Good sources as of 2012 are: http://fukushimaupdate.com/ and http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=7163
A good source for techical information is: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: http://bos.sagepub.com/content/current
Following the oil shock of the 1970’s, Japan has worked to reduce its need for imported petroleum and since then, through a combination of hydro and more than 50 nuclear power installations, has become one of the most energy efficient countries in the world.
By token of its disciplined national work ethic and its large, well-educated and industrious workforce, Japan has grown since the end of World War II to become by the 1980s the world’s third largest economy.
The radiation released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster [Mar 11 2011] was almost 2-1/2 times the amount first estimated by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday.
Tokyo Electric Power said its own analysis conducted over the past year put the amount of radiation released in the first three weeks of the accident at about one-sixth the radiation released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
"If this information had been available at the time, we could have used it in planning evacuations," Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told a news conference.
workers to begin removing fuel from the reactor's storage pool next year...
(27 May 2012)
(27 May 2012)
The Japanese government recently announced a de facto nationalization of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to avert the prolonged insolvency expected to result from massive compensation claims, cleanup charges, and reactor-disposal costs related to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. This conventional plan calls for Tepco to be kept viable -- that is, not allowed to fail, at least for the time being -- so it can be the primary vehicle for dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.
Promotion of nuclear energy has been a national policy in Japan. Full Tepco nationalization would allow the state to take direct responsibility for compensation, decontamination, reactor disposal, and crisis management at Fukushima Daiichi. Nationalization of the world's largest private-sector power utility would also send the message that no Japanese utility is too big to fail, reinforcing an accountability and safety culture within other nuclear operators. Perhaps most important, nationalization would create the opportunity to liberalize the Japanese electricity market, reducing the power of regional utility monopolies and encouraging alternative energy producers...
As Fukushima cleanup begins, long-term impacts are weighed
Fukushima one year on
http://www.energybulletin.net/sites/default/files/images/caesium-137-fukushima.jpg
All Reactors Turned Off May 2012:
Updated 7 May 2012, 22:18 AEST
First Thoughts March 2011:
With the restoration of mains power to the site, in the media there is talk that the situation is now under control. The rate of deterioration has certainly slowed, but there are five slow burning issues that will determine the eventual outcome, one working in favor of the authorities and four working against:
1) Radioactive decay of fission products is steadily declining as they burn up, though the rate of decline is slowing as we burn through the short half lives into the intermediate and longer half life inventories of isotopes.
2) Heat accumulation will rise for so long as circulation cooling is absent until a steady state is reached between the reactors and spent fuel and the surrounding buildings.
3) Corrosion of the stainless steel reactor vessel, pipes and pumps in a salt water environment they are not designed to withstand.
4) Salt accumulation in the reactor cores
5) Radioactive material spread and accumulation in the surrounding environment.
* given that reactor building 4 was destroyed by a couple of large hydrogen gas explosions that must have come from reduction of water and oxidation of zircalloy fuel cladding it seems quite certain that the fuel in ponds of unit 4 is damaged.
Who or what is to blame for the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima?
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber: The earthquake was merely the trigger. The crazy logic we apply in dealing with technical risks is to blame. We only protect ourselves against hazards to the extent that it's economically feasible at a given time, and to the extent to which they can be controlled within the normal operations of a company. But the Richter scale has no upper limit. Why is a Japanese nuclear power plant only designed to withstand a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, not to mention tsunamis?
Iodine and Cesium:
The Fukushima disaster and other irreproducible experiments
Fukushima news 2012
I-131 is one of the most acute causes of cancer in children after a nuclear meltdown. Uptake of radioactive iodine can be prevented by a timely supply of iodine tablets. While such iodine tablets were supplied to the municipalities and evacuation centres during the first few days of the disaster, the order to distribute them was never issued, and hence, with very few exceptions, no iodine tablets were taken by people exposed to radioactive iodine [27]. The may lead to a large number of cases of thyroid cancer, as in the case of Chernobyl [2]. And the signs are ominous.
Radioactive 'black soil' patches:
Researchers are now referring to "black soil" to describe these patches of dirt with unusually high levels of radiation. It is a sort of play on the “black rain" term used by victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to describe the mysterious precipitation that seemed to bring strange illnesses and untold suffering.
Those who brought their own dosimeters began measuring soil in ditches and under trees, and several people immediately recorded radiation levels exceeding 1 microsievert per hour. The highest level recorded was 1.117 microsieverts per hour on the surface of black soil along an asphalt road running through the park.
The radiation level at a nearby lawn was 0.25 microsievert. The rain and wind is believed to have left almost intact the radioactive cesium that had accumulated on the lawn and grass after last year's Fukushima nuclear accident.
However, the radiation level of the black soil was more than four times as high as that on top of the lawn.
Preliminary findings showed that areas with high readings were in the path of the radioactive plume from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant soon after the crisis started.
The highest level of radioactivity detected--about 5.57 million becquerels per kilogram--came from black soil collected in the Kanaya neighborhood of the Odaka district of southern Minami-Soma. In 36 out of 41 locations in Fukushima Prefecture where black soil was collected, the radioactivity level exceeded 100,000 becquerels per kilogram. If that level was found in incinerator ash, it would have to be handled very carefully and buried in a facility that had a concrete exterior separating it from its surroundings.
Japan OKs restart of 1st reactors June 2012
Japan's government on Saturday approved bringing the country's first nuclear reactors back online since last year's earthquake and tsunami led to a nationwide shutdown, going against wider public opinion that is opposed to nuclear power after Fukushima.The decision paves the way for a power company in western Japan to immediately begin work to restart two reactors in Ohi town, a process that is expected to take several weeks.
Despite lingering safety concerns, the restart could speed the resumption of operations at more reactors across the country. All Japan's 50 nuclear reactors are offline for maintenance or safety checks.
Japan and Local Nuclear Subsidies:
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/06/15/fukushima-watch-looking-for-new-nuclear-revenue-a-spent-fuel-tax/
Genkai’s revenue problem is acute. All of the four nuclear reactors in the Genkai power plant are now offline — as are Japan’s 46 other reactors — as utilities hold off on restarting them to assuage public fears raised by the Fukushima Daiichi accident in March 2011. The Japanese government is expected to order the first two back online since the accident on Saturday.
The idling has pummeled finances at small, out-of-the-way communities like Genkai, which received generous government subsidies in exchange for their agreement to host nuclear plants. During its 40-year lifespan, a reactor typically brings in more than ¥10 billion in fixed subsidies, as well as subsidies given out in proportion to the amount of electricity it generates each year. Operators of nuclear plants also pay property taxes, which sometimes amount to as much money as the nuclear subsidies.
Genkai’s budget for the current fiscal year starting April 1 is ¥6.3 billion, up 11% from a year earlier, thanks mainly to the fact that nuclear power-related subsidies are calculated based on performance in the two years prior to the previous fiscal year. Since the Genkai plant’s No. 2 and 3 reactors have been offline since late 2010 and the remaining No. 1 and 4 were switched off in December 2011, this means the town will face a drop in revenue from the fiscal year starting April 2013. Of this year’s ¥6.3 billion budget, about 34% is from nuclear subsidies and about 36% is from property tax on the nuclear power plant.
Nuclear-power critics say the Fukushima Daiichi accident has exposed the weaknesses of the current subsidy system.
Nuclear-related money “is like a drug: you get addicted once you receive it,”
Wall Street Journal Paints Happy Face on Killer Industry
Rupert Murdoch’s Fukushima Flim-Flam
With every atomic reactor disaster comes the inevitable whitewash.
And Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has just painted a tragic new coat over the radioactive wasteland of atomic flim-flam.
Its “Panic at Fukushima” speaks volumes to a nuclear power industry now crumbling at the core. It fits an historic pattern:
When yet another radioactive leak emits from the local nuke—no matter how serious—the official response is hard-wired to include the phrase “no danger to the public.”
When serious structural cracks surface at reactors like Ohio’s Davis-Besse or Crystal River, Florida, safety concerns are invariably dismissed with well-funded contempt.
As with fatally flawed steam generators at California’s San Onofre, if it can make an extra buck, the industry will run these reactors into the ground, safety-be-damned. Protected by federal taxpayer insurance and the bankruptcy laws, they know even a catastrophic disaster need not trouble their bottom line.
When earthquakes rattle reactors in Virginia and Ohio, or threaten others near New York City and Los Angeles, the public is “never in danger.” Likewise a generation of Japanese heard for decades that reactors at Fukushima and Kashiwazaki were “perfectly safe.”
But, now that earthquakes have hammered them both, we know who pays.
At Three Mile Island, there was “no melting of fuel” until, nine years later, robotic cameras showed there certainly was.
“Nobody died” at Three Mile Island until epidemiological evidence showed otherwise. (Disclosure: In 1980 I interviewed the dying and bereaved in central Pennsylvania, leading to the 1982 publication of KILLING OUR OWN).
TMI was a “success story” for industry apologist Patrick Moore, whose accounting skills apparently include cheerily alchemizing a $2 billion liability from a $900 million asset.
Likewise, the Soviet Union said not to worry as Chernobyl spewed lethal radioactive clouds across Europe and into the jet stream that contaminated the entire northern hemisphere. One “scientist” said the fallout would “improve” human health in downwind Ukraine and Belarus, where stillbirths, malformations and birth defects still run rampant.
The Soviet Union is now dead…except in the hearts of a corporate media still parroting the Politburo lie that only 31 people died at Chernobyl, rather than the million-and-counting that now seems likely.
For Fukushima, the inevitable Murdoch whitewash comes from a one-time Koch-funded climate skeptic named Richard Muller. He says Fukushima has harmed virtually no one except the nuclear industry, which the Japanese people have all but shut.
Muller’s article occupies a parallel pro-nuclear universe. Virtually devoid of actual fact, it is meticulously dissected by SimplyInfo in a brilliant primer on the health impacts of a truly apocalyptic nightmare that is far from over.
Entitled “The Truth vs. the Wall Street Journal,” SimplyInfo’s dissection is deja vu all over again. The once-prestigious Journal disgraces itself in vintage Murdoch style with some truly embarrassing errors and anachronisms. Simply and briefly:
1. The Journal astonishingly minimizes the death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki using speculative data that has been discredited for decades. It ignores the findings by Japanese scientists that Fukushima has (thus far) spewed nearly 30 times as much radioactive cesium as did the Bombings;2. The Journal’s totally discredited averaging assumptions say Fukushima’s fallout will nicely administer uniform minimal doses for everyone. But the fallout has gone global. Plutonium, cesium, strontium and other killer isotopes tend to come down in clumps and clusters, heavily dosing some while missing others. As at TMI, Chernobyl and now Fukushima, woe be to the unlucky masses who get rained on;3. The averaging argument jumps off the rails with pregnant women, as well as small children, the elderly, the biologically sensitive. At TMI, the owners’ advertising compared the fallout to a single x-ray for everyone in the area. But a doubled childhood leukemia rate has long been linked to a single x-ray administered to a fetus in utero. Pregnant women exposed to these small doses must brace for the worst.4. The Journal admits that Fukushima was not designed to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and 50-foot tidal wave. The quake’s epi-center was more than 100 miles offshore, but all three Fukushima reactors operating at the time melted and exploded. Diablo Canyon, San Onofre, Indian Point are no safer. Nearby fault lines could reduce them and others to rubble, followed by emissions whose death toll would be virtually impossible to calculate.5. The Journal has published a heavily edited rebuttal (the full original is at http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/crisis.htm) from Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service pointing out that sea-ward winds saved Japan—including Tokyo—from suffering far heavier doses.
Fukushima erupted 66 years after Hiroshima/Nagasaki, 32 since Three Mile Island, 25 after Chernobyl. The atomic industry seems defined by a reverse learning curve.
Perhaps it could heed Jeffrey Immelt, president of General Electric, who warns that nuclear power has no economic future. GE’s brand is all over Fukushima. Small wonder Immelt wants to join Siemens et. al. in a green-powered Solartopian future, built on renewable technologies like wind, solar and bio-fuels.
No verbal contortions can ever cleanse what Forbes Magazine long ago branded “the largest managerial disaster in American history.” No error-filled whitewash will ever convince our bodies that radiation is good for us.
While Rupert Murdoch helps paint a happy face on a dying industry, we continue to pay with our money and our lives.
Fukushima's Forgotten 50 Oct 14 2012
IT HAS taken the Japanese government more than 18 months to pay tribute to a group of brave men, once known as the “Fukushima 50”, who risked their lives to prevent meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant from spiralling out of control. But when the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, belatedly offered official thanks to them on October 7th something strange was afoot: six of the eight men he addressed had their backs to the television cameras, refused to be photographed and did not introduce themselves by name, not even to Mr Noda (see the image below).
The reason: officials from the government and from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) quietly admitted that the men wanted to keep their identities secret because they were scared of stigmatisation for being involved in the disaster, such as might lead to the bullying of their children and grandchildren. But Tepco is also muzzling them, presumably for fear that what they say will further discredit the now nationalised company. When I asked if I could at least hand my business card to them to see if they wanted to tell their side of the story, an irate Tepco spokesman answered bluntly: “Impossible.”
There are numerous ways that this incident reflects badly on both Tepco’s and the government’s handling of the situation. Firstly, there is the contrast between the frontline worker’s behaviour and the brazen hypocrisy of Tepco’s management after the accident. I remember Tepco’s then-chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata (now thankfully retired), nonchalantly blaming everyone but himself when giving testimony to a Diet commission earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the men who worked loyally for him, risking their lives on behalf of his company, still hide their heads in shame.
The government, for its part, has done these men a huge disservice by not acting more quickly to differentiate their heroism from the craven self-interest of the company’s bosses. In the eyes of the public there ought to be no confusion between the two. In Chile, it was easy to see how the country made heroes of the 33 trapped mine workers in 2010, while making villains of their bosses. Nothing like that has happened in Japan. As one government official noted, if this were America, the “Fukushima 50” would have been invited to the Rose Garden for presidential recognition.
Yet even after Mr Noda’s visit, the men do not get the recognition they deserve. Kyodo, a news agency, relegates any mention of them to the bottom of a boring story about decontamination.
An English-language paper, the Japan Times, today at least tells part of their harrowing story, though it doesn’t mention the refusal of all but two of them to be identified. They did not depict themselves as heroes, as they recounted their experiences to Mr Noda. They mostly sounded plain scared. One said he thought “it was all over” after the tsunami of March 11th, 2011 knocked out all the power. Another told of how he sent his staff out into the dark, where they faced the danger of electrocution, to restore the power to a nuclear reactor on the verge of melting down. He was asked by his men whether he thought they would come back alive. They went on regardless.
But the headlines, ultimately, refer back to Mr Noda, not to the Fukushima 50. He gets more of the credit than they do, despite his wooden acknowledgement to the men, that “Thanks to your dedication, we have managed to preserve Japan.” This is one of the tragic flaws of modern Japan. The media attention is always focused on those in power, who typically do nothing to merit the recognition. The multitudes on the frontline, who put their heads down and do all the hard work are treated as faceless, nameless and ultimately forgotten.
Noda visits Fukushima nuclear plant
Jiji-Daily Yomiuri Oct 8 2012
FUKUSHIMA--Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda visited Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant Sunday to see the site of the country's worst nuclear crisis first-hand and offer gratitude to workers.
It was Noda's second visit to the plant following one he made soon after his inauguration as prime minister in September last year.
Having secured his second term as head of the Democratic Party of Japan last month, and reshuffling his Cabinet last Monday, Noda is poised to reveal his stance of tackling the Fukushima nuclear crisis as his administration's No. 1 task, sources said.
Before arriving at the nuclear plant, Noda visited J-Village, a J.League national training center in the town of Naraha in the prefecture that now serves as the base for nuclear crisis-related work.
He met with workers who remained at the scene despite facing life-threatening dangers after the crisis began following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.
Noda told them: "I'd like to express my appreciation for your endeavors, as I believe you must have faced difficulties beyond words.
"Please accept my words of gratitude as a member of this nation for your having worked so hard in such an appalling, severe environment."
After expressing thanks to the workers, Noda entered the nuclear plant, inspecting the fifth floor of the No. 4 reactor building, where the main problem is retrieving spent nuclear fuel from the fuel pool.
Noda also inspected the central control rooms for the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors.
In the afternoon, Noda made an on-site inspection of radiation cleanup operations and a temporary storage site for contaminated soil in Naraha. He then visited a rice- inspection facility in Motomiya in the prefecture.
(Oct. 8, 2012)
Same Type of Reactor Used in U.S.A
The NRC database of nuclear power plants shows that 23 of the 104 nuclear plants in the U.S. are GE boiling-water reactors with GE's Mark I systems for containing radioactivity, the same containment system used by the reactors in trouble at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. The U.S. reactors are in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
In addition, 12 reactors in the U.S. have the later Mark II or Mark III containment system from GE. These 12 are in Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington state.
The six reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which had explosions ... are all GE-designed boiling-water reactors, known in the industry as BWRs. Five have containment systems of GE's Mark I design, and the sixth is of the Mark II type. They were placed in operation between 1971 and 1979.
Nuclear Mishap or Meltdown?: It's All a Matter of Degree
In all, there were 10 incidents at U.S. nuclear plants last year [2011 MM] that merited ratings of 2—"significant spread of contamination / overexposure of a worker" and "incidents with significant failures in safety provisions," as the INES handbook puts it—or above, Jones says. "Two reactor events and eight nonreactor events."
Among the eight nonreactor events was a spill at the Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc., fuel production plant in Erwin, Tenn., in March 2006. More than eight gallons (31 liters) of highly enriched, weapons-grade uranyl nitrate, the liquid form of transportable uranium, nearly pooled in a sufficient quantity to achieve the conditions necessary for a spontaneous chain reaction—uncontrolled fission, otherwise known as a criticality.
Radioactive Fuel Fires: Not Just a Japanese Problem
Fuel pools in the United States store an average of ten times more radioactive fuel than stored at Fukushima, have virtually no safety features, and are vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks.
If the water drains out for any reason, it will cause a fire in the fuel rods, as the zirconium metal jacket on the outside of the fuel rods could very well catch fire within hours or days after being exposed to air. Seethis, this, this and this. (Even a large solar flare could knock out the water-circulation systems for the pools.)
The pools are also filling up fast, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission:
Even though they contain some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet, U.S. spent nuclear fuel pools are mostly contained in ordinary industrial structures designed to merely protect them against the elements. Some are made from materials commonly used to house big-box stores and car dealerships.
***
All spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants do not have steel-lined, concrete barriers that cover reactor vessels to prevent the escape of radioactivity. They are not required to have back-up generators to keep used fuel rods cool, if offsite power is lost.
***
For nearly 30 years, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) waste-storage requirements have remained contingent on the opening of a permanent waste repository that has yet to materialize. Now that the Obama administration has cancelled plans to build a permanent, deep disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, spent fuel at the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors will continue to accumulate and are likely remain onsite for decades to come.
The U.S. government should promptly take steps to reduce these risks by placing all spent nuclear fuel older than five years in dry, hardened storage casks — something Germany did 25 years ago. It would take about 10 years at a cost between $3.5 and $7 billion to accomplish. If the cost were transferred to energy consumers, the expenditure would result in a marginal increase of less than 0.4 cents per kilowatt hour for consumers of nuclear-generated electricity.
Another payment option is available for securing spent nuclear fuel. Money could be allocated from $18.1 billion in unexpended funds already collected from consumers of nuclear-generated electricity under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to establish a disposal site for high-level radioactive wastes.
Short of closing plants, there is a fairly reliable solution to the problem of spent fuel rods. It is called “dry cask storage.”
***
But there is a problem with dry cask storage: it costs money….
Video: 51 min.
Video Transcript available.
With more radioactive Cesium in the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant's spent fuel pool than was released by Fukushima, Chernobyl, and all nuclear bomb testing combined. Gundersen and Lockbaum ask why there is not a single procedure in place to deal with a crisis in the fuel pool?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/more-than-a-dozen-nuclear-plants-near-hurricane-sandys-path-brace-for-impact.htmlThe following lists the nuclear reactors and utilities in Sandy's potential path. Plant State Size Company (MW) Brunswick North Carolina 1,858 Duke Surry Virginia 1,638 Dominion North Anna Virginia 1,863 Dominion Calvert Cliffs Maryland 1,705 Constellation Salem New Jersey 2,332 PSEG Hope Creek New Jersey 1,161 PSEG Peach Bottom Pennsylvania 2,244 Exelon Limerick Pennsylvania 2,264 Exelon Three Mile Island Pennsylvania 805 Exelon Susquehanna Pennsylavnia 2,450 PPL Oyster Creek New Jersey 615 Exelon Indian Point New York 2,063 Entergy Millstone Connecticut 2,102 Dominion Pilgrim Massachusetts 685 Entergy Seabrook New Hampshire 1,247 NextEra Vermont Yankee Vermont 620 Entergy
Let’s review the list and look at examples of problems experienced by the nuclear plants in Hurricane Sandy’s path:
- Brunswick experienced a reactor coolant system leak last year
- Surry has recently been plagued by problems with the coolant system, valves and damage from a tornado
- North Anna leaked tritium last year after an earthquake shook the plant and shifted around a gigantic radioactive storage cask
- Calvert Cliffs was knocked offline by the last hurricane
- Hope Creek has suffered security problems, has the same design as the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, has “some of the same issues with above-ground storage of spent fuel rods as Fukushima” and “was designed to withstand certain major weather events but we need to look at the potential impacts of more extreme events, especially … sea level rise and flooding”
- Peach Bottom purportedly has a defective design and has been plagued by various problems
- Limerick has suffered electrical and other issues
- Three Mile Island suffered another leak in the cooling system last month
- Susquehanna has been hit with one problem after another
- Oyster Creek has been plagued with electrical and other problems
- Indian Point is widely recognized as one of the nation’s worst nuclear plants. If Indian Point melted down, it could close New York City for years, and cost half a trillion dollars or more
- Millstone’s vulnerability is shown by the fact that it was shut down due to warm seawater
- Pilgrim has numerous structural problems. And see this. Pilgrim’s spent fuel pools contain more radioactive cesium than released by Fukushima, Chernobyl and all nuclear bomb tests combined
- Vermont Yankee – which has around 10 times more spent fuel rods than any of the individual Fukushima reactors – leaked tritium
Fukushima Update: Unit 4 Is Sinking … Unevenly
… And May Begin Tilting
The spent fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4 is the top short-term threat to humanity, and is a national security issue for America.
As such, it is disturbing news that the ground beneath unit 4 is sinking.
Specifically, Unit 4 sunk 36 inches right after the earthquake, and has sunk another 30 inches since then.
Moreover, Unit 4 is sinking unevenly, and the building may begin tilting.
An international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups are calling on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this.
Given the precarious situation at Unit 4, it is urgent that the world community pool its scientific resources to come up with a fix.
SPENT FUEL RODS AND DRY CASK STORAGE
The BE HAPPY response from article: 
Nuclear plants must store the spent uranium fuel rods for at least five years in order to cool them sufficiently before they can be moved to dry cask storage containers.
The pool is not filled with ordinary water but with boric acid, which helps to absorb some of the radiation given off by the radioactive nuclei inside the spent rods. The spent fuel rods are supposed to stay in the pool for only about 6 months, but, because there is no permanent storage site, they often stay there for years.
Canadian version:
In Canada, above-ground dry storage has been used. Ontario Power Generation is in the process of constructing a Dry Storage Cask storage facility[10] on its Darlington site, which will be similar in many respects to existing facilities at Pickering Nuclear Generating Station and Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. NB Power's Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station and Hydro-Québec's Gentilly Nuclear Generating Station also both operate dry storage facilities.
many of the nuclear power plants in the United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind.
Lists of nuclear disasters and radioactive incidents
Massachusetts Institute of Technology is studying how such dry casks perform in salt environments. Some hope that the casks can be used for 100 years but cracking related to corrosion could occur in 30 years or less.
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:35 PM, D. deLang <dsdelang@gmail.com> wrote:
Notice the mention of one service water pump to cool the fuel rods. What happens if this pump fails? Perhaps we could get Obama and Romney to pump by hand.
<http://ca.news.yahoo.com/u-nuclear-plant-declares-alert-san dy-storm-surge-065922470.html>
How about Nuclear Safety in Europe?
"Practically all" of the more than 130 active nuclear reactors in the European Union need safety improvements, repairs or upgrades, at a cost up to 25 billion euros ($30 billion), according to a draft copy of a European Commission report that is scheduled to be released Thursday.
The scale of the problems detailed in the report, as well as the size of the expected repair bill, may amplify public concerns about the safety of nuclear power on the part of Europeans, who are already deeply divided over the technology and whose governments still zealously guard control over energy policy at the national level.
The European Commission undertook the safety review of its nuclear plants after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which led to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Part of the assessment was the performance of "stress tests," which are meant to assess how a nuclear facility would fare in various kinds of failures and crises. National experts conducted the stress tests in conjunction with the commission's advisory group on nuclear safety. The tests identified the need for "hundreds of technical upgrade measures," the draft report says.
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The two biggest previous civilian nuclear accidents — at Three Mile Island outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979, and at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, were both followed by similar scrutiny, and agreements were reached on extensive new safety measures. But the draft report notes that "even today, decades later, the implementation of those measures is still pending" in some of the union's member countries.
Among the vulnerabilities identified in the report, the commission found that at four reactors in Finland and Sweden, if the cooling systems failed or all electric power was lost, the operators would have less than an hour to restore safety functions before catastrophic damage was done. The report says that 10 reactors in countries including Spain, France and the Czech Republic lack adequate equipment to detect earthquakes.
Most of the upgrades called for in the report involve making European nuclear plants better able to withstand earthquakes, flooding and the loss of primary cooling — the factors that combined to devastating effect at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The report also says that rules ensuring the independence of national nuclear safety regulators "are minimal." The EU's energy commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, is expected to announce plans for unionwide legislation Thursday meant to improve reporting and protect the regulators' independence.
Mark Breddy, a spokesman for Greenpeace Europe, the environmental advocacy organization, said: "Cozy relationships between nuclear operators, regulators and politicians were pivotal to aggravating the Fukushima disaster. The situation isn't much better in Europe."
Given those relationships, he said, he questioned whether the European Commission's stress tests were as thorough and impartial as they should have been.
Germany’s Response [this section borrowed from: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.ca/2011/10/fukushima-disaster-and-germanys.html]
Soon after the Fukushima disaster Germany announced it would phase out nuclear power. I wondered where the replacement energy would come from. Would it be a serious commitment to renewables? What storage technology are they going to deploy to allow for that? Germany has installed over 44 GW of wind and solar capacity, and in 2010 generated about 96 TWh of renewable power out of the total electricity generation of 621 TWh. Commentators opined that Germany would be looking to importing natural gas from Russia and coal from the Chech Republic to make up for the 140 TWh contributed by nuclear power. The increased use of fossil sources would run counter to the goals of CO2 reduction. However, Germany also exports annually a net of about 20 TWh of electricity, Could it be that between cutting back on exports and employing conservation strategies, Germany could avoid increasing consumption of fossil fuels.
Based on the data for the first half of 2011 from Germany’s Bureau of Statistics, which show that Germany was a net exporter of electricity Paul Gipe (Bloomberg, Sep. 27, 2011) tried to dispel the notion that Germany will be relying on increased imports. I think it is premature to judge the net effect of Germany’s decision to close the nuclear reactors. Compared to the first half of 2010 when Germany exported nearly 11 TWh more electricity than it imported, in the first half of 2011 it sold only 4 TWh more electricity. Further, during half of the first-half of 2011, the nuclear reactors were still operating. We will get a better sense of the impact when the final figures for 2011 are published. Stay tuned.
Nation marks 1 year since quake / Many hurdles remain to recovery from Japan's worst disaster since WWII
As of March 10, a total of 15,854 people had been confirmed dead in 12 prefectures as a result of the disaster. Survivors have evacuated to all 47 prefectures, with most living in temporary housing units and apartments.
Among commercial and industrial businesses affected by the disaster in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, 22 percent have closed temporarily or permanently. Progress has been slow in rebuilding main industries in coastal areas, such as seafood processing, and about 65,000 people are still looking for work.
The key obstacle to reconstruction is the huge amount of debris left by the earthquake and tsunami.
Other areas of the nation have not cooperated widely in accepting debris. Only 6 percent of debris has so far been disposed of permanently through reclamation or other methods.
The most pressing issue in Fukushima Prefecture is decontamination efforts to remove radioactive substances. It is expected to take more than five years to make some parts of the prefecture fit for residents to live in.
Local municipalities around the nuclear plant are not even at the starting line of reconstruction. (Mar. 12, 2012)
The government plans to step up decontamination in the town and other Fukushima municipalities. Due to numerous challenges in promoting cleanup efforts, Noda needed to cite specific measures to facilitate the efforts, officials said. (Oct. 9, 2012)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/T120311004134.htm
Due to increased fuel costs, TEPCO raised household power rates in September. According to a government assessment on TEPCO's plan to raise household electricity rates, the utility only will be able to reduce its annual fuel costs by 11.8 billion yen out of the total 2.47 trillion yen the firm estimates it will spend. TEPCO is currently undergoing rehabilitation under the government's supervision and importing shale gas could help the utility in this respect.
The company has increasingly relied on thermal power as an alternative to nuclear power generation amid the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
TEPCO's fuel costs for crude oil, coal, liquefied natural gas and other fuels needed for thermal electricity generation was about 2.2 trillion yen in fiscal 2011, up about 60 percent from the previous year. The cost of LNG accounted for 70 percent of this total.
Due to increased fuel costs, TEPCO raised household power rates in September.
As it is unclear whether the utility can resume nuclear power plant operations, it is unlikely it will be able to reduce fuel costs under the current situation.
The Japanese utilities have long-term contracts with foreign LNG exporters to secure stable supplies, but this tends to make LNG more expensive.
The average price of LNG is about 16 dollars to 18 dollars per 1 million British thermal units--a BTU is about 27.75 cubic meters. If the LNG was imported straight from the United States it would cost only 3 dollars per BTU.
