Archive for the ‘Nukes’ Category

December 27, 2011

BY:RICK WALLACE, TOKYO CORRESPONDENT
The Australian

IN terms of sheer chutzpah, Tokyo Electric Power Co’s claim that it no longer owns the radioactive isotopes that spewed out of its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March takes some beating.

In defending a lawsuit from a Fukushima Prefecture golf club, lawyers said the radioactive cesium that had blighted the Sunfield Nihonmatsu golf course’s fairways and greens was the club’s problem. The utility has taken a similarly hard line defending claims from ryokan (inn) and onsen (spa) owners.

TEPCO’s lawyers used the arcane legal principle of res nullius to argue the emissions that escaped after the tsunami and earthquake triggered a meltdown were no longer its responsibility. "Radioactive materials (such as cesium) that scattered and fell from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant belong to individual landowners, not TEPCO," the utility told Tokyo District Court.

The chief operating officer of the prestigious golf course, Tsutomo Yamane, told The Australian that he and his staff were stunned: "I couldn’t believe my ears. I told my employees, ‘TEPCO is saying the radiation doesn’t belong to them’, and they said ‘I beg your pardon’."
The court rejected TEPCO’s argument, but ruled it was the responsibility of local, prefectural and national governments to clean it up.

The case – and the club’s bid for $160 million in clean-up costs – has proceeded to the High Court amid fears the ruling could result in some local governments being bankrupted.

Mr Yamane said that, before the disaster, Sunfield Nihonmatsu, about 45km west of the stricken plant, was regarded as one of the region’s finest courses and was enjoyed by about 30,000 players a year.

He said the course was showered with fallout from the accident and sections of it were now reporting readings of almost double the criteria for evacuation of 20 millisieverts a year imposed by the Japanese government for regions around the plant.

"The highest radiation amount we measured on the course was 51 microsieverts per hour (in a drain). We are getting more and more concerned about the amount of cesium on the ground," Mr Yamane said.

"Up to the end of September there was still staff working to maintain the course, but on advice from the prefectural government we had to ask them to leave."

The club launched the lawsuit after being fobbed off by TEPCO’s compensation department. Mr Yamane said TEPCO was already using the District Court judgment as a legal battering ram to fend off lawsuits from other affected golf courses in Fukushima Prefecture.

"I wonder what’s up with today’s Japan," Mr Yamane said. "TEPCO used to keep saying nuclear power was safe and kept building plants in Japan.

"If that was true, the kind of problem we are seeing now should never have occurred."

April 23, 2013

by Kate Galbraith
Texas Tribune

Four months after a fire in January, one of Texas’ four nuclear reactor units is being restarted, bringing to an end the unit’s second prolonged shutdown in two years.

"We’re bringing the unit back up," said Buddy Eller, a spokesman for the South Texas Project, the enormous Bay City nuclear plant where the problems have occurred. The 1,350-megawatt reactor unit, known as STP Unit 2, should be producing 100 percent power by sometime Tuesday, according to Eller, who spoke with the Tribune on Monday afternoon.

The fire in January occurred at a transformer in the electrical switchyard outside the reactor. The fire was fueled by oil, lasted about 10 minutes and was immediately put out by the plant’s fire brigade, Eller said.

The fire department in Bay City headed to the scene, but plant officials turned them back, saying they had the fire under control and did not need additional help, according to a representative of the Bay City Police Department.

No one was injured in the fire, according to Eller, who said that reports of 50-foot flames were "incorrect."

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and STP. However, Eller said it was safe to turn the unit back on.

"Our focus is to ensure that we put safety over [power] production," he said, adding that the outage had given the company time to perform additional maintenance tasks. The turbine blades and bearings were damaged when the reactor shut down quickly during the fire, he said.

It was the second major incident for STP 2 in two years. In November 2011, the reactor went down for five months after it tripped, or shut down, while it was at 100 percent power, according to an NRC web report. The cause was a malfunction of the main generator, due to a ground fault.

In neither incident was there any danger of radioactive material leaking, Eller said.

The South Texas Project plant, which began operating in the 1980s, is jointly owned by NRG Energy, which has a 44 percent stake, and two municipal utilities. CPS Energy, the San Antonio electric utility, owns 40 percent, and Austin Energy owns 16 percent. Texas’ other nuclear plant, the two-reactor Comanche Peak facility, is located in Glen Rose, near Fort Worth. The two are among the youngest nuclear plants in the country.

Environmentalists concerned about nuclear power say that the fire, in addition to the generator problem in 2011-12, has created concerns about the plant’s ability to operate safely. The federal licenses for the STP reactors expire in 2027 and 2028. Public hearings on the license extension took place in Bay City in January, just days after the fire.

"Relicensing should be halted while a serious, in-depth examination occurs," said Karen Hadden, executive director of the Austin-based SEED coalition, which advocates for sustainable energy. "I think it’s becoming increasingly unreliable, and it’s costing us money to fix it." She said it was difficult to get information about the plant’s problems.

Eller would not provide an estimate of the cost of fixing the plant. He said the plant was working through the process with its insurance company. NRG Energy said it would not discuss the cost of buying replacement power during the months that the unit was shut down, as such information is proprietary. Efforts Monday afternoon to glean cost figures from the plant’s municipal-utility owners, CPS Energy and Austin Energy, were unsuccessful.

Over the past four months, STP has taken apart the turbine generator and inspected it thoroughly, Eller said. The generator — which had been refurbished in 2012 — was fine, he said, but "we had to replace a number of the turbine blades." The two incidents were not causally connected, he said.

The NRC provided little information on the cause of the January fire; Lara Uselding, a spokeswoman, would say only that it was an "internal electrical fault on the main transformer on Unit 2." The NRC will issue a quarterly inspection report, which is publicly available, "in the May timeframe," she said. Meanwhile, "inspectors will continue their review of the root cause and would take any regulatory action if warranted," she said.

If the reactor restart is successful, it will be online in time to provide electricity during Texas’ most crucial season — the summer, when heavy air-conditioning use sends up power consumption.

"We are expecting to have STP 2 capacity available for summer needs," said Robbie Searcy, a spokeswoman for ERCOT, the Texas grid operator.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story said that NRG Energy operates the STP plant, in addition to owning 44 percent of it. In fact, the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company operates the plant. The story has been corrected.

August 15, 2013

By Polly Ross Hughes
Texas Energy Report

Study finds South Texas Project defenseless from potential sea-based terrorist strike

More than a decade after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, all 104 of the nation’s commercial nuclear reactors and three research reactors remain inadequately protected from ‘credible’ terrorist attacks, according to the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

The report commissioned by the Pentagon found that terrorists could wage a sabotage attack to cause a nuclear meltdown or steal bomb-grade materials to make a nuclear weapon.

"More than 10 years have come and gone since the events of September 2001, and America’s civilian nuclear facilities remain unprotected against a terrorist attack of that scale", said Alan J. Kuperman, coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project and co-author of the report, ?Protecting U.S. Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack: Re-assessing the Current ?Design Basis Threat? Approach.?

"Instead, our civilian reactors prepare only against a much smaller-scale attack, known as the ‘design basis threat’, while the government fails to provide supplementary protection against a realistic 9/11-type attack," Kuperman continued in a release issued with the report. ?"It would be a tragedy if the United States had to look back after such an attack on a nuclear reactor and say that we could have and should have done more to prevent the catastrophe." The South Texas Project near Bay City in Matagorda County is among 11 nuclear power reactors deemed at highest risk. The South Texas Nuclear Generating Station, owned by NRG Energy and the cities of San Antonio and Austin, is among eight that research shows are vulnerable to water-borne attacks. The others listed as unprotected from attacks from sea include Diablo Canyon in California, St. Lucie in Florida, Brunswick in North Carolina, Surry in Virginia, Indian Point in New York, Millstone in Connecticut and Pilgrim in Massachusetts.

Three civilian research reactors pose a danger and raise particular concerns because they are fueled with bomb-grade uranium, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology, located just two dozen miles from the White House. The others that will continue to use bomb-grade uranium for at least another decade are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and a research reactor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Unlike military facilities that hold the same materials, the research reactors are not defended against a high-impact or lesser terrorist threats, the research shows.

"Less than two dozen miles from the White House and Capitol Hill, a nuclear reactor contains bomb-grade uranium, but it is not required to protect against even the lesser ‘design basis threat’ of terrorism," said Kuperman. "We know where the weak spots are when it comes to nuclear facilitates, so it would be the height of irresponsibility to fail to take action now."

Despite the toll of the 9/11 attacks, most operators of nuclear reactors are not required to defend against attacks from airplanes, attacks from sea or even against easy-to-obtain, high-power sniper rifles, he pointed out. Cost of such security poses one hurdle but security officials often claim that terrorist don’t value the sites or that the effects of potential attacks would not be catastrophic.

Kuperman disagrees and says it is not possible to know which nuclear targets terrorists might prefer or which types of attacks would pose the greatest harm. The NPPP recommends that all potentially high-value targets, including both nuclear power reactors and civilian research facilities, should be protected against maximum terrorist attacks. He suggested the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission upgrade its protection standards and that the federal government provide needed extra security.

The full report can be found here.

Copyright August 15, 2013, Harvey Kronberg, www.texasenergyreport.com, All rights are reserved

August 14, 2013

Matthew L. Wald
New York Times

Washington – States cannot shut down nuclear plants over safety worries, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on Wednesday, upholding a lower court’s decision that allowed the Vermont Yankee plant to keep running despite a seven year effort by the Vermont Legislature to close it.

"The nuclear power industry has just been delivered a tremendous victory against the attempt by any state to shut down federally regulated nuclear power plants," said Kathleen Sullivan, a lawyer for Entergy, which owns the Vermont Yankee.

Read more at the New York Times website

Jun. 3, 2013

PERRY BEEMAN AND WILLIAM PETROSKI
DesMoines Register

MidAmerican Energy says design plan isn’t approved; environmentalists celebrate

MidAmerican Energy has scrapped plans for Iowa’s second nuclear plant and will refund $8.8 million ratepayers paid for a now-finished feasibility study, utility officials said Monday.

The utility has decided against building any major power plant. That’s because there is no approved design for the modular nuclear plant it envisioned, and there are too many questions about limits on carbon emissions from a natural gas plant, the company said.

"We opted for what was in the best interest of our customers," MidAmerican vice president for regulatory affairs Dean Crist told The Des Moines Register.

The decision ends, for now, a three-year controversy over the future of nuclear energy in Iowa and how to pay for a possible nuclear plant. Iowa has one nuclear power plant, the Duane Arnold plant near Palo.

Crist said a feasibility study started in 2010 found that two 700-acre sites near Thurman in southwest Iowa and Wilton in southeast Iowa would work for a modular nuclear plant, which was expected to cost around $1 billion and to be built in phases.

The MidAmerican study, finished several months early, also noted that the type of modular nuclear plant envisioned could be cost-effective, would be safer than earlier plants and would be a $135 million annual boon to the Iowa economy for 40 to 60 years.

In addition, the 11-year construction would bring another $1.2 billion in spending, a peak of $75 million in payroll, and 1,880 jobs.

But MidAmerican said those modular plants have not been designed and approved yet. And carbon regulations continue to make fossil-fuel plants a tougher proposition, Crist said.

Muscatine County Supervisor Scott Sauer said he had opposed any power plant at the Wilton-area site, preferring that the utility build on the sites of decommissioned coal plants instead.

James Larew, an Iowa City lawyer, had been critical of MidAmerican’s financial proposal for the plant because ratepayers, rather than investors, would have borne the risk. He credited AARP and other organizations for killing the legislation.

MidAmerican became part of a national wave of nuclear plant proposals in the United States, which last year approved its first new reactors since 1978. More than 100 proposals turned up as utilities looked for ways to sidestep almost certain limits on carbon emissions linked to climate change and largely from coal and natural gas.

Plans softened after earthquakes and tsunamis caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011. Now, with natural gas cheaper and plentiful, there is more talk about gas plants, and less about nuclear.

Mike Crecelius, Fremont County emergency management director, said he wasn’t surprised by MidAmerican’s move. One of the sites was in the county, and there has been widespread, unfounded concerns about groundwater contamination, he said.

The Japan disaster didn’t help MidAmerican’s plan, said Crecelius, but he noted that the Iowa plant would have used modular designs that would use far more modern technology.

Iowa environmental groups that had objected to MidAmerican’s attempt to charge ratepayers in advance for the nuclear plant praised the move to scrap the project.

"Yay!" exclaimed Neila Seaman, director of the Iowa Chapter of Sierra Club. "We are glad to hear that they are planning to expand their wind power. We think that is a better option than nuclear power," Seaman said.

"Nuclear power is dangerous and then there is the waste issue," Seaman added. "It is expensive and we just think there are better options."

Others saw it as a victory for clean energy.

"I think our perspective is that the right mix of clean energy, whether wind energy, or conservation, or both, can meet Iowa’s demand for energy," said Nathaniel Baer, who follows energy issues for the nonprofit Iowa Environmental Council. "This is welcome news."

The lack of an approved design for the new plants is another major reason few reactors are expected to be built in the next decade.

MidAmerican will ask the Iowa Utilities Board to approve a refund and cancel on July 1 the special charge ratepayers paid for the study. The utility collected $14.2 million over several years, and it will return the $8.8 million it didn’t spend on the site and market analysis, tests, and the like.

The money would be refunded over a year, beginning in August.

MidAmerican plans to let its land options expire, and will sell a couple of Muscatine County properties it bought for soil tests.

Crist said it probably will be toward the end of this decade before the utility takes another hard look at a major power plant project.

In the meantime, Mid­American will focus on its plan to build up to 656 wind turbines in a $1.9 billion project across Iowa, which also will trim power bills by saving fuel costs.

Ratepayers will see a slight dip in bills because of the nuclear-study refund, Crist noted.

MidAmerican President William Fehrman has a background in nuclear energy. Over several years, he suggested the nuclear facility was the best choice for a major plant needed for Iowa’s economic growth, as well as to replace power from coal plants that would be mothballed as federal regulations limiting carbon emissions ramp up.

But a controversial bill MidAmerican backed in the Iowa Legislature led to a political brouhaha. On Monday, Crist said that fight didn’t doom the plant, noting that Mid­American could have petitioned the utilities board to allow the financing.

The legislation would have allowed MidAmerican to charge customers for planning and construction of the plant before it was built, and even if it wasn’t, to a point.

In February 2012, an Iowa Poll found that 77 percent of Iowans polled opposed the arrangement allowing the utility to charge customers up front for the planning and construction. Eighteen percent favored the approach.