Skip to main content

Monday Update

By

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:

Japan’s 2012 GDP Could Drop 5.6% If Reactors Remain Shut

Plant Status

• Tokyo Electric Power Co. reports that the water decontamination system recycling accumulated water to cool the Fukushima Daiichi reactors stopped working Sunday after several pumps failed. TEPCO is working to reduce the volume of contaminated water in the basements of the reactor and turbine buildings, but the decontamination system continues to perform below capacity. The company is pumping the water into temporary storage tanks and has begun testing a system to reduce its volume by evaporation. TEPCO says about 21,000 tons of untreated water remains at the plant.

Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues

• A short-term energy outlook report released by Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics estimates that if the country’s nuclear plants do not begin to restart this fall after shutting down for periodic inspections, there will be a 7.8 percent shortage in the primary energy supply by next summer and a 5.6 percent, $98 billion drop in gross domestic product. Presently only 15 of Japan’s 54 reactors are generating electricity, all of which could be shut down for inspection by next summer.

• Japan’s Ministry for National Policy has begun deliberations to consider Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s call to gradually reduce the country’s “dependence on nuclear power.” The Ministry’s Energy and Environment Council said it will “thoroughly examine” Japan’s energy policy and will promote a national debate on the “best mix” of energy sources. Meanwhile, the cabinet confirmed that Japan should continue to export nuclear power technology and to engage in nuclear technology cooperation with other countries.

• The Japanese government has issued guidelines on compensating people affected by the Fukushima accident. The rules cover evacuees and businesses, including cattle farmers, green tea producers, travel agents and merchandise exporters. The Japanese parliament last week passed a bill providing government support for TEPCO to pay compensation claims.

New Products

• A new issue brief on emergency preparedness can be found on NEI’s safety first website.

Labels:

Comments

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