Skip to main content

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site:
Japan PM Expects Shutdown Reactors to Restart by Next Summer
September 21, 2011
Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues
  • Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, who will speak at this week’s United Nations general assembly, said he expects Japan’s shutdown nuclear energy facilities to be running by next summer. Since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi, communities throughout Japan have refused to let plants restart after they shut down for routine maintenance. In Japan, local governments have the ability to block nuclear facility restarts. Only about 25 percent of Japan’s nuclear reactors are operating.
  • There will be “continuous and significant growth in the use of nuclear power” over the next 20 years, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said at the organization’s general conference, which is taking place this week. He added that he expects the growth to proceed “at a slower rate than in our previous projections.” The range of growth, he said, is 90 to 350 new reactors by 2030.
  • Radioactive cesium at levels well below the Japanese government’s safety limit has been detected in 4 percent of rice samples from Japan’s Tohoku and Kanto regions. So far, tests on rice in seven prefectures are complete, but not in Fukushima or Miyagi. Cesium has been detected in rice in 64 locations in Fukushima Prefecture, but the highest level was only about 25 percent of the limit.
  • Japan’s government may lift its evacuation advisories for areas 12.5 to 18.5 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility by the end of September. Residents of five municipalities that lie mostly within that zone will be required to prepare for quick evacuation in case of an emergency.
Plant Status
  • In its monthly status report on its roadmap for recovery at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it will increase monitoring of radioactive materials released from the site. January remains its goal to reach what TEPCO calls a “cold shutdown condition” for the three damaged reactors, the company reports.
  • The Japanese government and TEPCO said the utility will soon begin to install filters to reduce the amount of radioactive substances in the air at reactors 1-3 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The new equipment will remove contaminated gases from the reactors. TEPCO also said it expects to complete construction of a giant shield around reactor building 1 by mid-October. The vinyl shield is designed to keep radioactive material from entering the environment.
  • A large amount of groundwater may be entering the nuclear facilities at Fukushima Daiichi. TEPCO reported that 200 to 500 tons of what it believes to be rainwater that had seeped into the soil may be entering reactor buildings through cracks in basement walls, mixing with contaminated water that already is there. For the last several weeks, TEPCO has been decontaminating water that has accumulated at the site and is recycling it to cool the reactors.

Media Highlights

  • Typhoon Roke grazed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility and damaged only a security camera, CBS News reported.
Upcoming Events
  • NEI and industry representatives are meeting with NRC staff today to discuss actions related to the NRC’s Japan task force recommendations. The meeting will be webcast.
  • Lessons learned from the Fukushima accident will be discussed in a Sept. 22 meeting on nuclear safety and security that will convene as part of the United Nations’ general assembly.
  • The NRC commissioners will be briefed in a public meeting Oct. 11 on prioritization of long-term recommendations from its Japan task force. The briefing will be webcast.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should