Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Safety First web site:

Japanese Regulator Confirms No Criticality at Fukushima Daiichi

November 9, 2011

Plant Status

Sustained nuclear fission did not occur at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility last week, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said, confirming earlier reports from Tokyo Electric Power Co. Plant employees detected a trace amount of radioactive xenon-135 gas in the reactor 2 containment vessel last week, which led to initial concerns there might have been an ongoing nuclear reaction in the vessel. After investigation, TEPCO said the xenon was produced through spontaneous fission, a form of radioactive decay. NISA said the density of the xenon did not change when a boric acid solution was injected into the reactor, demonstrating that criticality was not occurring.

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

Japan’s environment ministry has begun a study of radiation levels within 12 miles of Fukushima Daiichi to pinpoint areas that should be decontaminated first. An interim report is expected in December, with full-scale cleanup beginning in January.
One-quarter of the evacuees from areas around Fukushima Daiichi have no intention of returning, a Fukushima University survey has found. More than half of the respondents in their mid-30s or younger said they won’t return to their hometowns. The Fukushima University group sent questionnaires to all households in eight municipalities near the nuclear energy facility, receiving responses from about half of them.

Media Highlights

Energy costs will rise over the next two decades if governments don’t promote renewables and nuclear power, Bloomberg News reports. The online article says the International Energy Agency predicts global demand for energy will increase by 40 percent by 2035.
Following computer-simulated stress tests of its systems, Kansai Electric Power Co. reported that its Ohi 3 nuclear energy facility has sufficient safety margins to withstand beyond-design-basis events, Nuclear Engineering International reports.
The Dalai Lama said after a tour of tsunami-damaged northeastern Japan that he supports using nuclear energy as a peaceful way to bridge the economic gaps in developing countries, the Wall Street Journal Japan Realtime blog reports.
A French radiological organization has proposed hardening the country’s nuclear reactors so a limited number of “hard core” safety-related systems, structures and components can withstand extreme external events like floods and earthquakes that are outside the plant’s safety parameters. The organization said analysis of the country’s reactors showed that external events had not been considered as thoroughly in plant design as internal events, Platts reports.

New Products

NEI’s Safety First website continues its ongoing focus on practices that enhance nuclear safety. This week the site features an interview with Bonnie Bryant at Seabrook nuclear energy facility, where she and her husband have both worked since the early 1990s. Each holds a senior reactor operator’s license. Bryant discusses safety procedures at the facility.

Note: There will be no Friday Update due to the Veterans Day holiday. Updates will return Monday.

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog