https://taosnews.com/stories/explosive-accidentally-detonates-at-la...

Explosive accidentally detonates at LANL
Blast injures one employee, prompts request to safely detonate two compromised vessels

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 7:24 pm

An explosion in a densely staffed sector of Los Alamos National Laboratory on Sept. 14 left one employee with multiple cuts and prompted lab officials to request emergency approval from the New Mexico Environment Department to safely detonate two compromised vessels containing highly explosive hazardous waste.

Both of the approximately 1.7-ounce containers were "unstable due to heat exposure and the presence of etching on the vessel exterior," an incident report said.

"This condition posed an imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment," the report reads.

No radioactive material was involved in the incident, a lab spokesman said.

The detonation occurred during synthesis of a type of powerful non-nuclear explosive in development at LANL.

The injured worker, who sustained cuts to his or her hands caused by broken glassware, was treated at both Los Alamos Medical Center and University of New Mexico Hospital, the spokesman said. The employee has since been released and is back at work.

The cause of the explosion is under review.

The blast detonated some time before 11:30 a.m., in Technical Area 35, Building 85. The area flanks Pecos Road on the southeast side of Los Alamos.

"It's a very highly populated part of the lab," said Greg Mello, director of the Albuquerque-based Los Alamos Study Group, a watchdog agency that tracks safety issues at the laboratory.

By midday, John Kieling, chief of state's Hazardous Waste Bureau, had authorized detonation of the unstable chemicals in a contained vessel.

Destruction of the chemicals went off without a hitch at 1:15 p.m., according to the report.

Mello said developing stronger explosives has been a LANL aim for decades.

This is the latest in a series of safety mishaps at the labs. In May, a crew of pipe fitters underwent decontamination after radioactive materials were discovered on a worker's hands, on the crew's protective clothing and in the work area. In March, all work with special nuclear materials was put on hold at the lab's plutonium facility following violations of two safety mandates meant to prevent a nuclear chain reaction.

According to the follow-up report detailing the Sept. 14 incident, the pair of unstable containers were discovered during an assessment of the chemical hood (a kind of secure, vented workspace) in which the explosion took place.

The lab spokesman declined to say whether the vessels were actually in the hood at the time of the explosion, but Richard Holder, a retired UNM organic chemistry professor who specializes in chemical syntheses and reactions, said it's not uncommon for chemists to keep other compounds in their workspace.

It's not best practices to do so, he said. "I don't condone it, but it's common, and I've done it myself," Holder said.

Having other compounds in the space poses hazards in the event or a fire, during which intense heat could set off additional chemical reactions.

https://www.wwaytv3.com/2018/11/09/uranium-found-in-water-near-leak...

Uranium found in water near leaking South Carolina plant

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nuclear-power-plant...

Three injured after accident at nuclear power plant in Lancashire

Emergency services called to Heysham 1 power station after reports of accidental steam release

Three people have been injured following an incident at a nuclear power station in Lancashire. 

Emergency services were called to Heysham 1 power station at 10.30pm on 19 November after reports of an accidental steam release.

The incident was described as non-nuclear but three members of staff were rushed to two nearby hospitals for treatment.

One of the workers was taken to a hospital in Wythenshawe while the others were taken to Preston.

They are believed to have suffered broken bones and burns, according to the BBC.

“It goes without saying that everyone’s thoughts are with our three colleagues who have been injured, we will be doing everything we can to support them and their families while they recover,” the spokesperson said. 

“There was no risk to the public during the incident which is now under control.

“A full investigation into the cause will be carried out.

“Safety is our overriding priority and we will investigate how this happened and make sure all measures necessary are put in place to ensure it does not happen again.”

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said it has launched an investigation into the incident. 

A spokesperson said: “The Office for Nuclear Regulation, as the independent safety regulator, will investigate the incident. Separately, in line with standard procedures, EDF has also launched its own investigation.

“In light of these ongoing enquiries, which are at an early stage, it would be inappropriate to comment any further at this time.”

https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article222521475.html

‘Electrical disturbance’ shuts down part of Diablo Canyon

December 02, 2018 11:06 AM

Part of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant shut down Saturday due to an “electrical disturbance,” PG&E said in a news release.

The shutdown happened Saturday morning in Unit 2, officials said. As of Sunday morning, Unit 2 remained shut down as PG&E officials worked to determine the cause of the disturbance, Suzanne Hosn, a PG&E spokeswoman, told The Tribune in a phone interview.

“This is on the non-nuclear side of the plant,” Hosn said. She emphasized that the shutdown poses no risk to the community or to employees.

The unit is “in a safe condition” and will be back in service after the cause is determined and equipment is tested, PG&E said.

PG&E said it has informed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state and local officials of the incident.

http://www.brusselstimes.com/rss-feed/13537/doel-nuclear-reactor-cl...

Doel nuclear reactor closed down one week after starting up again

Saturday, 22 December 2018 11:18

https://www.knopnews2.com/content/news/NPPD--503670051.html

Fire extinguished at Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper Nuclear Station

Posted: Sat 7:59 PM, Dec 29, 2018

AUBURN, Neb. According to a news release from Nebraska Public Power District's Corporate Media and Media Services Supervisor Mark Becker, a "notification of an unusual event" was declared at Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper Nuclear Station at 9:04 a.m. Saturday.

Nebraska Public Power District's safety and plant personnel detected a fire within a pipe chase.

The station's fire brigade extinguished the fire at 9:51 a.m.

A second news release provided updated information on the event:

"As of 3:44 p.m. today, Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) exited the emergency classification level called a “notification of an unusual event” (NOUE) at its Cooper Nuclear Station. NPPD initially declared the NOUE at 9:04 a.m. today after discovering a hazardous gas environment in the basement of the plant. While investigating the gas, safety and plant personnel detected a fire within a pipe chase.

The station’s fire brigade extinguished the initial and active fire at 9:51 a.m. but support staff from the plant’s
emergency response organization were brought in to assess damage caused by the fire, provide engineering support, and maintain a fire watch in the area until there was no longer any potential for a fire to restart. The fire was declared out as of 3 p.m., after completion of overhaul activities and assurance that a re-flash would not occur.

At no time did plant conditions threaten public safety. The plant remained stable and operating throughout the event
and continues to operate at this time.

A NOUE is defined as unusual events, minor in nature, which have occurred or are in progress which indicate a potential degradation in the level of station safety at the station. If placed on a scale of 1 to 4, with 1 being the least serious level of an emergency and 4 being the most serious level of an emergency, a NOUE would equal a 1.

In situations like this, plant personnel follow an emergency response plan and notify appropriate local, county, state, and federal agencies as part of their processes.

Cooper Nuclear Station is located three miles southeast of Brownville near the Missouri River. It is owned and operated by the Nebraska Public Power District, with headquarters in Columbus. More information will be provided as it becomes available."

https://www.aikenstandard.com/news/radiation-contaminated-water-dis...

Radiation-contaminated water discovered at SRS facility, new report states

January 17 2019

Last month, rain leaked through the roof of a Savannah River Site nuclear processing facility, picked up radioactive contamination and then showed up in a so-called "clean area" on the facility's first floor, according to a final incident report filed Wednesday.

The leak and contamination was found Dec. 2, 2018, at H-Canyon, the nation's last up-and-running hardened nuclear chemical separations plant.

No injuries or exposures were mentioned in the report

The contaminated water was removed from the clean area, a warning was posted and additional inspections of the facility were done, according to the incident report. No other contamination was discovered, according to the same information.

The rain made its way into H-Canyon through an "expansion joint" where previous leaks had been observed, according to the incident report. Joints between sections of the building run vertically from the roof to the first floor, according to the report.

"Over time, some of these joints have failed and rainwater migrates into the facility," the report reads.

A plan has been developed to repair the H-Canyon roof, according to the incident report.

H-Canyon – now operated by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the SRS management and operations contractor – was constructed around 1950 and began operations in 1955.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent nuclear-safety watchdog, was notified of the leak and contamination on Dec. 3, 2018.

Inquiries made to the U.S. Department of Energy were not immediately returned.

The incident report is available here.

https://orpspublic.doe.gov/orps/reports/displayReport2.asp?crypt=%8...

https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/below-freezing-temps-shut-...

Below-freezing temps shut down Salem nuclear reactor

The reactor was still offline as of Thursday afternoon, said PSEG spokesman Joe Delmar. A similar shutdown occurred at the plant in 2010 as a result of slushy ice blocking the 70-foot filter screens. Each reactor has six pumps that move water in and out of the river, and those pumps trip when water isn’t pushed through the filters.

Below-freezing temperatures early Thursday caused the shutdown of a reactor at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant.

Control-room operators manually shut down the Salem Unit 2 reactor at 3 a.m. after ice accumulated on screens used to filter out debris before water from the Delaware River is pumped into the plants, said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan.

The reactor was still offline as of Thursday afternoon, said PSEG spokesman Joe Delmar. A similar shutdown occurred at the plant in 2010 as a result of slushy ice blocking the 70-foot filter screens. Each reactor has six pumps that move water in and out of the river, and those pumps trip when water isn’t pushed through the filters.

Salem Unit 2 is one of three plants operated by PSEG Nuclear at the Artificial Island generating site in Lower Alloways Creek Township. In response to the shutdown, Sheehan said, Salem Unit 1 reduced power to 88 percent.

Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said PSEG should invest in more environmentally friendly cooling towers at its Salem Unit 1 and 2 reactors to avoid such shutdowns. Cooling towers create a “closed-loop system” in which water is drawn from a river, circulated through the plant and sent to a tower to lower its temperature before being reused.

Nuclear subsidy program given green light by BPU

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities approved a Zero Emission Credit program last week f…

Tittel called the current system “antiquated.”

“Here we are on one of the coldest days,” he said, “and they had to stop operating.”

and another:

http://www.the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005514794

Alarm goes off at JAEA nuclear fuel facility

7:37 pm, January 31, 2019

TOKYO (Jiji Press) — An alarm indicating a radioactive leak went off at a nuclear fuel facility in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Wednesday afternoon, but no one was exposed to radiation in the incident, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency said.

No radioactive materials leaked outside of the premises of the JAEA’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engineering Laboratories in the village, the government-affiliated institute added.

The alarm went off at a plutonium fuel development laboratory in a radiation-controlled area at the facility around 2:25 p.m. Wednesday, according to the JAEA.

At the time, nine male workers were replacing the bag covering a stainless steel container for powdered mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel, a blend of plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel, and uranium. They were wearing radiation protection suits and half-face masks during the task.Speech

http://1057news.com/2019/04/04/15/06/36/hydrogen-fluoride-release-a...

HYDROGEN FLUORIDE RELEASE AT Y-12 PROMPTS PRECAUTIONARY EVACUATION OF EMPLOYEES

04 Apr 2019

Emergency crews at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge responded to an emergency at the plant Thursday morning.

In a statement, officials with CNS Y-12 – which operates the facility for the federal government – say shortly before 8 a.m. sensors detected a possible release of hydrogen fluoride within a processing enclosure in Building 9212. No injuries were reported and, in their statement, officials said, “at this time, there is no offsite impact to the public as a result of the incident.”

Hydrogen fluoride is an acidic chemical used in some of the processes at Y-12. The statement also says, “appropriate precautionary protective actions have been initiated for Y-12 employees who are in the vicinity of the incident and who are not involved in the emergency response.”

On-site monitoring found no detectable levels of the chemical outside of the enclosure and systems in place were working properly to reduce the chemical levels within the enclosure.
All nuclear material was deemed safe and there was no indication of a “malevolent event.”

Employees were initially evacuated from the area, but were cleared to return to work for normal operations at around 9:45 am after the emergency was deemed “under control.”

http://1057news.com/2019/04/05/12/15/17/east-tennessee-shaken-by-th...

EAST TENNESSEE SHAKEN BY THREE EARTHQUAKES THURSDAY, RESIDENTS REPORTED HEARING LOUD ‘BOOM’ SOUNDS

05 Apr 2019

Residents in Maryville started calling 911 to report they heard a series of ‘booms’ throughout the day Thursday.  The USGS reported that no earthquakes had shown up on their sensors.  More and more people called all afternoon saying they were hearing loud boom sounds.   Then last night – it was confirmed they were indeed earthquakes.  Three quakes over the span of seven hours.

The first was a 2.4 magnitude quake recorded at 12:09 p.m. a little more than a mile west-southwest of Maryville, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Two smaller tremors, each measuring 1.4 magnitude, followed at 4 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.

This is following a series of quakes over the past several months shaking the region.  East Tennessean’s are wondering why so many quakes.  Scientists are wondering the same thing.  Last week a group of scientists deployed more seismic sensors in Alabama and Florida to find out if those quakes are caused by fracking for oil in the area.

Experts say as far as earthquakes go, East Tennessee is on shaky ground.

The region experiences more seismic activity than just about anywhere else in the eastern United States, though a December 4.4 magnitude quake near Decatur was unusually intense for the area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-12_National_Security_Complex

Y-12 National Security Complex

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigation Jump to search

For other uses, see Y-12 (disambiguation).

Y-12 Plant, in Oak Ridge TN.

The Y-12 National Security Complex is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was built as part of the Manhattan Project for the purpose of enriching uranium for the first atomic bombs. It is considered the birthplace of the atomic bomb.^[1] In the years after World War II, it has been operated as a manufacturing facility for nuclear weapons components and related defense purposes.

Y-12 is managed and operated under contract by Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC (CNS), which is composed of member companies Bechtel National, Inc., Leidos, Inc., Orbital ATK, Inc, and SOC LLC, with Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc. as a teaming subcontractor.^[2] CNS also operates Pantex Plant in Texas

http://www.spacewar.com/afp/190430102708.wqwzllht.html

Ukraine says radiation levels safe after nuclear plant fire

Kiev, April 30 (AFP) Apr 30, 2019
Ukrainian officials said Tuesday that radiation levels remained safe after a fire broke out at a nuclear power plant, leading to the shutdown of one of the reactors.

The fire, which was extinguished within an hour, began late Monday at the Rivne nuclear power station in western Ukraine, around 300 kilometres (190 miles) from Kiev.

It erupted in an electrical transformer, triggering the reactor protection system and "the third reactor was turned off," Ilona Zayets, a spokeswoman for the state nuclear agency Energoatom, told AFP on Tuesday.

"Radiation levels have not risen," she said, adding that no one was hurt as a result of the incident.

She said the causes are being investigated.

The level of seriousness of the incident on the international scale for emergencies at nuclear stations is zero, the nuclear agency said in a statement.

The third reactor remained switched off on Tuesday because the transformer needs to be replaced.

Ukraine currently operates four nuclear power plants with a total of 15 reactors. Rivne power plant has four reactors.

Nuclear power is an important energy source for Ukraine, accounting for around 50 percent of its electricity production.

Ukraine was the scene of the world's worst nuclear disaster when one of the reactors at Chernobyl power station, which is about 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Kiev, exploded in 1986 during testing.

https://www.energycentral.com/news/reactor-shut-down-after-electric...

Reactor shut down after electrical cable fails at Plymouth nuclear plant

May 21, 2019

May 21-- May 21--A degraded electric cable led to a manual scram, or shutdown, Friday of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), control-room operators shut down the reactor at 11:03 p.m. when a circulating-water pump lost power.

"The shutdown was uncomplicated," stated Neil Sheehan, NRC Public Affairs. "One of our resident inspectors assigned to Pilgrim on a full-time basis responded to the plant and independently reviewed the operators' handling of the shutdown and equipment performance. He did not identify any immediate safety concerns."

A manual scram was implemented Friday evening when employees of Entergy, which operates the nuclear power plant, received indications that one of the two seawater pumps was not working. Pilgrim has a boiling water reactor which uses seawater for cooling. The water pumps take water from the bay and circulate it through tubes inside the condenser to cool steam produced by the reactor to spin the turbine.

According to Patrick O'Brien, Entergy's Senior Communications Specialist, control-room operators shut down the reactor in accordance with their procedures.

"After a thorough investigation, one of three electrical cables to the seawater pump B was found to be degraded," he said. "A plan was established to fix the issue and the electrical connection was repaired."

According to a scram report filed with the NRC by Entergy, the reactor was at 70 percent core thermal power at the time. The shutdown was initiated when a condenser vacuum began to degrade. According to the report, "all control rods are inserted as designed" and "the plant is in hot shutdown."

The scram report also stated, "This event has no impact on the health and safety of the public or plant personnel. The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified. The licensee will notify the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency."

Decommissioning of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant is scheduled to begin at the end of the month. Entergy would not comment if the reactor would be restarted before that date.

"Safety remains our number-one priority as we continue toward our final shutdown on May 31," O'Brien said

https://trinikid.com/cracks-have-been-found-on-a-nuclear-reactor-in...

Cracks Have Been Found On A Nuclear Reactor In Scotland That May Lead To Evacuations Of Major Cities

Fans of Chernobyl know that nuclear incidents are serious business and it seems that we are doomed to remake our past mistakes.

June 8, 2019

Exactly one month after the premiere of the hit HBO miniseries Chernobyl news of cracks to a nuclear reactor at the Hunterston B nuclear power plant near Ardrossan, Scotland are flooding the internet.

Scotland is home to two of Europe's oldest nuclear reactors, one of these is the Hunterston B nuclear power plant at 43 years old. Both plants are way beyond their operating lifetime and have had their operating life extended on two occasions by the EDF Energy. Both reactors are scheduled to be decommissioned in 2023, but currently, the power plant holds serious safety issues.

Edinburgh Live reports that the reactors have what is known as keyway root-cracking. This is a process where the graphite moderator cores that are housed inside of the reactor develop cracks. These cracks can cause instability within the core which can lead to a major nuclear incident. Persons who have watched the Chernobyl miniseries on HBO would have a very good idea of what can be the potential risk of such an incident.

Two of the lobbyist against restarting the reactor are Dr.Ian Fairlie, an independent

consultant on radioactivity in the environment and Dr. David Toke, Reader in Energy Policy at the University of Aberdeen.

They had this to say:

This is a serious matter because if an untoward incident were to occur – for example an earth tremor, gas excursion, steam surge, sudden outage, or sudden depressurisation, the barrels could become dislodged and/or misaligned.

These events could in turn lead to large emissions of radioactive gases. Further, if hot spots were to occur and if nuclear fuel were to react with the graphite moderator they could lead to explosions inside the reactor core.

In the very worst case the hot graphite core could become exposed to air and ignite leading to radioactive contamination of large areas of central Scotland, including the metropolitan areas of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The last period which saw the operational life of the reactors in the Hunterston B nuclear power plant get a renewal had an operational limit of 350 cracks which inspection has revealed that it is currently exceeding. The EDF is petitioning for this operational limit to be doubled to 700 cracks.

Hopefully, the persons in charge learn from mistakes of the past and don't take any risks when it comes to nuclear reactors.

https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article232683887....

Small explosion and fire at Columbia nuclear plant bring more federal scrutiny

July 15, 2019 04:58 PM

Westinghouse Nuclear has sparked concerns recently among neighbors about spills and leaks near its Columbia plant. The company makes atomic fuel for nuclear power plants across the country. Photo by Sammy Fretwell, The State

A nuclear fuel factory with a history of safety and pollution troubles near Columbia is under federal scrutiny after a fire erupted last week in a drum containing radioactive material.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans an inspection later this month at the Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel plant on Bluff Road to learn more about the incident, which occurred early Friday.

A federal report shows that a lid blew off the drum, dispersing some contents from the barrel and leading to the fire. The drum contained contaminated mop heads, filters, rags and laboratory waste that smoldered, before paper in the drum ignited, the report shows.

Several ounces of uranium 235, a radioactive heavy metal, were in the container, the report says

“About 2 in the morning, (plant personnel) heard a loud noise and discovered the lid from the drum had blown off and smoke was issuing from the drum,’’ NRC spokesman Joey Ledford said. “They called the fire brigade out.’

Inhaling or ingesting high concentrations of uranium can cause bone, lung and liver cancer, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report says no one was injured and the public was in no danger, but the incident is the latest in a series of troubles that have plagued the nuclear fuel factory southeast of Columbia.

Tom Clements, a nuclear watchdog from Columbia, said the problems at the Westinghouse plant are worrisome.

“They just can’t get their operations straight where there are no problems,’’ Clements said. “It remains a concern that management of the operation is not as it should be.’’

The Westinghouse plant, established more than 50 years ago, drew public scrutiny and criticism last year following the leak of uranium through a hole in the floor. The public later learned of other leaks at the plant that had not been reported by Westinghouse to state or federal authorities, prompting intense criticism by neighbors who said they had been kept in the dark. Groundwater beneath the plant is contaminated and many people worry that it will spread off the site.

Three years ago, the NRC launched a major investigation of the plant, after learning that hazardous amounts of uranium had built up in an air scrubber. The amount of uranium found in the air pollution device was three times higher than the federal safety standard, raising concerns about whether workers could have been exposed. No one was injured, but some workers were laid off temporarily while part of the plant was shut down during the investigation. Problems with air pollution scrubbers dated back 10 years, federal officials said.

Westinghouse officials have pledged to improve operations at the plant and have said they are committed to keeping the public better informed.

The company said it has launched a detailed investigation of why the incident occurred and “has taken actions’’ to prevent future problems like the fire. Among the efforts underway are improving controls to make sure some materials are not mixed together. The company also is looking at adding vents to relieve pressure inside the drums and monitoring for heat build-ups.

“On Friday, June 12, a drum holding uranium-containing materials used in our operations, including mops, rags, laboratory waste and a small amount of paper, had a chemical reaction and ignited,’’ the company said in a statement Monday. “The materials had been packaged for uranium recovery and incineration. The fire was quickly extinguished by plant personnel, with no impact on people, the environment or the plant. The safety of our employees and community is our highest priority. Air samples taken within the area confirmed no impact to plant personnel, the public or the environment.

Meanwhile, the NRC report said no problems were found with other drums in the area where the fire occurred. The incident occurred in an area of the plant where uranium is recovered and recycled.

The Westinghouse plant is one of the Columbia area’s major employers, with about 1,000 workers. The 550,000-square-foot facility manufactures nuclear fuel pellets for use in commercial atomic power plants. The factory was established in 1969 in a rural area of eastern Richland County between Interstate 77 and Congaree National Park.

Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article232683887....

Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article232683887....

Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article232683887...."

Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article232683887....

Read more here: https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article232683887....

https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article233263621.html

Radioactivity found in drinking water north of Columbia

July 30, 2019 10:35 AM,

State regulators are pressing a small utility with a history of troubles to explain why elevated levels of radioactivity showed up in the drinking water the company piped to customers last year in Fairfield County.

The Jenkinsville Water Co. violated state drinking water standards for radioactivity from July through December of last year, even though the company had installed a treatment system to filter out the contamination.

Radioactivity levels have dropped to within safe standards in recent months, but not by much — and state regulators say they are concerned about the 2,500 people who rely on Jenkinsville Water.

The letter gave Jenkinsville a month to tell the public about the violations. In the meantime, DHEC is considering making an enforcement case against Jenkinsville Water that could result in fines or other sanctions. The violations have been referred to DHEC’s enforcement staff, agency spokeswoman Laura Renwick said in an email.

Jenkinsville, a community of working class neighborhoods and higher-end lake houses north of Columbia, has had problems with radioactivity in the water before. Since 2010, the water company has been sanctioned by DHEC four separate times for failing to comply with state drinking water standards, including two for radioactivity.

The company began treating the water at one problematic well after finding radioactivity exceeded safe drinking water standards in 2013 and 2014. Some of the problems cleared up after the treatment process began, but radioactivity levels spiked last year in the public supply well on Clowney Road, DHEC records show.

The Jenkinsville Water Co. operates in a part of South Carolina served by the V.C. Summer nuclear plant, but its problems are not known to be related to the power plant. Like some other small water systems, Jenkinsville is in an area where radioactivity occurs naturally in groundwater.

Despite that, water systems must take steps to lower the naturally occurring radiation in drinking water they supply to customers to make sure people’s health is protected. Over time, drinking water with elevated levels of radioactive pollutants can increase a person’s chances of bone cancer and kidney damage.

In this case, Jenkinsville was cited for having gross alpha levels above safe drinking water standards. These readings are a measure of radioactivity in the water from contaminants such as radium or uranium.

DHEC says it is not common for water systems to have violations for high gross alpha readings. Agency records show that from 2012 to 2018, the agency made more than 250 enforcement cases for drinking water violations statewide, but only about a dozen were for radioactive pollution in water.

Jenkinsville Water Co. manager Greg Ginyard said the water is safe to drink. He maintained that the treatment system is functioning since radioactivity has met the safe drinking water standard this year. DHEC said other wells the company relies on comply with the radiation standard.

Ginyard questioned whether elevated levels of gross alpha radiation last year resulted from DHEC errors since that agency tests the water. He is scheduled to meet with DHEC Aug. 7.

“It could have been a mistake,’’ Ginyard said. “We didn’t know anything about it until Thursday, when we got the letter from DHEC.’’

The Jenkinsville Water Co. is one of many small utilities across South Carolina that struggle to comply with drinking water requirements. Unlike big systems, scores of smaller systems lack the money or the expertise to operate in compliance with state and federal safe drinking water laws, The State reported in its “Tainted Water’’ series this past March. Small water systems individually serve only small pockets of the state’s population, but collectively provide water to about 800,000 people.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/five-dead-after-explosion-at-russi...

Five dead after explosion at Russian nuclear facility during missile test — radiation spike detected: report

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-49434131

Lightning strike affected Dounreay nuclear site

http://www.arirang.com/News/News_View.asp?nseq=245934

Japan finds radioactive waste leaked in typhoon aftermath Updated: 2019-10-18 16:45:21 KST

Japanese media report that traces of radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant have been found in various places following the season's strongest typhoon, Hagibis.
The Tokyo Shimbun reported Friday that ten bags that had contained radioactive waste were found empty along the Furumichi River, indicating that the contents had spilled out.
Those are understood to be some of the bags that the nearby city of Tamura said earlier this week were swept away by the storm's heavy rain.
Meanwhile, two other villages in Fukushima Prefecture, Kawauchi and Nihonmatsu, say they found a total of 33 bags downstream and two of them were empty.
The Japanese government had collected about 30 million tons of radioactive debris after the nuclear disaster in March 2011.

The Tokyo Shimbun also pointed out that the authorities had not managed the nuclear waste facilities properly.
According to local media, four of the temporary storage units in Gunma and Fukushima Prefectures have been made inaccessible because of landslides and floods, so workers cannot even inspect them.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
In 2015, around 240 bags of contaminated waste from the Fukushima plant went missing in similar circumstances when the region was hit by torrential rain.

https://www.wltx.com/article/news/vcsummershutsdownduetoleak/101-1b...

Dominion Energy shuts down V.C. Summer plant after finding 'small leak'

https://valliantnews.com/2019/11/16/officials-on-alert-after-tunnel...

Officials on alert after tunnel collapse at Hanford nuclear waste s...

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/01/12/breaking-news/canadian-pr...

Canadian province retracts alert of nuclear power incident

An emergency alert issued by the Canadian province of Ontario reporting an unspecified “incident” at a nuclear plant is shown on a smartphone today. Ontario Power Generation later sent a message saying the alert “was sent in error.” The initial message said the incident had occurred at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, though it added there had been no abnormal release of radioactivity from the station.

TORONTO >> People throughout the Canadian province of Ontario awoke today to a cellphone alert warning them of an “incident” at a nuclear plant just east of Toronto — only to later be told the message was a mistake.

The message, which was transmitted throughout the nation’s most populous province, was accompanied by a shrill emergency broadcast noise. It said an unspecified event had occurred at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. There was no abnormal release of radioactivity, it added, and people did not need to take protective action.

More than an hour later, utility officials sent another message saying the alert “was sent in error” and that there was “no danger to the public or environment.”

“No further action is required,” said the message, which was also sent to television screens.

The alert went out during a routine training exercise being conducted by the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre, Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones said in a statement that apologized for the mistake.

She said the government had started a full investigation and would “take the appropriate steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

Jim Vlahos, a 44-year-old Toronto man, awoke to the alert and quickly made a hotel reservation more than 60 miles away in Niagara Falls. He said he figured he would go as far west as possible and then cross the border.

“Having watched ‘Chernobyl’ didn’t help,” he said, referring to the HBO show about the 1986 nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union. “The lack of communication following the alert didn’t help either,” he said.

“I have no problem leaving my phone on for these types of alerts,” Vlahos said. “But I would expect some more info from the government so I wouldn’t have to overreact the way I did.”

Many people slept through the first alert and saw it was a false alarm by the time they woke up.

Jonathan Davies, also 44, was taken aback when he spotted the alert while driving. But he waited until after he picked up his Tim Hortons coffee to check the news.

“I can’t cope with much until I have my coffee, at least a few sips,” he said. “I got scared and went online but found no information.” He later saw the the follow-up alert that indicated it was a false alarm.

Scott Pelton, a 48 year-old Toronto resident, wondered if was a cyber attack.

“Could be sign of a hack or could just be an innocent mistake? But is a mistake like that possible?” Pelton said.

Pickering Mayor Dave Ryan said he was “very troubled” by the message. He said on Twitter that he spoke to provincial officials and demanded an investigation.

Toronto Mayor John Tory joined him, tweeting that there were “far too many unanswered questions” about the warning that was sent across the province of 14 million people.

Terry Flynn, who teaches crisis communications at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, said the error runs the risk of eroding public trust.

“When we have continuous problems in these systems, then we have a lack of trust and people begin to ignore them. So that’s the biggest fallout from this scenario,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general recommended changes to the emergency alert system in the United States after Hawaii officials in 2018 mistakenly warned the public about a nonexistent incoming ballistic missile. An employee at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent the missile alert to cellphones and broadcasters, triggering panic until the agency sent another message 38 minutes later notifying people it was a false alarm.

Pickering, which opened in 1971, was scheduled to be decommissioned this year, but the provincial government committed to keeping it open until 2024. Decommissioning is now set to start in 2028.

The plant generates 14% of Ontario’s electricity and is responsible for 4,500 jobs across the region, according to Ontario Power Generation.

The station has experienced several earlier incidents. In 2011, a pump seal failure caused the spill of more than 19,200 gallons (73,000 liters) of demineralized water into Lake Ontario, though with no significant risks to public health, according to local authorities.

In 1994, the plant automatically shut down after a faulty valve caused 132 tons of heavy water to spill. It was the first time a Canadian nuclear reactor had to use its emergency core cooling system to prevent fuel overheating.

Ontario Power “has a sophisticated and robust notification process in place that we would immediately follow in the unlikely event of an incident at the station,” Chief Nuclear Officer Sean Granville said. “I want to assure the public that there was no incident at the station, and the plant is operating as designed.”

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200117_10/

Fukushima nuclear plant's frozen wall leaks

Power outage hit San Onofre nuclear plant on Wednesday

Backup systems continued to power essential systems, officials said

 https://www.ocregister.com/2020/01/30/power-outage-hit-san-onofre-n...

Backup generators rumbled to life at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on Wednesday, Jan. 29, when an issue with transmission lines feeding the plant caused a 44-minute power outage, operator Southern California Edison said.

Power cut out at 5:05 p.m. and was restored by 6 p.m., said Edison spokesman John Dobken. Workers followed procedures and were continuing to restore plant systems into the night. All systems were powered back up on Thursday.

San Onofre is where the power systems of Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric meet. In Wednesday’s high winds, SDG&E had a glitch in its system close to 6 p.m., nearly an hour after San Onofre lost power, so was likely not tied to the outage there, an SDG&E spokeswoman said.

The cause of the outage is still being investigated, but may be due to high winds affecting the lines feeding San Onofre. This story will be updated as more information comes forward.

Electricity powers water circulation around the hot waste in San Onofre’s spent fuel pools — one of the reasons officials are eager to move all waste into dry storage as soon as possible. Dry storage requires no electricity. All waste is slated to be in dry storage later this year.

The fuel in the pools has been cooling for more than five years, and backup power was directed to other essential systems, Dobken said. Diesel generators and other equipment responded as designed “and at no time was there any public impact,” Edison said in a statement.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission office was notified as a courtesy.

PUBLISHED: January 30, 2020 at 4:07 pm | UPDATED: January 31, 2020 at 11:17 am

 (Photo courtesy of Edison International)

~

https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article240309966.html

Holes found in protective liner at SC nuclear fuel factory. Should you worry?

Inspectors at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel factory near Columbia recently found 13 small leaks in a protective liner that is supposed to keep pollution from dripping into soil and groundwater below the plant.
Now, the company plans to check a concrete floor beneath the liner, as well as soil below the plant, for signs of contamination that could have resulted from the tears, which were characterized in a federal inspection report as ‘’pinhole leaks.’’
The pinhole leaks, discovered by Westinghouse late in 2019, may have formed after company employees walked across the liner and weakened it, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

If that’s true, it would mark the second time in two years that Westinghouse has run into trouble over employees walking across protective liners.

Foot traffic weakened a liner in another part of the plant that contributed to a 2018 leak of uranium solution through the plant’s floor, according to the NRC. The 2018 leak, which occurred near a spiking station that mixes solutions, contaminated soil, prompting an outcry from community residents about operating practices at Westinghouse.

Since the leak of uranium solution, state and federal agencies have revealed the existence of previously unreported leaks at the plant. Troubles at the plant have sparked public meetings in eastern Richland County, where many neighbors have criticized Westinghouse for not keeping them informed.
The Westinghouse plant converts uranium hexafluoride into uranium dioxide to make nuclear fuel assemblies for atomic power plants. Chemicals used in the process can be hazardous if people are exposed to substantial amounts. Among the threats are kidney and liver damage. Uranium is a radioactive material that also can increase a person’s risks of cancer.
Paul Threatt, an area resident and former Westinghouse employee, said he’s glad the company is looking for such problems. Westinghouse reported the pinhole leaks to the NRC after an inspection. The pinholes had not showed up in inspections before, the NRC says.
“If they caught this in time, it’s not such a big deal,’’ said Threatt, a member of a citizens group monitoring the Westinghouse plant. “The other (liner issue from 2018) had been ignored for quite a while and it ate through the concrete and allowed uranyl nitrate to escape into the ground.’’
The NRC inspection report, completed in January, said Westinghouse was supposed to ensure that walking pads were across the liner to prevent problems, but “this proved to be ineffective.’’ The report said “13 pinhole leaks were found in the liner, indicating that the liner had been walked on.’’ The problems, discovered Dec. 9, occurred in a section of the plant with a second spiking station, similar to the spiking station where the leak was found in 2018.

Tom Clements, a nuclear safety watchdog and one of the plant’s most vocal critics, said the latest problem is nothing to ignore. Walking on the liner contributed to the 2018 leak, and now the company has found holes from employees walking on another section of the liner, he said.
“It reveals they have not learned any lessons from the other incident,’’ Clements said.
Westinghouse had little to say about the pinhole leaks, referring to comments in the recent inspection report. The company noted that it found the leaks and told federal regulators. The company said it is replacing the spiking station where the pinhole leaks were found.
“Appropriate corrective actions have been taken for the causes of this issue,’’ spokeswoman Courtney Boone said in an email Friday.
Laura Renwick, a spokeswoman for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, said her agency was aware of damage to the liner. The agency said Westinghouse will submit a testing plan to DHEC in the next month as it investigates “the area under the spiking station.’’ She did not elaborate but said the public is not in danger because the area in question is inside the building.

Like the NRC, DHEC regulates the Westinghouse plant.
Westinghouse’s Bluff Road fuel plant, a major employer with more than 1,000 workers, is one of only three like it in the country. Established in 1969 between Columbia and what today is Congaree National Park, the factory makes fuel rods for the nation’s atomic power plants.
The company has a decades long history of groundwater contamination. Regulators say the pollution is contained on the site, and if tainted water does trickle off the property, it won’t flow toward homes in the Hopkins area that rely on wells for drinking water. Groundwater problems include contamination from fluoride, solvents and nitrate. Concerns have risen recently upon the revelation of previously unknown leaks at the plant in 2008 and 2011. Westinghouse knew about the leaks but did not inform regulators for years.
Westinghouse also has had multiple problems in the past five years complying with federal nuclear standards. In addition to the 2018 uranium leak, the company also had troubles in 2016 when inspectors found that uranium had built up in an air pollution control device, creating a potentially dangerous situation for workers. Last year, the company dealt with a small fire in a bin containing nuclear plant refuse, as well as uranium-tainted water leaking from a rusty shipping container.

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/02/16/dont-panic-nuclear-a...

‘Don't panic’: Nuclear agency urges controlled reaction to radiation in South Tangerang housing complex

Jakarta / Sun, February 16, 2020 / 02:40 pm

Officers from the National Police's bomb squad and the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency (Bapetan) measure radiation levels at the Batan Indah housing complex in Serpong, South Tangerang, Banten, on Saturday. (Antara/Muhammad Iqbal)

The National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan) has asked residents of the Batan Indah housing complex in South Tangerang, Banten, to remain calm after finding high levels of radiation within the complex.
Agency spokesperson Heru Umbara said locals should not panic because the case was being handled by the relevant authorities.
"Residents can carry out activities as usual, as long as they do not enter the area that has been marked as contaminated. If managed properly, exposure to this radiation will not endanger the residents," Heru said in a statement on Saturday.
The Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency (Bapeten) first detected the radiation during a routine check meant to ensure that the agency’s mobile radiation detection unit was working properly.
“From Jan. 30 to 31, Bapeten conducted a function test with target areas of Pamulang, the Puspiptek [Center for Science and Technology Research] housing complex, the Muncul area, the ITI [Indonesia Institute of Technology] campus, the Batan Indah housing complex and the Serpong train station,” Bapeten spokesperson Indra Gunawan said in a statement on Friday.
He said that all of the areas showed normal radiation levels except for a vacant lot next to the volleyball court at Block J of the Batan Indah complex.
“A joint Bapeten and Batan team conducted a search to find the source of the high radiation on Feb. 7 to 8 and found several radioactive fragments,” he said, adding that after the fragments were removed, tests showed that the radiation levels in the area had decreased but were still above normal levels. “Based on those results, we concluded that the contamination had spread in the area and decontamination efforts had to be conducted by removing or dredging contaminated soil and removing contaminated trees and other vegetation.”
Bapeten spokesperson Abdul Qohhar Teguh said that the agency was not yet able to confirm the source of the radioactive fragments found in the area.

“For the time being, we have not focused on investigating the location of the source, where it came from, why it was there, who brought it. At the moment the joint team is still focusing on clearing the scene,” Qohhar told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
He added, however, that the team’s initial findings indicated that the radiation did not come from a nuclear reactor leak. The Puspiptek building, which is located about five kilometers away from the Batan Indah complex, houses several small reactors used for experimental purposes.
“The source of radiation that we found [in the complex] is Caesium-137, which is frequently used for industrial purposes,” he said. “Caesium-137 is also one of the substances that will contaminate the environment when there is a reactor accident, such as at Chernobyl or Fukushima. But in addition to Caesium-137 there would also be other substances [in a reactor accident]. In this case, the only radiation source is Caesium-137, so the hypothesis that this incident is due to a reactor leak is baseless.”
Qohhar added that when radiation exposure rate went above a certain threshold, the effects would be felt by humans, with symptoms such as changes in skin color, dizziness, nausea or even death.
“The exposure rate in Batan Indah is far below this threshold,” he said.
A resident of Batan Indah complex, who asked to remain anonymous, said that she received a letter from the neighborhood unit (RT) earlier this week informing her about the radiation. She felt everything was under control.
“I think there is no need to panic. I believe that the authorities are doing their best to solve the problem. And if they thought it was dangerous, they would have warned us. But so far there is still no warning, so we’re safe,” she said.
She said that she passed the volleyball field every day during her morning walk and that besides the yellow barrier tape around the vacant lot, everything looked normal.

Heru said that Batan was currently in the process of cleaning up the exposed area and had collected 52 drums of soil and vegetation from the locations.
“The results of the cleanup showed that the material causing the radiation had mixed with the soil. The findings are currently being analyzed in the Batan laboratory,” he said.
He added that after the cleanup, the radiation levels fell by 30 percent, from 149 microSieverts per hour to 98.9 microSieverts per hour. The normal exposure rate from background radiation is around 0.03 microSieverts per hour.
The clean-up process, Heru said, started on Feb. 12 and would continue until early March.
He added that the team would soon conduct a radiation test known as “whole-body counting” on residents who lived in the exposed area to measure their bodies’ radioactivity levels.
"We will keep doing the cleanup until the area is thoroughly clean and there is no longer any danger to the people and the environment,” Heru said.

https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article240587476....

3 plutonium-tainted Hanford facilities are at high risk of collapse, feds discover

Richland, WA
Three radioactively contaminated underground structures at high risk of collapse on the Hanford nuclear reservation could be filled with concrete-like grout within a year.
The Department of Energy has concluded they could fail and release radioactive contamination.
“A number of structures are overstressed and at risk of age-related failure, which could result in a release of contamination with impacts to human health and the environment,” DOE said in a letter last week to the Environmental Protection Agency, a Hanford regulator.

Two of the structures, a trench and a tank at the center of the site, are estimated to be contaminated with a combined 170 to 255 pounds of plutonium.

DOE could award a contract for grouting as soon as March, according to the letter.

Hanford was used to produce plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program during World War II and the Cold War. Environmental cleanup is underway now. Courtesy Department of Energy
It has not declared an emergency, but is calling the grouting a “time-critical” action, which allows work to proceed during a public comment period that could begin in late March.
The trenches and settling tank were all used at the Plutonium Finishing Plant in central Hanford, where plutonium from fuel irradiated in Hanford reactors arrived in a liquid solution into buttons the size of hockey pucks for shipment to weapons plans.
Earlier this month workers finished demolishing the Plutonium Finishing Plant down to the ground, but below-ground structures still need to be addressed.
Highest risk of collapse

After a partial collapse of a waste storage tunnel at Hanford’s PUREX plant in May 2017, DOE and its contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. analyzed other old and contaminated structures to determine if they were at risk of collapsing.
They determined that the three below-ground structures at the Plutonium Finishing Plant presented the highest risk, requiring stabilization to prevent a collapse and the potential to spread contamination.

The structures include a settling tank and two cribs, sometimes called trenches, where liquid waste from the Plutonium Finishing Plant were poured into the ground.
A Governmental Accountability Office report released last week also looked at the larger of the two cribs and the settling tank, saying that the Z-9 crib might not be cleaned up until 2034 and the settling tank might not be cleaned up until 2028.

The Z-9 crib is contaminated with an estimated 105 pounds of plutonium and the nearly 100 cubic yards of radioactive sludge in the settling tank contains an estimated 65-150 pounds of plutonium.
The PUREX tunnel that collapsed and the second waste storage tunnel at the plant have both been filled with grout, in a process similar to what’s proposed for the Plutonium Finishing Plant underground structures.
According to preliminary information posted by DOE at Hanford.gov, grouting the three structures most at risk now would not preclude more cleanup in the future.

Support for grouting
Hanford Communities, a coalition of Hanford-area-local governments, supports the grouting plan.
“Injecting engineered grout into the void space of all three structures will insure that the roofs will not collapse and provide a pathway for contamination to be released into the environment,” Hanford Communities said in a statement Monday.
The structures pose a greater risk even than the second Hanford PUREX tunnel, which was filled with grout to prevent a collapse, it said.
Hanford Challenge, a Seattle-based Hanford watchdog group, does not object to the grouting as a short-term solution, but it should not be a substitute for complete cleanup, said Tom Carpenter, executive director.

Here’s what DOE plans:
▪ The Z-9 crib, which operated from 1955 to 1962, would be filled with about 4,000 cubic yards of grout, making it by far the largest of the three proposed grouting projects.
The crib is a 20-foot deep hole sloping to a 60-by-30-foot floor, where about 1 million gallons of waste from the plant was poured. It has a concrete roof, supported with six concrete columns.
The grouting could be completed in the fall or early winter of 2020.
▪ The Z-361 Settling Tank, which was used from 1949 to 1973, would be filled with 400 cubic yards of grout.
It is a reinforced concrete structure that is 28 feet long, 15 feet wide and up to 18 feet deep. Contaminated liquids were sent to the tank to allow solid waste to settle out.
A video inspection in 1999 showed cracking in the interior roof of the tank, dissolving of the interior steel liner and deterioration of the concrete sidewall of the tank.
Grouting could be completed this summer.
▪ The Z-2 Crib, which was used from 1949 to 1969, would be filled with 140 cubic yards of grout.
No estimate of plutonium in the crib was immediately available, but waste with about 15 pounds of plutonium was discharged to the Z-2 Crib and its companion Z-1 Crib. Overflow from the Z-2 Crib went to the Z-1 Crib.
The soil on top of the Z-1 Crib has sunk and extra soil was added there earlier.
Both cribs are open-bottomed boxes about 12-feet square and 14-feet tall.
DOE would like to have the Z-2 Crib grouted by summer 2020.
Tank, cribs cleanup plans
A final cleanup decision has already been approved for the three structures, and DOE believes the grouting will not interfere with those plans.
The structures of the two cribs are planned to be removed and the contaminated soil beneath them removed and treated for permanent disposal.
The plan for the settling tank is to remove the remaining sludge from the tank and grout it in place.
DOE’s proposed schedule to begin work starts with a contract award for grouting in March and testing of grouting equipment in April and May.
A video inspection of the underground structures could be done in May, with grouting beginning in July for the smallest structures.
That would likely but the start of grouting after the end of a 30-day public comment period. DOE also is expected to announce a public meeting in March to explain the project.

https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/202...

inaccurate-info-about-watts-bar-problem/517808/

Federal regulators cite TVA for providing inaccurate info about Watts Bar problem
Regulators hit TVA for third time in four months with fine or proposed penalties for nuclear safety violations
March 10th, 2020

This story was updated Wednesday, March 11, 2020, at 12 a.m. with more information.
For the second time in as many weeks, federal regulators have cited the Tennessee Valley Authority for violating nuclear safety standards in the past at one of its Tennessee nuclear power plants.

In a letter released Tuesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission accused TVA of providing inaccurate and insufficient Unit 1 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tennessee.formation to regulators in November 2015 when pressurized water levels rose uncontrollably during the startup o The NRC citation, which TVA has the right to challenge, identifies a dozen violations of NRC rules and could lead to another civil penalty against TVA. The NRC is also considering license suspensions or restrictions on some current and former TVA nuclear employees involved in the initial response to the problem and subsequent reports.
Kenneth G. O'Brien, director of the special project team assigned to study the incidents for the NRC Office of Enforcement, said TVA failed to maintain proper operating logs and failed to use proper procedures to resolve a pressurized water problem in the reactor's residual heat remover. After internal investigations by both TVA and the NRC, O'Brien cited "multiple examples in which TVA apparently maintained or submitted to the NRC incomplete or inaccurate information from December 2015 to March 2016."
"Based on the results of the investigation, 12 apparent violations were identified and are being considered for escalated enforcement action," O'Brien wrote in a letter to TVA.
TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said the NRC notification stems from events more the four years ago and said the incident "caused no immediate public safety concern and did not impact employee safety."
"TVA is fully committed to the safe operation of its nuclear units," Hopson said. "We'll ensure we have corrected all findings the NRC has noted."
Document
Read the NRC letter to TVA

https://media.timesfreepress.com//news/documents/2020/03/10/ml20065...

The NRC finding of apparent violations comes just a week after the NRC also cited TVA for violating whistle blower protections for nuclear workers by disciplining and then firing nuclear engineers who raised questions about the leadership and processes at the Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants from 2015 to 2018. TVA continues to be under heightened regulatory oversight by the NRC for its "chilled work environment" for nuclear workers to voice their safety concerns.
Last November, the NRC also slapped a $145,000 fine on TVA for providing inaccurate information to the NRC regarding the licensing and startup work at the Unit 2 reactor at Watts Bar.
NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said the civil penalty last November and the apparent violations issued this month are all separate instances. But with three NRC enforcement actions against TVA in just four months — plus the ongoing "chilled work environment" assessment of the utility's nuclear program — TVA is currently facing the most amount of NRC enforcement actions of any U.S. utility.
TVA has the right to challenge both of the new NRC citations issued this month with either written responses or a contested hearing.
Last week, TVA Nuclear Chief Timothy Rausch said TVA disagrees with NRC's findings about improper retaliation against its nuclear engineers and said nuclear safety remains the highest priority for the federal utility.
Despite the NRC findings of apparent violations this month and the fine paid by TVA last fall, Rausch said "indications through recent independent evaluations are that our safety culture has improved at all three stations (Sequoyah, Watts Bar and Browns Ferry) and in our corporate office."
Since he was named head of TVA's nuclear power program in October 2018, Rausch said he has worked to improve TVA's safety culture and performance.
Hopson said the past problem cited by the NRC at Watts Bar and how it was handled in 2015 and 2016 "is not indicative of our current performance or culture."
"Watts Bar is a different site with a different leadership team and with improved performance," he said.
Indeed, the NRC's new annual assessment of the Watts Bar plant issued last week rates TVA's operation of the plant in the highest performance category "because all inspection finding had very low safety significance."

But Mark Miller, director of the NRC's division of reactor projects, said regulators are "still deliberating on the appropriate time to close the Watts Bar Chilling Effect Letter" regarding how employee safety concerns are handled and the NRC's heightened oversight of such concerns will remain in place, at least for now.
David Lochbaum, a former NRC and TVA nuclear engineer who was formerly the director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the latest incidents identified by the NRC last week "are but the latest in a long-standing practice of TVA violating federal regulations by retaliating against nuclear workers raising safety concerns" under different executives and nuclear managers.
"Despite this management musical chairs, TVA has managed to sustain its practice of illegally retaliating against nuclear workers," Lochbaum said after reviewing the latest retaliation findings against TVA's nuclear engineers. "Curious that an organization created and tasked with flood control is unwilling or unable to stem a flood of whistle blower infractions."

https://www.danapointtimes.com/7000-gallons-wastewater-songs-spill-...

About 7000 gallons of wastewater from SONGS spill into the pacific

Roughly 7,000 gallons of partially treated wastewater from the sewage treatment facility at the San Onofre power plant was released more than a mile out into the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday morning.
According to the Hazardous Materials Spill Report that Southern California Edison filed with the governor’s office on Wednesday, the release of the partially treated sewage was caused by an influx of water at the treatment facility.
SoCal Edison, the owner the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or SONGS, said the spill, which was released through the plant’s Unit 2 conduit, was a non-radiological release.
“The wastewater underwent the proper dilution but was released before it could be fully processed,” Edison said in an emailed statement to Dana Point Times. “As designed, a signal alerted operators to the situation and the discharge pumps were turned off.”
Edison also said that while it’s working to identify the cause of the influx of the water, the system has been taken offline until it operations can safely return.

https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2020/03/nuclear-plant-could-se...

Nuclear plant could 'sequester’ employees to live on-site under pandemic plan
Posted Mar 27, 2020

COVERT, MI — The company that owns Palisades nuclear plant has a private pandemic plan that includes a contingency to sequester employees live at the site temporarily, though that scenario is unlikely, a company spokeswoman said.
Entergy owns the nuclear plant situated on the Lake Michigan shoreline about 7 miles south of South Haven. The plant generates 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 800,000 homes in Michigan, Entergy Spokeswoman Val Gent said in an email message.

The plant has about 600 employees, according to the website.
The plan includes contingencies to sequester a particular set of employees onsite, in the unlikely event such a measure is necessary. Employees are not currently being sequestered, she said on March 25.
Sequester means employees would reside on site, Gent said. The company declined to release its full plans to MLive because they contain business-sensitive information, she said.
“Palisades remains safe, secure and stable, and there is currently no impact on the delivery of energy," Gent said. “We are confident our business continuity plan, which is specifically designed for these types of situations, will ensure the reliable delivery of electricity. Entergy’s pandemic response plan consists of a phased approach to ensure adequate qualified resources remain available to safely operate and maintain Palisades.”
The power plant is not alone in preparing for expected impacts of coronavirus. Local governments have shut down meetings and buildings, while police and city utility operators are ready to shift personnel if the staff is hit. Many businesses have closed — most temporarily, but some for good.

https://ctmirror.org/2020/04/03/most-ne-nuclear-power-offline-due-t...

Most NE nuclear power offline due to timing fluke and problem

April 3 2020

All but unnoticed as the coronavirus pandemic tears through the Northeast: the New England power grid is without 75% of its nuclear power – with more to go.
Many nuclear power plants schedule refueling operations in spring and fall when electricity demand is lower, and that is the case in New England, where the three remaining nuclear plants typically supply about one-third of the electricity. The Seabrook Nuclear plant in New Hampshire went offline on Tuesday for its refueling – that’s 1,245 megawatts of power. Unit 2 of the Millstone Nuclear Power Station, with about 870 megawatts, is due for refueling this spring as well.
But in the meantime, Millstone Unit 3, which carries about 1,230 megawatts , tripped offline less than a day after the Seabrook shutdown due to a circuit fault between the main generator and the switchyard, according to Kenneth Holt, spokesman for the plant’s owner Dominion Energy. The automatic reactor protection system kicked in as it was supposed to and the plant was shut down.
As of Friday noon, the grid mix showed nuclear at 8% and natural gas at a whopping 68%.
While the situation is abnormal and the timing with the health emergency a fluke, it does not pose any special risks for the region, especially since the demand for power is lower than normal because so much commerce and industry has temporarily shut down.
“One good thing going for us is we do have electricity,” Holt said. “It’s not like a hurricane or a blizzard that’s taken down the power lines. We as a company understand how important electricity is right now. For doctors. For manufacturing facilities making supplies.”

Nuclear plants have some wiggle room, but not a lot, for refueling. In the case of Millstone, each unit is refueled every 18 months in an alternating rotation. Unit 3, the one offline now, is due for refueling in the fall.

Refueling takes about one month during which one-third of the plant’s nuclear rods, which are about one foot-by-one foot by 12 to 14 feet long, are replaced. They last about 4.5 years.

Other maintenance is done at the time. Some is required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Some is done because of the convenience of the plant being shut down and can be deferred. Due to the pandemic situation, Dominion plans to skip the optional work to minimize the number of workers needed.
There are typically 600 to 700 people on site at Millstone during normal operations. Under the pandemic emergency plan that’s been in place for the plant for about 20 years and is updated regularly, that force has been streamlined.
Anyone who can work from home must do so. There is a ready-reserve force of people on standby at home. Cleaning regimens have been stepped up and markers are now on the floor in 6-foot intervals to keep people separated.
Employees must take their temperature before they leave home for the plant. Their temperatures are taken again when they get there. Employees are not being held at the plant full time.
For refueling, typically an additional 800 to 1,000 workers are brought in. That force will be streamlined this year. Holt did not provide exact numbers.
Holt declined to discuss when Unit 3 would be ready to go back online. Other than refueling – that unit, which went into operation in 1986, was offline in December of 2019 for five days to make repairs to one the backup diesel generators.
Unit 2, which began operating in 1975, was offline in December of 2019 for three days for repairs to one of the pumps that supplies water to the steam generators.

and another:

https://www.pottsmerc.com/news/workers-terrified-at-limerick-nuclea...

Workers 'terrified' at Limerick nuclear plant amid coronavirus

Apr 5 2020

LIMERICK — Contractors working during a refueling project at the Limerick Generating Station are “terrified” they’re working in a “breeding ground” for COVID-19 and expressed concerns about the company’s safety practices during the pandemic.
“I’m in a constant state of paranoia. In my opinion, it’s just a complete breeding ground, a cesspool for this,” said one man, who spoke on condition of anonymity to MediaNews Group out of fear of losing his job.
The contractor said supplemental workers began showing up at the plant days before a Unit 1 refueling outage began on March 27. Montgomery County officials have said they were informed that up to 1,400 contractors may have been summoned to work on the project as a coronavirus outbreak was taking shape in the county.

The first cases of coronavirus were reported in the county on March 7.
The workers interviewed claimed that social distancing measures of standing at least six feet apart, which have repeatedly been recommended by health officials during the outbreak, were not in place at the plant as they initially reported for their jobs.
“From the first day I got there, there were no less than 100 people in the training room being processed. I have pictures from that day of people literally sitting on top of each other, no one enforcing social distancing,” the man said on Friday. “There were computer labs for people to take the tests they need to get into the plant, people sitting at every computer elbow to elbow. So, I’ve been concerned since the minute I walked in there.”

During shift changes, he said, people from both shifts congregated in the break room “standing room only, just packed in there.”
“They did not enforce any social distancing whatsoever until this past Wednesday (April 1) when the news got to the media. That’s when they started enforcing some social distancing,” the man claimed. “Being put at risk like this makes us mad.”
The contractor described the current social distancing at the plant as “a half-assed thing.” “They made us sit further apart in the break room. But that first week and a half we were elbow to elbow with 40 people in the break room at any given time,” he claimed.
Those interviewed said social distancing is now being practiced somewhat outside the plant but inside is a different story.
“There’s groups of people just working on top of each other, still to this day,” the contractor claimed on Friday, adding there are jobs in the plant where social distancing cannot be adhered to, “because you need multiple pairs of hands to accomplish the jobs.”

A second contractor, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, expressed fear about working at the plant during the pandemic.
“People are starting to get nervous now,” that contractor said. “I am terrified. I have trouble sleeping and have crazy anxiety.”
The contractor follows a strict routine after a day of being at the plant.
“I strip down in the garage. I throw everything in the washer. I run and get in the shower. You wash yourself three or four times and you’re still so paranoid you don’t feel clean enough,” the second contractor described a routine that is followed before having contact with any friends or relatives. “It’s what I do now.”
Both contractors said that despite their fears, they continue to report to work because they need jobs and their income, especially during the current tumultuous economic times, continues...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/11352239/chernobyl-forest-fires-radia...

FLAMING HELL Chernobyl forest fires release ‘locked radiation’ causing spike ’16 times higher than normal’

8 Apr 2020, 10:17Updated: 8 Apr 2020, 10:17

FOREST FIRES near the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster have reportedly pushed radiation levels in the area up to 16 times their normal levels.
The blazes are releasing radiation trapped for decades in soil surrounding the Ukrainian city of Prypiat, which was abandoned in 1986 following an explosion at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant that caused the world's worst nuclear accident.

The fires began on Friday evening in the western part of the exclusion zone and spread to nearby forests, some of which are in the part of the zone that still has higher radiation.
Footage shot by the emergency service shows forests covered with dense smoke, burning grass and shrubs.
Ukrainian authorities have attempted to play down fears that the radiation could spread to the capital Kiev just 62 miles from Prypiat.
Radiation levels at the centre of the inferno over the weekend had skyrocketed, according to Yegor Firsov, head of Ukraine’s state ecological inspection service.

The fires began on Friday evening in the western part of the exclusion zone and spread to nearby forests

“There is bad news – radiation is above normal in the fire’s centre,” Yegor wrote on Facebook Sunday.
The post included a video with a Geiger counter showing radiation at 16 times above normal.
Yegor added that the blaze had spread to about 100 hectares of forest.
About 100 firefighters have been drafted in to fight the fire, as well as planes and helicopters.

What is the Chernobyl disaster?
Here's what you need to know about the world's worst nuclear accident
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is situated near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat in Ukraine
The power plant exploded in April 1986 when its poorly designed fourth reactor suffered a huge power surge
The explosion and subsequent fires released a lot of nuclear radaition into the astmosphere
The intial explosion killed two people but radiation sickness quickly began to kill more plant workers and emergency services employees who were responding to the inicdent
Authorities were slow to release information about the extent of the disaster to the outside world until radiation alarms began to go off at a nuclear plant in Sweden
Trees surrounding the area absorded so much radition they died and turned red resulting in an area known as the 'Red Forest'
116 000 people were evacuated from the surrounding area in 1986 and there is now a 30km exlcusion zone where it is illegal to live
Tourists who visit Ukraine can book a short tour of Chernobyl because a short time spent in the radiation is not thought to be harmful
The New Safe Confinement is the name of the shelter which now surrounds the exploded reactor and is intened to confine any radition that it stills gives off
This confinement was not compelted until 2018
Experts believe that the area won't be safe for humans to live in for another 20,000 years

The nuclear power plant exploded in 1986

The fires follow unusually dry weather but police also say they have identified a 27-year old local resident accused of deliberately setting fire to grass in the region.
Local authorities in Ukraine have dismissed residents' concerns that the fires have led to unsafe radiation levels.
The radiation levels in the capital Kiev and the exclusion zone established around the plant in 1986 "did not exceed natural background levels", the zone's authorities said.

https://www.richmond.com/business/water-leak-shuts-down-one-of-two-...

April 10 2020

Water leak shuts down one of two nuclear reactors at North Anna Power Station

Dominion Energy has shut down one of its two nuclear reactors at the North Anna Power Station after operators discovered what a spokesman for the company called a "small leak of water" in the reactor’s coolant pumps.
Unit 2 at the plant in Louisa County was shut down at about 1:30 a.m. on Thursday and remained offline on Friday afternoon. Unit 1 was unaffected and was still operating at 100 percent capacity on Friday.
The water leak was about 0.1 gallons per minute at the time the unit was shut down, said Ken Holt, a spokesman for Dominion.

“The water from the leak was contained in the containment building and did not go into the environment,” Holt said. “The source has been identified and repairs are underway. All the systems operated as designed during the shutdown and the reactor is currently offline and stable while repairs are being made.”
Richmond-based Dominion operates twin 980-megawatt nuclear reactors at the 1,043-acre North Anna Power Station. Each unit can produce enough energy for about 225,000 homes, but the company can pull power from other sources when a unit is down.
Dominion previously shut down Unit 2 at the plant because of a water leak in December 2017.

https://www.heraldsun.com/news/state/south-carolina/article24245833...

SC earthquake strikes a mile from nuclear plant outside Columbia 

May 02, 2020 01:04 PM

An earthquake took place Friday about a mile from the V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant in Fairfield County, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The agency’s maps showed the epicenter of the quake was in Lake Monticello, also known as the Monticello Reservoir, near Jenkinsville, which is about 30 miles north of Columbia. The V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant is located on the southern edge of Lake Monticello, which supplies the plant with water. The epicenter of the quake was approximately 5000 feet from the nuclear plant, according to maps.
The quake reached 2.0 magnitude, which is considered a minor earthquake; at that magnitude, a slight shaking of the earth or a tremor inside a house might have been felt by people near the center of the quake.

But it’s unlikely that many people felt the earthquake — for the most part quakes that register 2.5 magnitude or less go unnoticed and are only recorded by a seismograph, according to Michigan Technological University. Any quake less than 5.5 magnitude is not likely to cause significant damage, according to the university.

Anyone who did feel the quake can report it to the United States Geological Survey.
The Monticello Reservoir was completed in 1978 by South Carolina Electric & Gas to supply water to cool the reactors in the nuclear energy plant, which began operating in 1984. Construction of two other nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer site was halted in 2017 after rising costs that eventually led to SCE&G being bought by Dominion Energy, which now owns the nuclear plant.
Lake Monticello Park is located on the southeastern shores of the reservoir.
South Carolina has about 10 to 15 earthquakes a year, according to the state’s Emergency Management Division.
In April a 2.3 magnitude earthquake was reported outside Rock Hill, according to a geological survey. In March a 2.3 magnitude earthquake was recorded near Charleston — and in January two earthquakes hit in Kershaw and Lexington counties.

http://www.beyondnuclear.org/

Georgia Nuclear Plant Sinking, Critics Charge; Legal Action Filed

See the May 12, 2020, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) press release, and intervention petition/hearing request submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). A quote in the press release concisely sums up the high risks: "Vogtle has finally admitted that the sheer weight of the nuclear island building is causing it to sink into the red Georgia clay," said Arnold Gundersen, an independent nuclear power plant engineer who provided analysis of the structural problems at Vogtle's Unit 3. He added, "It is figuratively and literally sinking under its own weight. Islands are not supposed to sink." A two-reactor nuclear power plant in Michigan -- Midland -- was blocked due to safety-significant building sinking into the ground; billions of dollars were wasted. Likewise, Vogtle 3 & 4, the only new reactors under construction in the U.S., are putting $12 billion of U.S. taxpayer money (in the form of nuclear loan guarantees) at risk, as well as many billions of dollars in Georgia ratepayer involuntarily "investment" at risk, as well. As mentioned in the Fermi-2/Covid-19 entry in today's bulletin, Vogtle nuclear power plant is also suffering one of the worst currently known coronavirus outbreaks at any nuclear power plant in the country.

BREDL's is not the only intervention against Vogtle's new build start up. On April 20, 2020, Nuclear Watch South announced the filing of a petition to block nuclear fuel loading into Vogtle Unit 3, due to widespread, alarming QA (quality assurance) violations involving safety-significant reactor-related ITAAC (inspections, tests, analysis and acceptance criteria). See the Nuclear Watch South press release and petition, here. (See photo, above right: Vogtle Units 3 (left) and 4, July 30, 2015. After around eight years of construction, both units are several long years behind schedule, and many billions of dollars over budget. Photo by High Flyer, special to Savannah River Site Watch.)

http://www.bredl.org/pdf6/200511_BREDL_Petition_to_Intervene_Vogtle...

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-radiation-leak-detected-at-research-r...

Germany: Radiation leak detected at research reactor

Date 16.05.2020 

A research reactor near Munich has emitted excess C-14 radiation, says the Bavarian city's technical university. The "slight" leak late March had shown up Thursday when monthly readings were collated.

Munich's technical university (TUM) said Saturday a neutron reactor located at Garchingjust north of the metropole was found to have leaked nuclides into the atmosphere "slightly" above the level permitted annually in its license.
Neither human beings nor the surrounding environment had been endangered, said the TUM and Bavaria's environmental ministry — responsible for oversight.
Monthly figures collated on Thursday had shown an excess in C-14 particles 15% above the permitted yearly level, with the potential to cause "theoretically" a load for the public of 3 Mikrosieverts at the maximum.
That was less than the level a patient undergoing an x-ray at the dentists' would endure, said Anke Görg spokesperson for the TUM's operating institute, known as FRMII.
"An individual error during the installation of the mobile drying unit used for this purpose caused the discharge of the C-14 over a short period of time," Görg added, referring to a method used to extract C-14 in resin from water in the reactor's tank.
The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said the notifiable incident was ranked "0," very low on the international scale.
Read more: Germany's anti-nuclear movement: Still going strong after four decades of activism
Garching's divisive 'Egg'
Garching's special campus, where an "egg"-shaped dome covers an older reactor — used between 1957 and 2000 — draws annually about 1,000 international researchers who experiment with its newer neutron reactor, the so-called FRMII.
The facility was put on hold on March 17 because of the current pandemic, leaving many scientists unable to glean results for industry and medicine, said Görg.
The FRMII reactor, inaugurated in 2005, remains controversial among organizations like Germany's branch of Friends of the Earth (BUND) and opposition Greens in Bavaria's state assembly.
Detection of the isotope C-14 is a key method in so-called carbon-dating to determine the age of ancient objects containing organic material.
Read more: Winds of change push German power grid to brink
Decades of turmoil
Bavaria, which in the 1970s went through political turmoil over the siting of six nuclear reactors, now has only two of them in operation — Isar 2 east of Munich, and Gundremmingen C, west of Augsburg.
As a whole, Germany currently has six reactors running as a whole, according to the federal environment ministry, as it continues its nuclear-power phase-out, spurred by Japan's 2011 Fukushima disaster, as it pushes for renewables.
Read more: Nuclear reactor to shut down amid Germany's atomic phase-out
Europe still has 108 reactors running
Positioned just outside Germany's borders are further nuclear plants, for example, Cattenom, a four-reactor French power station.
It lies alongside the Moselle river in France's Lothringia region, adjacent to Germany's states of Saarland and Rhineland Palatinate, and EU hub Luxembourg.
Downwind in terms of prevailing weather are German cities such as Frankfurt, Mainz and Heidelberg.
Western Europe currently has 108 operational reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEO) based in Paris.

https://www.en24.news/2020/06/a-level-1-incident-reported-at-the-pe...

France

A level 1 incident reported at the Penly nuclear power plant
June 4, 2020

The Penly nuclear power plant, near Dieppe. — BEAUFILS/SIPA
An incident was reported on 28 May to the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) by the management of the Penly power plant in Petit-Caux (
Seine-Maritime). The malfunction of one of the four core monitoring detectors in reactor No. 1 was involved in this Level 1 incident on a scale of 7, explains Paris-Normandy Thursday.
“Repairs to the offending detector are underway,” said a statement from EDF, which manages the facility.
A faulty detector
The failure was noticed during a visit to the facility on May 16. As the reactor’s power decline was initiated, an intermediate detector displayed different measurements from the other three calculating the reactor’s power variation. In an initial analysis, the detector was found to be functional, but a second concluded that it malfunctioned.
“At all times, the other three detectors remained functional, and the monitoring of the heart remained effective. However, due to an initial mis-analysis, management declared this event,” EDF said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8406315/Dramatic-moment-si...

Dramatic moment silo collapses at unfinished nuclear power plant Hinkley Point C throwing huge dust cloud into the air

115-ft tower suffered 'structural damage' at Hinkley Point C incident today
EDF said there were no injuries and will investigating incident near Bridgwater
Construction at Hinkley Point C is unfinished and is due to be completed in 2025

A 115-ft tower at the unfinished Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant suffered 'structural damage' today, throwing a huge dust cloud into the air.
EDF, which is building the plant, has denied eyewitness claims of an explosion, and confirmed that no one was injured at the 7.30am incident.
The energy supplier is now investigating the events of this morning which occurred at the plant, due to be completely constructed in 2025, near Bridgwater.
A spokesman for EDF said: 'At around 7.30am a silo in the concrete batching plant at Hinkley Point C suffered structural damage, releasing a dust cloud around the area.

The 115-ft tower, which weighs 5,000 tonnes, suffered 'structural damage' at 7.30am when onlookers said they heard what sounded like an explosion
'Nobody has been injured and the emergency services were not required. An investigation is underway to understand the cause of the event.'

The silo contains ground-granulated blast-furnace slag which plays a 'pivotal role' in the plant's construction by reusing the material within its concrete.
Ground-granulated blast-furnace slag is obtained by quenching molten iron slag from a blast furnace in water or steam to produce a glass, granular product.
This product is then dried and ground into a fine powder, which explains why there was a large dust cold when the silo collapsed.
State-owned French supplier EDF is building two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C to provide low-carbon electricity for six million British homes.

EDF has denied there was an explosion, and said no one was injured. The energy supplier is now investigating the incident near Bridgwater, Somerset
Construction of the nuclear power plant was officially approved in 2016, with EDF wanting to build another station at Sizewell in Suffolk.
Financing for Hinkley Point C, which is expected to cost more than £20billion, is being split between EDF and state-owned Chinese General Nuclear (CGN). 

CGN which was invited to assist the construction of Hinkley Point C by David Cameron, was blacklisted by the US government for espionage last August.
In May, a senior US official told the Mail on Sunday that CGN's involvement in UK power generation would jeopardise Britain's political independent for many decades.

Dr Christopher Ford, the US State Department’s assistant secretary for non-proliferation and international security, warned that CGN is closely linked to the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese Communist Party's military.

One of the company’s top engineers has previously been convicted and jailed in the US for running a spy network at the behest of Beijing.

In an appeal to the Government, which was criticised by the US for initially allowing Chinese telecoms company Huawei to help build up Britain's 5G network, Dr Ford said: 'We are trying to discourage our friends and partners from engaging with a Chinese nuclear company that is known for such acts.'

Work on Hinkley Point C has continued throughout the coronavirus crisis, as workers previously warned about the perceived lack of social distancing measures.

https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2020/06/03/seabrook-emergency-shutd...

Seabrook Nuclear Plant Gets Back Online Safely After Unexpected Shutdown

June 03, 2020

Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant is back online after an unplanned shutdown this past weekend.
Officials with the plant and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission say the incident did not pose a safety risk, and a watchdog group agrees.
The malfunction involved Seabrook’s control rods, which are used to fine-tune the fission reaction that powers the facility.

A report to federal regulators says on Friday afternoon, a set of control rods moved into the reactor when they weren't supposed to.

This led operators to trip the reactor, or shut it down. The whole process is known as an emergency manual scram.
"On Friday, our operators followed their procedures and training and initiated a manual shutdown of Seabrook’s reactor after an issue with a piece of equipment," says a spokesman for Seabrook's owner, NextEra, in a statement. "All systems responded normally and the equipment issue has been addressed."

https://theferret.scot/torness-nuclear-reactor-shut-faulty-valve/

Torness nuclear reactor shut by faulty valve

June 25 2020

One of the nuclear power reactors at Torness in East Lothian has been shut down following a problem with a valve, prompting increased concerns about its future.
EDF Energy, the French company that runs Torness, has said that reactor two went offline on 23 June because a key valve in the steam turbine closed. It is investigating what went wrong, and hoping to restart the reactor on 30 June.
Reactor one at Torness, which is still running, is now the only one of four reactors in Scotland currently generating electricity. The other two reactors at Hunterston in North Ayrshire have been closed for most of the last two years because of spreading cracks in their graphite cores.

Torness station director, Robert Gunn, emailed local stakeholders on 25 June with news of the closure. “The shutdown was due to the closure of a governor valve in the conventional non-nuclear part of the power station,” he said.
“Our systems are designed to ‘fail safe’ and as our operators worked to resolve the issue, the unit automatically shut down. As a result, steam was released from the vents which made a loud noise.”
Gunn added: “This was perfectly normal and expected in a safe shut down like this. The reactor shut down and cooled safely, which is our overriding priority when a reactor goes offline, and there were no health or environmental impacts.
“The unit will be returned to service once an investigation has been carried out.”
Gunn pointed out that Torness reactor two had been operating uninterrupted for 552 days before it shut down on 23 June. The station, which started up in 1988, has the capacity to generate electricity for more than two million homes.
Gavin Corbett, a green councillor for Edinburgh and a member of the Torness local liaison committee, was informed of the closure. “The plant manager was at pains to emphasise that the shut down did not pose any safety concerns although that is for the investigation to determine rather than being prejudged,” he told The Ferret.
“Clearly, a nuclear reactor isn’t closed down for a week for no reason. Torness is 31 years old now and should have been approaching its closure very soon.”
Corbett pointed out that the plant’s “shelf life” had been extended until 2030. “I’d expect very close scrutiny of the operation and plans developed to ensure the staff and suppliers have a long term future in a thriving Lothian and Forth renewables industry,” he said.

The Ferret reported on 6 May 2020 that the UK’s nuclear safety watchdog was predicting that cracks would start appearing in graphite cores at Torness six years sooner that previously thought. The Office for Nuclear Regulation said that cracking – which could increase the risk of a nuclear accident – was now expected to begin in 2022.
Friends of the Earth Scotland warned that nuclear power isn’t helping the country’s energy mix. “With cracks in reactor cores nuclear power is clearly on a shoogly peg in Scotland,” said the environmental group’s director, Dr Richard Dixon.
“The sooner we phase out nuclear power and rely on a broad mix of renewables and storage systems the better.”
Edinburgh-based nuclear consultant, Peter Roche, highlighted that there had been faulty valves in an EDF reactor in France. “Scotland has only one operating reactor just now,” he said.
“But the lights haven’t gone out. It’s time to phase out nuclear and go 100 per cent renewable.”
A spokesperson for EDF Energy said: “Unit two at Torness power station came offline due to the closure of a valve associated with the boilers in the conventional, or non-nuclear, side of the plant. Shutdown took place as expected and we expect to re-start in a few days.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-appears-to-be-ignoring-...

Russia appears to be ignoring the UN nuclear watchdog after it was accused of being behind a mysterious radiation leak into Scandinavia

Russia appears to be ignoring a request for information from the UN's nuclear watchdog after it was accused of being behind a radiation spike in Scandinavia.
A safe but remarkable uptick in levels of three radioactive isotopes was observed in Sweden, Finland, and Norway last week. Dutch authorities said it came "from the direction of Western Russia."
The International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday said it had asked European countries for data. Twenty-nine countries responded, but not Russia.
On Saturday, Russia's nuclear energy operator denied it was the source of the leak and said its plants were all working as usual.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Russia is yet to respond to a request for information from the UN nuclear watchdog after it was accused of being behind a radiation leak in Scandinavia.
Last week, authorities in Sweden, Finland, and Norway reported a minor uptick in levels of the Ru-103, Cs-134, and Cs-137 radioactive isotopes.
An analysis by the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (NIPHE) found that the radiation was coming "from the direction of Western Russia."
On Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that 29 European countries had so far responded to a request for a situation report sent on Saturday — but not Russia.

The countries "reported to the IAEA that there were no events on their territories that may have caused the observed air concentrations of Ru-103, Cs-134 and Cs-137."
While the increase in radiation is unknown, it is not dangerous, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the IAEA.
"I expect more Member States to provide relevant information and data to us, and we will continue to inform the public," he said.

The pattern of radiation, according to NIPHE, "indicates damage to a fuel element in a nuclear power plant."
A spokesperson for Rosenergoatom Concern, a branch of the centralized Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom, denied that there had been a leak on Saturday.
Two nuclear powerplants in western Russia, the Leningrad and the Kola, are "working in normal regime," the spokesperson told state news agency TASS on Saturday.
Russia has a long a turbulent history with nuclear power, most famously trying to cover up the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear facility in 1986.
It was accused of failing to disclose an accident at the Mayak nuclear facility in 2017 and of covering up an accident at a nuclear facility in Nyonoksa in August 2019.
Russia has 36 nuclear power reactors in total, according to the IAEA.

Iran struggles to explain fire at Natanz nuclear complex

Updated 1618 GMT (0018 HKT) July 3, 2020

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/02/world/iran-natanz-nuclear-comple...

A photo provided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) of a building at the Natanz nuclear site appeared to show serious fire damage.

Tehran (CNN)Iran struggled to explain a fire that tore through the Iranian Natanz nuclear complex on Thursday morning, causing major damage to a site that has been key to the country's uranium enrichment program.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) shared an image of the damaged building, which appeared to show a roof charred by fire, broken doors and blown out windows

The heat signature from the fire appears to have been captured by the NOAA-20 satellite, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ​(NOAA). The fire was detected in the northwestern corner of the facility at around 2:06 a.m. local time early Thursday morning, according to data obtained by CNN from the satellite.

No casualties were reported at the facility in Iran's Isfahan Province, south of the capital Tehran, according to semi-official news agency Tasnim.

The incident is under investigation, according to state media Press TV, which cited an anonymous Iranian security official as saying that there was "no evidence" of sabotage.

Questions are swirling in the international community about the incident, which comes just a week after a major explosion on the outskirts of Tehran, near the town of Parchin and a military facility.

Heat signature data from the NOAA-20 satellite, when displayed on an undated satellite image, indicates there was a fire (seen as red boxes in the image) at 2:06 a.m. local time on July 2, in the northwestern corner of the complex. CONTINUE......

https://www.northaugustastar.com/news/plutonium-mishap-at-los-alamo...

Plutonium mishap at Los Alamos National Lab accentuates pit production worries

• Jul 14, 2020

Fifteen workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory might have been exposed to plutonium, a potentially grave mishap that some industry observers and critics say portends trouble for plutonium pit production, a separate cross-country nuclear weapons mission.

At least one lab worker received "significant contamination" on his hair, skin and protective clothing, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, following a June breach in a glovebox, a sealed piece of equipment used to handle dangerous or toxic substances.

"The room experienced significant" airborne radioactivity at the time and alarms triggered, inspectors with the independent board reported. A Los Alamos spokesperson on July 8 said "laboratory employees responded promptly and appropriately, and cleared the room in a safe manner."

The one worker, the DNFSB noted, was successfully decontaminated and provided chelation therapy, a treatment for heavy-metal poisoning.

Los Alamos is investigating the June 8 exposure, and the total 15 workers are being monitored and evaluated, the same spokesperson said. The area where it happened at the New Mexico lab has been secured, pending a review.

Exactly how long that review will take is unclear, as are its consequences.

The "serious" incident last month is a "tiny window into long standing problems here," Greg Mello, with the watchdog Los Alamos Study Group, said in an interview with the Aiken Standard. It comes at a time, too, when the lab is maneuvering toward and preparing for jumpstarted plutonium pit production, the forging of nuclear weapon cores.

Federal law mandates the production of 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030 – a tight schedule, defense officials have acknowledged. While the Savannah River Site would produce 50 of those pits per year, according to a joint recommendation made by the National Nuclear Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Defense in 2018, Los Alamos would produce 30.

What recently transpired at Los Alamos "casts a long shadow" over the lab's "pell-mell rush to acquire a huge plutonium production mission, namely pit production," Mello said last week. Stephen Young, a Washington representative for the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, described the circumstances as "tricky, dangerous," expensive and time consuming.

"This is yet another example of why the current pit production plan is doomed to failure," Young said.

Savannah River Site Watch Director Tom Clements on July 8 similarly said the plutonium exposure is troubling – for both South Carolina and New Mexico.

"The rush by DOE to quickly expand plutonium pit production to SRS is fraught with risks and this accident serves as a red alert about those fast-tracked plans," he said. "NNSA must immediately pause their overly ambitious pit production plans and fully review this troubling plutonium accident and its implications in environmental documents being prepared on pits at both SRS and Los Alamos."

Los Alamos, near Albuquerque and Santa Fe, has been recognized as a plutonium center of excellence. Plutonium-238, what was being handled June 8, is not used in nuclear weapons, as NASA has noted.

Pit production at the Savannah River Site, according to the 2018 recommendation, would mean repurposing the failed and incomplete Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/britain/section-of-sel...

Section of Sellafield plant evacuated

August 15 2020 02:30 AM

A section of the defunct nuclear plant at Sellafield has been evacuated after a routine inspection uncovered hazardous chemicals.

A bomb-disposal unit was called into the site to deal with a "small amount" of organic peroxide, a potentially explosive chemical that must be kept cool to remain safe.

Organic peroxide has a variety of uses across different industries but its storage is subject to strict safety measures.

The plant, which is now used only to store nuclear waste and has not produced energy for the past 17 years, has been made "non-operational", Sellafield stated.

A statement by the company that operates the site said: "The storage area is safely segregated from the nuclear operations of the plant and the risk has been identified as a conventional safety issue rather than a nuclear safety risk.

"As a precautionary measure, a controlled evacuation of the Magnox Reprocessing Plant was carried out yesterday in order to investigate the chemical and devise the appropriate course of action.

"The plant was non-operational at the time.

"The plant will remain non-operational while the chemical is disposed of."

https://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/business/duane-arnold-energ...

Duane Arnold nuclear plant won't restart after Iowa derecho damage

Decommissioning of plant was set for October, but timeline moved up after significant storm damage

Duane Arnold Energy Center officials decideded to close the nuclear facility permanently after experiencing significant damage from the Aug. 10 derecho, a NextEra Energy Resources spokesman said Monday.

“After conducting a complete assessment of the damage caused by recent severe weather, NextEra Energy Resources has made the decision not to restart the reactor,” spokesman Peter Robbins said.

Duane Arnold, the only nuclear power plant in Iowa, was scheduled to be decommissioned Oct. 30.

The derecho caused “extensive” damage to the facility’s cooling towers, Robbins said. Replacing the cooling towers with fewer than three months until decommissioning was “not feasible,” he added.

Robbins said NextEra Energy Resources will “continue to work with all our employees to minimize the impact of this situation on them and their families.”

Before the derecho, employees were taking early retirements, looking for other jobs within the company or staying at NextEra to manage the decommissioned site. Those options remain intact, Robbins said.

“It doesn’t change the outcomes for those folks,” Robbins said. “It just affects the timing of it.”

and another:

https://energycentral.com/news/fermi-2-nuclear-power-plant-stable-a...

Fermi 2 nuclear power plant 'stable' after earthquake near Detroit Beach

• Aug 24, 2020 10:46 am GMT
• 

Aug. 22--A minor earthquake near Detroit Beach rattled Downriver areas and was felt in places through the region, but left the nearby Fermi 2 nuclear power plant in a safe condition, officials said.

The 3.2-magnitude earthquake was recorded Friday evening south-southeast of Detroit Beach near Monroe by the U.S. Geological Survey, about two miles south of the nuclear plant.

The earthquake, rare for Michigan, occurred at 6:55 p.m just off the shoreline of Sterling State Park, according to USGS.

Depth was determined to be 9.2 km, or about 5.71 miles. The USGS initially reported the quake as reaching 3.4 magnitude.

A magnitude 3.2 quake is considered minor and generally does not cause damage, said Dongdong Yao, a postdoctoral research fellow affiliated with the University of Michigan who has studied seismic activity in the region.

Downriver residents and those as far away as Bowling Green, Ohio, reported feeling the quake. The intensity rippled throughout Downriver, including Trenton, La Salle, Grosse Ile, south to in northern Ohio, as far north as Waterford Township and in Macomb County.

Officials with the geological agency could not immediately be reached for comment Friday night.

The tremors did not appear to have affected the Fermi 2 nuclear power plant in Monroe County, which DTE Energy Co. runs.

"We remain in a safe, stable condition and we're at 100% power," spokesman Stephen Tait said Friday night.

The plant was operating at 100% Friday after earlier this month completing a refueling operation that was prolonged by the coronavirus pandemic, according to reports from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC had not posted an event notification report regarding the earthquake by Saturday morning.

Yao said even a minor quake can trigger a sensation of movement in some people while not in others. "Some people might be very sensitive, so they can feel some very minor shaking," he said.

Yao said the temblor was unusual: "If you look back 20 years, this type of earthquake is very rare in this region.

Friday's quake came more than a year after the agency recorded a temblor with a magnitude of 4.0 in Lake Erie, just off the shoreline of northeast Ohio, in June 2019. That was considered an "intra-plate" earthquake, USGS officials said at the time.

In April 2018, a magnitude 3.6 quake originated near Amherstburg, Ontario, across the Detroit River, some 15.5 miles south of Detroit It was felt at least 40 miles away in parts of Downriver and Dearborn.

Another quake, registering at 4.0, struck south of Galesburg, near Kalamazoo, on May 2, 2015, officials said. Also in 2015, central lower Michigan experienced a minor earthquake that measured 3.3 magnitude on the Richter scale in an area seven miles from Union City, 13 miles from Battle Creek, 14 miles from Coldwater and 47 miles from Lansing.

On Jan. 16, 2018, a meteor that hit Earth sparked a 2.0 magnitude earthquake in Metro Detroit.

Earthquakes "are not generally common" in the region, said Kyle Klein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "We're not near any active fault line."

According to USGS, most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains has infrequent earthquakes.

"... Most of the enormous region from the Rockies to the Atlantic can go years without an earthquake large enough to be felt, and several U.S. states have never reported a damaging earthquake," the agency said.

The USGS website says that most earthquakes in North American east of the Rockies "occur as faulting within bedrock, usually miles deep."

"Few earthquakes east of the Rockies, however, have been definitely linked to mapped geologic faults, in contrast to the situation at plate boundaries such as California's San Andreas fault system, where scientists can commonly use geologic evidence to identify a fault that has produced a large earthquake and that is likely to produce large future earthquakes."

and another:

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/nuclear-reactor-in-france-shut-down...

Nuclear reactor in France shut down over drought

Chooz Nuclear Plant on Belgian border turned off after dry summer evaporates water needed to cool reactors

25.08.2020

PARIS

A nuclear power plant in northern France has been temporarily shuttered due to a drought in the area, said the company that runs the plant Tuesday.

The second reactor of the Chooz Nuclear Power Plant, in Ardennes, on the Belgian border, was shut down late Monday night, after the first reactor ceased operations Friday evening.

The actions were taken due to low water levels in the Meuse River, the main artery that runs through the area used to cool the two reactors.

The plant is named after Chooz, the commune where it is located in the Ardennes. The region is on level three of four drought alert levels.

In a statement on its website, French energy company EDF, which runs the plant, gave the reasons for the closure.

"On Monday at 11.30 p.m. [2130GMT], given the current climatic conditions and in accordance with the agreement between France and Belgium, teams at the power station stopped operations of reactor number one."

The company reassured that given a forecast of rain ahead, both reactors are planned to be up and running over the next couple of days.

Safety concerns were ruled out as a cause for the reactors' suspension.

Water is a crucial ingredient for nuclear plant safety to cool the reactor core.

In 2019, the plant produced 4.7% of France's nuclear power, or 17.9 billion kilowatt-hours, according to paperwork the company shared with Radio France International. The two reactors operate at a capacity of 1,450 megawatts and date from 1996 and 1997.

Water restrictions have been imposed this summer in 79 out of the 96 mainland departments in France due to drought conditions.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/27/hunterston-scottish...

https://www.wlrn.org/2020-09-01/nuclear-regulators-inspecting-turke...

Nuclear Regulators Inspecting Turkey Point After Reactor Shut Down

Published September 1, 2020 at 5:29 PM EDT

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200901/pike-county-school-district-...

Ohio

Pike County school district asks feds to move middle school away from radiation

Sept 1 2020

A school district in Piketon is requesting help from the U.S. Department of Energy to build a new middle school, according to a letter drafted last week. That’s because radioactive isotopes were detected two miles downwind from a former uranium enrichment facility.

Just a week into the school year, with Zahn’s Corner Middle School students crammed in elementary and high schools, a letter has been drafted in hopes of securing federal funding to re-build the school at a new location.

That’s because since the decommissioning and cleanup of a former uranium enrichment plant was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Energy started in 2017, there have been radioactive isotopes detected at the school located two miles downwind from the facility.

“While the levels are debatable, there is very little question that the presence of these dangerous contaminants are not ‘natural’, nor can they be attributed to ‘background’ radiation,” wrote Wes Hairston, superintendent of Scioto Valley Local School District in a letter to DOE Secretary Dan Brouillette dated Thursday.

“The community, including the County Health Department, is extremely concerned with the continuation of the construction and on-site disposal near the middle school. The continuation of work on this site will most certainly emit more of these dangerous elements into the air and into the school.”

The DOE has issued numerous statements about the former plant, located 73 miles south of Columbus, saying that numerous tests “show results significantly below regulatory safety limits and no radioactivity detected above naturally occurring levels.” They have said the school and community are safe. The DOE did not respond to a request to comment when asked about the letter.

The letter comes after The Dispatch reported on DOE Secretary Brouillette’s visit to Columbus. At the time, Brouillette told The Dispatch, “We stand ready to assist the school system in any way that they would see fit. Our door remains open.”

“We appreciate your willingness to provide support, as suggested in your recent response to a question posed by a reporter with the Columbus Dispatch,” Hairston told Brouillette in the letter.

The middle school was closed by the district in May 2019 after neptunium-237, a radioactive isotope, was detected by DOE air monitors across the street from the school.

Enriched uranium was detected inside the school’s air ducts and ceiling tiles during an inspection.

The district was not made aware of the isotopes detected in 2017 until two years later. That’s the same year cleanup efforts began at the plant. This year, DOE disclosed a 2018 detection of americium, another radioactive isotope, according to the school district.

In late July, DOE released its most-recent annual environmental assessment report where the federal agency summarizes and provides results of thousands of tests.

The levels in the report were “well below the levels at which you have to take action to protect the public,” David C. Ingram, chair of the physics and astronomy department at Ohio University who specializes in nuclear science, said in a recent interview.

Despite the figures cited in the report and DOE’s assurances, the community has every right to be concerned about exposure though, Ingram added. That’s because the annual report uses averages.

“One analogy I use is that if I was to put a small piece of radioactive material in the corner of a big field, very close to that piece of radioactive material it could be a hazard, particularly if somebody picked it up, or breathed it in,” he said. “Whereas I could take all that material and spread it across the field and come up with a number which is well below causing concern.”

When asked about using averages, DOE said in a statement: “The annual dose calculations in (environmental reports) are based on the worst-case exposure scenario for a member of the public. The maximum concentrations of radionuclides detected in various media (e.g., sediment, soil, vegetation, etc.) were used in dose calculations even if these media-specific maximum concentrations do not occur throughout the year or even at the same location. DOE’s conservative approach fairly assesses any risk to the community.”

A third-party assessment funded by DOE is still pending. It could be another year before that study is completed. That study will include samples on both public and private property inside a six-mile radius from the plant.

There is no such thing as a safe level for radioactive isotopes, said Jennifer Chandler, a former environmental scientist who worked for DOE and is now a village council member in Piketon.

“Even though (DOE) may say, `We don’t think the levels are high enough.′ There’s no `such thing as a safe level,” Chandler said.

The school district is already petitioning the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission in hopes of getting land to build a new middle school with the state’s help. They have not been given an answer on their request.

Some state and federal offices are waiting for those third-party study results before taking action to help the community.

When the Ohio Democrat’s office was pressed about whether he will push to fund a new school, the following statement was issued: “Sen. Brown shares the concerns of the community and looks forward to reviewing the third-party assessment on Zahn’s Corner Middle School.”

A spokesman for Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Dan Tierney, had a similar response. “We are awaiting the results of the third-party testing before any decisions are made.”

In the meantime, students at Zahn’s Corner continue to wait.

“This problem was not created by our school district. And our district does not have the financial means, or the moral imperative to solve it,” Hairston wrote Brouillette.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/hanford-has-a-radioact...

Hanford Has a Radioactive Capsule Problem

Researchers still don’t have a way to neutralize the former nuclear-weapons complex’s 1,936 capsules of radioactive cesium and strontium

At the Hanford Site, capsules of cesium and strontium are stored in concrete pools, whose water glows blue as the radioactive materials decay.

At the vast reservation known as the Hanford Site in south-central Washington state, much of the activity these days concerns its 212 million liters (56 million gallons) of radioactive sludge. From World War II through the Cold War, the site produced plutonium for more than 60,000 nuclear weapons, creating enough toxic by-products to fill 177 giant underground tanks. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which controls Hanford, is pushing to start “vitrifying,” or glassifying, some of that waste within two years. The monumental undertaking is the nation’s—and possibly the world’s—largest environmental cleanup effort. It has been going on for decades and will take decades more to complete.

But the tanks are not the only outsize radioactive hazard at Hanford. The site also houses nearly 2,000 capsules of highly radioactive cesium and strontium. Each of the double-walled, stainless-steel capsules weighs 11 kilograms and is roughly the size of a rolled-up yoga mat. Together, they contain over a third of the total radioactivity at Hanford.

For decades, the capsules have resided in a two-story building called the Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility (WESF). Inside, the capsules sit beneath 4 meters of cooling water in concrete cells lined with stainless steel. The water surrounding the capsules glows neon blue as the cesium and strontium decay, a phenomenon known as Cherenkov radiation.

Built in 1973, the facility is well beyond its 30-year design life. In 2013, nuclear specialists in neighboring Oregon warned that the concrete walls of the pools had lost structural integrity due to gamma radiation emitted by the capsules. Hanford is located just 56 kilometers (35 miles) from Oregon’s border and sits beside the Columbia River. After leaving the site, the river flows through Oregon farms and fisheries and eventually through Portland, the state's biggest city.

In 2014, the DOE’s Office of the Inspector General concluded that the WESF poses the “greatest risk” for serious accident of any DOE facility that’s beyond its design life. In the event of a severe earthquake, for instance, the degraded basins would likely collapse, draining the cooling water. In a worst-case scenario, the capsules would then overheat and break, releasing radioactivity that would contaminate the ground and air and render parts of the Hanford Site inaccessible for years and potentially reach nearby cities.

“If it’s bad enough, it means all cleanup essentially stops,” says Dirk Dunning, an engineer and retired Hanford expert who worked for the Oregon Department of Energy and who helped flag initial concerns about the concrete. “We can’t fix it, we can’t stop it. It just becomes a horrible, intractable problem.”

To avoid such a catastrophe, in 2015 the DOE began taking steps to transfer capsules out of the basins and into dry casks on an outdoor storage pad. The plan is to place six capsules inside a cylindrical metal sleeve; air inside the cylinder is displaced with helium to dissipate heat from the capsules. The sleeves are then fitted inside a series of shielded canisters, like a nuclear nesting doll. The final vessel is a 3.3-meter-tall cylindrical cask made of a special steel alloy and reinforced concrete. A passive cooling system draws cool air into the cask and expels warm air, without the need for fans or pools of water. The cask will sit vertically on the concrete pad. Eventually, there will be 16 to 20 casks. Similar systems are used to store spent nuclear fuel at commercial power plants, including the Columbia Generating Station at Hanford. The agency has until 31 August 2025 to complete the work, according to a legal agreement between the DOE, the state of Washington, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

When the transfer is completed, DOE estimates the new facility will save more than US $6 million per year in operating costs. But it’s intended only as a temporary fix. After 50 years in dry storage—around 2075, in other words—the capsules’ contents could be vitrified as well, or else buried in an unspecified deep geologic repository.

Even that timeline may be too ambitious. At a congressional hearing in March, DOE officials said that treatment of the tank waste was the “highest priority” and sought to defer the capsule-transfer work and other cleanup efforts at Hanford. They also proposed slashing Hanford’s annual budget by $700 million in fiscal year 2021. The DOE Office of Environmental Management’s “strategic vision” for 2020–2030 [PDF] noted only that the agency “will continue to evaluate” the transfer of capsules currently stored at the WESF.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated the department’s plans. The DOE now says it “will be assessing potential impacts on all projects” resulting from reduced operations due to the pandemic. The department’s FY2021 budget proposal calls for “safely” deferring work on the WESF capsule transfers for one year, while supporting “continued maintenance, monitoring, and assessment activities at WESF,” according to a written response sent to IEEE Spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, community leaders and state policymakers oppose the potential slowdowns and budget cuts. They argue that Hanford’s cleanup—now over three decades in the making—cannot be delayed further. David Reeploeg of the Tri-City Development Council (TRIDEC) says the DOE’s strategic vision and proposed budget cuts add to the “collective frustration” at “this pattern of kicking the can down the road.” TRIDEC advocates for Hanford-related priorities in the adjacent communities of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco, Wash. Reeploeg adds that congressional support over the years has been key to increasing Hanford cleanup funding beyond the DOE’s request levels.

How did Hanford end up with 1,936 capsules of radioactive waste?

The cesium and strontium inside the capsules were once part of the toxic mix stored in Hanford’s giant underground tanks. The heat given off by these elements as they decayed was causing the high-level radioactive waste to dangerously overheat to the point of boiling. And so from 1967 to 1985, technicians extracted the elements from the tanks and put them in capsules.

Initially, the DOE believed that such materials, especially cesium-137, could be put to useful work, in thermoelectric power supplies, to calibrate industrial instruments, or to extend the shelf life of pork, wheat, and spices (though consumers are generally wary of irradiated foods). The department leased hundreds of capsules to private companies around the United States.

One of those companies was Radiation Sterilizers, which used Hanford’s cesium capsules to sterilize medical supplies at its facilities in Decatur, Ga., and Westerville, Ohio. In 1988, a capsule in Decatur developed a pinhole leak, and 0.02 percent of its contents escaped—a mess that took the DOE four years and $47 million to clean up. Federal investigators concluded that moving the capsules in and out of water more than 7,000 times caused temperature changes that damaged the steel. Radiation Sterilizers had removed temperature-measuring systems in its facility, among other failures cited by the DOE. The company, though, blamed the government for shipping a damaged capsule. Whatever the cause, the DOE recalled all capsules and returned them to the WESF.

The WESF now contains 1,335 capsules of cesium, in the form of cesium chloride. Most of that waste consists of nonradioactive isotopes of cesium; of the radioactive isotopes, cesium-137 dominates, with lesser amounts of cesium-135. Another 601 capsules contain strontium, in the form of strontium fluoride, with the main radioactive isotope being strontium-90.

Cesium-137 and strontium-90 have half-lives of 30 years and 29 years, respectively—relatively short periods compared with the half-lives of other materials in the nation’s nuclear inventory, such as uranium and plutonium. However, the present radioactivity of the capsules “is so great” that it will take more than 800 years for the strontium capsules to decay enough to be classified as low-level waste, according to a 2003 report by the U.S. National Research Council. And while the radioactivity of the cesium-137 will diminish significantly after several hundred years, cesium-135 has a half-life of 2.3 million years, which means that the isotope will eventually become the dominant source of radioactivity in the cesium capsules, the report said.

Workers at Hanford continue to monitor the condition of the capsules by periodically shaking the containers using a long metal gripping tool. If they hear a “clunk,” it means the inner stainless-steel pipe is moving freely and is thus considered to be in good condition. Some capsules, though, fail the clunk test, which indicates the inner pipe is damaged, rusty, or swollen, and thus can’t move. About two dozen of the failed capsules have been “overpacked”—that is, sealed in a larger stainless-steel container and held separately.

Moving the capsules from wet storage to dry is only temporary

The DOE has made substantial progress on the capsule-transfer work in recent years. In August 2019, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company, one of the main environmental cleanup contractors at Hanford, completed designs to modify the WESF for removal of the capsules. In the weeks before COVID-19 temporarily shut down the site in late March, crews had started fabricating equipment to load capsules into sleeves, transfer them into casks, and move them outside. A team cleaned and painted part of the WESF to make way for the loading crane. At the nearby Maintenance and Storage Facility, workers were building a mock-up system to allow people to train and test equipment.

During the lockdown, employees working remotely continued with technical and design reviews and nuclear-safety assessments. With Hanford now in a phased reopening, CH2M Hill workers recently broke ground on the site of the future dry cask storage pad and have resumed construction at the mock-up facility. Last October, the DOE awarded Intermech, a construction firm owned by Emcor, a nearly $5.6 million contract to build a reinforced-concrete pad surrounded by two chain-link fences, along with utility infrastructure and a heavy-duty road connecting the WESF to the pad.

However, plans for fiscal year 2021, which starts in October, are less certain. In its budget request to Congress in February, the DOE proposed shrinking Hanford’s annual cleanup budget from $2.5 billion to about $1.8 billion. Officials sought no funding for WESF modification and storage work, eliminating $11 million from the current budget. Meanwhile, the agency sought to boost funding for tank-waste vitrification from $15 million to $50 million. Under its legal agreements, the DOE is required to start glassifying Hanford’s low-activity waste by 2023.

continues...

https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/10/12/doe-investigates-small-fir...

DOE Investigates Small Fire Oct. 4 At Los Alamos Neutron Science Center

Work involving a small electricity capacitor bank which caught fire Oct. 4 at the Los Alamos Neutron Accelerator Facility in Area 53 at Los Alamos National Laboratory remains suspended pending the completion of an investigation into the fire’s cause, a Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration spokesperson said Friday.

The Los Alamos Fire Department responded to the incident at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) along with LANL personnel.

“Given the fully-charged nature of the capacitors in the room, the decision was made not to fight the fire directly and monitor the event. Once the fire extinguished, LANL personnel secured the room in a safe configuration and LAFD was able to extinguish all hot spots,” the NNSA spokesperson said.

The report on the incident says LAFD received a fire alarm from the affected room and responded. After the decision was made not to fight the fire until after the capacitors could be safely discharged, the fire was allowed to extinguish itself which took about six hours.  LAFD and radio frequency personnel entered the room to discharge the capacitor bank and eliminate any remaining hot spots. LAFD extinguished all hot spots and RFE personnel secured the room in a safe configuration. The report states that the fire was contained within the capacitor room.

A capacitor bank is a group of connected capacitors each containing hazardous electrical energy. A capacitor is similar to a battery in that the energy it contains must be discharged prior to handling the capacitor. For a capacitor bank, the report says discharging is accomplished by connecting the positive and negative terminals of each capacitor in the bank with a shorting device. LANSCE Operations personnel de-energized the capacitor bank remotely by lowering a metal bar across the capacitor terminals and tripped the breakers for any other electrical components in the room.

LAFD personnel evaluated the fire through a window and determined that the room was not safe to enter because the capacitors remained potentially charged and presented a significant electrical hazard. LAFD posted a fire watch to monitor the fire.

Following an Oct. 5 fact finding, it was noted that the LANL Chief Electrical Safety Officer determined that all proper procedures were followed and no personnel had been exposed to or potentially exposed to an electrical hazard.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13086091/north-korea-nuclear-reactor-...

SMOKED OUT 

Mystery smoke spews from North Korea nuke plant crippled by typhoons sparking fears of Fukushima-style disaster

• 2 Nov 2020, 15:02

SMOKE has been spewing from a North Korean nuclear plant as it undergoes repairs after being damaged in a typhoon.

Experts have warned the reactor could be another Fukushima-style disaster waiting to happen after satellite pictures showed it took a battering by storms.

The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Centre appeared to have been damaged after a dam which regulates water for the reactor's cooling system was breached.

New satellite images show smoke emanating from a building just south of the uranium enrichment plant.

The building was used to recover and purify uranium from yellowcake, a type of concentrated uranium powder, says specialist website 38 North.

But the site says it’s now is unclear what is taking place.

Meanwhile, repair work is continuing at the cooling water reservoir overflow dam in the Kuryong River.

Imagery from October 27 shows the dike-like structure is complete and the water levels have risen to cover the intake cisterns for the reactors.

A trench sheeting has been installed along the dam breach, forming a solid steel wall capable of stabilizing the dam.

Kim's two reactors at the site were luckily switched off amid the flooding as part of ongoing talks with the US and the regime's great rivals South Korea.

One is a Soviet Union-style reactor, which has been operating intermittently since 1986.

And the other is an experimental reactor, which has not yet been fully switched on since construction started in 2009.

It has previously been warned shoddy safety could cause a catastrophe impacting 100million people.

Damage caused by typhoons that battered North Korea's west coast show the potentially devastating vulnerability of the site, experts say.

They compared the risk to the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan.

North and South Korea, eastern China, south eastern Russia, and Japan's west coast could all be exposed to radiation.

The fear is that the reactor is susceptible to incidents like in Fukushima

While some experts downplayed the immediate threat, they said the damage highlights the potential for the country's crumbling nuclear infrastructure to cause a catastrophe.

Tom Plant, director of proliferation and nuclear policy at the Royal United Services Institute, told The Sun Online the site is “creaking” and doesn’t meet modern safety standards.

He said: “There is a danger of nuclear accidents at these sites, we cannot rule out radiation leakage or fallout.

Mr Plant said: "The real risk is if they were in the middle of operations and there was a huge flood and it knocked out the pumps like it did in Fukushima."

He added: “If for some crazy reason they tried to operate under conditions where the cooling wasn’t working, then all the bad things would happen.

“And there are residual safety concerns about the reactors. The old one is very old and even well regulated reactors of that vintage do not meet modern safety standards.”

The few scientists who have visited the site have also previously noted the reactors appear to be outdated and built using substandard materials.

It has also been warned the highly secretive North Korea's reluctance to engage with other nations could cause a Chernobyl-style information blackout in a disaster.

Soviet Union officials famously failed to announce the infamous nuclear accident at the plant in Ukraine until the West had already detected a radiation cloud over Europe.

Dr Ramon Pacheco-Pardo, an associate professor in international relations at King's College London, said the site was “susceptible to incidents like in Fukushima”, where the site was left “a no-go area where it’s not safe to live anymore”.

"The fear is that the reactor is susceptible to incidents like in Fukushima," he said.

"Japan was ultimately able to contain the damage, but even then it was still left a no-go area and its not safe anymore to live there.

"If there was bigger damage to Yongbyong than there is currently, North Korea would not be able to contain the problems."

The expert questioned how safe the North Korean reactors are even without damage given the secretive state's lack of resources and apparent lax safety procedures.

'CREAKING WITH AGE'

North Korea's Soviet-style reactor is 34 years old, right at the end of its operational life, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Dr Pacheco-Pardo explained the reactor should have been decommissioned and replaced, but this is not an option for cash-strapped North Korea.

And should there be a disaster, he suggested it is likely North Korea would only notify China and Russia, leaving the West and its allies to find out themselves.

But he added it's unlikely North Korea will seek to restart the reactors any time soon as it battles the aftermath of the typhoon, famine, and the coronavirus pandemic.

In a report published in 2018, Dr Oleg Scheka, who previously worked for coordinating environmental cooperation between Russia and North Korea, laid out the dire threat posed by a North Korean nuclear disaster.

He noted Russian experts who helped North Korea build industrial facilities noted the regime's "willingness to cut corners" on safety for the sake of speed.

Dr Scheka warned 100million people across the Koreas, Russia, China and Japan could be impacted by a reactor failure in North Korea.

https://transformers-magazine.com/tm-news/incident-reported-at-bela...

Incident reported at Belarus nuclear plant

November 16, 2020

Belarus, Astravyets: Belarus’ nuclear plant in Astravyets, some 50 km from Vilnius, suffered a technical incident that put the facility out of operation, according to sources of the country’s independent media outlet TUT.by.

Lithuania’s transmission system operator, Litgrid, confirmed that the plant has been out of operation since Sunday midday. The nuclear plant started producing electricity on 3 November, just five days before the incident.

Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko took part in the opening of the plant on 6 November, where he said the launch of the Astravyets NPP was as “ordinary” as building a metro.

According to sources at TUT.by, several voltage-measuring transformers outside of the nuclear reactor exploded during the incident.

On 9 November, the Belarusian Energy Ministry said that “a need to replace the measuring equipment arose” during testing.

The radiation levels in Lithuania are normal, according to Ramunė Stasiūnaitienė from the country’s Radiation Protection Centre.

“Residents have no reason to be concerned or take their iodide tablets,” she stated.

Lithuania’s State Nuclear Power Safety Inspectorate (VATESI) said the plant is still undergoing testing. However, “we have also received no information about the  next steps to launch the plant”, said VATESI in a written comment.

Lithuania has been one of the most ardent critics of the nuclear plant built by the Russian state atomic corporation Rosatom and funded by a loan from the Kremlin.

Vilnius says the plant is unsafe and was built in breach of international safety standards. Minsk denies all allegations.

To prepare for the launch of the plant, Lithuania has staged evacuation drills in the border areas, located less than 20 km from the nuclear plant. The country has also ceased all electricity trade with Belarus, a move that Moscow called “discriminatory”.

The Baltic states are gearing up to switch from the Russian-controlled BRELL electricity grid that also includes Belarus, and synchronise with the continental European system by 2025.