measurements of cesium-137 in soil around the plant.

The levels were highest from two points northeast of the plant, ranging from 8,690 becquerels/kilogram to a high of 163,000 Bq/kg measured on 20 March from a point about 40 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima plant. The hottest spot is similar to levels found in some areas affected by Chernobyl. Assuming the measurement is no more than 2 centimeters deep, nuclear engineer Shih-Yew Chen of the Argonne National Laboratory calculates that 163,000 Bq/kg is roughly equivalent to 8 million Bq/m2. The highest cesium-137 levels in some villages near Chernobyl were 5 million Bq/m2. If true, Fukushima has already released higher levels of Cesium 137 than Chernobyl, making it the worst source of nuclear radiation release in history.

Given this, the Japanese government must now move quickly to stop the release of radiation from the Fukushima plants. If preliminary information is correct, Fukushima already is the worst nuclear disaster in history. It could become much worse by degrees if the Japanese government hesitates to use every resource at its disposal — including that of the IAEA and foreign governments — to solve the problem. In the absence of admitting the severity of the problem and acting with haste, Japan’s economy and its people face potentially grave consequences, and the northeast Asia region faces unknown consequences from the release of high levels of cesium-137.

Daniel Wagner is managing director of Country Risk Solutions, a political risk consulting firm based in Connecticut, and senior advisor to the PRS Group.

NRG put brakes on new plant; industry aims at loan guarantees

Apr 1, 2011

By Steve Gelsi
MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — While public outrage over radiation seeping from Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant is a huge setback for proponents of nuclear power, securing financing for new reactors poses perhaps an even bigger challenge in the United States.

After a long hiatus, the U.S. nuclear power industry in recent years was finally making headway toward building the next generation of reactors.

Among the group of big electric power producers stepping up to the plate, Constellation Energy Group CEG zeroed in on nuclear with a plan to build a third reactor at its Calvert Cliffs complex in Maryland.

The effort ground to a halt late last year, when Constellation CEG said problems raising a U.S. loan guarantee, a surplus of cheap natural gas for power generation, and uncertainty over pending U.S. rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions had derailed the project.

Baltimore-based Constellation instead opted to sell its 50% share in the project to Electricite de France , leaving the giant French power company its sole owner.

Fast-forward about six months, and few of the forces that scuttled Constellation’s plans have gone away. Add to that the fact that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station is still leaking radiation three weeks after Japan’s monster March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and the likelihood of finding financing for these billion-dollar projects grows even dimmer.

Just last week, New Jersey-based NRG Energy NRG said it would suspend near-term efforts to begin construction of its South Texas Project nuclear plant. NRG said it would continue efforts to secure an operating license for the project, however.

"Nuclear plants are too large to be financed in the capital markets," NRG Energy CEO David Crane said in a prepared statement to MarketWatch. "Without the federal loan guaranty, our project is dead on arrival."

Loan guarantees amount to a contractual pledge between the government, private creditors and a borrower that Uncle Sam will cover the borrower’s debt obligation in the event of a default. This gives borrowers access to capital markets at the same low interest rates available to the government.

At the same time, companies granted loan guarantees by the Department of Energy for nuclear energy projects pay a premium to participate in the program, called a credit subsidy cost, and have to cover all administrative costs. As with any commercial or bank loan, all loans issued under the program must be repaid in full.

NRG’s decision was also shaped by events in Japan, since the South Texas Project included a $125 million equity investment commitment from Tokyo Electric Power Co., TKECY with an option to invest $30 million more for a total stake of 20%, said NRG spokesman David Knox.

But Tepco also owns the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant north of Tokyo. Efforts to bring the plant under control and line up enough power to serve its millions of customers now cast doubt over its continued participation in the South Texas Project.

"We won’t ask Tepco what is happening with everything they’re going through," Knox said. "When the time is right we’ll figure out the path forward."

In another blow to the NRG project, CPS Energy, a San Antonio, Texas-based utility, said it would suspend discussions with NRG regarding a power purchase agreement for nuclear power from the proposed plant, though holding the door open to future talks.

U.S. nuclear power plant construction list shortens

Less than a year ago, the U.S. nuclear power industry was counting on four new federal permits for plants approaching construction, paving the way toward the expansion of a fleet of 104 reactors that provide about 20% of the country’s electricity.

With NRG Energy and Constellation Energy now backing out of their construction plans, only two sites with a total of four reactors are still active: Southern Co.’s SO Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, and Scana Corp.’s SCG V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 in South Carolina.

The two projects are likely to receive construction licenses by the end of 2011 or early 2012, according to a March 23 update from the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group.

On the financing side, Southern Co. secured a $3.4 billion federal loan guarantee for its project while Scana Corp. has said it doesn’t need a federal loan guarantee to move ahead.

Including the two front-runner nuclear plant projects from Southern Co. and Scana Corp., a total of 18 applicants — power companies and other operating entities — have applied for plant operating licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. See list of applicants for nuclear power plants.

James Dobson, an electric power equity analyst with Wunderlich Securities, said these nuclear power plant proposals face stiff financing challenges whether they are for regulated utilities selling power to rate payers, or for merchant power producers looking to put electricity on the grid through open market sales to utilities and big industrial customers.

On the regulated side of the business, utilities typically provide debt investors a greater measure of security since they offer the possibility of recovering plant construction costs by convincing state regulators to pass those costs down to consumers in the form of higher rates.

But with the cost of a plant reaching $6 billion or more, and its income stream years away, the payoff for investors is not terribly appealing, Dobson said.

Safety concerns and regulatory scrutiny resulting from the Fukushima accident merely add to a murky financing mix, he said.

"On the regulated side, bond investors … are worried about the regulatory picture as well as the cost of capital," Dobson said. "One feeds into the other. Companies are saying they need U.S. government involvement to push this along. On the financing side, bond investors are saying, ‘These things seem like a lot of risk and why do I want to be the guy standing behind this?’"

Dobson said regulated utilities may need federal loan guarantees to move ahead but at least one project, Scana Corp.’s V.C. Summer plant, is managing without them, partly because of statewide legislation supporting the project while placing some of the risk on rate payers.

As for unregulated power producers, Dobson said, "I don’t think a merchant plant can be built without loan guarantees."

Despite the hurdles, nuclear remains an economically viable source of electricity, once the plants manage to get built, he said.

"The variable costs of nuclear are low but fixed costs are very high," Dobson said. "Certainly, financing risks borne by equity and debt holders … those same debt holders will be staring at safety standards."

Meanwhile, other types of power such as wind, natural gas and solar, cost less and take less time to build, offering investors quicker returns, he said.

U.S. loan guarantee shortfalls

While President Barack Obama just this week reiterated his support for nuclear power, some in the industry said the government’s loan guarantee program doesn’t provide enough support under its current structure.

Constellation Energy spokeswoman Maureen Brown said the company told the Department of Energy that the program contains a "significant problem" in calculations on credit cost.

Based on the requirements set forth by the government, the Department of Energy offered Constellation an 11.6% credit cost, which would have added $880 million to the cost of its Calvert Cliffs project, Brown said.

The company concluded that such a huge sum would "clearly destroy the project’s economics," Brown said

A hearing was held last fall in Congress on the methodology used to assign credit costs to nuclear plant loan guarantees, but no major changes have been announced by the government. Nor has any federal loan guarantee been announced since Southern Co.’s award more than a year ago.

As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continues a review of U.S. plants, nuclear power operators have stepped up efforts to promote the improved design and safety of their proposed plants.

But even before these plants move from the planning phase to reality in the U.S., major power producers find themselves facing a shortage of easy financing options to help cover the costly construction bill for America’s next generation of nuclear reactors.

Meanwhile, power generators are turning elsewhere to meet the nation’s growing energy needs.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. added 23,144 megawatts of non-nuclear power generating capacity in 2009, the equivalent of about 23 atomic reactors.

The figure includes 11,000 MW of natural gas generation, nearly 10,000 MW of wind energy and 880 MW from solar panels in 2009 alone.