Skip to main content

Friday Update

By

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

Japan PM Says Fukushima will Achieve Cold Shutdown This Year

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

  • Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told a United Nations special session on nuclear safety and security that the Fukushima Daiichi energy facility will achieve cold shutdown by the end of the year. Noda said Thursday that Japan will disclose all information related to the accident and share with the international community lessons learned from the accident. Noda said that the level of radioactive material has fallen to around one four-millionth of the level seen earlier in the year.
  • After the session, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said, "participants affirmed that the responsibility for ensuring the application of the highest standards of nuclear safety . . . lies with each state and operating organization."
  • At the session, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “we can make concrete improvements to nuclear safety practices around the world” and reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to nuclear energy. She said, "The Obama Administration is committed to nuclear power as a component of our secure energy future, and we recognize that nuclear power is a vital contributor to the world's growing energy needs. It is, therefore, not an option that we simply can take off the table.”
  • The International Atomic Energy Agency general conference, which concludes today, unanimously endorsed its action plan on Nuclear Safety. The plan, based on lessons learned from Fukushima Daiichi, promotes the independence of regulatory bodies from industry and government influence. The plan also recommends that member states undertake assessments of their nuclear fleets to ensure they can withstand "extreme natural hazards" and calls for the agency to perform voluntary safety inspections of nuclear energy facilities.
  • Radioactive iodine released from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant spread not only to the northwest of the plant but also to the south, according to a survey released by the Japanese government. The Japanese Science Ministry will determine the level at which the element spread so further action can be taken to ensure public safety.

New products

  • The Ask an Expert section of NEI’s Safety First website answers a new question: Who pays the cost of used fuel storage and disposal?
  • A new interactive graphic demonstrating how nuclear fuel is produced, used and stored is now available on NEI’s Safety First website.

Upcoming events

  • NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko will speak on the “Global Implications of a Nuclear Disaster” at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on October 5.
  • The NRC will conduct a briefing on its Japan Task Force Report to prioritize the report’s recommendations on October 11. The meeting will be webcast.
 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Design Team Pictures the Future of Nuclear Energy

By
For more than 100 years, the shape and location of human settlements has been defined in large part by energy and water. Cities grew up near natural resources like hydropower, and near water for agricultural, industrial and household use.

So what would the world look like with a new generation of small nuclear reactors that could provide abundant, clean energy for electricity, water pumping and desalination and industrial processes?

Hard to say with precision, but Third Way, the non-partisan think tank, asked the design team at the Washington, D.C. office of Gensler & Associates, an architecture and interior design firm that specializes in sustainable projects like a complex that houses the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. The talented designers saw a blooming desert and a cozy arctic village, an old urban mill re-purposed as an energy producer, a data center that integrates solar panels on its sprawling flat roofs, a naval base and a humming transit hub.

In the converted mill, high temperat…
Post a Comment
Read more

Sneak Peek

By
There's an invisible force powering and propelling our way of life.
It's all around us. You can't feel it. Smell it. Or taste it.
But it's there all the same. And if you look close enough, you can see all the amazing and wondrous things it does.
It not only powers our cities and towns.
And all the high-tech things we love.
It gives us the power to invent.
To explore.
To discover.
To create advanced technologies.
This invisible force creates jobs out of thin air.
It adds billions to our economy.
It's on even when we're not.
And stays on no matter what Mother Nature throws at it.
This invisible force takes us to the outer reaches of outer space.
And to the very depths of our oceans.
It brings us together. And it makes us better.
And most importantly, it has the power to do all this in our lifetime while barely leaving a trace.
Some people might say it's kind of unbelievable.
They wonder, what is this new power that does all these extraordinary things?
Post a Comment
Read more

Seeing the Light on Nuclear Energy

By
If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century,” by Scott L. Montgomery, a geoscientist and energy expert, and Thomas Graham Jr., a retired ambassador and arms control expert.


Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution.  In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…
Post a Comment
Read more