Archive for the ‘Fukushima’ Category

June 8, 2012

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press via Google News

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s leader appealed to the nation Friday to accept that two nuclear reactors that remained shuttered after the Fukushima disaster must be restarted to protect the economy and people’s livelihoods.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said the government has taken ample safety measures to ensure the two reactors in western Japan would not leak radiation if an earthquake or tsunami as severe as last year’s should strike them.

All 50 of Japan’s workable reactors are offline for maintenance and safety concerns since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, swept into a coastal plant in Fukushima and sparked the world’s second-worst nuclear disaster.

The two reactors at the Ohi nuclear plant are the first two ready to resume generating power, but the public has shown great concern that government failures worsened last year’s crisis and may recur.

Nuclear energy is crucial for Japanese society, Noda said in a news conference broadcast live. The government wants the reactors to be operational ahead of a summertime energy crunch.

"We should restart the Ohi No. 3 and No. 4 reactors in order to protect the people’s livelihoods," Noda said. "The Japanese society cannot survive if we stop all nuclear reactors or keep them halted."

Noda said a 15 percent power deficit is expected in the western region, a level he called "severe." Without nuclear energy, utilities would have to rely more heavily on expensive fossil fuel, which would increase electricity bills and financial strain on small businesses.

He said the public opinion is polarized but he has to make a decision because "I cannot put people’s safety and livelihood at stake by not restarting the reactors."

Local consent is not legally required for restarting the reactors, though government ministers have promised to gain understanding from the prefecture. Noda said he understands the mixed feelings many people have about a startup. He promised to publish a long-term energy policy that aims to reduce nuclear dependency and promote renewable energy around August — a delay from an earlier target of June.

Noda’s speech Friday possibly removes the last obstacle before a resumption of the Ohi reactors. The Fukui governor made Noda’s public appeal conditional to his consent for the startup. With the governor’s consent, Noda is expected to make a final go ahead as early as next week, so the restart could take place within days.
Noda said the peak of energy demand for the summer is approaching, requiring a quick decision.

He said major cities around the Ohi plant should thank local residents for their burden of supplying electricity to towns around the west, despite the safety concerns, apparently seeking to gain their understanding for the resumption.

Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa took Noda’s comment "seriously," indicating an approval, a local newspaper Fukui Shimbun reported.

Fukui, where 13 reactors are clustered in four complexes along the coast, is often called Japan’s "Nuclear Alley," making the region Japan’s most nuclear-dependent area.

Noda said the startup is not intended just for the summer, rejecting calls for limited operation by Osaka city and other nearby towns. He said he planned to start up more reactors whenever their safety is confirmed.

The government issued new safety guidelines in April to address residents’ worries. In response, Kansai Electric Power Co. submitted its safety plans for two reactors at the plant, saying the full upgrades will take up to three years.

Some of the most crucial measures to secure cooling functions and prevent meltdowns as in Fukushima were installed, but more than one-third of the necessary upgrades on the list are still incomplete.

Filtered vents that could substantially reduce radiation leaks in case of an accident threatening an explosion, a radiation-free crisis management building and fences to block debris washed up by a tsunami won’t be ready until 2015. This means the plant, as well as plant workers and residents, won’t be fully protected from radiation leaks in case of a Fukushima-class crisis.

Masataka Shimizu, former president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima plant, said its crisis management building installed in 2010 saved the crisis from becoming a catastrophe.

"It’s horrifying just to imagine if it hadn’t been there yet," Shimizu told a parliamentary accident inquiry Friday.

Noda, however, said that the safety measures are provisional and that they would have to be more closely examined when a new regulatory agency is installed. The step has been delayed due to demands by opposition parties to make it more independent than the government proposal.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Japan is readying to restart some of its 50 idle nuclear reactors, with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda going on national television to declare that society "won’t function" without nuclear power.

June 11, 2012

News Desk
Global Post

Japan is readying to restart some of its 50 idle nuclear reactors, with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda going on national television to declare that society "won’t function" without nuclear power.

Japan is facing electricity shortfalls in the peak summer period, however recent polls have indicated that public opinion is against restarting reactors and for reducing Japan’s reliance on nuclear energy.

Before last year’s March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami caused meltdowns and radiation leaks at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, Japan was the world’s biggest nuclear power generator after the US and France.

According to the Associated Press, Noda warned that going without nuclear power would mean relying more heavily on fossil fuel, which would increase electricity bills for individuals and small businesses.

However, according to Australia’s ABC News, about 1,000 protestors gathered outside Noda’s Tokyo home over the weekend, chanting "No to restarting nuclear plants."

However, Noda said: "I have decided that reactors three and four at the Ohi nuclear plant should be restarted in order to protect people’s lives."

Noda also received the nod from a panel of Japanese scientists that the two nuclear reactors were safe to operate, Bloomberg reported.

The 12-member panel that met late Sunday released a document specifying that the Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Ohi nuclear plant in Fukui prefecture could be operated safely.

"It has been evaluated that safety measures are satisfactory for ensuring reactor security even in the event of an earthquake and tsunami that must be anticipated based on the lessons learned from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear accident," the panel said.

Fukushima Dai-Ichi was operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Co.

The Ohi reactors could be powered into life as early as this week, the ABC reported.

The AP cited Noda as saying that said major cities around the Ohi plant should thank local residents for their burden of supplying electricity to towns further afield.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Kyodo, Staff report
The Japan Times

The water cooling the core of the crippled Fukushima power plant’s No. 2 reactor is only 60 cm deep, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday, all but confirming experts’ fears that the unit is breached and can’t hold its coolant.

The utility, better known as Tepco, made the discovery by mechanically inserting a 20-meter endoscope into the primary containment vessel to check its coolant level after failing in January. Water must constantly cover the nuclear fuel core to prevent the rods from melting. The rods in a boiling water reactor of this type are about 4 meters long.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Junichi Matsumoto gave assurances that the melted fuel in unit 2 is being constantly cooled by injected water and said the temperature was between 48.5 and 50 degrees. But he also acknowledged that the lower-than-expected water level suggests much of it is leaking from the vessel and into the plant.

This is the second time Tepco has inserted an endoscope into the reactor since the plant was crippled by the core meltdowns triggered by the earthquake and tsunami last March. When an attempt using a shorter endoscope failed to find water level on Jan. 19, the company had to try a longer one to check deeper inside.

The fuel in reactors 1 to 3 is believed to have blazed through the pressure vessels and accumulated in the outer containment vessels. Although the water injected into unit 2 was transparent, some sediment was found, Matsumoto said.

Tepco plans to survey the No. 2 reactor again on Tuesday to check the interior radiation level.

For the first survey in January, Tepco projected the water level had likely climbed to about 4.5 meters, based on the pressure differential between the main body and a lower component. But it failed to detect any coolant water around 4 meters from the bottom.

MARCH 14, 2012

The QueQue
San Antonio Current

Call for an end to nuclear power in San Antonio

It was a dank, dark, drizzly Luminaria-less night, but a dozen-plus protestors trudged past the Federal Building downtown Saturday night with a banner calling on the few squinting drivers and umbrellaed pedestrians to "Imagine a World Without Nuclear Disasters." They walked down César Chávez Boulevard before hanging a right on Navarro Street to take up a position on the sidewalk outside CPS Energy‘s offices. Every few minutes someone tried to get a chant going, "Sayonara nuclear power" being the clunker in the bunch, and members of Energía Mía lit candles to place on the curb in memory of not only the thousands that died following the 9-magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan a year ago, but for the victims likely still to come from the radioactive contamination wrought by the triple meltdown and hydrogen explosions at the Daiichi nuclear complex at Fukushima. "I would like to see us go to a zero nuclear power position," said a bearded Allen Townsend, who has tracked energy issues since the 1970s. "My big concern is the waste. Some of that waste is like a 20,000-year half-life, and I don’t think we can take care of something that long. That’s mortgaging the future."

Former City Councilmember Maria Berriozábal, the lone council opponent to STP 1 and 2 when they were constructed in the 1980s, said she hopes the units now being reviewed for license extensions that could have them operating until almost 2050 instead of shuttering in the late 2020s fail the test. "They’re old. They’re shut down as we speak because of problems. And we’ve seen all the problems that we’ve had in other cities," she said. "We should just concentrate all of our efforts on the good job that CPS is doing on sustainable energy and just quit nuclear energy." Lamenting the health risks that come from nuclear, former elementary teacher Helen Villarreal agreed, adding that the United States is losing an opportunity to be a leader in the field of low-polluting energy sources such as solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal.

Radioactive contamination from what may be the world’s worst nuclear disaster has blanketed the countryside around Fukushima and poured into the Sea of Japan, contaminating many domestic products and impacting the nation’s export business. Radioactive fallout was even tracked to cities in the United States. While regulators insist the minute levels of radioactive cesium and iodine, for instance, don’t pose a health risk here, two researchers publishing in the International Journal of Health Services found that 14,000 "excess" U.S. deaths – particularly among infants – may be linked the radioactive fallout from Fukushima. The gap represents the same sort of double-minded approach within the research community that still divides opinions about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. An international collaboration of researchers have pinned the estimated fatalities linked to Chernobyl at 5,000 nearby and about 30,000 worldwide. However, reports filed by physicians in Ukraine and Russia published by the New York Academy of Sciences claim the death toll wrought by Chernobyl has already approached a million dead.

Reactor safety and concerned scientists

As some of the last reactors to go online in the U.S., STP also enjoys one of the stronger safety records in the fleet, said Buddy Eller, spokesperson for the STP Nuclear Operating Company. And if Fukushima Daiichi’s disaster was brought on by the loss of connection to the electrical grid from earthquake damage and backup generators swamped by the resulting tsunami – a double-whammy above and beyond what the reactors were built to sustain – Eller expressed confidence in STP’s three emergency safety systems that include "locomotive-sized" diesel generators in "flood-proof" concrete bunkers. Annual Assessment letters from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 2011 dated March 5, 2012, also give Texas nukes, the South Texas Project and Comanche Peak in North Texas, clean bills of health. "The NRC determined that overall, South Texas Project Electric Generating Station Units 1 and 2 operated in a manner that preserved public health and safety and met all cornerstone objectives."

But the Union of Concerned Scientists blasted the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a report last week for failing to enact key recommendations from its own post-Fukushima assessment. "Many of its proposals to safeguard against such a calamity here are good in principle," the report states, "but their effectiveness will depend on how well they are implemented, and how quickly." High on their complaint is the NRC’s unfulfilled charge to clarify "patchwork" regulations for severe accidents (those exceeding the abilities of the plants to withstand, see Fukushima). In fact, such action, while highest on the NRC’s list of priorities, will be some of the last actions to be implemented, the UCS report states.

CPS Energy plans and public opinion

Plans to double the 1,080-megawatt nuclear-power complex in Matagorda County responsible for a full third of greater San Antonio’s power fell through after ballooning expenses in 2009 gave way to internal bickering and lawsuits between partners CPS, NRG Energy, and Toshiba in 2010, but members of Energía Mía want the city to fully divest itself from what they consider an "unforgiving" power source. It’s a non-starter at CPS, where an emailed response to questions on the subject reads simply: "CPS Energy has not evaluated elimination of nuclear from its energy portfolio and does not have any plans to do so." Whether STP 1 and 2 will be closed in 2028 or 2048, increased maintenance and repair will be the name of the game for years to come. Unit 2, for instance, has been offline for several months now as crews work to replace a rotor in the main generator, Eller said. Yet in order to fulfill its goal of 20 percent renewables by 2020 and a full 65 percent of its energy supply from "low-carbon" sources, CPS is pursuing non-nuclear and non-coal options vigorously. "Mothballing Deely in 2018 and acquiring a gas plant to replace Deely’s 870 MW along with wind, solar and clean coal is helping us get there," spokesperson Christine Patmon said. CPS announced this week that it is purchasing an 800-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant in Seguin. In January, a deal for 400 solar megawatts from OCI Solar was announced. How well the "bridge fuel" play on natural gas works out will hinge a lot on the environmental costs of shale gas development and the durability of formations like the Eagle Ford in South Texas (see "Inflated figures").

Meanwhile, a recent survey by ORC International performed Last month for the Civil Society Institute found that 57 percent of Americans (extrapolated from a survey of 1,032) are less supportive of nuclear power post-Fukushima. "This survey is another piece of bad news for new nuclear construction in the U.S.," said Peter Bradford, a former NRC commissioner and current adjunct law professor on nuclear power and public policy at Vermont Law School, said in a prepared release. "The nuclear industry has spent millions on polls telling the public how much the public longs for nuclear power. Such polls never ask the real world questions linking new reactors to rate increases or to accident risk. Fukushima has made the links to risk much clearer in the public’s mind."

March 7, 2012

Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe in Texas;
Lessons We Must Learn and Actions We Must Take In Light of the Fukushima Disaster

Austin, TX Concerned citizens in Texas are calling on U.S. leaders to do more to prevent a U.S. nuclear disaster. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that began nearly a year ago, on March 11, 2011, resulted in explosions, releases of radioactive materials and complete meltdowns of three reactors. 160,000 people were evacuated. Radioactive Iodine-131 and Cesium-137 was detected around the world and large amounts of radioactive materials were released into the Pacific Ocean. Only two of Japan’s 54 nuclear reactors are operating today and they are also expected to be shut down by the end of May. In light of the meltdowns, Germany now plans to shut down all 17 of its reactors and replace them with renewable energy. Post-Fukushima safety improvements have been recommended by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s task force.

"The lesson we absolutely must learn from Fukushima is that any nuclear reactor can have a meltdown. U.S. reactors are at risk from hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, floods, earthquakes, lack of cooling water and terrorist attacks, as well as accidents due to human error and mechanical failure," said Karen Hadden, Director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition. "We’re urging Congress to halt nuclear licensing and nuclear loan guarantees, subsidies which would allow billions of taxpayer dollars to flow into dangerous new reactor projects. Old reactors get metal fatigue and accident risks increase. They should be retired, not re-licensed for another twenty years."

Read more…

• Download Press Release 3/7/12
• Five Myths About the Fukushima Disaster
• 1 Year Anniversary Events in Texas

A couple who lived in Japan, but had to leave as a result of the Fukushima disaster speak out

Listen to thier stories (wav files)
• Ivan Stout
• Chiaki Kasahara

Take Action:

• No Fukushima Style Disaster in Texas