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

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

By
The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
1 comment
Read more

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

By
A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.


What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nuclear Plant Closures Are a Crisis for Small Town USA

By
Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot.

Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed, because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo.


From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example:

Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had to cut its municipal budget in half. The town closed its police department and let the county take over; the youth sports teams lost their volunteer coaches, and Vernon Elementary School lost th…
Post a Comment
Read more