Meteor Activity Outlook for October 29-November 4, 2011 | American ...As seen from the northern hemisphere, meteor rates continue to be strong in November. While no major activity is expected this month, the two Taurid radiants ...www.amsmeteors.org/.../meteor-activity-outlook-for-october-...
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Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Wednesday Update
TEPCO Takes Precaution Against Possible Fission in Fukushima Reactor
November 2, 2011
Plant Status
- Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility have taken steps to halt the possibility of localized fission reactions in reactor 2 after detecting trace amounts radioactive xenon in the reactor’s containment vessel, NHK World reports. Xenon is a byproduct of fission. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the facility, reports no significant changes in temperature, pressure and other data from the reactor.
Media Highlights
- A special report on the IEEE Spectrum website looks at “Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Power.” Articles include an in-depth review of the first 24 hours after the earthquake and tsunami struck the nuclear energy facility and a comparison of the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents.
- In a first since the March 11 nuclear accident, a shutdown reactor in Japan has resumed operation, the New York Times reports. After receiving approvals from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and the local government, reactor 4 at the Genkai nuclear energy facility came back on line this week. The reactor was inadvertently shut down Oct. 4 due to an operator error. However, it will shut down again in December for a scheduled inspection.
- U.S. boiling water reactors “would have fared much better” in an earthquake and tsunami than the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility, the website Electric Light & Power reports. The article says that U.S. facilities are subject to regulations that would limit damage in a severe natural event and that plants are located in places with minimal vulnerability to the kind of tsunami that struck Japan.
New Products
- A new series on NEI’s Safety First website examines some of the industry and independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s post-Fukushima activities. Articles appearing this week explore seismic and flooding protection, safety during a loss of off-site electricity, used fuel storage, operator emergency training and accessibility of specialized vent valves.
Falling Into Molehills
We’ll be seeing some official timelines on the accident before the end of the year – consider this a considerably fleshed out coming attractions trailer.
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The folks at IEEE have also put up an interesting if slightly misleading chart called Fukushima Daiichi’s Messy Future. It aims to show how the cleanup will go at the stricken Japanese plant at the 1 year, 10 year and 100 year marks.
The misleading part is that setting the future at 10 and 100 years doesn’t really indicate when the cleanup or disposition of various components – reactor buildings, reactor cores, etc. – will be finished, only that they will be finished by then.
Maybe this is fair enough – one can’t really know what the future will bring – but it might have helped if IEEE had used current estimates to pin down the target dates a little more. With that caveat in place, it’s worth a look.
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From the department of keeping it real:
This is the headline from the Washington Post’s Federal Eye blog:
Energy Department Couldn’t Manage Stimulus Money, Watchdog Says
Here’s the evidence:
Friedman’s appearance Wednesday is meant to summarize the more than 100 investigations conducted by his office into the department’s stimulus spending. To date, the office has recovered $2.3 million in stimulus fraud and has sparked five criminal prosecutions.
A little more data:
Gregory H. Friedman is slated to tell lawmakers that the Energy Department‘s efforts to quickly distribute $35.2 billion in economic stimulus funding “was more challenging than many had originally envisioned.”
Hmm! $2.3 million out of $35.2 billion distributed equals 0.07 percent of the funds that went to fraudulent activities. That’s not a bad outcome at all.
Energy Department officials have defended their management of stimulus dollars, noting that a majority of the money has been distributed to recipients on time. But the $535 million government-backed loan given to Solyndra, the now-shuttered solar company, has raised questions about the rush to distribute stimulus dollars …
But one of the complaints about the Energy Department stimulus funds early on was that it was taking too long to distribute the funds – I heard this at more than one hearing. And loan guarantees really are stimulus, in fact, one of the most stimulative aspects of the stimulus bill. As the Economist put it, they were:
optimal stimulus policy: the money was spent, it flowed out into the economy and added to demand, rather than going to wealthy individuals or firms who in a period of high risk aversion were likely to park it in Treasury bonds.
And a final overlooked point: Solyndra’s $535 million loan guarantee is 1.3 percent of DOE’s current $37.8 billion loan guarantee portfolio. Yes, of course there should be investigations, but there’s a lot of molehill-into-mountaining going on here – and it’s unfortunate the Post is falling into the molehill.
Solyndra’s building in Fremont, Calif.
Dreaming About a Repository–Take 2
Taxpayers have already spent billions to develop the [Yucca Mountain] site as a safe depository for nuclear waste.
We all have an interest because the worst of the nuclear waste cleanup at Hanford, Wash., is or was scheduled to be stored there. The storage is needed by about 2015, when a new plant will begin producing glass pucks of nuclear waste as a way to drain 177 storage tanks of highly toxic material.
This is from the Daily Astorian in Washington state. The Hanford Site was created by the federal government in the early 40s as part of the Manhattan Project. Its reactors (used to generate materials for defense) were decommissioned after the end of the cold war. Hanford also houses the Columbia Generating Station and the Pacific Northwest National Labs. You can read more about Hanford here.
The high-level used fuel being held at Hanford was intended for Yucca Mountain and, as with the Savannah River Site, the federal government is unambiguously responsible for it, not the state that hosts the site.
Yucca needs to be opened. One can only hope politics will move on after the general election and this nuclear waste site will become operational. It is currently the country’s best and only option for long-term nuclear waste storage.
As always, a few swallows on the window ledge don’t equal springtime, but there is a surprising lot of interest lately in reviving Yucca Mountain and concomitant annoyance at the present administration and some of the Republican candidates for keeping it closed. The Blue Ribbon Commission’s final report may set a course that satisfies a large contingent or at least refocuses the conversation – it really couldn’t come soon enough (it’s due at the end of January.)
An aerial view of Hanford.
The ANS Social Media Meetup
When NEI launched NEI Nuclear Notes almost seven (!) years ago, the nuclear energy blogging landscape was rather bare, as was our blogroll. The term "social media" was still on the horizon, Faacebook was still in its infancy, and not everyone inside our own organization was convinced that starting a blog -- whatever the heck that might be -- was an altogether good idea.
As I was walking into a conference room at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington last night for a no holds barred discussion on social media sponsored by the American Nuclear Society, I had to wonder out loud what anyone had been afraid of in the first place. So, while there was a time when we were so happy to find a blogger who supported nuclear energy we started a regular feature, it was nothing but standing room only in that hotel conference room last night.
As you might imagine, the debate was freewheeling, which it couldn't help but be when you stuff 60 or so bloggers into the same room for a couple of hours. And while we had our differences on style, there was a lot of substantive agreement in the room -- especially when it came to the value of sticking up for the industry and taking on our adversaries.
Thanks to Dan Yurman, chief cook and bottle washer at Idaho Samizdat for pulling the event together. NEI was flattered to be asked to co-sponsor the event with our friends from AREVA. Needless to say, we look forward to more freewheeling discussions with our friends.
Germany Nuclear Phase Out Same as Putting 4.4 Million Cars on the Road
We return, once more, to Germany where details are starting to emerge on the real costs of their nuclear phase out.
Let’s start with emissions. According to an estimate by Laszlo Varro, the head of the gas, coal, and power markets division at the International Energy Agency emissions will rise significantly.
Varro estimates that the nuclear phase out in Germany has caused a 25-million-ton annual increase in carbon dioxide emissions. The culprit, in large part, is the new coal power that has come online to meet the shortfall.
25 million tons is sort of abstract, but EPA has a pretty cool tool: the Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. It finds more concrete alternatives to “tons of carbon dioxide” like “emissions from passenger vehicles.” Turns out 25 million tons of CO2 emissions per year is equal to (pick your favorite one of the following):
- Annual greenhouse gas emissions from 4,446,984 passenger vehicles or
- CO2 emissions from 52,743,297 barrels of oil.
- CO2 emissions from the electricity use of 2,827,882 homes.
- CO2 emissions from burning 123,494 railcars’ worth of coal.
- Annual CO2 emissions of 5.4 coal-fired power plants.
Imagine adding emissions from 4.4 million cars in a country of 80 million. Or the emissions from almost 3 million homes. That’s essentially what Germany’s done with its phase out of nuclear power.
Don’t forget jobs. Obviously, the European economy isn’t doing too well. While Germany seems to be weathering the storm fairly well, losing 11,000 jobs can’t help.
E.ON, the world's largest utility by sales, joined peers in posting weak half-year results as Germany's decision to abandon nuclear power forced it to slash its profit outlook, its dividend and up to 11,000 jobs.
There are also concerns over the nuclear phase out’s long-term drag on Germany’s export-oriented economy. One estimate has energy bills up 20%.
Christian Schulz, senior European economist at Berenberg Bank, said estimates suggested the nuclear shutdown would increase Germany's energy bill by a fifth, which will hit the country especially hard since its economy relies heavily on its energy-intensive manufacturing industry to propel growth.
This sort of things makes you understand German manufacturers’ concerns about competitiveness. But the phase out isn’t sparing consumers either.
German households pay twice as much for power than in France, where 80% of energy is generated by nuclear plants. Klaus Abberger, senior economist at the Ifo institute for economic research at the University of Munich, said energy prices had already gone up since plans to end nuclear power generation and would stay at high for at least the next five years [emphasis added].
So much for “expensive nuclear power.” Perhaps this is behind Belgium’s qualified rethink on nuclear power.
The plan for a shutdown of the three oldest reactors by 2015 and a complete exit by 2025 is conditional on finding enough energy from alternative sources to prevent any shortages.
"If it turns out we won't face shortages and prices would not skyrocket, we intend to stick to the nuclear exit law of 2003," a spokeswoman for Belgium's energy and climate ministry said.
That’s a fair share of caveats. At least this gives Belgium a face-saving out if they can’t find cost effective “alternative sources” scalable enough to prevent blackouts. Renewables and natural gas may just fit the bill. Or not. Renewables are hard to scale up. Natural gas prices are hard to predict. But Belgium, unlike Germany, at least has given itself time to consider the alternatives.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News 2NOV2011
November sky highlightsDaily Post North WalesThere's plenty going on to get you out under the stars this month including a good meteor shower... Without a doubt, the highlight (in every sense of the word) of the night sky at the moment is the planet Jupiter. November sees the peak of the Leonid ...
Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News: MBIQ Indicates Montana ...MBIQ Indicates Montana Meteor
Latest Worldwide Meteor/Meteorite News: MBIQ Indicates Montana ...MBIQ Indicates Montana Meteor
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