Skip to main content

Monday Update

By

From NEI’s Safety First web site:

Japan Cabinet Approves Decontamination Protocols

Nov. 21, 2011

Industry/Regulatory/Political

  • The Japanese cabinet has approved “basic policies” to clean up radioactive contamination resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Based on recommendations made in 2007 by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, areas contaminated to dose levels within two rem per year above background will be cleaned up to reduce adult doses by 50 percent within two years and 60 percent for children, and to a long-term level of 0.1 rem/year above background radiation levels. Two rem is about the same amount of radiation exposure a patient would receive from a full body CT scan. Areas where the annual dose levels are above two rem/year will be given priority in scheduling decontamination activities.
  • The Japan Nuclear Technology Institute has published a report reviewing the Fukushima Daiichi accident. The Japan Atomic Industrial Forum said the analysis of the accident is based on published facts, operational experience and knowledge of the plant design, and includes recommended safety protection measures “to prevent and mitigate severe accidents.”

Media Highlights

  • The Salt Lake Tribune quotes Adrian Heymer, NEI’s executive director of the Fukushima regulatory response, on how some of the safety lessons from the Japan accident already have been incorporated in the features of new nuclear reactor designs.
  • An Associated Press article explains the difficulty of measuring future health effects of the low doses of radiation resulting from the Fukushima Daiichi accident.
  • A Washington Post article describes the areas around the Fukushima Daiichi plant that have remained evacuated since the March accident following the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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