Archive for the ‘Nuclear Power’ Category

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Another Iranian nuclear scientist killed

July 23, 2011

Another Iranian nuclear scientist has been gunned down and if this is the work of covert operations by governments  hostile to the Iranian nuclear programs (read USA or Israel or France) it would be a case – not for the first time – of State sponsored murder and the use of terror for political purposes.

BBC

An Iranian nuclear scientist has been shot dead outside his home in Tehran, Iranian media sources say. The Isna news agency named him as Daryoush Rezaei, 35, adding that his wife was wounded. His identity has not been officially confirmed.

In 2010, nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi was killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Tehran. Iran blamed that attack on Israeli secret service Mossad. Israel has long warned about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Some reports said the latest attack involved assailants on a motorcycle, but this has not been confirmed. Isna said that Mr Rezaei was an expert with links to the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran.

The US, Israel and many Western nations have opposed Iran’s atomic programme, fearing it may be a front to creating a nuclear bomb.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is for purely peaceful purposes. This week, Iran said it was installing newer and faster centrifuges at its nuclear plants, with the goal of speeding up its uranium enrichment process. Enriched uranium can be used for civilian nuclear purposes, but also to build atomic bombs.

The French government condemned the move as a “new provocation”.

Related: 

Conspiracy theory: 5 nuclear experts who helped Iran’s program among 44 who died in Russian plane crash

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New uranium finds help fuel India’s nuclear program

July 19, 2011
India has a flourishing and largely indigenous nuclear power program and expects to have 20,000 MWe nuclear capacity on line by 2020 and 63,000 MWe by 2032.  The target is to supply 25% of electricity from nuclear power by 2050.
But uranium ores in India are largely low-grade ores which are not usually economic for power generation (and are therefore mainly used for weapons programs). Because India is outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty due to its weapons program, it was for 34 years largely excluded from trade in nuclear plant or materials, which has hampered its development of civil nuclear energy until 2009.
The civil nuclear program is heavily dependent upon the continued import of nuclear fuels. Nevertheless new finds of uranium ore in India provide comfort for the continuing nuclear program in the wake of Fukushima.
Uranium mining in Andhra Pradesh, which has been held up for years by environmental and other activists, has finally begun. Andhra Pradesh’s uranium ore is five times richer than in India’s old mines at Jaduguda. But this does not solve India’s uranium shortage for nuclear power plants. Jaduguda ore has just 0.06% uranium, and AP will yield maybe 0.3%.
But internationally, commercial ores have up to 15% uranium and India will need imported fuel for the foreseeable future

From The Hindu:

Tummalapalle in Andhra Pradesh could have one of the largest uranium reserves in the world. Recent studies have indicated that it could have a reserve of 1.5 lakh (150,000) tonnes of the scarce material.

Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, and Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Srikumar Banerjee said: “Studies have already shown that the area had a confirmed reserve of 49,000 tonnes and recent surveys indicated that this figure could go up even three folds.”

He said uranium deposits in Tummalapalle appeared to be spread over 35 km. Exploratory works are under way. At present, the country is estimated to have a total reserve of about 1,75,000 tonnes of uranium, apart from this.

Terming the new findings a major development, Dr. Banerjee, however, pointed out that the indigenous reserves would still not be sufficient to meet the entire demand of the country’s nuclear programme. “The new findings would only augment the indigenous supply of uranium. There would still be a significant gap. We would still have to import.”

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Posted in India, Nuclear Power | 2 Comments »

Conspiracy theory: 5 nuclear experts who helped Iran’s program among 44 who died in Russian plane crash

June 23, 2011

Two days ago:

21st June: A Russian plane exploded into flames after crashing on a highway just short of its airport, killing 44 and leaving eight survivors fighting for their lives, officials said Tuesday.

The RusAir Tupolev 134 was trying to land at its destination of Petrozavodsk in the Karelia region of northwestern Russia in bad weather but failed to make the runway and instead hurtled onto a road 1.25 miles away. 

The impact of the landing blasted parts of the plane and corpses of the passengers several hundred meters distant as the burning wreckage blazed in the night sky.

“The plane sustained a hard landing two kilometres from Petrozavodsk,” the emergencies ministry said in a statement on its website. “Forty-four people were killed and eight people injured.”

Russia plane crash

The wreckage of Tu-134 plane, belonging to the RusAir airline, is seen on a highway near the city of Petrozavodsk Tuesday, June 21, 2011. Photo AP

But today’s Haaretz reports that:

Nuclear experts killed in Russia plane crash helped design Iran facility.

The five Russian scientists were among 44 killed earlier this week; no official investigation of foul play has been opened, though Iranian nuclear experts have in the past been involved in similar accidents.

The five nuclear experts killed in a plane crash in northern Russia earlier this week had assisted in the design of an Iranian atomic facility, security sources in Russia said on Thursday.

The experts – who included lead designers Sergei Rizhov, Gennadi Benyok, Nicolai Tronov and Russia’s top nuclear technological experts, Andrei Tropinov – worked at Bushehr after the contract for the plant’s construction passed from the German Siemens company to Russian hands.

The five were employed at the Hydropress factory, a member of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, and one of the main companies to contract for the Bushehr construction.

While sabotage is not being mentioned officially as a reason for the crash it is not far away from the thoughts of the investigators.

Israeli covert activities have previously been blamed by the Iranian government for the death of two of their nuclear scientists.

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Posted in Aviation, Nuclear Power, Russia | 3 Comments »

Fukushima radioactive water leakage now stopped

April 5, 2011

Update! BBC:

A leak of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean from Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been stopped, its operator reports. Tepco said it had injected chemical agents to solidify soil near a cracked pit, from where the contaminated water had been seeping out.

TEPCO reports the first signs that at least one of the leaks has been found and that preventive measures seem to be having some effect according to NHK:

TEPCO has injected a hardening agent beneath a leaking concrete pit in a bid to stem the flow of highly radioactive water into the sea. The firm says the leakage seems to be decreasing, following the infusion of the hardening agent.

The utility showed reporters a photo of the leak on Tuesday evening, saying it indicates such a decrease. TEPCO said it will infuse another 1,500 liters of liquid glass. Tokyo Electric Power Company started infusing liquid glass into gravel below the pit near the Number 2 reactor at 3 PM on Tuesday.

Leakage - before and after: screen shot from NHK

TEPCO spotted a crack in the pit 3 days ago while trying to find the source of the leakage of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Since then, the utility has tried in vein to seal the pit with concrete, or to plug piping leading into it with a polymer mixture. A test using a dye agent showed the possibility that the radioactive water is leaking from a cracked pipe, and then seeping through gravel into the concrete pit.

TEPCO is planning to board up the breached sections of an offshore dike to prevent the tainted water from spreading further into the sea. It is also considering building underwater barriers at 3 locations, including one near a water intake for the Number 2 reactor

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Fukushima Dai-ichi – Tracing the leaks

April 4, 2011

Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors #1 to 4 will never operate again. Politically, it is difficult to see how reactors #5 and 6 could be brought back into operation though technically it may well be feasible. But right now the focus is on finding where exactly the radiation leaks are coming from. The process of tracing all leaks and gradually bringing them all under control is likely to take months rather than weeks.

Some of the nuclear hysteria is dying down and some media attention is returning to the people affected by the quake and the tsunami. And nobody has received anything like a fatal dose of radiation from Fukushima.

And mentioning Fukushima in the same breath as Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which our instant media pundits are inclined to do) is obscene.

TEPCO seems to be getting its house in order and perhaps the efforts of Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata are having some effect.

Update from NHK:

TEPCO, is continuing its efforts to identify the exact route of the highly radioactive water flowing into the Pacific from its damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex.

TEPCO poured a white liquid into a tunnel leading to a concrete pit where the contaminated water is leaking through a crack. This operation was undertaken to determine the exact route the water is taking to the ocean from the pit, located near the plant’s Number 2 reactor.

Monday’s work follows a failed attempt on Sunday to stop the flow of contaminated water by injecting a polymer absorbent into a duct connecting the tunnel with the pit. TEPCO says it will inject the chemical again to block the duct as soon as it has identified the leakage route.

The utility company has also been working on removing radioactive water from the basements of the turbine buildings for two of the plant’s reactors.

The radioactive water in the condensers for the two reactors is being transferred to storage tanks. As soon as the condensers are emptied, the water from the reactor will be drained into them to allow work to begin to restore the reactors’ cooling systems.

Work to remove the water was begun on Sunday at reactors Number 1 and 2. A similar operation will start at the Number 3 reactor on Monday.

As a temporary measure, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is considering setting up silt barriers near a water intake for the Number 2 reactor.

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Fukushima reactors coped with the massive quake but were overwhelmed by the tsunami wave

April 2, 2011

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Fukushima nuclear plant successfully withstood quake accelerations which were somewhat higher than had been designed for but the real damage came from the tsunami which overwhelmed the defences of the plant and then knocked out all the emergency generators (13 of them in the basement apparently). That in turn knocked out all cooling pumps and cooling functions and then the die was cast…..

Latest IAEA updates on the Fukushima nuclear accident.

image IAEA - credit Google Earth

From JAIF:

The chief executive of General Electric has stressed that the GE reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant have no structural problems. Jeff Immelt spoke to NHK and other media outlets on Thursday. Some observers say the No. 1 and 2 reactors, the oldest types at the plant, have a flaw in their designs. He said the GE reactor has been in service for more than 40 years and is well tested and well-designed and has been upgraded over time. Immelt said in Washington on Thursday that he was aware of the doubts expressed about nuclear power plants. But  he said it is necessary to diversify energy sources at a time of rising oil prices. In the United States, more than 20 reactors are in use that have similar structure to the Fukushima No. 1 and 2 reactors. Questions were raised about their safety after the Fukushima reactors were damaged last month.

Meanwhile TEPCO released further information about the forces measured during the quake:

TEPCO says 3 of the plant’s 6 reactors were shaken on March 11th by tremors exceeding forces they were designed to withstand. Reactor No.2 suffered the largest horizontal ground acceleration of 550 gals, which is 26 percent stronger than the reactor’s design limit.

(A gal – is named after Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) – and is a unit of acceleration equal to 1 centimetre per second per second – 1 cm /s/s)

TEPCO says the readings were 548 gals at the No.5 reactor, about 21 percent higher than its design limit; and 507 gals at the No.3 reactor, topping the capacity by about 15 percent. The power company says the strength of ground motions were close to or within the design parameters at the remaining 3 reactors, and at all 4 reactors of the nearby Fukushima Daini nuclear plant.
The utility says it had been planning to reinforce the reactors so they could withstand horizontal shaking of 600 gals, after the government reviewed their quake-resistance standards 5 years ago. But the work was not finished.

In the event strengthening the earthquake resistance would not have helped. By all accounts the tsunami wave was more than twice the height of the existing wall defences.

Reactors 3 and 4: image TEPCO

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The dark side of black

March 31, 2011

From Kyodo News:

Radiation fears have prevented authorities from collecting as many as 1,000 bodies of victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami from within the 20-kilometer-radius evacuation zone around the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, police sources said Thursday.

One of the sources said bodies had been ”exposed to high levels of radiation after death.” The view was supported by the detection Sunday of elevated levels of radiation on a body found in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, about 5 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

The authorities are now considering how to collect the bodies, given fears that police officers, doctors and bereaved families may be exposed to radiation in retrieving the radiation-exposed bodies or at morgues, according to the sources.

Even after the bodies are handed over to the victims’ families, cremating them could spread plumes containing radioactive materials, while burying the victims could contaminate the soil around them.

The following are the latest casualty figures related to the earthquake and tsunami that hit northeastern and eastern Japan on March 11, according to the National Police Agency as of 9 p.m. Thursday:

Number of people killed 11,532

Number of people missing 16,441


 

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TEPCO stocks are on their way to losing all value

March 30, 2011

Shares in Tokyo Electric, commonly known as TEPCO, dropped another 17.7 percent on Wednesday to 466 yen and trading was later stopped.

Chart: tepco stock 20110330

It seems inevitable that TEPCO stocks will lose all their value and will be driven to zero – unless nationalisation comes first. Now even the largest shareholders are being hit:

Shares in TEPCO’s main bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group , which is also a large shareholder with a 2.7 percent holding, fell 2.1 percent.
Dai-ichi Life Insurance , which is the second-largest shareholder in TEPCO with 4.1 percent stake, rose 3 percent after Deutsche Securities said the impact of TEPCO stock price fall is limited on its embedded value, a measure of an insurer’s worth that includes the present value of future earnings from life insurance contracts.  However, Dai-ichi shares have fallen 18 percent compared with a 10.3 percent decline in the benchmark Nikkei 225 index .

There is a vacuum in the leadership of TEPCO. The President of TEPCO Masataka Shimizu has been hospitalized for high blood pressure and dizziness. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata will take over operation of the power company. He is 70 years old and faces an unenviable task.

Tsunehisa Katsumata: kyoto photo

Tsunehisa Katsumata served as President of Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc., from October 2002 to June 2008. Mr. Katsumata has been the Chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., since June 2008. Mr. Katsumata serves as Chairman of the Board of Federation Of Electric Power Companies of Japan. He has been an Outside Director of Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. and NKSJ Holdings, Inc. since April 1, 2010. Mr. Katsumata has been a Director of Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. since June 1996. He serves as an Outside Director at KDDI Corp. He serves as Chairman of Evaluation Committee at Japan Finance Corporation.

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Posted in Business, Japan, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | 3 Comments »

TEPCO President goes AWOL – not seen in public since March 13th

March 27, 2011

While the toll of casualties keeps increasing it has emerged that TEPCO’s President Masataka Shimizu has gone into seclusion and has not been seen publicly since 13th March. In the meantime the leaderless TEPCO has retracted the very high radiation results from reactor #2.

The National police Agency’s figures for casualties from the earthquake and tsunami, as of Sunday night, exceeds 27,000 killed or missing:

Number of people killed 10,804

Number of people missing 16,244

At the Fukushima plant TEPCO has retracted the measurements of high radioactivity they announced earlier and give the impression, not so much of being clueless, but certainly of being without any coherent leadership.

NHK reports:

Tokyo Electric Power Company has retracted its announcement that 10 million times the normal density of radioactive materials had been detected in water at the Number 2 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The utility says it will conduct another test of the leaked water at the reactor’s turbine building.

The company said on Sunday evening that the data for iodine-134 announced earlier in the day was actually for another substance that has a longer half-life.

The plant operator said earlier on Sunday that 2.9 billion becquerels per cubic centimeter had been detected in the leaked water.

It said although the initial figure was wrong, the water still has a high level of radioactivity of 1,000 millisieverts per hour.

The perception of TEPCO being without leadership first built up when the President Masataka Shimizu tried to abdicate all responsibility for the site on March 14th and was severely told off by the Prime Minister and the government.

But it now emerges from Kyodo News that he has not been seen publicly since 13th March. He seems to have gone AWOL:

Masataka Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the crisis-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, fell sick March 16 and took some days off from the liaison office between the government and the utility firm, TEPCO officials said Sunday.

While Shimizu was away from the office set up at the firm’s headquarters, he collected information and issued instructions from a different room of the headquarters building to address the troubles at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station hit by the March 11 quake and subsequent tsunami, the officials said. He has already recovered and come back to work at the liaison office, they said.

A TEPCO spokesperson declined to elaborate on his health condition, but said he did not fall over or need to be hooked up to an intravenous drip.

Shimizu has not appeared in public since attending a press conference on March 13, two days after the catastrophe that wreaked havoc on northeastern and eastern Japan.

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Fukushima Dai-ichi: Reactor No.2 suppression pool leaking highly radioactive water

March 27, 2011

BREAKING!

Very high levels of radiation have been measured in water leaking from reactor #2. It is thought that the breach is in the suppression pool.

TEPCO, says it has measured radiation levels of 2.9 GBq/cc in water from the basement of the turbine building attached to the Number 2 reactor. The level of contamination is about 1,000 times that of the leaked water already found in the basements of the Number 1 and 3 reactor turbine buildings. The measurements indicated 2.9 GBq/cc iodine-134, 13 MBq/cc of iodine-131, and 2.3 MBq /cc for each of cesium 134 and 137. This is clear evidence that fission is continuing.

University of Tokyo graduate school professor Naoto Sekimura says the leak may come from the suppression chamber of the Number 2 reactor, which is known to be damaged. The chamber is designed to contain overflows of radioactive substances from the reactor.

All workers have been evacuated from the reactor #2 building.

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Posted in Japan, Natural Disasters, Nuclear Power | 1 Comment »

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