Plant leaking radioactive water into Lake Michigan

The Palisades nuclear power plant has been closed since Sunday with a radioactive water leak. The South Bend Tribune reported yesterday:

The entry into Lake Michigan of 79 gallons of what officials at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission describe as “very slightly radioactive” water has drawn its share of attention, very little of it positive.

The leak from a water tank at the plant in Van Buren County’s Covert Township resulted in a plant shutdown Sunday and was the second such incident this year.

Particularly upset was the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton:

The terse statement from the chairman … an advocate for nuclear power, called for the plant to remain off-line until the problem is permanently fixed.

“This situation is not acceptable and demands full accountability,” Upton said. “I have been in contact with both the NRC and Entergy and am demanding a permanent solution.”

The Tribune article also quoted a spokesman from Beyond Nuclear:

Also weighing in was Kevin Kamps, spokesman for the nuclear power plant watchdog Beyond Nuclear. The suggestion that there’s no threat to human health or safety should be taken “with a big grain of salt,” he said, adding that “claims of ‘very slightly radioactive’ water are akin to ‘a little bit pregnant.’

“Entergy and NRC should stop treating Lake Michigan as if it is a radioactive industrial sewer. It is the headwaters for 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water, the Great Lakes,” he said. “The Great Lakes provide drinking water for 40 million people in eight U.S. states, two Canadian provinces and a large number of Native American first nations.”

Here’s  a link: http://http://www.southbendtribune.com/business/sbt-palisades-water-tank-leak-drawing-attention-20130509,0,7990308.story

 

Another radioactive animal story: Contaminated goldfish at Ohio nuke

You should know by now that I can’t resist a radioctive animal story. The Cleveland Leader reported yesterday:

An investigation is underway by the U.S. Nucleaer Regulatory Commission after a pair of radioactive goldfish were discovered swimming in a lemonade pitcher in the steam tunnel of the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio.

The Perry Nuclear Power Plant is located about 40 miles northeast of Cleveland in North Perry, Ohio, and is situated near the coast of Lake Erie.

Jennifer Young, a spokeswoman for the plant, said: “Clearly somebody brought the two goldfish into the plant. They did not swim into the plant.”

The two fish were discovered when crews were taking down scaffolding earlier this week following a 43-day maintenance shutdown of the plant.

Investigators are now questioning employees and contractors, and are also reviewing video recordings of the tunnel.

Young added that the fish were only slightly radioactive. They died on Thursday, but likely due to lack of care and not radiation.

Here’s a link: http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/20824

 

New problem at Fukushima: Groundwater leaking into contaminated plant and how to dispose of it

 The New York Times reported April 29:

Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.

Groundwater is pouring into the plant’s ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools.

As the problem continues, the on-site storage tanks are reaching their limits:

But even they are not enough to handle the tons of strontium-laced water at the plant — a reflection of the scale of the 2011 disaster and, in critics’ view, ad hoc decision making by the company that runs the plant and the regulators who oversee it. In a sign of the sheer size of the problem, the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, plans to chop down a small forest on its southern edge to make room for hundreds more tanks, a task that became more urgent when underground pits built to handle the overflow sprang leaks in recent weeks.

And, there may be worse problems in the near future:

…the constant threat of running out of storage space has turned into what Tepco itself called an emergency, with the sheer volume of water raising fears of future leaks at the seaside plant that could reach the Pacific Ocean.

The Times article also contained this assessment of the current situation at Fukushima:

The jury-rigged cooling loop that pours water over the damaged reactor cores is a mazelike collection of pumps, filters and pipes that snake two and a half miles along the ground through the plant. And a pool for storing used nuclear fuel remains perched on the fifth floor of a damaged reactor building as Tepco struggles to move the rods to a safer location.

Here’s a link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/asia/radioactive-water-imperils-fukushima-plant.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

And another victory: Duke suspends plans for two new reactors at South Carolina plant

Reuters reported May 2:

Duke Energy, the largest U.S. electric utility, said it notified regulators on Thursday that it will drop plans to build two new nuclear reactors in North Carolina due to slow growth in power demand.

This announcement came two days after an NRC decision blocking construction of two new reactors at the South Texas Project.

A note of caution, however: Duke said it is suspending the license application, not withdrawing it. According to Dhiaa Jamil, president of Duke Energy Nuclear:

The Harris site is well-suited for new nuclear generation and has not been eliminated from our long-term consideration as a site to expand our nuclear fleet.

The Reuters piece also cited the reasons for the decline in the so-called Nuclear Renaissance:

The once-predicted revival of U.S. nuclear construction has been tempered by lower natural gas prices, anemic growth in electric demand and the absence of limits on emissions of carbon dioxide.

Here’s a link: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/05/02/utilities-duke-nuclear-idINL2N0DJ2QG20130502

 

NRC blocks expansion of Texas nuke over ownership issue

The Dallas Morning News reported last Thursday:

Plans to build two new reactors at the South Texas Project nuclear facility outside Bay City hit a road block Tuesday.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled that a partnership between NRG and Toshiba Corp. through the holding company Nuclear Innovation North America violated a U.S law prohibiting foreign control of nuclear power plants.

“At this point NINA from our perspective is foreign owned, controlled or dominated,” said NRC spokesman Scott Burnell.

“Until such time as NINA can come up with a different corporate ownership structure we would not be able to approve their license.”

The decision is a victory for opponents of the expansion, including the Austin-based Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition. SEED’s Executive Director Karen Hadden said in a press release:

This NRC notice is great for us as opponents of two proposed reactors at the South Texas Project. We hope that we’ll soon see clean, safe energy developed in Texas instead of dangerous nuclear power. We must prevent Fukushima style disasters from happening here.

Here’s a link to the Morning News report: http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2013/04/nrc-shoots-down-texas-nuclear-plant-expansion.html/

And here’s a link to the SEED press release: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases-test/foreign-ownership-could-halt-licensing-of-south-texas-project-nuclear-reactors-nrc-says-nina-doesnt-meet-their-requirements-205654341.html

 

Lightning strike knocks out off-site power at Illinois nuke; plant’s two units were on emergency diesel generators overnight

The Associated Press reported on Thursday, April 18:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says a lightning strike knocked out power to a northern Illinois nuclear plant for several hours Wednesday night, but emergency generators kicked in to keep the site running.

Exelon Generation says it believes lightning hit a substation that carries electricity to and from its LaSalle Generating Station. Both reactors shut down as a safety precaution, and diesel generators continued to power plant equipment.

According to the NRC, LaSalle ended the Unusual Event Thursday morning. Exelon says both units will remain off-line “until appropriate safety checks and procedures are completed.”

Here’s a link: http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9070675

Nuclear evacuation plans may not be adequate, says new GAO report

The Associated Press reported April 10:

Regulators and congressional investigators clashed Wednesday over a new report warning that in the event of an accident at a nuclear plant, panicking residents from outside the official evacuation zone might jam the roads and prevent others from escaping.

The report by the Government Accountability Office, which acts as the investigative arm of Congress, challenges a three-decade-old fundamental of emergency planning around American nuclear power plants: that preparations for evacuation should focus on people who live within 10 miles of the site.

The GAO found that people living beyond the official 10-mile evacuation zone might be so frightened by the prospect of spreading radiation that they would flee of their own accord, clog roads, and delay the escape of others. The investigators said regulators have never properly studied how many people beyond 10 miles would make their own decisions to take flight, prompting what is called a “shadow evacuation.”

As a result, the GAO report says, “evacuation time estimates may not accurately consider the impact of shadow evacuations.”

The report cited Japan’s experience following the Fukushima nuclear disaster:

The disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan two years ago has heightened worry about how well U.S. communities can protect themselves from a major release of radiation. When a tsunami cut off power and nuclear fuel melted, more than 150,000 people fled the Fukushima area, many from well beyond 12 miles, according to Japan’s Education Ministry.

The Associated Press had previously looked into nuclear evacuation planning:

…in its 2011 series, the AP reported population growth of up to 350 percent within 10 miles of nuclear sites between 1980 and 2010. About 120 million Americans — almost 40 percent — live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant, according to the AP’s analysis of Census data. The series also reported shortcomings in readiness exercises for simulated accidents, including the failure to deploy emergency personnel around the community, reroute traffic, or practice any real evacuations.

In a less-than-ringing endorsement of current planning, Sean Kice, a radiation protection officer at the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, backed the NRC standard and said his state’s plans are “adequate enough….”

Here’s a link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/panic-fleeing-beyond-official-zone-may-bog-down-nuclear-evacuation-says-report-to-congress/2013/04/10/515adc6e-a1dd-11e2-bd52-614156372695_story.html