Skip to main content

Monday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

Japan Prime Minister Seeks Stability at Fukushima

Sept. 12, 2011

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

  • Japan marked six months since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami with a call from the country’s new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda to stabilize the situation in and around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. Noda asked his cabinet to be responsive to requests for decontamination from residents and heads of municipalities.
  • Prime Minister Noda named former chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano as the new minister for economy, trade and industry (METI). The previous METI minister, Yoshio Hachiro, resigned Saturday after his controversial remarks about radiation in Fukushima prefecture were published. Edano had been the previous government’s spokesman during its efforts to cope with the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, including the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.
  • The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) holds its board meeting this week in Vienna, Austria. The board is to discuss a draft action plan to secure the safety of nuclear energy facilities worldwide. The draft plan includes provisions to allow the IAEA to inspect member countries’ nuclear plants on a voluntary basis, and to confirm national safety measures and plant designs in countries considering new plants.

Plant Status

  • Tokyo Electric Power Co. says it has completed the steel framework for the fabric cover being built over Fukushima Daiichi reactor 1. The entire structure is expected to be finished next month.
  • TEPCO said that the temperature within the pressure vessel of reactor 3 remains stable as the company gradually switches core cooling from the feedwater supply system to the core spray system. The company plans to cool all three affected reactors to below the boiling point by next January.

New Products

  • Maria Korsnick, Constellation Energy Nuclear Group’s chief nuclear officer, writes on the lessons learned by the nuclear industry in the past six months since the Fukushima accident. Her article can be found on NEI’s Safety First website.

Media Highlights

  • An article by Bloomberg Businessweek reports on the background of former chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano, who was chosen by incoming Prime Minister to be the new minister for economy, trade and industry.
  • The New York Times and others report on the situation in Japan six months after the March 11 earthquake and nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

Upcoming Events

  • The NRC commissioners will be briefed on short-term actions recommended in its Fukushima task force report in a public meeting Sept. 14. The meeting will be webcast.
The NRC commissioners will hold a briefing Oct. 11 on prioritizing longer-term actions based on the Japan task force recommendations. The briefing will be webcast

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should