NEI Nuclear Notes

About a week ago, the Japanese government rated the event at Fukushima Daiichi at level 7, the highest such level on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. This put it on par with the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986 (then in the Soviet Union, now Ukraine.) For some commentators, that meant that Fukushima Daiichi is as serious as Chernobyl . For others, it qualified as a head scratcher , as the two events seem to have many points of departure. One quick way to find out which view is closer to the truth is to consult the scale itself. It was created and is maintained by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A brochure explaining it can be found here . From the introduction: The INES Scale is a worldwide tool for communicating to the public in a consistent way the safety significance of nuclear and radiological events. Just like information on earthquakes or temperature would be difficult to understand without the Richter or Celsius scales,...

From NEI’s Japan Earthquake launch page: UPDATE AS OF 11 A.M. EDT, THURSDAY, APRIL 14: Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has moved highly contaminated water from a concrete enclosure outside reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the utility reported. TEPCO said the water is stored in the reactor’s condenser. To help keep radioactive water from diffusing into the ocean near the plant, TEPCO has installed an underwater silt fence in front of the intake screen for reactors 3 and 4. Radioactive water that has accumulated in turbine room basements is interfering with work to restore cooling operations at the site. TEPCO is completing preparations to transfer the contaminated water to the plant's radioactive water processing facility and other temporary storage locations. TEPCO continues to inject cooling water into reactors 1, 2 and 3 and to spray water as needed into the used fuel pools for reac...

Uh-oh. The level of Iodine-131 found at the Queen Lane treatment plant is the highest of 23 sites in 13 states where the particles have appeared following the massive radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Lower levels were found at the city's two other plants. Er: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told the Daily News yesterday that Philadelphia water samples from last August contained nearly twice as much radioactive iodine as the recent samples collected after the Fukushima disaster. Although numbers aren’t given, I’m going to take a guess and say that in neither instance was the level of iodine-131 high enough to raise a danger flag. No harm in being careful, of course. From the Philadelphia Daily News. --- Always on the lookout for interesting anti-nuclear energy editorials and op-eds, I’ve actually come up rather short. Sometimes, the ones I find are so weak that I don’t want to highlight them. It’s no fun smacking...

Doings in Florida - Officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were holding a public meeting Wednesday on their review of the St. Lucie County nuclear power plant on Hutchinson Island. But: According to Florida Power & Light spokesman Mark Waldron, this is an annual review, and the NRC has already told FPL in a letter that there are "no issues with the plant." Yawn! Even despite Fukushima, one might think the public likely to skip this one. Yet it might be quite interesting. --- And here’s why it might be interesting : Their [Turkey Point and St Lucie’s] job is done. However, the used, or "spent," fuel rods have not gone anywhere. They're still at the St. Lucie and Turkey Point nuclear plants, they're still close to population centers on water and they're still radioactive. The pile of waste continues to grow. “The pile of waste?” Sound like it was put in barrels in the back yard, doesn’t it? It takes awhile for t...

The New York Times has put up a very well implemented – and interactive – map that provides a lot of data about the Japan earthquake and about Fukushima Daiichi. Worth bookmarking. --- The Economist has posted a debate – done in classical style, a treat for us old college arguers – that proposes the following: This house  believes that the world would be better off without nuclear energy. Read through the arguments – very well researched on both sides, so even those in favor of the statement are worth attending to by nuclear advocates – and cast your vote. Currently, 32 percent favor the statement and 68 percent disfavor it. Technically, you can’t vote your conscience, but only for the better argument. Assuming the voters are doing this, what can we say? Go, nuclear energy! --- Up in Connecticut, a bill in the legislature proposes taxing nuclear energy. If the bill passes, Dominion Energy, which runs the Millstone plant, will shut it down – it cannot pass the cost to ...

From NEI’s Japan Earthquake launch page: UPDATE AS OF 10 A.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13: Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are pumping radioactive water from the concrete enclosure near reactor 2 into a turbine condenser. A series of aftershocks that rattled the area Tuesday has put the work behind schedule. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) is inspecting another storage facility on the site to determine if it can hold contaminated water from the basement of the reactor 2 turbine building. Radioactive water in the turbine buildings is hampering efforts to restore cooling operations at the plant. TEPCO continues to inject cooling water into reactors 1, 2 and 3 and to spray water as needed into the used fuel pools for reactors 1-4. TEPCO also continues injection of nitrogen gas into the containment vessel of reactor 1 to prevent a possible explosion of hydrogen that may be accumulating inside.

The Japan government has classified the Fukushima Daiichi accident as a level 7 accident, using an international scale for such incidents. This struck me as puzzling – Fukushima, without at all denying its impact, still seemed less consequential than Chernobyl, also a level 7 accident – until I realized that there is no level 8. Thus, anything between Fukushima and Chernobyl would be classified as level 7 simply because there is nothing higher. A flaw in the classification system? Maybe – but it’s what there is. NPR has a try at sorting out the differences between Chernobyl and Fukushima: Though Fukushima and Chernobyl are both level 7 nuclear accidents, the health consequences in Japan to date are much less severe. In part, that's because far more radiation was released at Chernobyl. So far, Fukushima Daiichi has released about one-tenth of the amount of radioactive material that escaped Chernobyl, according to an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency. ...