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Why Nuclear Power Is All but Dead in the U.S.

Employees adjust nuclear fuel rods in a fuel pool. Photographer: Timothy Fadek/Bloomberg The Obama administration supported a bill yesterday, April 14, that would give Congress a chance to review a nuclear power agreement with Iran, if the two countries clinch a deal before their June 30 deadline.  In other words, if the diplomatic hurdles are surmounted, nuclear power may have a smoother ride in Iran than in the U.S. “No question,” said Judd Gregg, the former New Hampshire Republican senator and governor and current co-chairman of Nuclear Matters , a bipartisan nonprofit group that promotes keeping nuclear alive in the U.S. “There are 150 plants on the drawing board around the world. There are five on the drawing board in the United States.” Say what? The U.S. achieved fission before anybody else. It learned before anybody else to control nuclear power, train it to boil water, to spin turbines, to generate electricity. There are 99 nuclear reactors across the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nuclear Reactors in Japan Remain Closed by Judge’s Order

Photo The Takahama nuclear power station in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, in 2013. Credit Kyodo News TOKYO — Fukui Prefecture, with 13 commercial nuclear reactors clustered along a short, rugged coastline, has earned the area a reputation as a political stronghold for the atomic power industry. Nuclear-friendly politicians dominate most of Fukui’s government offices, and the region is nicknamed Genpatsu Ginza, or Nuclear Alley. Fukui has now emerged as a battleground for the Japanese government’s effort to rebuild the nuclear industry and reverse the economic impact of the reactor shutdowns. On Tuesday, a local judge blocked the latest attempt to get atomic power back on the grid, issuing an injunction forbidding the restarting of two nuclear reactors at the Takahama power plant in the region. The nuclear industry has been in a state of paralysis since the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant four years ago. None of the […]

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Fukushima — A litany of failures costing hundreds of millions

Fukushima — A litany of failures costing hundreds of millions thumbnail Four years after the earthquake and resulting tsunami that killed 18,000 people and destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plan in Japan, the tragedy is far from being over. Despite the litany of failures in cleaning up the mess, Japan carries on. The daunting task of cleanup at the Fukushima nuclear power plant site, where three of six reactors melted down, and one other is badly damaged, has been an ongoing chore that seems to have no end. And to add insult to injury, Japanese government auditors revealed this past week that over one-third of the $2.0 billion of taxpayer money earmarked for the cleanup has been wasted. But believe it or not, tourists are beginning to return to the area as radiation fears have faded, perhaps due to positive information being issued to the public by government […]

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Hong Kong Finds Radioactive Contamination in Sample of Japanese Tea

HONG KONG — A sample of powdered tea imported from the Japanese prefecture of Chiba, just southeast of Tokyo, had 9.3 times the legal maximum level of radioactive cesium 137 allowed in food, the Hong Kong government announced late Thursday evening. Hong Kong’s legal limits for radioactive material in food are low and stringent. But the discovery is not the first of its kind. The government’s Center for Food Safety found three samples of vegetables from Japan with “unsatisfactory” levels of radioactive contaminants in March 2011, the month that nuclear reactors in Fukushima, northeast of Tokyo, suffered partial meltdowns following a powerful earthquake and tsunami. Other samples of Japanese food have occasionally been found to have low levels of radiation since the Fukushima disaster, the Hong Kong food center said. Some tea samples were found in Japan with radioactive contamination in the months immediately after the earthquake and tsunami. […]

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Saudi Nuclear Deal Raises Stakes for Iran Talks

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman greeted South Korean President Park Geun-hye in Riyadh last week. ENLARGE Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Reuters WASHINGTON—As U.S. and Iranian diplomats inched toward progress on Tehran’s nuclear program last week, Saudi Arabia quietly signed its own nuclear-cooperation agreement with South Korea. That agreement, along with recent comments from Saudi officials and royals, is raising concerns on Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies that a deal with Iran, rather than stanching the spread of nuclear technologies, risks fueling it. Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family, has publicly warned in recent months that Riyadh will seek to match the nuclear capabilities Iran is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel. Several U.S. and […]

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TEPCO Admits Delaying Report Of Major Radiation Leak Into The Pacific Ocean For 10 Months

TEPCO Admits Delaying Report Of Major Radiation Leak Into The Pacific Ocean For 10 Months thumbnail While faith in Japanese ‘economics’ is starting to falter (borne out by the split in the BoJ and endless macro data disappointments) , trust in TEPCO and its governmental operators must be about to hit a new record low. Having promised and given up on the ice-wall strategy to stop radioactive water leaking into the ocean, Bloomberg reports TEPCO officials have admitted that it’s investigating the cause of a spike in radiation levels (23,000 becquerels/liter vs the legal limit of 90) in drainage water that it believes subsequently leaked into the Pacific ocean from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant. The bigger problem, as NBC reports, TEPCO failed to report the leak for 10 months! The radioactivity increase was ‘reported’ on Sunday, the company said in an e-mail yesterday, and as Bloomberg reports […]

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Areva Warns of $5.6 Billion Loss

ENLARGE Delays on the Olkiluoto-3 nuclear power plant in Finland have contributed to Areva’s losses. The power plant was scheduled to come online in 2013. Photo: Associated Press PARIS—Engineering firm Areva SA said it expects its 2014 net loss to widen to about €4.9 billion, or $5.6 billion, from a year earlier, as delays to a reactor project in Finland and low demand for nuclear projects continue to hammer the company. The French firm’s latest profit warning follows three successive years of reported losses stemming from delays to a nuclear reactor project in Finland and a big write-off after a mine acquisition went sour. The company was also hampered by the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, when many utilities shelved or delayed plans for nuclear power plant construction. Areva, which is 85%-owned by the French state, on Monday said preliminary financial information shows a full-year net […]

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New Fukushima Leak Sees 70x Increase In Radiation

It has been a disturbing week for Japan, not due to any recent economic calamity resulting from Abenomics, but because for the first time since the catastrophic 2011 earthquake, the nation has been rocked with a series of ever stronger tremors, with two 6.0+ stronger quakes recorded in just the past 2 days: The quakes come at an awkward time, just a few short months before Japan’s government aims to restart its first nuclear reactor by around June, following the Fukushima devastation. While it is unclear if it is directly related to the recent surge in tectonic activity, overnight another radioactive water leak in the sea was detected at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the facility’s operator TEPCO announced. Contamination levels in the gutter reportedly spiked up 70 times over regular readings. The levels of contamination were between 50 and 70 times higher than Fukushima’s already elevated radioactive status, […]

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Zuma Seeks Nuclear Power to Solve South Africa’s Energy Crisis

(Bloomberg) — South African President Jacob Zuma said his priority is to solve the energy crisis in the country that’s curbing output at mines and factories and stifling economic growth, including adding more nuclear power by 2023. “We will pursue gas, petroleum, nuclear, hydropower and other sources as part of the energy mix,” Zuma, 72, said in his annual state-of-the-nation speech in Parliament in Cape Town on Thursday. “The country is currently experiencing serious energy constraints which are an impediment to economic growth and is a major inconvenience to everyone in the country.” Zuma’s speech follows nine consecutive days of rolling blackouts implemented as demand for power outstripped supply. State utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which provides 95 percent of the nation’s electricity, has warned of almost-daily blackouts until the end of April. The power crisis has soured investor appetite for South Africa’s currency and debt. The rand reached […]

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6000% Increase in Cancer Rates at Fukushima Site

As reports from individuals like Chieko Shiina, a supporter of the Fukushima Collaborateive Clinic talk about exploding rates of thyroid cancer in children, as well as an epidemic of leukemia, heart attacks, and other health problems,  the Abe-led government and US continue to sweep the fall out of the Fukushima disaster under the rug. Cancer rates have exploded at an increase of almost 6000% in areas near the reactor meltdown. Aside from people-on-the-street interviews that a rare media outlet like “Hodo station” will report on, mainstream media stays completely silent. One Japanese resident,  Carol Hisasue, laments  that as the incident has disappeared from the media, it has also disappeared from people’s consciousness. So why does Fukushima continue to be a see no evil, hear no evil event? You can watch an over hour-long report that goes into detail, but to sum it up, people can’t even turn on their gas-stoves near Fukushima because […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple