The report by the panel of five seismologists advising the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is the first issued on its investigation into active fault lines at the Tsuruga plant, which is located on the Japan Sea coast. The Tsuruga plant – which has been operating for 43 years – has two reactors, with the fault line having been discovered directly under the idled No. 2 reactor.”Safety levels [at Tsuruga] have been low and it is really just a matter of luck that there hasn’t been an accident,” Reuters cites Kunihiko Shimazaki, the head of the panel and a commissioner of the NRA, as saying after the report was finalized. “We are taking the first steps to correct the situation.” The NRA is set to determine the Tsuruga plant’s fate at its regular meeting scheduled in a week’s time. The experts’ finding is likely to kill any chance the reactor will ever be reactivated, as government regulations prohibit the construction of reactor buildings directly above any active fault line. NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka has previously said that no evaluation for the resumption of operations at the Tsuruga plant would be conducted if an active fault was found, Japan’s Asashi Shimbun reported. Japan Atomic Power Co., which operates the two-reactor Tsuruga station, reacted to the findings with disbelief, accusing the panel of bias.”We deeply regret that they made such a conclusion this time and it is absolutely impossible for us to accept it,” the company said in a statement.”We hereby ask the panel of experts to come to a fresh conclusion after reviewing existing data with a neutral and fair point of view, with discussion on a strictly scientific basis and clarification of the grounds of understanding.” The mayor of Tsuruga Kazuharu Kawase said on Monday he was worried nuclear regulators were rushing “towards a conclusion” regarding the atomic plants fate, adding that Japan Atomic Power had yet to finish its own investigation.“I want the NRA to cautiously deliberate the matter from a broad viewpoint, reflecting the outcome of the operator’s investigation and various opinions in and outside the country,” the Japan Times cites him as saying. Japan Atomic Power has claimed the fault is inactive based on its analysis of volcanic ash, which they say shows no signs of recent movement. The panel has dismissed the claim as unreliable. The experts determined that the fault, a zone of pebbles and sediment dubbed D-1, could shift simultaneously with two others: one known as K and the other an active major called Urazoko. The K fault, which has apparently moved within the past 130,000 years, is therefore considered to be technically active. They further say that the D-1 fault is also active as it is a part of this structure, while the Urazoko fault is located some 200-300 meters from the reactor buildings.Japan’s nuclear operators have faced massive losses following an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, which caused three reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.Currently, 48 of the country’s 50 nuclear reactors are suspended from operations, although the country’s nuclear industry had expected early restarts based on past experience with regulators.”It is no longer business as usual. This is the beginning of a long-term restructuring of the nuclear power business in Japan,” a senior adviser on atomic policy told Reuters on condition of anonymity.The experts will conduct a total of six studies on faults at six locations near nuclear plants.With the atomic industry faltering, last week Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) promised to bring the country’s nuclear reactors back into service once they had been verified as safe.The country’s public remains ambivalent about the government’s nuclear plans, according to a poll published in the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper in March.While 79.6 per cent of those questioned were at least moderately in favor of parting with nuclear power eventually, 69 per cent said they would support the restarting of some nuclear reactors to fulfill the Japan’s current power needs.The same month the poll was conducted, some 13,000 people gathered in Tokyo to protest the continued use of nuclear power in Japan nearly two years after the Fukushima disaster. … Read More
Ukrainians mark anniversary of Chernobyl disaster
Ukrainians on Friday lit candles and laid flowers to remember the victims of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl 27 years ago, as engineers pressed on with efforts to construct a new shelter to permanently secure the stricken reactor. On April 26, 1986, an explosion during testing…
UK to claim over 2,500kg of foreign waste plutonium
Britain is home to more spent civilian plutonium than any other country in the world. The Office for Nuclear Regulation said that as of December 2011 Britain was storing 118.2 tons of plutonium, of which 27.9 tons is owned by foreign entities.Now London wants to recycle some of the stored substance into mixed oxide fuel (MOX), to be used for a new generation of nuclear power stations, which are currently under discussion.Tuesday, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced the UK will take control of 1,850 kg of plutonium which was previously earmarked to repay France. In a series of complex swaps, Sellafield will assume control of 750 kg of German-owned plutonium and 350 kg of Dutch owned material.The deal has been approved by Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the DECC insists that the change of ownership does not mean more nuclear fuel will be stored in the country. “There are advantages to having national control over more of the civil plutonium in the UK as this gives us greater influence over how we ultimately manage it,” Michael Fallon, Britain’s minister of state for energy, said in statement.The DECC declined to say to what extent the ownership transfers benefited British taxpayers.The UK government currently spends 2 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) a year on managing its growing plutonium mountain. These expenses are not expected to be alleviated soon. None of the new nuclear power stations are due to become operational until the 2020’s, and it is still unclear how many of them are going to be built. Even the MOX plant constructed by the French is not expected to be finished by 2015.Plutonium is a radioactive by-product found in spent nuclear fuel when it is removed from a nuclear reactor. It can be recycled, although the process is expensive and technologically difficult It is used to make MOX fuel, which is an alternative to low-enriched uranium and usually comes as a blend of plutonium and uranium.Some of the plutonium stored in Britain comes from the country’s own nuclear weapons program of the 1950’s and 1960’s and was created by the UK’s first generation of nuclear reactors – the Magnox reactor. Magnox reactors ended up producing far more plutonium than the UK needed, partly because they were operated for longer than envisaged and partly because during the miners’ strike of 1972 and 1974 and the three day week of 1973 they were run at full tilt just to keep the lights on. … Read More
UK to claim over 2,900kg of foreign waste plutonium
Britain is home to more spent civilian plutonium than any other country in the world. The Office for Nuclear Regulation said that as of December 2011 Britain was storing 118.2 tons of plutonium, of which 27.9 tons is owned by foreign entities.Now London wants to recycle some of the stored substance into mixed oxide fuel (MOX), to be used for a new generation of nuclear power stations, which are currently under discussion.Tuesday, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced the UK will take control of 1,850 kg of plutonium which was previously earmarked to repay France. In a series of complex swaps, Sellafield will assume control of 750 kg of German-owned plutonium and 350 kg of Dutch owned material.The deal has been approved by Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the DECC insists that the change of ownership does not mean more nuclear fuel will be stored in the country. “There are advantages to having national control over more of the civil plutonium in the UK as this gives us greater influence over how we ultimately manage it,” Michael Fallon, Britain’s minister of state for energy, said in statement.The DECC declined to say to what extent the ownership transfers benefited British taxpayers.The UK government currently spends 2 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) a year on managing its growing plutonium mountain. These expenses are not expected to be alleviated soon. None of the new nuclear power stations are due to become operational until the 2020’s, and it is still unclear how many of them are going to be built. Even the MOX plant constructed by the French is not expected to be finished by 2015.Plutonium is a radioactive by-product found in spent nuclear fuel when it is removed from a nuclear reactor. It can be recycled, although the process is expensive and technologically difficult It is used to make MOX fuel, which is an alternative to low-enriched uranium and usually comes as a blend of plutonium and uranium.Some of the plutonium stored in Britain comes from the country’s own nuclear weapons program of the 1950’s and 1960’s and was created by the UK’s first generation of nuclear reactors – the Magnox reactor. Magnox reactors ended up producing far more plutonium than the UK needed, partly because they were operated for longer than envisaged and partly because during the miners’ strike of 1972 and 1974 and the three day week of 1973 they were run at full tilt just to keep the lights on. … Read More
FBI investigating armed attack at Tennessee nuclear plant
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken the reigns of the probe, but so far authorities say they have yet to identify the mysterious man who fired at least two shots at a security guard early Sunday morning next to a facility on the property of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar nuclear power plant, about 60 miles southwest of Knoxville.The FBI is being joined in the investigation by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.According to investigators, a Tennessee Valley Authority security officer was routinely patrolling the nuclear plant at around 2 a.m. Sunday when he located a suspicious person in a restricted area, only a few hundred yards from the protected area that houses the nuclear reactor and power production facilities.“They spoke for a few seconds. The officer didn’t believe there was any danger,” TVA spokesman Jim Hopson tells reporters.In a manner of only seconds, though, things quickly changed. The suspect successfully fled the scene seconds later, says Hopson, but not before exchanging gunfire with the security guard.Hopson says that amid the confrontation, the suspect pulled a handgun and fired at least two shots at the officer and then fled in a nearby flat-bottomed boat docked at a concrete ramp on the shore of the Tennessee River.“The individual fired on the officer, striking the officer’s vehicle,” Hopson says. “The officer returned fire, and as the officer was calling for backup, the individual fled the scene.”The security guard was not harmed in the incident, and authorities believe the suspect got away without being hit as well. More than 48 hours later, though, investigators are still not sure what to make of the event.”To protect the health and safety of the general public, is to ensure those who may want to interfere with our safety system or the reactor itself, don’t have that opportunity,” Hopson says. “But anytime you have shots taken at a security officer at a nuclear plant, that’s a big issue.”In the immediate aftermath, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission put the Watts Bar facility on “unusual event” alert, the lowest of the agencies four emergency classifications, but removed that warning after a search of the property later in the afternoon. … Read More
China to help Russia create fleet of floating nuclear power stations
“We did not reject it, but so far I cannot provide any estimates, but from a business perspective the idea is good,” Aliyev said.Talks were held with the China National Nuclear Corporation but the commercial side of the matter wasn’t on the agenda. Currently a business model of cooperation is being formed and as a result, a joint venture of two or more companies or a private Russian company could be set up. ”We have agreed that for now it is not subject for technological cooperation research. We are only talking about commercial viability. There is a concept of creating a joint venture that would be owned by Russia and China, and would jointly funded and would create a specific fleet and it would then be jointly exploited,” Aliyev said.Aliyev said there is no room for negotiations on producing a single floating nuclear power plant on order for a third party due to the complexity of the process.In June 2010 the world’s first floating power unit “Academician Lomonosov” with the capacity of 70 MW was launched at the Baltic Shipyard in St. Petersburg. A floating power unit consists of a self-propelled icebreaker type vessel with two reactor units. The installed electric capacity of each reactor is 35 MW. The potential lifetime of the station is 36 years with three cycles of 12 years, between which the unit requires repair work. The floating nuclear power plant is planned to be stationed in the city of Vilyuchinsk in Russia’s Kamchatka. … Read More
Cyprus & bailouts: That great sucking sound
Think about the black hole in the Cyprus budget which emerged almost as soon as the bailout was agreed.We’ve all been there. In deep mid-winter, the central heating has gone eerily silent and icicles are starting to form on grandma. The plumber spends a few moments fiddling, tapping, testing and finally sits back and offers that most dreadful of human exclamations. Sucking in breath around the edges of his mouth he starts to shake his head from side to side, slowly at first but with increasing vigour and finally he utters that death statement ‘tut tut tut tut…” Now imagine being an inspector handed a failing bank, or even government, to assess. Here the job is too much for one number cruncher, so teams of analysts roam the corridors of power amassing data. The risk of ‘garbage in, garbage out’ is enormous. Eventually you have your very own ‘tut tut’ moment while taking care not to knock over the mountains of paper now causing a fire hazard in your makeshift office. This, roughly, is what it is like to be one of those souls given responsibility for looking at the finances of a future bailout candidate, and let me tell you, this is a job which makes working out quite why a nuclear reactor has just gone a bit toppish, look easy. …With reactors at least they give you a multitude of gauges which seek to pinpoint just where the problem lies. With a bank, or worse still a government, there is a relative paucity of information to address risk.Okay, true, banks do have a lot of data to address risk but these use financial models which tend to be remarkably good at following linear trends and pretty rubbish at dealing with crises. Moreover, they are usually modelled to say whether you will sink or not. Once sinking the model knows the ocean bed is next stop but may not tell you where the iceberg left the hole… There is also the problem that management may opt to try to keep steaming along come what may ‘berg gash or no. Management or Ministers may prove ‘economical with the truth’ because they are in denial or simply don’t want to admit all lest they face the consequences for their actions.Being a bailout expert is a fraught job. Unpeeling the onion-like layers of accounts you reach the dangerous point of challenging assumptions. Challenge too much and your political masters may simply not be able to stomach it. Do too little and you may find yourself in the Cyprus position where soon after a bailout which will last forever, it transpires ‘forever’ has been quantitatively eased down to less than a fortnight. Thus the government needs to suddenly ‘find’ 6 billion more from an economy worth around 18 billion. Tricky. Confidence sapping too.Of course the EU has also had moments of idiocy. To enter the single currency project, governments effectively audited themselves. So when Greece presented its data – presumably on the back of a gilded cigarette packet to mark such a momentous statistical moment – the EU officials could only ask “are these figures correct?” When the Greek official looked askance and said “of course!” the EU let them join the Euro.Hidden away in the crevices of a bailout candidate can be all manner of horrible things which may evade attention for a time but eventually bubble up. Spanish banks hold the thicker end of 100 billion Euros worth of underperforming property loans on their books. Mortgages are easy to calculate but who appraises the underlying property value? Here big problems can arise as ‘assets’ are usually the last thing to be written down by banks. What is Spanish property worth today? Well, if bankers offer you what they claim is 100 billion Euros of the stuff, I would haggle. Aggressively.Is the EU’s inability to work out precise bailout numbers cock-up or conspiracy? Greek government data is difficult to have faith in, such has been the cavalier manipulation by the political classes. Cyprus had a pretty sound hold on governmental finances but their bankers aggressively purchased Greek bubble assets before the meltdown. However it is impossible to avoid a finger of blame also touching the troika. They have many excellent staff who have done sterling work in assessing bailouts. Then again, how much faith can anybody have in the work of the EU, a body whose own accounts have apparently not been signed off by their auditors for 18 years? … Read More
