State loses fight over Pilgrim nuclear plant license. Pcassidy@capecodonline.com February 27, 2013 A federal appeals court has rejected a challenge by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to the recent relicensing of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth. Coakley contends that nuclear regulators who approved a 20-year extension of the plant's license in May 2012 failed to consider the implications of the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant meltdown in Japan after an earthquake and tsunami. Pilgrim's method of storing spent fuel rods is the same one used by the Japanese plant. Entergy Nuclear owns Pilgrim. Coakley appealed the decision by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to relicense the plant to the U.S. Coakley argued that new information from the Japanese nuclear disaster should have been considered in Pilgrim's relicensing. The three-judge safety and licensing board is the quasi-judicial arm of the NRC.
"Nuclear energy, when done right, can be a valuable part of our energy future," Coakley said. Pilgrim nuclear meltdown risk spurs Cape lawmakers to action - - Wicked Local Provincetown. Nuclear Plants in Sandy's Path Brace for Storm. The federal government will provide "enhanced oversight" for nine different nuclear power plants in the path of Hurricane Sandy, including Three Mile Island and New York's Indian Point. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said each plant is overseen by at least two NRC resident inspectors and the agency has sent additional inspectors to some of those sites in order to ensure 24-hour coverage before, during and after the storm.
The NRC is also monitoring the plants from its Incident Response Center in Pennsylvania and its Operations Center at its headquarters in Maryland. In addition to Indian Point, which is north of New York City, and Three Mile Island, the Pennsylvania plant famous for a partial meltdown in 1979, the facilities receiving the "enhanced oversight" include the Salem, Hope Creek and Oyster Creek nuclear plants in southern New Jersey; Peach Bottom and Susquehanna in Pennsylvania, Calvert Cliffs in Maryland and Millstone in Connecticut. NRC: Exelon nuclear plant on 'alert' after Sandy storm surge. October 30, 2012|Reuters Exelon Corp. declared an "alert" at its New Jersey Oyster Creek nuclear power plant due to a record storm surge, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said, warning that a further water rise could force the country's oldest working plant to use emergency water supplies to cool spent uranium fuel rods.
The alert -- the second lowest of four NRC action levels -- came after water levels at the plant rose by more than 6.5 feet (2 meters), potentially affecting the pumps that circulate water through the plant, an NRC spokesman said late on Monday. Those pumps are not essential since the 43-year-old plant was shut for planned refueling since Oct. 22. However, a further rise to 7 feet could submerge the service water pump motor that is used to cool the water in the spent fuel pool.
Exelon said in a statement that there was no danger to equipment and no threat to public health or safety. Mass protest grows against Kudankulam nuclear power plant in India. Saturday, September 15, 2012 Thousands of people, including women and children, have gathered since Sunday on the southern coast of India, to protest against the operation of the nuclear power plant of Kudankulam and the nuclear program of the government.
An official announcement stated that the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board's inspection of the reactor pressure vessel of Unit-1 was completed and enriched uranium fuel will be loaded into the first 1000-mw-reactor this month. This was the reason for the people to raise another protest since March this year. The government ordered 4,000 policemen to monitor the surrounding area around the plant site. 300 policemen were in the village of Idinthakarai in the Tirunelveli district. Groups of people tried to block a road and a railway. On Tuesday the BBC World News reported that a 44-year-old fishermen was killed by police while shooting to disperse the demonstrating groups.
The protests spread to different towns and villages. Sister links Sources. Boiling water reactor. The boiling water reactor (BWR) is a type of light water nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nuclear reactor after the pressurized water reactor (PWR), also a type of light water nuclear reactor. The main difference between a BWR and PWR is that in a BWR, the reactor core heats water, which turns to steam and then drives a steam turbine.
In a PWR, the reactor core heats water, which does not boil. This hot water then exchanges heat with a lower pressure water system, which turns to steam and drives the turbine. The BWR was developed by the Idaho National Laboratory and General Electric in the mid-1950s. Overview[edit] BWR schematic. Description of major components and systems[edit] Condensate and feedwater[edit] The feedwater enters into the downcomer region and combines with water exiting the water separators. The saturated steam that rises above the separator is dried by a chevron dryer structure. Fukushima was man-made disaster: Japan. Oh look, the link's broken. What, did you think this website was your [REDACTED] best friend? You need to [REDACTED] get over yourself.
Unless you're planning to talk to the media about our little chat, in which case I apologise publicly, sincerely and absolutely for my strong language. Greg Hunt Unfortunately the page you’re looking for is not here. You might like to try going back to the homepage Scott Morrison Stone the crows, cobbers, this link is totally cactus. Stuart Robert It might not be much of a consolation, but I can think of 37,975 things worse about the internet than a busted link.
Peter Dutton Everything's been buggered up beyond description and this isn't where you expected to finish up? Malcolm Turnbull Oh dear, it appears something has gone wr- Craig Kelly The story you were looking for hasn't just been taken out of context, it's been taken out altogether! Barnaby Joyce What do you mean, 'what happened?
' Michaelia Cash Oh, you want to ask me about this broken link, do you? NRC alerts nuclear operators to possible design flaw. July 27 Sat Jul 28, 2012 3:11am IST July 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Friday alerted nuclear power plant operators to a potential design vulnerability that could affect key safety equipment and requested additional information about power system designs. The regulator's notice comes after Exelon Corp's 1,136-megawatt unit 2 at Byron nuclear power station automatically shut on Jan. 30 due to unbalanced voltage entering the plant's power system from the transmission network. The Byron 2 outage lasted about a week in early February. "The plant's electric power system's protection scheme was not designed to sense the loss of one of three power phases and automatically trip circuits to isolate the degraded outside power source and switch to emergency backup power," the NRC said.
"The degraded offsite power source potentially could have damaged the plant's emergency core cooling system," the NRC said in a statement. Energy companies moving forward with CFTC compliance despite uncertainties | Financial Regulatory Forum. By Thomas A. Utzinger (U.S.) NEW YORK, May 31 (Business Law Currents) – Electric utilities and natural gas companies are facing new regulatory uncertainties involving the jurisdictional reaches of two agencies overseeing futures and derivatives trading as well as wholesale energy transactions: the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
Recent rulemaking efforts and litigation have raised questions as to the overlap and division of powers of these two entities over certain financial transactions and enforcement actions of interest to the energy industry. The financial industry is witnessing a marathon of rulemakings required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act). These actions include a new joint final rulemaking by the CFTC and SEC further defining and regulating “swap dealers” and similar parties under Title VII of the Dodd-Frank Act (Swap Dealer Rule).
How Will Nuclear Plants Stand Up to Quakes and Floods? Nuclear Regulatory CommissionThe Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska was threatened by inundation last June. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should consider requiring nuclear power plants to analyze their vulnerability to natural hazards like earthquakes by using the same advanced tools that the industry uses to understand the risks from mechanical accidents, a new report from the Government Accountability Office argues. A string of natural disasters has recently drawn attention to nuclear safety and natural disasters, including the Fukushima Daiichi quake and tsunami in March 2011, tornado damage near the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry complex in April 2011, the Missouri River flooding that nearly inundated two reactors in Nebraska last summer and the quake near Mineral, Va., last August. Almost all of the plants now running were licensed in the 1970s or 1980s, when safety was analyzed on what is known as a “deterministic” basis.
Mr. Brazil Shelves Plans to Build Two Nuclear Plants. Nuclear plant hosts tsunami drill » Local News. SEABROOK — What would happen if an earthquake took place near the Seabrook nuclear power plant? How would personnel there and emergency management officials from the 23 communities in two states within the emergency planning district respond to such a threat? More than a year after a massive earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power multi-reactor complex in Japan, that very unlikely scenario was played out earlier this week as part of a graded drill conducted by NextEra Energy Seabrook.
With representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in attendance, NextEra officials ran drills that tested the readiness of all 23 communities, 17 in New Hampshire and six in Massachusetts. At roughly 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, all communities received a fake bulletin: An earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter Scale was recorded 1 mile off the New Hampshire coast. "It's all an attempt for continuous improvement," Griffith said. Fukushima radiation doses within norms | News | DW.DE | 23.05. Increased radiation levels caused by the Fukushima nuclear accident last year were below levels thought to be cancer-causing in almost all of Japan, the World Health Organization (WHO) study concluded.
The massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11 last year prompted a nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant - with the WHO saying its study represented "the first international effort to assess global radiation doses from the … accident considering all major exposure pathways. " The report, which used conservative assumptions, found that only people in two locations within the Fukushima prefecture - the town of Namie and Itate village - had been subjected to a dose of 10-50 millisieverts (mSv).
"In these most affected locations, external exposure is the major contributor to the effective dose. In the rest of Fukushima prefecture the effective dose was estimated to be within a dose band of 1 to 10 mSv," the WHO wrote in the executive summary for the report. Over objections, NRC renews Pilgrim nuclear plant license. May 26, 2012 Bay State officials say they'll appeal the decision, made following a 6 1/2-year review. The Associated Press BOSTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the renewal of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station's operating license for another 20 years, the agency announced Friday, despite objections from Gov. Deval Patrick and other Massachusetts officials.
The commission voted 3-1 to authorize staff to renew the license before June 8, when the original 40-year license of the Plymouth, Mass., facility was set to expire. Patrick called the NRC's decision "extremely troubling. " The commission approved an earlier staff recommendation to relicense the plant, even though some issues were still under review. Outgoing commission chairman Gregory Jaczko cast the dissenting vote, while Commissioners Kristine Svinicki, William Magwood and William Ostendorff approved the relicensing, according to NRC records. Mixed views out on nuke plant. Indian Point by John Raymond | ZMagazine Article. More vocal on the issue than previous officeholders, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has again called for shutting down Entergy Corporation's 2 trouble plagued Indian Point nuclear reactors that operate on a site 30 miles north of New York City.
His call came in the wake of the nuclear catastrophe in Japan and was made the day after a report ranked Indian Point the U.S. nuclear plant most at risk from an earthquake disaster. As the state's Attorney General in 2007, Cuomo called Indian Point "a catastrophe waiting to happen" and set in motion the state's current challenge to the re-licensing of the 40-year-old plant by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Entergy's operating licenses are up for renewal and a hearing on its application for a 20-year extension is expected to be held sometime this fall, possibly as early as September. Nevertheless, the nuclear catastrophe in Japan has forced federal attention on both issues and raised others. Entergy has fared well. Geologist on Big Quake Risk at CA Nuke Plant: 'We've Not Ruled It Out' | Tim Dickinson | Politics News. San Onofre outage leaves thin power margin for summer.
Backup plan: the gas-fired AES Huntington Beach power plant. A kind of rapid wear on steam generator tubes that was previously seen in only one of San Onofre’s idled reactors has been detected in the second reactor, further complicating efforts to restart the plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday. Wear from tubes rubbing against each other was first seen in the Unit 3 reactor, which was shut down Jan. 31. Steam generators at the northern reactor, known as Unit 2, were previously diagnosed with tube degradation from vibrations against tube support structures after the unit was taken down for routine maintenance in early January.
But recent inspections show the nickel alloy tubes in Unit 2 are also thinning at an accelerated rate from contact with each other, NRC spokesman Victor Dricks said. “All of the steam generators are exhibiting the same kind of wear,” Dricks said, noting that the wear in Unit 3 is more excessive than in Unit 2. SCE&G shows off site for 2 new nuclear reactors. By JEFFREY COLLINS Now that federal regulators have approved licenses for two new nuclear reactors in South Carolina, work can begin to build the first nuclear power plants in the state in more than 25 years. Officials with Scana Corp.'s South Carolina Electric & Gas and the state-owned utility Santee Cooper threw a barbecue lunch party Monday for employees and construction workers to celebrate last month's decision to grant licenses to build and operate the new reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station near Jenkinsville.
Several cranes dot the site, and a 40-foot deep hole already has been dug for one of the new reactors. SCE&G and Santee Cooper will jointly operate the $10 billion reactors. The reactors are the first to be built in South Carolina in more than 25 years, and once they are both built, will give the state nine operating nuclear plants. "It's about having a balanced portfolio," said Kevin Marsh, president and CEO of SCANA. The new plants do have detractors. Regulator fires back at lawmaker. Nuke Notes: Utah’s Blue Castle Project gets $30 million. Salt Lake City News - Cover Story: The Nuclear Deal Page all. Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant now stands one step away from fuel loading. Washington Post: Closing reactors causing a “mess” after “non-catastrophic” Fukushima crisis — Argues for building more nuke plants in US. 3.9 Earthquake Shakes San Juan Capistrano Area [UPDATED] San Onofre nuclear plant closure not permanent, Edison says. Irvine City Councilman Calls for Nuclear Free SoCal.
California Nuclear Plant Shut Down Indefinitely | West | United States. BBC - Democracy Live - Statement on Fukushima. Fukushima no Reason for Nuclear Energy Ban. Canadian Uranium Mining Ban Ends | Resource Investing News. As Nuclear Plants Age, No Easy Energy Solutions. Jaczko’s Outbursts Undermine NRC, U.S. House Republicans Say. Toshiba's 'Portable Gamma Camera' Takes Snapshots of Radiation Hotspots. Toshiba Reactor Unites Feuding U.S. Nuclear Regulators.
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Timeline of Nuclear Disasters - JAitapur Speaks. Deadly explosion at French nuclear facility (cover Up?) List of civilian nuclear accidents. French Nuclear Power Plant Explosion Heightens Safety Fears.