Legalectric

I live in Red Wing, home to two nuclear reactors.  This week I hope you all will take some time to reflect on the mess at Fukushima Daiichi and the role of nuclear generators in our energy scheme.   It was a year ago today when Fukushima Daiichi reactors melted down.

When Fukushima Daiichi first blew up, I spent some time tracking down every shred of info, which wasn’t much.  That there was so little information available was startling, and that was emphasized by my blog stats which showed 4,00o+ hits in just one day, people trying desperately to find out what was going on.

For an overview of how difficult it was to get information, and the struggles of even NRC personnel, from Marketplace earlier this week:

Lessons from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Interview: Witness Fukushima Daiichi

From the New York Times:

Nuclear Disaster in Japan Was Avoidable, Critics Contend

The Wiki is packed with info:

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

Here’s what I’d posted then:

Alan’s been digging around looking at the old nuclear demonstration plants, particularly since my father worked on the Elk River plant in Minnesota, now decommissioned.  and lo and behold, Genoa is/was another Allis-Chalmers nuclear plant, although it’s a different branch of the family:

Nuclear Fuel Assembly: Curator’s Favorites

How bizarre…

And now for something a little more current:

State’s 2 nuclear plants will get post-Fukushima upgrade

Don’t forget that our Monticello GE reactor is similar to Fukushima reactors.  Enough about upgrades - SHUT THEM DOWN!

Thanks to Kelly Fuller for the heads up.  A 2.206 Petition has been filed about the unsafe conditions at the Ft. Calhoun and Cooper plant.  Note that the Petitions were from July, 2011, and it takes six months for it to rise up to the Federal Register.

Here it is:

[Federal Register Volume 77, Number 15 (Tuesday,
January 24, 2012)]
[Notices]
[Page 3515]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government
Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2012-1370]

[[Page 3515]]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

[Docket No. 50-285, License No. DPR-40; Docket No. 50-298,
License No. DPR-46; NRC-2012-0014]

Request for Action Against Omaha Public Power District
and Nebraska Public Power District

    Notice is hereby given that by petitions dated
June 26 and July 3, 2011, respectively, Thomas Saporito
(the petitioner) has requested that the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC or the Commission) take
escalated enforcement actions against Omaha Public
Power District, the licensee for Fort Calhoun Station,
Unit 1 (FCS), and Nebraska Public Power District, the
licensee for Cooper Nuclear Station (Cooper). The
petitions dated June 26 and July 3, 2011, are publicly
available in the NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and
Management System (ADAMS) under Accession Nos. ML11182B029
and ML11192A285, respectively.
    The petitioner has requested that the NRC take action
to suspend or revoke the NRC licenses granted for the
operation of nuclear power reactors and issue a notice
of violation with a proposed civil penalty against the
collectively named and each singularly named licensee
in this matter--in the amount of $500,000 for Fort
Calhoun Station and $1,000,000 for Cooper. Additionally,
the petitioner requested that the NRC issue confirmatory
orders to prohibit restart at FCS and to bring Cooper to
a ``cold shutdown'' mode of operation until such time as:
(1) The floodwaters subside to an appreciable lower level
or sea level;
(2) the licensee upgrades its flood protection
plan;
(3) the licensee repairs and enhances its current flood
protection berms; and
(4) the licensee upgrades its station blackout procedures
to meet a challenging extended loss of offsite power due
to floodwaters and other natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
    As the basis for these requests, the petitioner stated
that:
(1) The licensees' installed flood protection measures
and systems and barriers at FCS and Cooper are not
sufficient to adequately protect the nuclear reactor from
a full-meltdown scenario like that currently unfolding in
Japan; and
(2) the licensees' station blackout procedures are not
sufficient to meet a challenging extended loss of offsite
power due to flood waters and other natural disasters or
terrorist attacks.
    The requests are being treated pursuant to Title 10
of the Code of Federal Regulations Section 2.206 of the
Commission's regulations. The requests have been referred
to the Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
As provided by Section 2.206, appropriate action will be
taken on these petitions within a reasonable time. The
petitioner requested an opportunity to address the Petition
Review Board (PRB). The PRB held a recorded teleconference
with the petitioner on August 29, 2011, during which the
petitioner supplemented and clarified the petitions. The
results of those discussions were considered in the PRB's
determination regarding the petitioner's requests. As a
result, the PRB acknowledged the petitioner's concerns
regarding flood protection, including station blackout
procedures, at FCS and Cooper. By letter dated January 13,
2012 (ADAMS Accession No. ML120030022), the Director of the
NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation denied the
petitioner's requests for immediate action. Additionally,
the PRB noted that:
(1) Natural disasters such as earthquakes and flooding,
and
(2) station blackout regulations are undergoing NRC
review as part of the lessons learned from the Fukushima
event. The PRB intends to use the results of the Fukushima
review to inform its final decision on whether to implement
the requested
actions.
    Copies of the petitions dated June 26 and July 3, 2011,
are available for inspection at the NRC's Public Document
Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public File
Area O1F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville,
Maryland 20852. Publicly available documents created or
received at the NRC are accessible electronically through
ADAMS in the NRC Library at
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html.
Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter
problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS
should contact the NRC's PDR Reference staff by
telephone at 1-(800) 397-4209 or (301) 415-4737, or by
email to PDR.Resource@nrc.gov.

    Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 13th day of January 2012.

    For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Eric J. Leeds,
Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
[FR Doc. 2012-1370 Filed 1-23-12; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7590-01-P

Thanks to a reporter (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!), I’ve got the recently release Sandia report:

Granite Disposal of U.S. High-Level Radioactive Waste - Sandia National Laboratories

This was released in August 2011.  It’s making the rounds now.

Here’s the part that really scares me, right there on the first page:

Unlike the safety analyses for disposal in salt, shale/clay, or deep boreholes, the safety analysis for a mined granite repository depends largely on waste package preservation. In crystalline rock, waste packages are preserved by the high mechanical stability of the excavations, the diffusive barrier of the buffer, and favorable chemical conditions. The buffer is preserved by low groundwater fluxes, favorable chemical conditions, backfill, and the rigid confines of the host rock. An added advantage of a mined granite repository is that waste packages would be fairly easy to retrieve, should retrievability be an important objective.

Yes, it’s on page one (do I even want to read past page one? NOOOOO).  What’s scary about that?  Well, back in “Nuclear Waste Daze” representing Florence Township,  I learned more than I wanted to know about “waste package preservation,” specifically a lot about weld flaws, about loading “ignition events”because they hadn’t considered the impacts of zinc and boric acid:

On May 28, 1996, a hydrogen gas ignition occurred during the welding of the shield lid on a ventilated storage cask (VSC-24) multi-assembly sealed basket (MSB).  The gas ignition displaced the shield lid (weighing about 2898 kilograms [6390 pounds]), leaving it in place but tipped at a slight angle, with one edge about 7.6 centimeters [3 inches] higher than normal.

The loaded VSC-24 multi-assembly transfer cask (MTC), a shielded lifting device used to transfer the MSB loaded with spent fuel to the ventilated concrete cask, had been placed in the cask decontamination work area in the auxiliary building.  Approximately 114 liters [30 gallons] of borated spent fuel pool water had been drained from the MSB to facilitate welding of the shield lid, creating an air space below the lid.  The hydrogen gas ignition occurred during the initiation of the shield lid welding, approximately 11 hours after the loaded MTC had been removed from the spent fuel storage pool.

And then there’s the inability to unload a cask once it’s been loaded and used for storage for a while.  for a Three Stooges HILARIOUS (if the truth wasn’t so scary) report on trying to unload a cask, “oops, an assembly is warped, oops, got stuck pulling out, oops, what to do, oops, let’s just ram it back in and put the cover on” at INEL:

INEL Report - Failed attempt to unload TN-24P

The possibility of revival of the notion of storing nuclear waste in the Minnesota granite, and granite anywhere, is more than I want to think about.

Here’s a fun video with some shots that Northern States Power showed us back in the NSP sponsored “Task Force” prior to their application(we’re talking late 1994-early 1995 here), to show us how safe casks are:

Homer, you work at a nuclear plant - what do you think?

AAAAARGH, there goes PUC Commissioner (former chair) David Boyd putting out the welcome mat for nuclear power, nuclear plants and nuclear waste.  This we DON’T need…

And note that he’s claiming that the hurdles are “costs” and “public perceptions.”  Ummmm… where’s safety?  Minnesota is home to a Fukushima Dai-ichi GE nuclear reactor,  located in Monticello, north, upriver and upwind from the metro.

Safety, anyone?  But then, I’ve been to the Appellate Court about the responsibility of the PUC for assuring that the utilities provide “safe” electricity, and we were tossed out.   Power Line Task Force v. Public Utilities Commission

Addressing Nuclear Challenges

THE HURDLES OF COSTS AND PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS

Published In: EnergyBiz Magazine November / December 2011

Secondly, the federal obligation to take possession of spent fuel and place it in a repository, as dictated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and standing contracts with the utilities, has not been fulfilled, and this inaction adds to uncertainty. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future has proposed policy actions to address this issue. Even with swift acceptance of the commission recommendations, it may be 12 years before any spent fuel begins to move from present storage sites. Furthermore, there remain matters of active litigation over the suspension of licensing activities for Yucca Mountain, and disputes over the Nuclear Waste Fund fees.