background preloader

NRC MELTDOWN

Facebook Twitter

IAEA

NRC approves Waterford 3's safety plan to prevent nuclear meltdown. Entergy's Waterford 3 nuclear plant on the west bank of St. Charles Parish is capable of withstanding an extreme natural disaster and is currently implementing additional safety measures to ensure against a Fukushima-type meltdown of its core reactors, according to a recent evaluation by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "What this means is that Entergy is on track to meet the requirements of this order that we issued last year in response to the Fukushima incident in Japan," NRC spokesman David McIntyre said. "It means that we approve of the plan and that they are taking steps to implement it.

" While the NRC has said that all U.S. nuclear plants are constructed to withstand the most severe disasters expected for their locale, the agency required plants in 2012 to evaluate and upgrade equipment and safety plans to reduce the likelihood of damage from overheating and containment failure in the event of a complete loss of power. Ron Perry, St. THE NUCLEAR RETREAT - NEWS: On Fukushima Day, another door slams on U.S nuclear expansion. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : Monday, March 11, 2013 CONTACT: Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear, 301-523-0201 (mobile); 301.270.2209 (o) On Fukushima Day, another door slams shut on US nuclear expansion plans Beyond Nuclear lauds decision not to green light third Maryland reactor Takoma Park, MD — On a day when thousands around the world are protesting nuclear power to mark two years since the deadly Fukushima nuclear accident began in Japan, another door has slammed shut on nuclear expansion plans in the US.

Beyond Nuclear hailed Monday’s decision by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to deny an appeal by UniStar, wholly owned by French utility, Électricité de France (EdF), for a third reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant site on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. EdF had hoped to build an Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), a French Areva design originally targeted for six US nuclear sites. After the 60 days expired, the NRC put the application on indefinite review.

Allison Macfarlane N.R.C. Hearing May Focus on Waste. China Cautious About Building New Nuclear Plants. By IDN By Richard Johnson More than eighteen months after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011 in Japan, China continues to exercise caution in returning to building new nuclear power plants. After an executive meeting, the State Council or China’s cabinet, presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao, has decided not to set up any atomic plants in inland regions, but only build a few in coastal areas that have gone through adequate justification.

People’s Republic of China Within days of Fukushima accident, the Council had decided to halt approvals and licensing for new reactors until a safety plan was in place, and there was assurance that existing plants were adequately designed, sited, protected and managed. But power generation continued at reactors in operation at the time, as did construction of the 25 units then approved. Nuclear power safety China will constantly carry out safety upgrades on currently operating reactors and use the most advanced mature technologies. The Mercury - Residents should worry about discharges from nuke plant into river. Excellent articles by Mercury reporter Evan Brandt on July 9 and Aug. 17 explaining Limerick Nuclear Plant’s public hearing issues being considered by the DEP and DRBC. Hidden in the confusing mix of permits is what seems like enormous threats to our water supply.

Our major concerns include: 1. Radiation and cooling tower toxics discharged without limits into the Schuylkill River. 2. The request to use millions of gallons more river water per day. 3. Groundwater and residential wells could be at risk. There is only a two-day supply of water on the site for emergencies. There was never enough water in the Schuylkill for Limerick. We need a safe water supply. Come to the hearing at Sunnybrook on Aug. 28 from 6 to 9 p.m. and tell the DEP and DRBC that we do not want to sacrifice our water for this outdated plant or Exelon’s grotesque profits! BETTY and CHARLIE SHANK Pottstown.

Fort Calhoun Flood Disaster

NUCLEAR POWER - Revived Rust Belt Resistance to Radioactive Reactor Risks. Rally for a Nuclear Free Future Sept 20-22 Wash DC. 200 Cubic Meters of Jellyfish Caught on the Water Intake Screen. I've written about 137 alarms at Ooi Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 4 and the jellyfish protesting the restart (again) in my previous post. Yomiuri Shinbun tells us the scale of the jellyfish attack this time. 200 cubit meters worth of jellyfish forced the plant to reduce the water intake by 30%. Good job, jellyfish. From Yomiuri Shinbun (8/3/2012): 関西電力は2日、福井県おおい町の大飯原子力発電所3、4号機(各118万キロ・ワット)で7月末、大量のクラゲが取水口近くに押し寄せて冷却用の水を集めにくくなったため、約17時間にわたって出力を引き下げたことを明らかにした。

Easy. Otherwise, I think the best countermeasures against jellyfish is to stop the reactors so that no warm water is being released into the ocean from the plant.

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor

Are U.S. Nuclear Plants Ready for a Fukushima-Like Meltdown? | PBS NewsHour | May 25, 2012. JEFFREY BROWN: In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, how should government regulators here set the safety bar for nuclear power plants in the U.S.? This week, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced his resignation, and news reports suggest that battles within the commission over safety requirements may partially account for his departure.

NewsHour science correspondent Miles O’Brien has been looking into these bigger questions well before the latest news. His report was produced in partnership with ProPublica. MAN: We’re staying on AOP-1 for reactor scrams and AOP-2 for turbine trips. And the immediate actions for AOP-1 reactor scram are complete. MILES O’BRIEN: This is a test, only a test. MAN: Also, right now, we have sustained a loss of RPS, plus Bravo. MILES O’BRIEN: We’re in the simulator at the River Bend nuclear power plant near St. Gregory Jaczko is the outgoing chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. GREGORY JACZKO, chairman, U.S. Why not? Regulators aware for years of understated seismic risks to nuclear plants. Nearly six years before an earthquake ravaged Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, U.S. regulators came to a sobering realization: seismic risks to nuclear plants in the eastern two-thirds of the country were greater than had been suspected, and engineers might have to rethink reactor designs.

Thus began a little-noticed risk assessment process with far-reaching implications despite its innocuous-sounding name: Generic Issue 199. The process, which was supposed to have been finished nearly a year ago, is still under way. It is unclear when it will be completed.GI-199, as it is known, was triggered by new geophysical data and computer models showing that, as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission put it in an August 2010 summary document, “estimates of the potential for earthquake hazards for some nuclear power plants in the Central and Eastern United States may be larger than previous estimates.”

Data from the U.S. Events Get Ahead of the Regulators Aaron Mehta and Susan Q. Unacceptable radiation in Japan. SUBHEAD: Recent Tokyo soil samples would be considered hazardous nuclear waste in the United States. By Arie Gundersen on 22 March 2012 for Fairwinds - ( Image above: Still image of NRC Chairman Jaczko's presentation to Regulatory Information Conference. From video below. While traveling in Japan several weeks ago, Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen took soil samples in Tokyo public parks, playgrounds, and rooftop gardens.

All the samples would be considered nuclear waste if found here in the US. This level of contamination is currently being discovered throughout Japan. At the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Regulatory Information Conference in Washington, DC March 13 to March 15, the NRC's Chairman, Dr. Video above: Arne Gundersen introduces and comments on NRC Chairman's reaction to Fukushima radiation .From ( So today, I am in Washington D.C. Nuke Notes: Svinicki nomination at the Senate. The White House finds itself in the role of supporting a Republican for reappointment to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission The pretzel politics of life in Washington took on new twists this month. The White House nominated sitting NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki for another term over the objections of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)

Svinicki occupies a “republican” seat at the NRC, but Reid’s ire isn’t about partisan distinctions. It is no small thing for the White House to send a nomination forward against the wishes of the Senate Majority Leader. Svinicki (left) has been an outspoken critic of Reid’s former aide and now Chairman of the NRC Gregory Jaczko. Her reasons were based on charges that Jaczko was verbally abusive to women who worked for him at the NRC and that his erratic management style was detrimental to the safety mission of the regulatory agency.

Svinicki’s nomination has another formidable challenge in the Senate in the form of Sen. “Ms. US nuclear safety chief Gregory Jaczko quits after tenure dogged by criticism | guardian.co.uk | peacenews.org. Delay in the Pilgrim nuclear plant’s license renewal frustrates some GOP leaders in Congress | Mass. Market. Massachusetts politicians aren’t the only ones closely watching the fate of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth. A group of GOP congressmen, led by energy committee chairman Fred Upton, sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday, essentially scolding the NRC for taking so long with its review of Pilgrim. Critics of Pilgrim say the commission and the administrative law judges working on its behalf still have issues to address before the license can be renewed. But a top NRC administrator recently wrote to the commissioners, telling them the license is good and ready to go, and not to mind the complainers.

We can deal with them, the NRC administrator wrote, after the license gets renewed. Upton & Co. obviously are siding with the NRC staff and chiding the NRC commission for not acting on that recommendation yet. That’s not good enough for Upton and his cohorts. It’s easy to see why Massachusetts politicians would be concerned with Pilgrim. Outgoing NRC Chair Says Agency May Need To Rethink Its Safety Regulations. Aired 5/24/12 on KPBS News. Outgoing NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko says the agency may have to review its safety regulations. Meanwhile rallies call on power companies to decommission California's two nuclear power plants.

The outgoing chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory Jaczko, said today the agency may have to review its safety regulations, in view of ongoing problems at San Onofre. San Onofre, which provides about 20 percent of Southern California’s power, has been shut down since January after radiation leaked from its newly-installed steam generators. Enlarge this image David McNew / Getty Images Above: Evening sets on the San Onofre atomic power plant December 6, 2004 in northern San Diego County, south of San Clemente, California. Jaczko resigned earlier this week under pressure from other board members, who objected to his style and his stand on safety issues. “This is a company that can say, 'I’m not in the game,’” Lutz said, “'take me out - my 20 percent is over.’” Irony rules in the U.S. anti-proliferation community | Canadian Energy Issues. The U.S. president, struggling to restore some semblance of maturity at the top of the nuclear regulatory commission (NRC), recently nominated an anti-proliferation activist to replace the outgoing Gregory Jaczko.

This nomination is significant because it says a lot about what guides nuclear policy at the highest level of the U.S. government. The nominee, Allison Macfarlane, was a member of the president’s blue ribbon committee on nuclear waste, which recently recommended doing basically nothing about the U.S. used power reactor fuel inventory. Don’t put it at Yucca Mountain, and for heaven’s sake don’t recycle it. The U.S. has, as a matter of policy since the Ford presidency, abstained from recycling on the grounds that it somehow constitutes a proliferation threat. Did Dr. Macfarlane influence that recommendation? The really disappointing thing is that this nomination says that U.S. nuclear policy from the top down is straight out of the Jimmy Carter playbook. I mean, think of it. Gregory Jaczko’s Parting Message: Fukushima Was “A Wake-Up Call” Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced his resignation this week, but he is still making pointed comments about the need to strengthen regulations to ensure nuclear power plants are safer.

“I think the Fukushima event was a wake-up call, hopefully for everyone,” Jaczko said in a news conference today, referring to the earthquake- and tsunami-triggered nuclear plant accident in Japan on March 11, 2011, “I think there were people throughout this industry who had come to the belief that an accident of that magnitude simply was never going to happen, that we had really come to the point at which we’d eliminated that,” Jaczko said. “I’ve always tried to do my job without making that assumption.” There are hopeful signs for improvement, Jaczko said. However improvements have been too slow, he argued. Jaczko has been known for taking a more cautious approach than the other commissioners. George W. Image via Nuclearstreet.com Connect: Authored by: Mason Inman. A closer look at Jazcko's replacement | The Neutron Economy. Earlier this week, embattled NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko announced he would be stepping down from his position contingent upon the confirmation of his replacement.

Wasting no time, the Obama administration announced their nominee today, a mere three days after Jaczko's announcement. Their candidate? Dr. Allison MacFarlane, an associate professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University. MacFarlane is not without technical credentials - she holds a Ph.D. in geology from MIT and has written extensively on nuclear waste management issues - in particular, serving on the recent Blue Ribbon Commission. And, unlike the departing Chairman, MacFarlane at least has an academic career to point to, rather than solely being employed as a political aide for entire career. Ideologically however, she is relatively aligned with the departing Chariman however - thus, while not quite Gregory Jaczko II: Electric Boogaloo, she is likely close enough for government work. A mixed bag. Pilgrim nuke plant relicensing at hand. Pcassidy@capecodonline.com May 25, 2012 The outgoing chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission has voted against a recommendation to immediately issue a license for Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to operate for the next 20 years.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko's vote, however, appears to set the stage for the imminent approval of the license by the four other commissioners, who have often voted as a block against him on various related issues. In a statement released Thursday on his vote against a recommendation from NRC staff in April to issue the license, Jaczko indicates the relicensing may be a fait accompli. "While I appreciate the need to have an appropriate procedure for bringing this process to completion, the current approach that my colleagues on the commission support is unprecedented in license renewal proceedings and provides little basis for action," Jaczko wrote.

Pilgrim's primary opponent, Mary Lampert of Duxbury-based Pilgrim Watch, was less circumspect. Obama Nominates Allison M. Macfarlane for Jaczko’s NRC Post. 102.1 FM -- Music, NPR, Local Arts & More :: News. Obama makes his regulatory choice. A closer look at Jazcko's replacement. Obama Nominates George Mason University Professor to Replace Jaczko as Nuclear Chief.

US nuclear safety chief Gregory Jaczko quits after tenure dogged by criticism | Environment. Head of US nuclear safety agency to step down. Inhofe: Jaczko Right to Step Down. The infighting that threatens to undermine US nuclear safety | Environment. Republicans set sights on NRC chief - The Hill's E2-Wire. A Fight in the N.R.C. Family. NRC Commish's Stunning Lack of Candor Should Make President Rethink Renomination. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Criticized for Industry Ties. A Nuclear Plant's Flood Defenses Trigger a Yearlong Regulatory Confrontation. Gregory Jaczko Resigns: Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Steps Down. Virginia Quake May Have Exceeded Nuke Plant Design, NRC Says. NRC Waives Enforcement of Fire Rules at Nuclear Plants. David Lochbaum: “The NRC Is Not Doing Its Job” | Nuclear Aftershocks | FRONTLINE. NRC chairman visits expanding SC nuclear plant. U.S. nuclear plants similar to Fukushima spark concerns. Fukishima: Is the Worst Yet to Come?

SanOnofre Nuclear Disaster Potential

The Fukushima nuclear plant's slow recovery offers lessons to the US. The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb. NRC Report: Nuclear Power Plants More Vulnerable to Earthquakes Than Previously Thought | Nuclear Aftershocks | FRONTLINE. First Post-Fukushima Safety Rules Approved by NRC | Nuclear Aftershocks | FRONTLINE. Sanders laments NRC chief's departure. Head of U.S. nuclear safety agency to step down. Fukushima, NRC knew about meltdown hrs. after earthquake 1/4. Dogged by bully charge, nuclear chief Jaczko resigns.

Gregory Jaczko announces resignation from NRC - Darius Dixon. Gregory Jaczko, chief of Nuclear Regulatory Commission, resigns. NRC chairman resigns amid battle over lessons from Fukushima.