• EU nearing agreement on nuclear stress tests

    The European Union could begin stress-testing its nuclear reactors as early as June 1; officials are nearing an agreement on the parameters for safety tests, but are still hammering out the last “two or three” issues; following the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, European energy officials as well as industry groups have been pushing the government to conduct stress tests on its nuclear facilities to determine how they will fare in various disaster scenarios; EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger has sought to include threats from terrorist attacks as well as cyber attacks, which has stalled stressed test negotiations

  • Fukushima lessons for U.K.'s nuclear industry

    An interim assessment of the implications of the nuclear crisis in Japan concludes there is no need to curtail the operations of nuclear plants in the United Kingdom but lessons should be learnt; the report identifies twenty-five recommended areas for review — by either industry, the government, or regulators — to determine whether sensible and appropriate measures can further improve safety in the U.K. nuclear industry; these include reviews of the layout of U.K. power plants, emergency response arrangements, dealing with prolonged loss of power supplies, and the risks associated with flooding

  • More setbacks at Japan's beleaguered nuclear plant

    Japan’s latest efforts to contain reactor no. 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant hit a major obstacle last Saturday when a worker discovered a large pool of radioactive water in the reactor building; the pool is an estimated 18 feet deep and holds as much as 3,000 tons of water, more volume than an Olympic sized swimming pool; additional measures were being readied to treat and store radioactive water at Fukushima; officials have begun preparing a nearly 450 foot long “Mega-Float” that was previously used as an artificial island for fishing south of Tokyo to store the contaminated water

  • Early warning system helped save lives in Japanese quake

    Japan has spent millions of dollars to build a sophisticated early warning system for earthquakes and experts say that it helped save millions of lives and mitigated the damage from the 11 March earthquake and tsunami; while the massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami flattened much of northeastern Japan, the damage would have been far worse had Japan not had its early warning system in place; the system can provide anywhere from ten to thirty seconds of advance notice before an earthquake strikes giving Japan’s residents just enough time to slow down trains so they do not derail, shut off dangerous machinery, and send people to find cover

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  • Difficult decisions for Japanese living near Fukushima

    Japanese residents living just outside the twelve mile evacuation zone of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have struggled with their daily lives as the plant has continued to spew radiation; while Japanese officials have said that the radiation levels outside the evacuation zone are not high enough to cause observable health risks, many residents and scientists are still worried as radiation is still several times above the normal level; experts acknowledge their limited understanding of the health risks for long term exposure to low doses of radiation has made it difficult for scientists and policy makers to come to an agreement on what levels of radiation are safe and what areas need to be evacuated

  • Japan attempts "cold shutdown" at reactor no. 1

    Officials at the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) hope to bring reactor no. 1 at the beleaguered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to a “cold shutdown” by the end of the week; plant operators will attempt to bring the temperature inside the reactor below the boiling point of water so that it will no longer produce radioactive steam; the building housing reactor no. 1 must be vented so that all the radioactive air that has accumulated is released allowing workers to approach the reactor; once inside workers will inject cold water into the reactor’s primary containment structure; injecting tons of water into a damaged containment unit that houses uranium makes some scientists uneasy

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  • Men arrested outside U.K. largest nuclear plant, then released

    Five young men of Bangladeshi origin were arrested outside Sellafield, the U.K.’s largest nuclear facility hours after President Obama announced the killing of OBL; the men were arrested for taking pictures and behaving suspiciously (the Civil Nuclear Constabulary said that the men were “unable to give a satisfactory account of their actions”); after being questioned the men were released as it appears that they had taken a wrong turn; the men told police they were traveling along the road only because their in-car satellite navigation system had taken them the wrong way on the remote road just off the coast of Cumbria, close to the Lake District; Sellafield is one of only four nuclear fuel reprocessing plants in the world

  • Recipe for radioactive materials helps in studies of nuclear waste and fuel storage pools

    Easy-to-follow recipes for radioactive compounds like those found in nuclear fuel storage pools, liquid waste containment areas, and other contaminated aqueous environments have been developed by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories; the trick to the recipes is choosing the right templates; these are atoms or molecules that direct the growth of compounds in much the way islands act as templates for coral reefs

  • Solving nuclear fuel storage problem more crucial than ever: MIT report

    The Japan nuclear crisis adds to the urgency of dealing with radioactive used fuel, and may raise cost of new plants, MIT Energy Initiative study says; the report recommends that an interim solution be developed to remove spent fuel storage facilities at reactor sites, and move to regional, medium-term repositories where the fuel can be monitored and protected as it decays over time

  • Fears over nuclear energy stall Kentucky nuclear plans

    Days before the 11 March earthquake and tsunami struck Japan causing its ongoing nuclear crisis, a bill that would have eased restrictions on the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kentucky failed to pass the state legislature dashing the hopes of atomic energy advocates; the proposed site currently houses a uranium enrichment facility, but it is expected to be shut down in the near future leaving 1,200 people out of work; safety advocates are concerned because the site is located near the New Madrid seismic zone; Kentucky generates 90 percent of its power from coal, and Governor Beshear proposed in 2008 to use nuclear power to generate 30 percent of the state’s energy by 2030

  • Iran's control systems attacked by another virus

    Iran admitted it has been attacked by another virus aiming to disrupt its industrial control systems; the commander of Iran civil defense said, though, that the virus has been caught in time and neutralized by Iran’s “young experts”; Gholamreza Jalali described the virus as “congruous and harmonious with the (computer) system and in the initial phase it does minor damage and might be mistaken for some executive files of government organizations”; in the summer, nearly 42,000 computers and servers in Iran’s industrial control systems — many of them in Iran’s nuclear weapons program — were infected; the damage to uranium enrichment centrifuges was especially great, causing Iran in mid-November to halt enrichment operations; Stuxnet has also infected the Bushehr nuclear reactor; the reactor was supposed to come on line in August, but it is still not operational, and has missed several start-up deadlines

  • Opposition to nuclear power grows in India

    Opponents of nuclear power in India have received a major boost following the continuing nuclear crisis in Japan; the Indian government has planned an aggressive push to develop thirty-nine new nuclear power plants; by 2050, the government hopes to generate 25 percent of the country’s electricity with nuclear power; as a result of the events at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Indian scientists, politicians, and residents have become increasingly opposed to the construction of new nuclear plants; critics cite safety concerns and cleaner alternatives as reasons for their opposition; India faces a real need for power, approximately 40 percent of the country is not connected to the electrical grid and most major cities do not have reliable power twenty-four hours a day

  • Cooling pools or dry casks for nuclear waste: which is safer

    There are two ways to store nuclear waste: in pools of water, where the densely packed uranium rods are cooled by a constant flow of circulating water, or in dry casks — typically barrel-shaped steel-and-concrete structures that stand twenty feet high and sit outdoors — where the uranium loosely packed rods are cooled by passive air; there are 65,000 tons of nuclear waste in the United States, more than in any other nation, and this amount grows by about 2,200 tons each year; the Fukushima disaster demonstrated that dry casks were able to withstand the 11 March combination of earthquake and tsunami much better than cooling pools; the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission must now decide whether cooling pools are safe enough to store nuclear waste, and even whether densely packing nuclear waste is safe

  • ElBaradei: nuclear still main alternative to oil

    Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that “Today, nuclear power is the only real alternative to fossil fuel as a source of a reliable supply”; he acknowledged that Fukushima represents a potentially significant setback for nuclear power, but said that “Chernobyl and Fukushima should be shown to be aberrations”

  • Tennessee may spend millions to improve nuclear reactor safety

    The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is considering spending millions of dollars to bolster its six nuclear reactors against earthquakes and floods; TVA is the first American nuclear plant operator to declare safety changes following events in Japan; TVA is currently considering reducing the amount of fuel that it stores in its spent fuel pools instead transferring older fuel rods to passively cooled “dry casks” ; the operator will also add additional back up diesel generators, make improvements to electrical grids to make them more earthquake resistant, add small generators to recharge cell phone batteries and to keep lights on, and reinforce pipes that send cold water to spent fuel pools