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

Making Clouds for a Living

By
Donell Banks works at Southern Nuclear’s Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 as a shift supervisor in Operations, but is in the process of transitioning to his newly appointed role as the daily work controls manager. He has been in the nuclear energy industry for about 11 years.

I love what I do because I have the unique opportunity to help shape the direction and influence the culture for the future of nuclear power in the United States. Every single day presents a new challenge, but I wouldn't have it any other way. As a shift supervisor, I was primarily responsible for managing the development of procedures and programs to support operation of the first new nuclear units in the United States in more than 30 years. As the daily work controls manager, I will be responsible for oversight of the execution and scheduling of daily work to ensure organizational readiness to operate the new units.

I envision a nuclear energy industry that leverages the technology of today to improve efficiency…
Post a Comment
Read more

Why America Needs the MOX Facility

By
If Isaiah had been a nuclear engineer, he’d have loved this project. And the Trump Administration should too, despite the proposal to eliminate it in the FY 2018 budget.

The project is a massive factory near Aiken, S.C., that will take plutonium from the government’s arsenal and turn it into fuel for civilian power reactors. The plutonium, made by the United States during the Cold War in a competition with the Soviet Union, is now surplus, and the United States and the Russian Federation jointly agreed to reduce their stocks, to reduce the chance of its use in weapons. Over two thousand construction workers, technicians and engineers are at work to enable the transformation.

Carrying Isaiah’s “swords into plowshares” vision into the nuclear field did not originate with plutonium. In 1993, the United States and Russia began a 20-year program to take weapons-grade uranium out of the Russian inventory, dilute it to levels appropriate for civilian power plants, and then use it to produce…
Post a Comment
Read more

Nuclear: Energy for All Political Seasons

By
The electoral college will soon confirm a surprise election result, Donald Trump. However, in the electricity world, there are fewer surprises – physics and economics will continue to apply, and Republicans and Democrats are going to find a lot to like about nuclear energy over the next four years.

In a Trump administration, the carbon conversation is going to be less prominent. But the nuclear value proposition is still there. We bring steady jobs to rural areas, including in the Rust Belt, which put Donald Trump in office. Nuclear plants keep the surrounding communities vibrant.

We hold down electricity costs for the whole economy. We provide energy diversity, reducing the risk of disruption. We are a critical part of America’s industrial infrastructure, and the importance of infrastructure is something that President-Elect Trump has stressed.

One of our infrastructure challenges is natural gas pipelines, which have gotten more congested as extremely low gas prices have pulled m…
Post a Comment
Read more