Skip to main content

Wednesday Update

By

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

NRC Staff Proposes Priorities for Post-Fukushima Actions

October 5, 2011

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

  • A U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff paper that prioritizes recommendations from the near-term post-Fukushima task force was released today. The document, which will be the basis for an Oct. 11 commission briefing, divides the recommendations into three “tiers.” The briefing will be webcast
  • Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co. to provide safety guidelines for its work to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The agency said the main objective should be to prevent additional discharges of radioactive material and to reduce radiation levels at the plant over the next three years.
  • A reactor at the Genkai nuclear energy facility in western Japan shut down safely Tuesday because of abnormalities in the turbine generator steam condenser, a non-safety-related component. The operator of the plant, Kyushu Electric Power Co., reported no injuries and no change in radiation levels near the facility.
  • The government of Fukushima Prefecture has begun to train workers who will clean areas contaminated with radioactive material from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The two-day technical seminars are scheduled in various locations around the prefecture. Ten seminars are scheduled through the end of the year.
  • The Japanese government will check radiation levels in five municipalities outside the 12-mile no-entry zone around Fukushima Daiichi. On Friday, the government lifted its evacuation advisory for the municipalities, which are located between 12 and 18 miles from the nuclear energy facility. Decontamination continues in the areas and residents have not returned to their homes.

Media Highlights

  • U.S. nuclear energy facilities are built to withstand earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme natural events, Tony Pietrangelo, NEI’s senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, writes in a Real Clear Energy column. The comments also are posted on NEI’s Safety First website.

Upcoming Events

  • NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko will speak on lessons learned from Fukushima Oct. 24 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Details are on the AAAS website.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
This post is absolutely correct. The fuel in the reactor spent fuel pools at Fukushima was never at any risk. Even with the massive hydrogen explosions in Units 1, 3, and 4, the spent fuel pool walls were sufficiently thick that the pools remained leak tight, with plenty of water inventory.

But the lack of instrumentation to measure and monitor the water level created unnecessary uncertainty about the status of the pools, and the concern about the potential for damage to the spent fuel led to resources being diverted to spray water into the pools, and to the unnecessary NRC recommendation for a 50-mile evacuation distance for U.S. citizens.

There were a number of "technical experts" with anti-nuclear positions who were interviewed by the media during the early phases of the accident who made a lot of incorrect claims about what was happening during the accident. This type of disinformation is very damaging, and that's why the NRC's decision to put improved spent fuel pool instrumentation at the top of the list is exactly the right thing to do.
October 7, 2011 at 11:39 PM
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

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 Is a Long-Term Investment for Ohio that Will Pay Big

By
With 50 different state legislative calendars, more than half of them adjourn by June, and those still in session throughout the year usually take a recess in the summer. So springtime is prime time for state legislative activity. In the next few weeks, legislatures are hosting hearings and calling for votes on bills that have been battered back and forth in the capital halls.

On Tuesday, The Ohio Public Utilities Committee hosted its third round of hearings on the Zero Emissions Nuclear Resources Program, House Bill 178, and NEI’s Maria Korsnick testified before a jam-packed room of legislators.


Washingtonians parachuting into state debates can be a tricky platform, but in this case, Maria’s remarks provided national perspective that put the Ohio conundrum into context. At the heart of this debate is the impact nuclear plants have on local jobs and the local economy, and that nuclear assets should be viewed as “long-term investments” for the state. Of course, clean air and electrons …
Post a Comment
Read more