Nuclear Carnival Number 68
Collection of posts from
Pronuclear Bloggers Sept 3/2011 in its 68th week:
“In this guest post, Richard Schmidt discusses how much Sr-90 was in the fish caught in the Connecticut River, the fish that caused Governor Shumlin to say he wouldn’t eat fish from the river. Schmidt points out that people are advised to restrict their intake of local fish due to mercury. The mercury comes from coal plants. Neither the strontium nor the potassium in the fish is a hazard.”
Margaret returns to her strategic analysis with an overview of some of the international economic drivers for the nuclear industry.
An exclusive Interview with Nextbigfuture with Terrapower nuclear Engineer Robert Petroski. He describes how reactors using depleted uranium could potentially play a major role in ameliorating the world’s energy problems.
Progress on low-carbon energy will come from a four-fold growth in nuclear power to 40GW (gigawatts), 63GW of new hydroelectric capacity, a growth of 22GW in gas-fired generation18, 48GW19 of new wind capacity to more than double the current capacity and solar capacity expected to reach 5GW of by 2015. The country aims to have 100 gigawatts (GW) of on-grid wind farm generating capacity by the end of 2015 and to generate 190 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of wind energy annually, the China Securities Journal reported, citing a government plan. Of the planned 10 GW of solar power capacity in 2015, photovoltaic power installations will account for 9 GW and concentrated solar thermal power capacity will make up the rest, the report said.
Japan’s 13 month maintenance cycle could shutdown all of their reactors and Germany has blackout risks as they exit nuclear
It has been more than five months since the US NRC started spending a large quantity of unplanned resources in response to the Fukushima event. However, the agency has not requested any additional resources from congressional appropriators. The result is a squeeze on activities associated with new license applications. That will slow those efforts.
The NRC Public Affairs Office has indicated that there is no plan to change the situation.
In a breathless press release issued early this morning (08/29/11), Rep. Ed Markey, D- Mass., claims that U.S. nuclear reactors impacted by hurricane Irene had a far rougher time than reported in the news media.
What’s important is that none of the information items in the NRC Event Report indicate that the safety of the reactors was compromised in any way. There were no injuries to plant personnel and no radioactive releases.
It appears the NRC gave Markey’s office an early look at the event report from its private stock of information before it was posted on the agency’s website. How else would he have gotten the press release out so fast. This is flat out cheesy work. All federal agencies leak like sieves. NRC just happens to push a little harder for Ed Markey.
There is another problem with the NRC’s report, and that is that PR offices for the affected reactors never mentioned these reports to the NRC that took place throughout the weekend. And that comes after they were constantly providing updates via Twitter and Facebook. As for the NRC itself, why did it wait until Monday to release this information?
Post-Fukushima safety checks are done, but the size of the new build will be smaller
After five months China has mostly completed the safety inspections of its 11 GWe of nuclear energy plants. Work will resume on on the start of construction of new nuclear power stations. China temporarily suspended its nuclear new build on March 16, 2011.
In May 2011 the Chinese Environmental Ministry announced a series of supplemental measures to improve safety at the nation’s nuclear power plants. In August an IAEA team completed a review of China’s nuclear regulatory program with a series of recommendations to beef up its capabilities.
It’s not clear that work ever stopped on construction of reactor projects that had already broken ground. That includes four reactors being built by Westinghouse and two being built by Areva.
No operating reactors were reported to be closed by the inspections. The government did not released the results of the safety inspections. The report said that the safety checks would continue through October 2011.
John Bickel discusses the margin of safety and the factors used to assess the amount of work used to design earthquake safe reactors and how critics can mislead or misunderstand the numbers.
Atomic Insights – Rod Adams
Atomic Power Review
Brave New Climate
Canadian Energy Issues
Energy From Thorium
Hiroshima Syndrome
Nuclear Energy Tutorial
Nuclear FAQ Canada
Nuclear Green Revolution
ThoriumMSR
All Posts