Skip to main content

Friday Update

By

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

First of Japanese Reactor Stress Test Results Sent to Regulator

October 28, 2011

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

  • Kansai Electric is to submit to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) the results of a “stress test” on reactor 3 of its Ohi plant in Fukui prefecture. The test consists of computer simulations to gauge whether a plant can withstand a major earthquake and tsunami. It is the first to be reported to NISA for consideration on restarting a shutdown reactor. Eighty percent of Japan’s nuclear energy facilities (44 out of 55) have been shut down for safety inspections since the March 11 earthquake.
  • Japan’s health ministry said that as levels of radioactive contamination continue to fall, it will be ready to lower its radiation safety limits for food back to international standards as early as next April. After the March accident at Fukushima Daiichi, the government had provisionally set the acceptable limit at 500 millirem per year, five times the international standard. This week Japan’s food safety commission recommended a lifetime cumulative internal dose limit from food consumption of 10,000 millirem.
  • Japan’s Atomic Energy Commission said fuel removal from the pools at Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1 through 4 could begin within three years. Removal of the melted fuel from inside the reactors could begin within 10 years, pending repair of the damaged containment vessels. The commission’s report estimates decommissioning the site will take more than 30 years.


Media Highlights

  • Global carbon dioxide emissions may rise as much as 7 percent by 2035 if the Fukushima nuclear accident slows the pace of expansion in nuclear energy, says a Bloomberg report on a study by the Japan Institute of Energy Economy.
  • NHK World reports that Tokyo Electric Power Co. will request public financial aid of up to $12 billion to help it pay compensation claims to those affected by the Fukushima accident. TEPCO will submit a special business plan to the government Friday, outlining cost-cutting measures and restructuring steps the utility was ordered to elucidate to be considered for government assistance.
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

Seeing the Light on Nuclear Energy

By
If you think that there is plenty of electricity, that the air is clean enough and that nuclear power is a just one among many options for meeting human needs, then you are probably over-focused on the United States or Western Europe. Even then, you’d be wrong.

That’s the idea at the heart of a new book, “Seeing the Light: The Case for Nuclear Power in the 21st Century,” by Scott L. Montgomery, a geoscientist and energy expert, and Thomas Graham Jr., a retired ambassador and arms control expert.


Billions of people live in energy poverty, they write, and even those who don’t, those who live in places where there is always an electric outlet or a light switch handy, we need to unmake the last 200 years of energy history, and move to non-carbon sources. Energy is integral to our lives but the authors cite a World Health Organization estimate that more than 6.5 million people die each year from air pollution.  In addition, they say, the global climate is heading for ruinous instability. E…
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