Skip to main content

Friday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

NRC Commissioners Adopt Near-Term Recommendations

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues
  • The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has directed its staff to implement seven safety recommendations from the NRC’s Fukushima task force. The recommendations are among 12 presented by the task force in July. NRC staff reviewed the task force’s July 12 report and selected the recommendations it believed most appropriate for immediate action. The recommendations cover issues including the loss of all electrical power at a reactor, reviews of seismic and flooding hazards, emergency equipment and plant staff training to manage severe accidents.
  • A panel of the Japan Nuclear Safety Commission has issued a draft plan for determining emergency areas around the country’s nuclear energy facilities. The proposal calls for designating areas within three miles of a plant as zones that should be evacuated immediately in the event of an accident. People within 18 miles of a reactor would be asked to shelter indoors or evacuate at a slower pace, depending on the accident. The plan is due for further study before implementation.
  • The Fukushima Prefecture assembly wants Tokyo Electric Power Co. to permanently shut down all 10 nuclear reactors in the prefecture. Six of the reactors are at the Fukushima Daiichi site; the others are at the nearby Daini site. TEPCO has said it will close the four damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. None of the reactors has been restarted since the earthquake.
  • Tamura, a city near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility, is using a small, unmanned helicopter to check radiation levels of farms and forests. Parts of the city were among the areas outside the 12-mile no-entry zone for which the government has lifted its evacuation advisory.


Media Highlights

  • After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, hundreds of people took refuge at the Onagawa nuclear energy facility, and stayed for three months, news website TownHall.com reports.

Upcoming Events

  • The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and its subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety will hold the second joint hearing Nov. 3 on the NRC’s recommendations for safety and preparedness measures at U.S. reactors. All five NRC commissioners will be invited to testify. The first hearing was held Aug. 2.
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

New Home for Our Blog: Join Us on NEI.org

By
On February 27, NEI launched the new NEI.org. We overhauled the public site, framing all of our content around the National Nuclear Energy Strategy.

So, what's changed?

Our top priority was to put you, the user, first. Now you can quickly get the information you need. You'll enjoy visiting the site with its intuitive navigation, social media integration and compelling and shareable visuals. We've added a feature called Nuclear Now, which showcases the latest industry news and resources like fact sheets and reports. It's one of the first sections you'll see on our home page and it can be accessed anywhere throughout the site by clicking on the atom symbol in the top right corner of the page.
Most importantly for you, our loyal NEI Nuclear Notes readers, is that we've migrated the blog to the new site. Moving forward, all blog posts will be published in the News section, along with our press releases, Nuclear Energy Overview stories and more. Just look for the &qu…
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