Afternoon Report

Radiation doses at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant continue to decrease. Radiation dose rates at the site boundary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant ranged from 1 millirem to 3 millirem per hour on March 18. Eighteen locations were monitored in a 30 kilometer to 60 kilometer radius of the plant. The highest radiation dose rate at any of those locations was 14 millirem per hour.

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) is installing high voltage cables from a nearby transmission line to reactors 1 and 2 at Fukushima Daiichi. Power is expected to be restored to reactors 1 and 2 later today (Saturday, March 19, Japan time). Priority is being given to restoring power to residual heat removal and cooling water pumps at the reactors. Plans are being made to extend high voltage cables to reactors 3 and 4 by March 21.

TEPCO also is stepping up efforts today to add water to the used fuel pool at reactor 4.

Two diesel generators are running and supplying electrical power to Reactors 5 and 6 at Fukushima Daiichi. A residual heat removal pump, powered by a diesel generator, is providing cooling to the spent fuel pool at reactor 5. Temperature in the spent fuel pool at reactor 5 is “high, but decreasing” according to Japan nuclear industry sources.

There has been no change in the primary reactor containment structures at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Crews are still pumping seawater into the reactors 1, 2 and 3 to cool the fuel.

All four reactors at Fukushima Daini have reached cold shutdown conditions with normal cooling being maintained using residual heat removal systems.

U.S. Public Opinion Data

U.S. public opinion on the safety of nuclear energy is relatively unchanged from 2008 levels despite the Fukushima accident, and 60 percent of Americans surveyed said the situation in Japan has made no difference in how they feel about nuclear energy in the United States.

Comments

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog