Archive for the ‘News’ Category

July 16, 2012

New York Times

TOKYO — In Japan’s largest antinuclear rally since the disaster at Fukushima, tens of thousands of protesters gathered at a park in central Tokyo on Monday to urge the government to halt its restarting of the nation’s reactors.

A protester shouted slogans during a large antinuclear rally in Tokyo.
Organizers said 170,000 people filled a Tokyo square to sing songs, beat drums and cheer on a series of high-profile speakers who called for more Japanese to make their voices heard. The police put the number at 75,000, still making it the biggest gathering of antinuclear protesters since the Fukushima accident last year.

"To stay silent in the wake of Fukushima is inhuman," the Oscar-winning musician Ryuichi Sakamoto told the crowd, which braved soaring temperatures to gather at Yoyogi Park.

Polls suggest that public opinion is still divided over the future of nuclear power in Japan. But a unilateral decision last month by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to start putting the country’s reactors back into use has angered many Japanese and galvanized the antinuclear camp.

Read more at the New York Times website….

07  September 2012

World Nuclear News

Approval of four new reactors could be delayed as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission reconsiders its confidence in long term waste management arrangements over the next 24 months.

The NRC has to develop an environmental impact statement on the storing of used nuclear fuel at power plant sites for extended periods, which will form part of a new ‘waste confidence rule’ fundamental to power plant licensing. The previous rule was invalidated in June by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which said the NRC should have considered the possiblity that a permanent waste disposal facility might never actually be built, as well as more factors relating to potential water leaks or fires at storage pools.

The NRC will “proceed directly” on the task, it said, noting that staff could draw on a history of similar work. Nevertheless, the NRC said it might take 24 months to develop the statement. In the meantime the lack of a robust position afforded by a waste confidence rule means that the NRC cannot issue final licenses to new nuclear power plants. This may mean postponed approval for construction and operating licenses for two reactors at Levy in Florida and another two at Lee in South Carolina, which were both expected in late 2013.

In theory the licensing hiatus also applies to final NRC decisions on licence extensions, of which applications are under consideration regarding 13 reactors. While final decisions schedules may be affected pending new waste confidence, the continued operation of the reactors should not. NRC rules say that a reactor may continue operating if its owner submitted a sufficient application to the NRC with at least five years of the original licence remaining.

Waste confidence
For the NRC to grant a new licence to a nuclear facility it must have confidence that there will be suitable storage and disposal facilities for the wastes produced by the plant during its operation. This comes down to the generic waste confidence rule which in part relies on an environmental impact assessment.

This became a live issue to US nuclear power sector in 2009 when President Barack Obama scrapped the Yucca Mountain disposal project with the help of the men he appointed to lead the NRC and the Department of Energy, Gregory Jaczko and Stephen Chu respectively. With no long term disposal plan, the NRC had to revise its waste confidence rule in 2010, deciding that storage at nuclear power plants sites would be acceptable for up to 60 years after the end of power generation. This was quickly challenged by campaigners, leading to the court decision in June.

Researched and written
by World Nuclear News

August 28, 2012

Dave Rice
San Diego Reader

Further confirming that a restart of operations is unlikely to occur in the immediate future, plant operator Southern California Edison is preparing to remove tons of nuclear fuel from the Unit 3 reactor at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Unit 3 was the reactor that initially began leaking small amounts of radioactive steam into the atmosphere in late January, causing an emergency shutdown of the reactor as well as at its twin, Unit 2. Unit 1 was decommissioned in the early 1990s.

While hundreds of tubes in the recently replaced Unit 2 generator were found to have excessive wear, none had burst at the time of shutdown. It’s widely considered that, due to the lower incidence of problems, an earlier restart will be attempted there.

Union of Concerned Scientists director Dave Lochbaum, however, questioned the motives of the removal of fuel from Unit 3 in a Associated Press story. He says moving the fuel to storage allows for less safety equipment to be maintained in operable condition, and for fewer safety tests to be performed.

Last week Edison announced it would lay off up to a third of the San Onofre workforce as the shutdown continues.

August 09, 2012

By Alan Scher Zagier
AP News via Bloomberg Bloomberg Businessweek

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is putting a hold on requests for new reactor construction and license renewals —including Missouri’s only nuclear power plant — after a recent federal court ruling questioned the agency’s plans for storing radioactive waste.

The NRC’s Tuesday ruling will delay at least 19 requests by utilities for new construction and operating licenses or license renewals. Those projects include Ameren Corp.’s request for a 20-year license renewal at its Callaway County plant in central Missouri; a renewal request by the Calvert Cliffs power plant in southern Maryland; and a request by Florida Power & Light to build two new reactors at its Turkey Point nuclear plant south of Miami.

A coalition of two dozen environmental groups sought the delay after a federal appeals court in Washington ruled in June that the NRC’s plans for long-term storage of radioactive waste at individual reactors were insufficient.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit by New York’s attorney general and his counterparts in New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont over a relicensing application for the Indian Point nuclear plant along the Hudson River.

The appeals court found that spent nuclear fuel rods stored on site at power plants "pose a dangerous, long-term health and environmental risk." The NRC fought for decades to build a national waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, but that plan was scrapped two years ago by the Obama administration.

Ed Smith, safe energy director for the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, called the agency’s decision "essentially the first time the NRC cannot generically say that spent nuclear fuel pools, which are located at every nuclear reactor, are safe." The Missouri coalition was among the groups challenging the NRC’s plans.

While Ameren’s Callaway plant license doesn’t expire until 2024, the time frame for its license renewal likely will be pushed back from 2013 by another four or five years, Smith suggested.

"It’s a win for public safety that the U.S. Court of Appeals has vacated the NRC regulations on nuclear waste," Smith added. "Now the public will have an opportunity to comment on provisions for safely storing radioactive waste, which may or may not actually be viable."

On Wednesday afternoon, Ameren issued a statement noting that the agency’s "licensing reviews and proceedings will move forward," with the ruling more narrowly applied to the final issuance of permits.

In New York, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the Tuesday ruling shows that "the NRC has finally changed course" and "has committed to addressing the risks posed by long-term nuclear waste storage."

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Alan Scher Zagier can be reached at http://twitter.com/azagier

08/07/2012

Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON – The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday voted to halt final decisions on new and renewed licenses for reactors nationwide following a June court ruling that said the agency first must assess the environmental risks of storing radioactive waste.

The move could mean a potentially years-long delay of final decisions on as many as 19 pending nuclear power plant licenses, including a proposal to renew those for the South Texas Project nuclear plant near Bay City.

Spokesman David McIntyre stressed that the commission will continue reviewing applications until the point at which a final decision would be made.

"This isn’t saying that we’re not going to issue licenses for years; it’s saying, hold on, we need to take a breath and determine a path forward," McIntyre said. "The commission could come out with a path forward that says you can continue to do these things, but you have to address waste confidence in some way."

At issue is how the U.S. stores spent fuel rods while decades-old nuclear reactors continue to churn out power, without a clear plan on where to stash them permanently. The Obama administration ordered the Energy Department to rescind an application for building a long-term storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

In June, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s "waste confidence" rule, which said spent fuel could be stored safely for 60 years or more at the site of existing plants. The court ruled that the agency was obligated to study the environmental risks of allowing that radioactive material to remain at reactors for decades.

The court also criticized the commission for failing to consider the environmental effects of not finding permanent off-site storage for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain or anywhere else.

Full response weighed

The commission now is studying its full response, including possibly launching an environmental impact study that would span years before a new waste confidence rule could be made final.

In an order issued Tuesday, the commission said it would give the public an opportunity to comment on its decisions, including the breadth of any future environmental reviews.

Overdue, activists say

Nuclear foes and environmental activists who challenged the waste storage rule cheered the move, saying an environmental assessment of spent fuel storage and disposal is overdue.

"That study should have been done years ago, but NRC just kept kicking the can down the road," said attorney Diane Curran, who represented some of the groups that brought the case.

Existing licenses for the two units at the South Texas nuclear plant are set to expire in 2027 and 2028. In October 2010, the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Co., asked the NRC to renew the licenses.

That kicked off a long multiyear review process slated to end with a final decision in mid-2013.

The two units at the plant are pressurized-water nuclear reactors.

San Antonio’s city-owned utility, CPS Energy, owns the South Texas Project along with Austin Energy and NRG Energy.

jennifer.dlouhy(at)chron.com