東京電力福島第１原発事故に伴う除染で出た汚染土の再利用を巡り、法定の安全基準の放射性セシウム１キロ当たり１００ベクレルまで浄化する場合のコストは２兆９１２７億円掛かるのに対し、８０００ベクレルでは１兆３４５０億円との試算が環境省の非公開会合で示されていたことが分かった。同省は８０００ベクレル以下の汚染土の再利用を決め、１００ベクレルとの「二重基準」との批判が出ているが、１兆５０００億円余のコスト減は「経済的・社会的に合理的」と説明されており、試算には正当性を強調する狙いがあるとみられる。【日野行介】
[…]
資料は「経済的・社会的な要因を考慮すれば、合理的な再生資材の放射能濃度は数千ベクレルが妥当」などとする一方、注意書きに「最終処分コストは別途要推定」と記されている。[…]
もっと読む。
日本原子力研究開発機構の高速増殖炉「もんじゅ」（福井県敦賀市）で昨年１１月に使用済み燃料プールの水質が悪化し、今年５月まで改善していなかったこと が３日分かった。この間、約半年にわたって警報が作動。プールの浄化フィルターには必要な樹脂が入っていなかった。原子力規制委員会は同日、保安規定に違 反すると判断した。
（略）
規制委と原子力機構によると、昨年１１月１９日未明、使用済み燃料２体を保管するプールの水質悪化を知らせる警報が鳴った。不純物濃度の上昇傾向が緩やかだったため、担当者は手順書で定められた責任者への連絡をすぐにしなかった。
手順書は警報が鳴った場合、浄化フィルターの吸着樹脂を交換するよう定めていたが、原子力機構は２０１１年以降、樹脂を入れていなかった。担当課長は使用 済みの樹脂を保管する施設が使用できない状態だったことなどから、樹脂を使わず水質監視を継続。不純物濃度が上昇し、昨年１２月に所長に報告した。
所長は水質改善に向けた計画作成を指示。プールを清掃したが水質は警報値を下回らず、今年４月に「不適合事象」と判断し、規制委に報告した。５月下旬に樹脂を入れ、警報は止まった。
Seventy-one years ago Saturday, a United States B-29 bomber named the “Enola Gay” dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The bomb fell just over 29,000 feet from the plane and detonated 1,900 feet above Shima Hospital, an active medical center with a history dating back to the 18th Century. Between four and five square miles of buildings were leveled in the blast generated by just 141 pounds of highly enriched uranium. The US Department of Energy (DoE) estimates 70,000 people died in the initial blast, resulting fires, and radiation burst on August 6, 1945, but that the five-year death toll may have exceeded 200,000 people.
President Harry Truman told Japan to surrender or “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” Three days later, a second bomb (this time plutonium-based) dropped from an American warplane over the city of Nagasaki. The DoE estimates 40,000 people died in the immediate aftermath, and that number may have reached 140,000 within five years.
These events remain the only cases, so far, of human beings attacking other human beings with nuclear weapons. But the survivors of these attacks are from from the only people to carry the marks of nuclear warfare in their bodies.
Every person alive on the 71st anniversary of those attacks holds in their flesh radioactive remnants of the nuclear era — a period centered in the early decades of Cold War when nuclear nations conducted atmospheric tests of ever-larger bombs.
[…]
Hundreds of bombs detonated in the open air (and several more in the ocean) during the heyday of atmospheric nuclear testing — with thousands more tests conducted underground.
[…]
As Carrie Arnold reported in 2013 for Nova, the massive, unusual carbon-14 load of the era between 1955 and 1963 remains in the atmosphere. It’s called the “bomb pulse,” and it still makes its way, through plants, into the food web. But every second it decays a little more, leaving less in the atmosphere.
That means that every new cell created has a bit less carbon-14 than cells before it. And that slow decline proceeds in a predictable way.
In the last couple decades, researchers have taken advantage of that predictability to figure out exactly how old individual cells are. The process is fairly simple: Extract the cell’s DNA, measure its carbon-14 levels with a tool called a mass spectrometer, and check the result against tables of carbon-14 decay in the period since 1963.
This technique has been used, as Arnold reports, to trace the progress of cancers, advance our understanding of obesity and diabetes, and prove that brain cells continue to form through a human being’s lifetime.
However, barring a nuclear war or a rogue state conducting more dangerous above-ground tests, this method has a limited lifespan. Within a few decades, the bomb pulse will fade until it’s indistinguishable from our planet’s background carbon-14. (The researchers Arnold spoke to peg the date at 2050.)
Read more at Every baby born in 2016 contains atom bomb radiation — here’s why
YAMAGUCHI – The Yamaguchi Prefectural Government on Wednesday renewed a license for Chugoku Electric Power Co. to reclaim land for a new nuclear power plant in the western prefecture, surprising and angering local residents opposed to the project.
Whether to extend the expired license for landfill work in the coastal town of Kaminoseki for the Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Station had been a pending issue after the eruption of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011 led to the work being halted.
The local government, however, decided to grant permission, saying that the plant is positioned “within the country’s energy policy.”
Local opposition, however, is likely to prevent a quick restart of work by the utility.
The local government’s license renewal is also conditional: It said landfill work should not start until the schedule for building plant facilities becomes clear.
[…]
Chugoku Electric was initially granted the landfill license in October 2008 for the two-reactor Kaminoseki complex on an island in the Seto Inland Sea.
The company began landfill work a year later, but progress was slow amid local protests. Work was ultimately suspended after the 2011 Tohoku quake-and-tsunami disasters triggered the Fukushima crisis.
Just before the license was set to expire in October 2012, the utility applied for a three-year extension from the prefectural government.
“We have not changed our idea that we need the Kaminoseki plant,” a utility official said at the time. “We want to keep the license.”
Then-Yamaguchi Gov. Shigetaro Yamamoto said the local government would “examine the issue appropriately” but did not make a decision, citing “special circumstances after the nuclear accident.”
But the prefectural government reversed course on Wednesday and permitted the license extension, with the caveat that landfill work not begin until the utility presents a clear schedule of when they will begin building the plant facilities
[…]
The decision of the prefectural government drew mixed responses from local residents.
“I can’t believe the permission was given,” said Toshiyasu Shimizu, 61, who heads a group of residents on an island several kilometers from the construction site.
But Naonori Koizumi, a 58-year-old member of a group supporting the construction project, voiced approval of the plan.
“I don’t think work will immediately resume, but the town is depopulating and graying,” Koizumi said. “I hope nuclear power will make this town richer.”
Read more at Yamaguchi Prefecture renews license for new nuclear plant project
Related article:
原発建設の是非をめぐり、新潟県巻町（現新潟市西蒲区）で全国初の住民投票が実施されて４日で２０年になる。当時町長だった笹口孝明さん（６８）がインタ ビューに応じ、「住民投票で町の未来を切り開いた誇りがある。原発を造らないという選択は、間違っていなかった」と振り返った。
東北電力が １９７１年に巻原発の建設計画を公表して以降、巻町では用地買収などの準備が進んでいた。一方で反対運動も根強く、笹口さんは仲間と「巻原発・住民投票を 実行する会」を結成。９６年１月の町長選で初当選した。条例を作り、同８月に住民投票を実施。結果は反対多数で、東北電は２００３年に建設計画を撤回し た。
原発は国策とされ、表立って意見を言いづらい雰囲気があった。笹口さんは「住民が意思を示し、選択できたことが一番の意義だった」と強調する。
結果は大きく報道され、巻町は「民主主義の学校」と称賛された。一方で、笹口さんは当時の住民の思いを「原発に翻弄（ほんろう）され続けた町を、普通の町に戻したいということだったのだろう」と代弁する。
（略）
新潟県では東電が柏崎刈羽原発（柏崎市、刈羽村）の再稼働を目指し、原子力規制委員会に審査を申請している。笹口さんは使用済み核燃料から出る高レベル放 射性廃棄物（核のごみ）の最終処分場の選定が難航していることを挙げ、「規制委が合格を出したところで、核のごみ問題は片付かない。一日も早く原発から脱 却した政策を行うべきだ」と話した。
Kiev has paid Moscow for storing and reprocessing used nuclear fuel from Ukrainian plants, RIA Novosti reported citing a source.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Ukraine has transferred Russia a payment for exporting, storing and reprocessing used nuclear fuel from Ukrainian plants, a source familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
Continue reading at Ukraine Resumes Payments to Russia for Reprocessing Used Nuclear Fuel
規制委 安全対策が新規制基準適合の審査書案を了承
原子力規制委員会は３日の定例会で、関西電力が４０年超の運転延長を目指す美浜原発３号機（福井県、出力８２．６万キロワット）について、安全対策が新 規制基準に適合しているとする審査書案を了承した。事実上の審査合格で、１カ月間の意見公募を経て正式決定する。運転開始から４０年前後が経過した老朽原 発としては関電高浜原発１、２号機（同県）に次いで３基目の合格となる。
美浜３号機は１９７６年１２月に運転を開始した。東京電力福島第１原発事故後の法改正で原発の寿命は原則４０年とされ、規制委が認めれば１度だけ最長 ２０年延長できる。美浜３号機が再稼働するには、今回の審査合格に加え、４０年を迎える前日の１１月末までに、審査合格のため新設する施設の工事計画と運 転延長に関する二つの認可を得る必要がある。
関電は２０３６年までの運転延長を目指しているが、原子炉内の機器交換などの大規模工事が必要で、実際の再稼働は２０年３月以降になる見通しだ。
美浜３号機の周囲には活断層が多く、地震の揺れの想定をどの程度、見積もるかが安全審査の焦点だったが、関電は昨夏、基準地震動（耐震設計の目安とする 揺れ）を７５０ガルから９９３ガル（ガルは加速度の単位）に引き上げた。美浜１、２号機は昨春に運転を終え、すでに廃炉になっている。
By Linda Pentz Gunter
The NRC routinely fails to enforce its own safety codes at nuclear power plants, writes Linda Pentz Gunter – putting all of us at risk from accidents. It’s the US’s most extreme example of regulatory capture, rivalling Japan’s ‘nuclear village’ of crony agencies and feeble regulation that led to the Fukushima disaster. How long can it be before the US experiences another nuclear catastrophe?
The US still has 30 operating reactors of the same General Electric design that exploded at Fukushima. Yet the NRC has decided not to require a significant safety retrofit that it had ordered in 2013, and that would have reduced the radioactive consequences of a major accident at one of these dangerously flawed reactors.
Or rather, the NRC will require it, but only after the reactor closes. The Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey, which happens also to be the world’s prototype for the Fukushima reactors, is scheduled to close on December 31, 2019.
The NRC agreed to owner Exelon’s request for an extension to comply with the installation of a reliable severe accident-capable hardened vent. Exelon’s new deadline? January 2020, just after the reactor will be permanently shuttered.
Similarly, the Entergy-owned Pilgrim nuclear plant near Plymouth, MA, also a GE Fukushima design, and which has announced a June 1, 2019 shutdown date, has requested and extension to comply with the vent order until December 31, 2019.
It’s tempting be cynical and assume that by agreeing to extend such deadlines, the NRC is hoping owners will change their minds and keep their reactors open. After all, shutdowns are bad for business, and the NRC is very much in league with the interests of its industry friends.
Nothing illustrated this better than the NRC’s decision to provide a 20-year license extension to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant – another Fukushima clone – ten days into the 11th March 2011 Japan nuclear disaster. Luckily, the owners closed the financially hemorrhaging plant at the end of 2014.
The nuclear industry has consistently challenged the NRC’s safety compliance orders to avoid the expense, putting profit well ahead of safety. The NRC has consistently and obligingly capitulated, even when the risk itself is identified as a top priority.
Fetch the comfy chair! The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is in town to enforce its own safety regulations at your local nuclear power plant. Reactor owners have been duly warned. Comply or else …
Or else what? Three more last chances? No, unlike Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition, the NRC isn’t bothering to read the charges. It’s handing out immunity.
The US still has 30 operating reactors of the same General Electric design that exploded at Fukushima. Yet the NRC has decided not to require a significant safety retrofit that it had ordered in 2013, and that would have reduced the radioactive consequences of a major accident at one of these dangerously flawed reactors.
Or rather, the NRC will require it, but only after the reactor closes. The Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in New Jersey, which happens also to be the world’s prototype for the Fukushima reactors, is scheduled to close on December 31, 2019.
The NRC agreed to owner Exelon’s request for an extension to comply with the installation of a reliable severe accident-capable hardened vent. Exelon’s new deadline? January 2020, just after the reactor will be permanently shuttered.
Similarly, the Entergy-owned Pilgrim nuclear plant near Plymouth, MA, also a GE Fukushima design, and which has announced a June 1, 2019 shutdown date, has requested and extension to comply with the vent order until December 31, 2019.
It’s tempting be cynical and assume that by agreeing to extend such deadlines, the NRC is hoping owners will change their minds and keep their reactors open. After all, shutdowns are bad for business, and the NRC is very much in league with the interests of its industry friends.
Nothing illustrated this better than the NRC’s decision to provide a 20-year license extension to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant – another Fukushima clone – ten days into the 11th March 2011 Japan nuclear disaster. Luckily, the owners closed the financially hemorrhaging plant at the end of 2014.
The consistent pattern: industry cost cuts before public safety
Beleaguered by an economic nosedive, the nuclear industry has consistently challenged the NRC’s safety compliance orders to avoid the expense, putting profit well ahead of safety. The NRC has consistently and obligingly capitulated, even when the risk itself is identified as a top priority.For example, the agency allowed the nuclear industry to remove fire barriers that were found to be combustible from around safe shutdown electrical cables at reactor buildings, and in some cases replace them with … nothing! In the absence of replacement barriers that actually function, workers are expected to patrol vulnerable fire zones (and presumably shout ‘Fire!’) This, despite the fact that the NRC rates fire as the most likely cause of a meltdown.
[…]
Genius – let the nuclear industry self-report its own violations!
The list goes on. At the Exelon-owned Braidwood, IL nuclear power plant, starting in 1996, millions of gallons of water contaminated with tritium (radioactive hydrogen) leaked from the plant for 10 years while Exelon covered it up.The tritiated water spilled onto roadways and into ditches, contaminating nearby agricultural fields, ponds and the drinking water wells of surrounding homeowners. Two on-site NRC inspectors supposedly failed to notice the lake of radioactive water flooding on and off the site.
The NRC’s solution was to allow the industry to self-report future leaks through an unenforceable voluntary honor system; a guarantee for further cover-ups. This despite revelations including in a report by my organization Beyond Nuclear – Leak First, Fix Later, and by the Associated Press that radioactive leaks were likely occurring at almost every nuclear plant in the country.
At the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio, the NRC chose to risk losing Toledo and the Great Lakes after years of saving owner FirstEnergy the trouble and expense of finding and fixing a growing and eventually gaping corrosion hole in the reactor vessel head. Just three-sixteenths of an inch of a bulging stainless steel inner liner was all that remained on the six-inch thick reactor pressure vessel lid – and all that prevented a likely meltdown.
[…]All this should have changed in 1974 when the Energy Reorganization Act divided the then Atomic Energy Commission into two new agencies – the NRC and what would become the Department of Energy. This was done to create a dividing line between nuclear regulation and promotion, with the NRC assuming the former role.
But the umbilical cord never got cut. The NRC didn’t just climb straight back into bed with the nuclear industry. It crawled back into the womb, as former NRC commissioner and now critic, Peter Bradford, told the New York Times: “The NRC inherited the regulatory staff and adopted the rules and regulations of the AEC intact.”
Meanwhile, since the agency’s inception, many outgoing NRC Commissioners have sailed away in golden parachutes straight into plum nuclear industry jobs.
[…]
Read more.
福島県の親子らを奈良に招き、福島第１原発事故による放射能を気にせず遊んでもらう「福島の子ども保養プロジェクトｉｎなら」が先月２９日〜１日に開かれた。今年で５回目を迎え、小学生と家族計３８人が参加。奈良公園を散策し、鹿と遊ぶなどして楽しんだ。主催する市民生活協同組合ならコープは「息長く続けていきたい」としている。【中津成美】
福島県生協連の呼び掛けに応じて２０１２年に始まった。これまでに延べ７１家族１９８人を招いた。
[…]一方、保護者向けのアンケートには「福島では土は触らず、森に近づかないなどストレスも多い。思い切り深呼吸できる」「自宅を買った２年後に被災した。自主避難後、再び家に戻った。子供の健康を考えて定期的に県外保養に出ている」などと記され、東日本大震災から５年を経た切実な思いがうかがえる。
ならコープの上床匠子担当課長は「普段意識せざるを得ない放射能を忘れてもらうことが目的。被災者の声がある限り、できるだけ長く寄り添いたい」と話した。
もっと読む。
A nuclear power plant in Byron, Illinois. Taken by photographer Joseph Pobereskin (http://pobereskin.com).
