宮沢経産相:「原発再稼働進める」就任会見 via 毎日新聞

Posted on 2014/10/21 by yukimiyamotodepaul

宮沢洋一経済産業相（６４）が２１日、就任記者会見に臨み「原発は大事なベースロード電源。安全が確認された原発の再稼働を進めていく」と述べ、政 府方針に沿って再稼働を進める考えを示した。法人税減税については、これまで財務省寄りの慎重な立場だったが、就任を機に「攻守交代」と表現した。

九州電力川内原発では再稼働に向けた地元同意の手続きに入っている。宮沢氏は「なるべく早い時期に鹿児島に行きたい」と述べ、自ら現地を訪問し再稼働の必要性を説明する考えを示した。

続きは宮沢経産相:「原発再稼働進める」就任会見

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South Korean Court Ruling Could Spur Nuclear-Power Plant Suits via The Wall Street Journal

Posted on 2014/10/21 by yukimiyamotodepaul

Court Rules for Plaintiff Claiming Link Between Nuclear-Power Plant Radiation, Cancer

SEOUL–A South Korean court for the first time has ruled in favor of a plaintiff claiming a link between radiation from a nuclear power plant and cancer—a verdict that could trigger similar lawsuits in a country that depends heavily on nuclear power.

The Busan District Court ruled Friday in favor of a claim by Park Geum-sun, age 48, that her thyroid cancer was caused by radiation from six nuclear power plants located 7.7 kilometers from her house in Ichon-ri, Kijang County on the nation’s southeastern coast.

“She has lived within 10 kilometers of the plants for over 20 years and has thus been exposed to radiation for a long time. Other than the radiation from the nuclear reactors, there’s no clear reason for her cancer,” the court said in a written ruling.

The court ordered the operator of the nuclear plant, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., to pay Ms. Park 15 million won ($14,150) in compensation.

[…]

The decision is Korea’s first ruling on whether there is a relation between the location of nuclear plants and cancer in nearby residents, according to a court spokesman and Leem Jong-han, a professor of occupational medicine at Inha University.

Mr. Leem, who advised the judges in the case, said there is a high possibility that radiation from nuclear power plants caused an increase in the number of thyroid cancer patients in nearby Korean communities.

In its ruling, the court cited a government-commissioned study in 2011 that showed women living within five kilometers of nuclear plants had 2.5 times higher incidences of thyroid cancer than women living 30 kilometers or further from the plants.

The court also cited a study by Kijang County and a state-funded nuclear-power research institute which showed that of 3,031 Kijang County residents who had a medical checkup between July 2010 and December 2013, about 1.4%, or a total of 41 men and women, were found to have thyroid cancer. That compared with a 1.06% diagnosis rate for thyroid and other cancers among tens of thousands of citizens examined in Gangnam, Seoul, by Seoul National University Hospital in the same period, the documents said.

According to the Ministry of Health & Welfare, thyroid cancer topped the list of cancers found in South Korean women in 2011, with 114 cases out of 100,000 females surveyed. That compares with 12 cases in the same size survey in 1999, when the cancer was rated as the seventh most common malignant tumor among women. The ministry said the increase is partly due to increased detection from more-frequent medical checkups among women.

[…]

Public concerns over nuclear power have risen since Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, though there has been no fatal nuclear accident in South Korea since the country built its first commercial nuclear plant in 1978. In a nonbinding referendum earlier this month, for example, residents of the port city of Samcheok, north of Seoul, overwhelmingly voted against a government plan to build a nuclear-power plant in the area.

While the court ruled in favor of Ms. Park’s thyroid-cancer claim, it rejected a claim by her husband, Lee Jin-sup, that his rectal cancer and his 22-year-old son’s autism were also caused by long exposure to radiation from the nearby nuclear plant.

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Nuclear weapons deal with US renewed in secret, UK confirms　via The Guardian

Posted on 2014/10/20 by

The British government has just published amendments updating a treaty that goes to the heart of the UK’s special relationship with the US.

They relate to the Mutual Defence Agreement (MDA) first signed in 1958, which, according to the government, enables the UK and the US “nuclear warhead communities to collaborate on all aspects of nuclear deterrence including nuclear warhead design and manufacture”.

One amendment refers to potential threats from “state or non-state actors”. But the amendments are for the most part arcane and their significance cannot be understood in the absence of information which is kept secret.

The MDA does not have to be debated or voted on in parliament, as I have remarked before. Though the agreement is incorporated in US law, it has no legal status in Britain.

Yet the matters covered by the treaty, which is renewed only at 10 year intervals, are hugely important. Successive British governments have made clear a proper debate on the issues involved would not be welcome.

Read more.

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小渕氏辞任:福島避難者「経産相は仮設で１週間は過ごせ」via 毎日新聞

Posted on 2014/10/20 by

◇「期待してないから失望なし」「期待してた…正直がっかり」

　「大臣になる人は、１週間でいいから仮設住宅で過ごしてほしい」。廃炉作業を担う経済産業省トップ、小渕優子氏の辞任に、福島県内の原発事故の避難者たちは不信を募らせている。

　小渕氏は９月３日の経産相就任時、「原発事故への対応や、被災地の復興にしっかり取り組んでいきたい」と語った。だが、なにもできずに終わった。

　福島市笹谷の仮設住宅。福島第１原発事故の避難区域・浪江町から避難する志賀ヨシエさん（６８）は「政治家はカネの問題が多い。でも失望はない。最初から期待していないから」と突き放した。大臣になる前に仮設住宅で過ごせ、と言う。「そうしないと、私たちの苦しみは分からない。危機感を持って汚染水対策や廃炉作業に力を入れないと、時間がいくらあっても足りません」

　同じく浪江町から来た事務職の女性（５１）は「小渕さんだけは私たちの苦しみも分かってくれるのでは、と期待していた。正直がっかりした。もう政治家は信じられない」。

もっと読む。

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【出産回復傾向】地道な取り組み継続を（１０月２０日）via 福島民報

Posted on 2014/10/20 by

東京電力福島第一原発事故後に落ち込んだ県内での出産の回復傾向が続いている。県内１５医療機関の平成２５年度の全出産件数は５９７０件と事故前の水準に戻りつつある。県内外から実家に戻って子どもを産む「里帰り出産」も１０５０件と大台を超えた。調査を続けている県産婦人科医会は「放射線に対する理解が広がり、妊婦らの不安が和らいだのが要因」とみている。事故後から続く官民を挙げた地道な取り組みの成果といえるだろう。
[…]
東京電力福島第一原発事故後に落ち込んだ県内での出産の回復傾向が続いている。県内１５医療機関の平成２５年度の全出産件数は５９７０件と事故前の水準に戻りつつある。県内外から実家に戻って子どもを産む「里帰り出産」も１０５０件と大台を超えた。調査を続けている県産婦人科医会は「放射線に対する理解が広がり、妊婦らの不安が和らいだのが要因」とみている。事故後から続く官民を挙げた地道な取り組みの成果といえるだろう。

もっと読む。

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４号機使用済み燃料搬出終了へ via 新潟日報モア

Posted on 2014/10/20 by yukimiyamotodepaul

破損３体は次回取り出し

福島第１原発４号機の使用済み核燃料プールからの燃料取り出し作業で、東京電力 は２０日、使用済み燃料１３３１体のうち１３２０体の移送を終了したと発表した。次回作業で破損燃料３体を含む使用済み燃料すべての移送作業が終わり、 プールに残るのはリスクの低い未使用燃料だけとなる。

４号機プールには原発事故の発生前から、「く」の字に曲がった燃料が１体、過去に 放射性物質漏えいが検知された燃料が２体入っていた。次回の作業では、変形した燃料が入るように収納スペースを一部広げた輸送容器で、残る使用済み燃料 １１体を一遍に別棟の共用プールに運ぶ。

続きは４号機使用済み燃料搬出終了へ

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In Tennessee, Time Comes for a Nuclear Plant Four Decades in the Making via The New York Times

Posted on 2014/10/20 by yukimiyamotodepaul

SPRING CITY, Tenn. — When the Tennessee Valley Authority first ordered Watts Bar 2, the nuclear reactor now approaching completion here, demand for electricity was growing at 7 percent a year and coal supplies were uncertain. The mercury, soot and acid rain that coal produced were simply accepted as the way things were, and many of the people who now worry about global warming had not yet been born.

[…]

The agency started Watts Bar as part of a campaign to build 17 reactors, but dropped the project in 1988 after spending about $1.7 billion, when it was supposedly 80 percent complete. In 2007, with electricity demand growing again, the T.V.A. board voted to restart work because, consultants said, it could be finished for $2 billion. But by the end of next year, when commercial operation is now expected, the T.V.A. will have spent more than $4 billion.

[…]

When work resumed in 2007, engineers decided that the mechanical switches in the control room, although they had never been used, were too old. But nobody manufactured mechanical switches of that type anymore, so the T.V.A. sent them back to the manufacturer for reconditioning.

The 500-foot-tall cooling tower, narrow at the middle to create a draft, is intended to handle 410,000 gallons of water a minute. It is still sturdy, but dark and weathered and streaked with yellow-green moss.

Other parts are more modern. The turbines, which convert steam from the reactor to mechanical energy that is turned into electricity, were replaced before they were ever used because newer designs are more efficient and durable.

Not everyone is convinced that finishing the job is a good idea.

The underlying difficulty, according to S. David Freeman, whom President Jimmy Carter appointed to chair the T.V.A. in 1977, and who tried to shut many of the nuclear projects, is that the agency’s executives are “nuke-aholics.”

“They’re addicted to nuclear power,” said Mr. Freeman, the author of a book that argues that renewable energy can meet nearly all electricity needs. He said that when he joined the T.V.A. board, “they were telling me Watts Bar was 90 percent finished, but a few years later it was 84 percent finished.”

Read more at In Tennessee, Time Comes for a Nuclear Plant Four Decades in the Making

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Power Plants Seek to Extend Life of Nuclear Reactors for Decades via The New York Times

Posted on 2014/10/20 by yukimiyamotodepaul

The prospects for building new nuclear reactors may be sharply limited, but the owners of seven old ones, in Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina, are preparing to ask for permission to run them until they are 80 years old.

Nuclear proponents say that extending plants’ lifetimes is more economical — and a better way to hold down carbon dioxide emissions — than building new plants, although it will require extensive monitoring of steel, concrete, cable insulation and other components. But the idea is striking even to some members of the nuclear establishment.

At a meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May, George Apostolakis, a risk expert who was then one of the five commissioners, pointed out that if operation were allowed until age 80, some reactors would be using designs substantially older than that.

“I don’t know how we would explain to the public that these designs, 90-year-old designs, 100-year-old designs, are still safe to operate,” he said. “Don’t we need more convincing arguments than just ‘We’re managing aging effects’?”

“I mean, will you buy a car that was designed in ’64?” he asked.

[…]

The 100 operating power reactors, most of them completed by the late 1980s, were licensed for 40 years. In that era, new generating stations were expected to replace old ones within a few decades, but that turned out to be wrong for nuclear plants and coal-fired power stations as well. The nuclear industry now describes that 40-year period as an early estimate of the plants’ economic life, not physical viability.

As construction of new reactors tailed off to nearly nothing in the late 1980s, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission established a procedure in 1991 for 20-year license extensions, and it has now granted more than 70. Thus far it has not rejected any applications, although many are still under review.

[…]

Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst at Greenpeace, said: “This isn’t about running reactors until they are 80. It’s amortizing the large capital additions that the industry can’t afford right now.” The reactors, he noted, have been required to buy new hardware after the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011.

“The track record of this industry is a meltdown once a decade,” he said. “We have a concern that running reactors well beyond their economic lifetime and well into embrittlement is not sound.”

Read more at Power Plants Seek to Extend Life of Nuclear Reactors for Decades

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原子力賠償条約を了承　自民部会 via 日本経済新聞

Posted on 2014/10/20 by yukimiyamotodepaul

（抜粋）

自民党の外交部会・文部科学部会合同会議は20日、原子力発電所事故の国際的な賠償を定めた条約（ＣＳＣ）の承認案と関連法案を了承した。同条約は原子 力事業者のみが過失の有無に関係なく賠償責任を負う一方、加盟国は原発事故の損害が一定額を超えた場合に拠出金で支援し合うという内容。政府は今国会での 成立を目指す。

全文は原子力賠償条約を了承　自民部会

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France to Build 8 Nuclear Reactors in South Africa via International Business Times

Posted on 2014/10/20 by yukimiyamotodepaul

France is set to construct eight nuclear reactors in South Africa after signing a $US50 billion ($A54.10 billion) agreement early this week.

The deal likewise stated skills development, localisation of nuclear technology as well as research and development in South Africa, according to World Nuclear News. South Africa currently has two operating nuclear power plants. Located at Koeberg, these were built by Areva, which will also build the same new eight nuclear reactors. The existing facilities have been operating since the mid-1980s.

South Africa’s long-term plans, contained in its 2010 Integrated Electricity Resource Plan, heavily mentioned nuclear energy as its tool of choice as it works to achieve a sustainable energy mix. The country needs up to 9.6 GWe of new nuclear capacity by 2030 as it works towards modernization. South Africa has allocated at least $81 million early this year to be spent on nuclear research and development.

[…]

In September, the country also signed with Russia a US$50 billion (A$54.1 billion) deal for eight nuclear reactors by 2030. A deal with China of the same nature is also expected to be signed in November, according to Bloomberg. A plan with Japan is also being worked out.

South Africa had stipulated it will sign agreements with other global nuclear vendor countries in order to achieve its goal of 9.6 GWe of new nuclear capacity.

“South Africa today, as never before, is interested in the massive development of nuclear power, which is an important driver for the national economy growth,” Joemat-Pettersson earlier said.

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