Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

Fukushima City to Decontaminate 110,000 Residences

September 28, 2011

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

Fukushima City plans to remove radioactive materials from private houses, parks and meeting venues in the city. The plan includes decontamination of all 110,000 residences in the city over two years, with emphasis on households with children. Cleaners will scrub roofs, remove concrete and decontaminate ditches.
Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission is resuming its discussions on revisions to the country’s nuclear policy, which were started last year and interrupted by the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The commission has added new members with expertise in safety. The country’s policy on nuclear energy was developed in 1956 and has been revised roughly every five years since.
The Makinohara City Assembly has called for the permanent shutdown of a local nuclear energy facility unless its safety can be guaranteed. The city is within 6.5 miles of Chubu Electric’s Hamaoka nuclear power station. Three of the facility’s five reactors were shut down following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. The other two had already been taken off line for decommissioning.

New Products

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry nuclear energy facility withstood a historic spate of tornadoes earlier this year, shutting off external electricity to the plant. Managers at the facility talk about safety measures in a new report on NEI’s Safety First website.

Media Highlights

Japan’s government will have to remove and store as much as 29 million cubic meters of contaminated soil as cleanup progresses after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, Reuters reports.
Radiation levels approaching the government-set safety limit have been detected in rice harvested In Nihonmatsu, a city near Fukushima Daiichi, the Yomiuri Shimbun reports. Rice grown in the city will be subjected to additional testing.

Upcoming Events

The NRC commissioners will be briefed on prioritization of long-term recommendations from its Japan task force in a public meeting Oct. 11. The briefing will be webcast.
NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko will participate in an Oct. 4 American Nuclear Society/NRC live online webinar for nuclear bloggers. Participants may submit questions in advance to BlogMtg1.Resource@nrc.gov.
Jaczko also will speak on the global implications of the Fukushima accident Oct. 5 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. More information is at the National Journal’s event website.

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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