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Squelching Efforts to Measure Fukushima Meltdown

In the chaotic, fearful weeks after the Fukushima nuclear crisis began, in March 2011, researchers struggled to measure the radioactive fallout unleashed on the public. Michio Aoyama’s initial findings were more startling than most. As a senior scientist at the Japanese government’s Meteorological Research Institute, he said levels of radioactive cesium 137 in the surface water of the Pacific Ocean could be 10,000 times as high as contamination after Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear accident. Two months later, as Mr. Aoyama prepared to publish his findings in a short, nonpeer-reviewed article for Nature, the director general of the institute called with an unusual demand — that Mr. Aoyama remove his own name from the paper. “He said there were points he didn’t understand, or want to understand,” the researcher recalled. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Japan Regulator Selects First Reactors for Possible Restart

Members of the media and Tokyo Electric Power Co. employees visit a control room at Fukushima Daiichi on March 10. Japan’s nuclear regulator said Thursday it would start wrapping up safety compliance screening of two reactors in southwestern Japan. TOKYO—Japan’s nuclear power regulator has chosen two reactors in southwestern Japan as the first candidates for being restarted under new regulations meant to prevent another disaster like the one at Fukushima in 2011. At its weekly board meeting Thursday, the Nuclear Regulation Authority selected Co. ‘s Sendai No. 1 and 2 reactors as the first on which it will aim to complete its screening process, with most major safety concerns having been cleared up during the past eight months of discussions. "There are still a few issues at Sendai. Please make sure they are solved before completion of the screening report," NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka told fellow commissioners at the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Scientists: Test West Coast for Fukushima radiation

Very low levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster likely will reach ocean waters along the U.S. West Coast next month, scientists are reporting. Current models predict that the radiation will be at extremely low levels that won’t harm humans or the environment, said Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who presented research on the issue last week. But Buesseler and other scientists are calling for more monitoring. No federal agency currently samples Pacific Coast seawater for radiation, he said. "I’m not trying to be alarmist," Buesseler said. "We can make predictions, we can do models. But unless you have results, how will we know it’s safe?" The […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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After Fukushima, Utilities Prepare for Worst

Stored near the twin nuclear reactors here, safely above the flood level of the Susquehanna River, is a gleaming new six-wheel pickup truck with a metal blade on the front that can plow away debris from an earthquake or other disaster. Attached to the back is a trailer that carries a giant diesel-powered pump that can deliver 500 gallons of water a minute. If the operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan had owned such equipment when the tsunami struck three years ago Tuesday, they might have staved off disaster, plant operators say. Now, here at the Peach Bottom nuclear plant, which has the same […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Polar Vortex Emboldens Industry to Push Old Coal Plants

The polar vortex may give new life to aging coal and nuclear power plants in the U.S. Masses of arctic air rolling down from the North Pole have driven electricity prices to more than 10 times last year’s average in many parts of the country and have threatened some cities with winter blackouts. They’ve also emboldened energy companies to call for extending the lives of older and dirtier coal plants, as well as aging nuclear reactors. Despite a concerted campaign by environmentalists and public health experts to stanch its use, coal, the most plentiful and cheapest fuel in the world, is proving globally resilient. In the U.S., rising natural gas prices are prodding utilities to switch back to coal at levels not seen since 2011. Now, Edison Electric Institute, the Washington-based trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities, is turning to the latest series of cold snaps to bolster their […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Robots Star in Cleanup of Japanese Nuclear Plant

On a routine day at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear-power plant, a snakelike robot is cleaning the floor of the reactor buildings while another maps radiation density with a 3-D camera. In the three years since several of the plant’s reactors suffered meltdowns caused by Japan’s March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, it has become clear that melted fuel rods and debris inside the reactor buildings have to be cleaned up before the risks of radioactive discharge from the site can be contained. That’s where the robots come in. Robots are crucial in the cleanup, but that doesn’t mean they are […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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How To Take Apart Fukushima’s 3 Melted-Down Reactors

A radiation-proof superhero could make sense of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in an afternoon. Our champion would pick through the rubble to reactor 1, slosh through the pooled water inside the building, lift the massive steel dome of the protective containment vessel, and peek into the pressure vessel that holds the nuclear fuel. A dive to the bottom would reveal the debris of the meltdown: a hardened blob of metals with fat strands of radioactive goop dripping through holes in the pressure vessel to the floor of the containment vessel below. Then, with a clear understanding of the situation, the superhero could figure out how to clean up this mess. Unfortunately, mere mortals can’t get anywhere near that pressure vessel, and Japan’s top nuclear experts thus have only the vaguest idea of where […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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1000 researchers, 400 reports on fusion progress

Nearly 1,000 of the world’s preeminent fusion researchers from 45 countries gathered last week in San Diego to discuss the latest advances in fusion energy. The 24th International Atomic Energy Agency Fusion Energy Conference, organized by the IAEA in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy and General Atomics, aims to “provide a forum for the discussion of key physics and technology issues as well as innovative concepts of direct relevance to fusion as a source of nuclear energy.”   Those in attendance in San Diego included Nobel Prize-winning physicist Burton Richter; Physicist Steven Cowley, CEO of the United Kingdom’s Atomic Energy Authority; Frances Chen, a plasma physicist and UCLA professor emeritus who wrote the book An Indispensable Truth: How Fusion Power Can Save the Planet; and keynote speaker William Brinkman, director of the Office of Science in the US Department of Energy. […]

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Thirteen Workers Exposed to Radiation at New Mexico Plant

More workers at a New Mexico nuclear-waste depository will be tested for radioactive exposure after results showed that 13 employees had been contaminated, officials with the U.S. Department of Energy said Thursday. The 13 employees at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the outskirts of Carlsbad were working Feb. 14 when a radiation leak was detected at the facility. The government contractor that runs the plant, Nuclear Waste Partnership LLC, is now asking employees who were present the following day to also submit samples for testing, said Farok Sharif, the company’s president. The Energy Department is still in the process of determining the cause of the leak, the first ever reported at the site, which has been storing waste material from the research and production of nuclear weapons deep underground since 1999. But the agency said Wednesday that initial tests show the workers were exposed to americium, a contaminant […]

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Nuclear important in Japan’s latest draft energy policy

Japan’s government on Tuesday released an energy policy document in which nuclear power is considered an important electricity source. The plan is a toned-down revision of a draft document released in December, which said nuclear power also serves as a "foundation" for the stability of the country’s energy supply, Kyodo News Service reports. The government is required to review its energy plan at least every three years. The last plan, in 2010, called for Japan to boost its reliance on nuclear power to about 50 percent of its total electricity in 2030. Prior to the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis, triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, nuclear power provided nearly 30 percent of Japan’s electricity. The plan released Tuesday does not include any numerical targets for Japan’s medium- to long-term energy mix. "It was impossible to plan any energy mix, […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple