Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan Earthquake launch page:

Pillars Installed To Support Used Fuel Pool
Update as of 5 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, June 22

Plant Status

Tokyo Electric Power Co. workers have installed 32 steel pillars to support the reactor 4 spent fuel pool at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility and improve its capability to withstand earthquakes. The company next will wrap the pillars in concrete. It plans to finish the project by the end of July. The walls supporting the pool sustained damage in a hydrogen explosion four days after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. TEPCO reported earlier that analysis shows the reactor 4 building meets seismic requirements in its current condition, but shoring up the pool will provide an additional safety margin.
Ten Fukushima Daiichi workers have entered the reactor 2 building to assess its environment. Faced with near 100 percent humidity inside, TEPCO had earlier opened the building's doors for ventilation, which reduced the humidity by about half. TEPCO plans to install an air filtration system in the building to reduce airborne radioactive particles.
With the start of the rainy season in Japan, TEPCO workers are increasing water management activities, including the reduction of cooling water injected into the reactors. More than 110,000 tons of radioactive water has accumulated in the basements of buildings and in outdoor concrete enclosures and is impeding recovery efforts. TEPCO is reported to have two more days of testing remaining for a recently installed filtration system that will decontaminate water at the site.
TEPCO has posted photographs that were taken shortly after the March earthquake and tsunami damaged Fukushima Daiichi. One photo shows a worker reading instruments with a flashlight in a darkened room. Others show debris from the tsunami scattered around the site.

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has called for random safety inspections of global nuclear energy facilities. "We need to systematically and regularly review the safety of all nuclear power plants. I propose that countries with nuclear power should agree to systematic, periodic peer reviews by the IAEA," Director General Yukiya Aman o said at the opening of a five-day ministerial conference on nuclear safety. "I therefore propose a system based on random selection. The knowledge that any plant could be subject to review would give operators an additional incentive to implement the highest safety standards." The conference in Vienna, Austria, adopted a 25-point declaration on nuclear safety. The IAEA also released the final report of the task force it sent to Japan to assess the accident. IAEA reporting on the conference is available here.

Media Highlights

NEI issued a news release Tuesday criticizing a series of misleading Associated Press articles on U.S. nuclear power plant safety. AP states that the Fukushima Daiichi accident "has focused attention on the safety of plants elsewhere in the world" while noting its series explores issues beyond those posed by the Fukushima events.
Steve Kerekes, NEI's senior director of media relations, participated in a Voice of America interview on the future of nuclear power after Fukushima Daiichi.
Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, urged world leaders to improve nuclear safety standards. At the IAEA's Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety Vienna, Austria, he said the accident at Fukushima Daiichi has "badly shaken" public trust in nuclear energy, The Hill newspaper reported.

Upcoming Events

International Atomic Energy Agency Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety, June 20-24, Vienna, Austria
Japan-America Society, "The Future of Nuclear Energy Around the World," June 23, Washington, D.C.

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...

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