Comment: We include Canada because it will be the Canadian companies (which the Can. Gov't has certain amount ownership, Like the French) mining Coles Hills. Canada cut corners when it comes to the nuke cycle!
AHN Staff
Calgary, Alberta (AHN) - The Chalk River nuclear reactor shutdown has Canada take a second look at its nuclear facilities. An assessment made by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission of the country's seven nuclear plants for 2008 showed that the nation's oldest power reactor in Pickering may compromise public safety because of its shortage of experienced staff to handle disaster and emergency situations.
Aside from the experienced manpower lack, the assessment report, which will be presented at a hearing next week, pointed to the outages which had occurred at the Ontario Power Generation plant in Pickering because of equipment malfunction and other problem areas.
The report said the Pickering plants lost one-fourth of its output in 2008 because of unplanned closures, while the three other nuclear power stations in Ontario suffered only an average of 1 percent lost output.
Pickering A and B both got an integrated plant rating from the commission of Satisfactory.
For 2008 Pickering A went through 10 forced outages, two setbacks and no serious process failures.
Field inspection by the commission's staff showed observed housekeeping deficiencies, including water on the floor, clutter, scaffolding that are out-of-service and equipment which should be removed.
A CNSC request made in 2004 that an analysis of minimum staffing needs for common accidents like fire and earthquakes be made. However, the CNSC found out that the Pickering station management did not address the issues to CNSC's satisfaction.
The commission also found out in 2007 that the design of the Inter-station Transfer Bus had deficiencies existing since its installation in 1991. Pickering put in place a temporary modification to meet design intent, but it still lacks redundancy, cuts reliability and relies heavily on operator action.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7015387180#ixzz0HWFbU3HB&D
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7015387180
Showing posts with label nuclear plant accidents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear plant accidents. Show all posts
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Chernobyl victims enjoy holiday
Comment: So, the State of Virginia wants to be the Nuke Power of the World, Virginia is Nuke Friendly, why, why?????? So Virginia wants to poison our families, our land, our air and our Water!!!! No Nuke Power, No Uranium Mining!!!A group of children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster are in Cornwall on a month-long visit.
About a dozen youngsters and their carers are staying with host families in the county and taking part in a number of activities during their stay.
The Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine in 1986 was the worst accident in the history of nuclear power.
The visit to Cornwall gives youngsters a chance to be away from the effects of the explosion.
About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.
It is predicted that thousands of people will die prematurely of leukaemia and cancer caused by fallout as a result of the disaster.
Chernobyl Children Life Line, which organises trips for groups of children to visit different parts of the UK, claims that spending a month away from their homeland helps extend their lifespan by up to two years.
Last year youngsters who visited Cornwall were taught to surf.
Story from BBC NEWS:
About a dozen youngsters and their carers are staying with host families in the county and taking part in a number of activities during their stay.
The Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine in 1986 was the worst accident in the history of nuclear power.
The visit to Cornwall gives youngsters a chance to be away from the effects of the explosion.
About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.
It is predicted that thousands of people will die prematurely of leukaemia and cancer caused by fallout as a result of the disaster.
Chernobyl Children Life Line, which organises trips for groups of children to visit different parts of the UK, claims that spending a month away from their homeland helps extend their lifespan by up to two years.
Last year youngsters who visited Cornwall were taught to surf.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/cornwall/8067115.stm
Published: 2009/05/25 13:34:40 GMT
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Britain's farmers still restricted by Chernobyl nuclear fallout
Heather and rock outcrops on Snowdonia farmland Photograph: NTPL/Joe Cornish/PAComment: Been to England, pretty, remind you of the rolling hills in Shenandoah Park, Virginia but it's been ruin from a Nuke Plant Blowing up,our lands and animals will be the same from dust, water, air from urnaium mining!!
Environmentalists say controls on 369 farms highlight danger of plans to build nuclear plants around UK
Terry Macalister and Helen Carter guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 May 2009 12.30 BST
Nearly 370 farms in Britain are still restricted in the way they use land and rear sheep because of radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident 23 years ago, the government has admitted.
Environmentalists have seized on the figures as proof of the enormous dangers posed by nuclear power as the UK moves towards building a new generation of plants around the country.
Dawn Primarolo, minister for health, revealed 369 farms and 190,000 sheep were affected, but pointed out this was a tiny number compared with the immediate impact of radioactive fallout from Ukraine.
"This represents a reduction of over 95% since 1986, when approximately 9,700 farms and 4,225,000 sheep were under restriction across the United Kingdom. All restrictions in Northern Ireland were lifted in 2000," she added.
Critics of the nuclear industry expressed alarm at the latest numbers, which they believed would increase public unease about the highly toxic and long-term impact of radioactivity.
David Lowry, a member of Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates, said the figures demonstrated the "unforgiving hazards" of radioactivity dispersed into the environment, whether from Chernobyl in Ukraine, thousands of miles away and 23 years ago, or over decades from the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland, as revealed by the Guardian last month.
"Ministers like to describe nuclear power as 'clean and green', as they press for up to 11 new reactors to be built across England and Wales. But these latest figures on Chernobyl fallout gives the lie to these claims.
"Any breach of containment accident at Sellafield's high activity liquid radioactive waste storage tanks would release many times the radioactivity released in the Chernobyl accident. And these tanks had an under-reported loss of coolant a month ago, so we have been warned," he added.
Paul Dorfman, a former government adviser and a senior research fellow at the University of Warwick, was also concerned. "Despite all the reassurances from government about nuclear safety ahead of a new civil nuclear programme in Britain, the latest revelations about the continuing Chernobyl legacy show the dangerous reality of atomic power," he said.
The Ukraine explosion and fire was the biggest nuclear accident ever. In its aftermath 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness, of whom 31 died within the first three months. Accurate statistics on the wider health problems have been hard to ascertain because the Soviet authorities of the time refused to provide details.
More than 130,000 people were resettled from the immediate area and experts say there should be no farming there for at least 200 years. The Food Standards Agency said the release of radiocaesium-137 in upland areas of Britain is still able to pass easily from soil to grass and accumulate in sheep.
The European Commission imposed a maximum limit of 1,000 becquerels per kilogram (bq/k) of radiocaesium in sheep meat affected by the accident to protect consumers. Under a "mark and release" scheme in the restricted areas, a farmer wishing to move animals out of the area must have them monitored by a hand-held device.
"Any sheep that exceed the working action level are marked with dye and are not released from restrictions," said a spokesman, who added that mass summer surveys of sheep are performed at farms where there is confidence that restrictions are no longer needed.
Huw Alun Evans's farm, Hengwrt Uchaf in north Wales, is one of the 369 inside one restricted area. Thousands of his sheep have been scanned for more than two decades. Evans's animals have failed radiation tests if they have been on higher ground, but the danger levels drop after they have been brought down to graze on lower pastures.
He says: "I remember a meeting with civil servants at the time [1986] and got the impression they thought it would be short-lived. No-one had any idea it would go on this long."
Revelations about the continuing impact of the Chernobyl accident come weeks after three different sites were bought in auction by EDF and other power companies for building new atomic plants in Britain. The sites at Bradwell in Essex, Wylfa in Anglesey and Hinkley Point in Somerset were auctioned for £400m by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
A similar process is expected to start shortly for land near the huge Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, as the government moves to put in place new electricity generating plants to provide relatively low-carbon power and bolster domestic energy sources at a time when old atomic stations are nearing the end of their lives.
Terry Macalister and Helen Carter guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 May 2009 12.30 BST
Nearly 370 farms in Britain are still restricted in the way they use land and rear sheep because of radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident 23 years ago, the government has admitted.
Environmentalists have seized on the figures as proof of the enormous dangers posed by nuclear power as the UK moves towards building a new generation of plants around the country.
Dawn Primarolo, minister for health, revealed 369 farms and 190,000 sheep were affected, but pointed out this was a tiny number compared with the immediate impact of radioactive fallout from Ukraine.
"This represents a reduction of over 95% since 1986, when approximately 9,700 farms and 4,225,000 sheep were under restriction across the United Kingdom. All restrictions in Northern Ireland were lifted in 2000," she added.
Critics of the nuclear industry expressed alarm at the latest numbers, which they believed would increase public unease about the highly toxic and long-term impact of radioactivity.
David Lowry, a member of Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates, said the figures demonstrated the "unforgiving hazards" of radioactivity dispersed into the environment, whether from Chernobyl in Ukraine, thousands of miles away and 23 years ago, or over decades from the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland, as revealed by the Guardian last month.
"Ministers like to describe nuclear power as 'clean and green', as they press for up to 11 new reactors to be built across England and Wales. But these latest figures on Chernobyl fallout gives the lie to these claims.
"Any breach of containment accident at Sellafield's high activity liquid radioactive waste storage tanks would release many times the radioactivity released in the Chernobyl accident. And these tanks had an under-reported loss of coolant a month ago, so we have been warned," he added.
Paul Dorfman, a former government adviser and a senior research fellow at the University of Warwick, was also concerned. "Despite all the reassurances from government about nuclear safety ahead of a new civil nuclear programme in Britain, the latest revelations about the continuing Chernobyl legacy show the dangerous reality of atomic power," he said.
The Ukraine explosion and fire was the biggest nuclear accident ever. In its aftermath 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness, of whom 31 died within the first three months. Accurate statistics on the wider health problems have been hard to ascertain because the Soviet authorities of the time refused to provide details.
More than 130,000 people were resettled from the immediate area and experts say there should be no farming there for at least 200 years. The Food Standards Agency said the release of radiocaesium-137 in upland areas of Britain is still able to pass easily from soil to grass and accumulate in sheep.
The European Commission imposed a maximum limit of 1,000 becquerels per kilogram (bq/k) of radiocaesium in sheep meat affected by the accident to protect consumers. Under a "mark and release" scheme in the restricted areas, a farmer wishing to move animals out of the area must have them monitored by a hand-held device.
"Any sheep that exceed the working action level are marked with dye and are not released from restrictions," said a spokesman, who added that mass summer surveys of sheep are performed at farms where there is confidence that restrictions are no longer needed.
Huw Alun Evans's farm, Hengwrt Uchaf in north Wales, is one of the 369 inside one restricted area. Thousands of his sheep have been scanned for more than two decades. Evans's animals have failed radiation tests if they have been on higher ground, but the danger levels drop after they have been brought down to graze on lower pastures.
He says: "I remember a meeting with civil servants at the time [1986] and got the impression they thought it would be short-lived. No-one had any idea it would go on this long."
Revelations about the continuing impact of the Chernobyl accident come weeks after three different sites were bought in auction by EDF and other power companies for building new atomic plants in Britain. The sites at Bradwell in Essex, Wylfa in Anglesey and Hinkley Point in Somerset were auctioned for £400m by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
A similar process is expected to start shortly for land near the huge Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, as the government moves to put in place new electricity generating plants to provide relatively low-carbon power and bolster domestic energy sources at a time when old atomic stations are nearing the end of their lives.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Nuke plant was not required to inspect all pipes
Comment: can you believe the NRC did not require Nuke Plants to inspect pipes, pipes which contaminated water runs thru, back out to a lake or the ocean!! Leaks are a common problem with Nuke Plants, fish kills are too! The whole Nuke cycle ruins our water, air & land!!
May 7, 2009
By TODD B. BATES
Staff Writer
Nuclear regulators did not require the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey to inspect all of its buried pipes — two of which leaked radioactive tritium — before renewing the facility's license for 20 years, according to a federal spokesman.
Oyster Creek's buried piping inspection program is "not designed to be a 100 percent inspection, according to Neil A. Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Four monitoring wells at the plant are contaminated with up to about 300 times government limits for tritium in water. Tritium — found naturally in the environment and generated by nuclear plants — is a weak isotope of hydrogen that poses a cancer risk.
The tritium has remained on site and is no threat to public or employee health, plant, federal and state officials have said.
Exelon, which owns Oyster Creek, inspected at least one of the two pipes with holes before its operating license was renewed, Sheehan said.
But it looks like the pipe was inspected in a different spot than where the hole was found, he said in an e-mail.
Plant officials discovered holes in the pipes, which carry radioactive water in a closed loop at the plant, after the license was renewed last month.
Within 10 years after a license is renewed, plants will do one or both of the following, according to Sheehan:
— Inspect portions of piping with a high likelihood of corrosion problems or piping with a history of corrosion.
— Take advantage of ongoing maintenance opportunities and inspect portions of piping if and when excavation work is done adjacent to it.
— Neither officials nor plant spokesman David Benson had a figure Friday on the amount of piping at the plant.
— Some piping was inspected before the license was renewed, according to Sheehan. — Oyster Creek's aging-management program is based on the results of inspections and operating experience at all 11 Exelon nuclear plants, Benson said.
It "isn't a static aging-management program," he said. "We use data from all the plants across the fleet to ensure every station has the most recent analysis and information for their programs."
Meanwhile, the "cause of the current leakage" at Oyster Creek has yet to be determined, according to Sheehan.
Leaks from the two pipes were stopped as soon as they were found, but "we're still checking" on whether there are other leaks, Benson said.
Enforcement officials in the state Department of Environmental Protection began investigating Friday whether Oyster Creek violated environmental laws regarding the tritium contamination, according to DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura.
She said she could not speculate on the fines the DEP could issue in this case.
Last year, Oyster Creek agreed to pay the state $67,859 for a fish kill in 2007 and another in 2006. The plant also reached a $1 million settlement with the state following a 2002 fish kill.
http://www.app.com/article/20090507/COMMUNITY/905070402/1277/LOCAL01&source=rss
May 7, 2009
By TODD B. BATES
Staff Writer
Nuclear regulators did not require the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey to inspect all of its buried pipes — two of which leaked radioactive tritium — before renewing the facility's license for 20 years, according to a federal spokesman.
Oyster Creek's buried piping inspection program is "not designed to be a 100 percent inspection, according to Neil A. Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Four monitoring wells at the plant are contaminated with up to about 300 times government limits for tritium in water. Tritium — found naturally in the environment and generated by nuclear plants — is a weak isotope of hydrogen that poses a cancer risk.
The tritium has remained on site and is no threat to public or employee health, plant, federal and state officials have said.
Exelon, which owns Oyster Creek, inspected at least one of the two pipes with holes before its operating license was renewed, Sheehan said.
But it looks like the pipe was inspected in a different spot than where the hole was found, he said in an e-mail.
Plant officials discovered holes in the pipes, which carry radioactive water in a closed loop at the plant, after the license was renewed last month.
Within 10 years after a license is renewed, plants will do one or both of the following, according to Sheehan:
— Inspect portions of piping with a high likelihood of corrosion problems or piping with a history of corrosion.
— Take advantage of ongoing maintenance opportunities and inspect portions of piping if and when excavation work is done adjacent to it.
— Neither officials nor plant spokesman David Benson had a figure Friday on the amount of piping at the plant.
— Some piping was inspected before the license was renewed, according to Sheehan. — Oyster Creek's aging-management program is based on the results of inspections and operating experience at all 11 Exelon nuclear plants, Benson said.
It "isn't a static aging-management program," he said. "We use data from all the plants across the fleet to ensure every station has the most recent analysis and information for their programs."
Meanwhile, the "cause of the current leakage" at Oyster Creek has yet to be determined, according to Sheehan.
Leaks from the two pipes were stopped as soon as they were found, but "we're still checking" on whether there are other leaks, Benson said.
Enforcement officials in the state Department of Environmental Protection began investigating Friday whether Oyster Creek violated environmental laws regarding the tritium contamination, according to DEP spokeswoman Elaine Makatura.
She said she could not speculate on the fines the DEP could issue in this case.
Last year, Oyster Creek agreed to pay the state $67,859 for a fish kill in 2007 and another in 2006. The plant also reached a $1 million settlement with the state following a 2002 fish kill.
http://www.app.com/article/20090507/COMMUNITY/905070402/1277/LOCAL01&source=rss
Monday, April 27, 2009
Malfunctions Shut Down 2 Exelon Corp Nuclear Power Plants Over Weekend; Illinois Plant Back Up While New Jersey Plant Remains Off-Line
Comment: say no the Nuke Power, the NRC is notified after the problem happens, scary!
Linda Young - AHN Editor
Braidwood, IL (AHN) - Exelon Corp. shut down two of its nuclear reactors in different parts of the nation this weekend after technical malfunctions.
Energy services provider Exelon (NYSE: EXC) is the largest nuclear operator in the U.S., and is also the nation's largest electric and natural gas utility.
With corporate headquarters in Chicago, IL, the first malfunction was nearby on Friday night at Exelon Nuclear's Braidwood Generating Station.
The Braidwood malfunction was in the cooling system control and caused an automatic shutdown of one of the plant's two nuclear reactors. There were no injuries, disruption of service or environmental damage from the incident and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was notified.
Repairs were made and the Illinois plant resumed operations by 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
However, shortly before then, Exelon's plant in New Jersey went down. There was no release of radiation, risk to the public or injuries because of the malfunction.
The Oyster Creek Generating Station was manually shut down at 6:04 p.m. Saturday after one of its main transformers failed. The company has not given a time frame for completing repairs.
Oyster Creek Generating Station is the nation's oldest operating nuclear power plant. It has been generating electricity for 40 years and earlier this month renewed its license for another 20 years.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7014947393
Linda Young - AHN Editor
Braidwood, IL (AHN) - Exelon Corp. shut down two of its nuclear reactors in different parts of the nation this weekend after technical malfunctions.
Energy services provider Exelon (NYSE: EXC) is the largest nuclear operator in the U.S., and is also the nation's largest electric and natural gas utility.
With corporate headquarters in Chicago, IL, the first malfunction was nearby on Friday night at Exelon Nuclear's Braidwood Generating Station.
The Braidwood malfunction was in the cooling system control and caused an automatic shutdown of one of the plant's two nuclear reactors. There were no injuries, disruption of service or environmental damage from the incident and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was notified.
Repairs were made and the Illinois plant resumed operations by 7:30 p.m. Saturday.
However, shortly before then, Exelon's plant in New Jersey went down. There was no release of radiation, risk to the public or injuries because of the malfunction.
The Oyster Creek Generating Station was manually shut down at 6:04 p.m. Saturday after one of its main transformers failed. The company has not given a time frame for completing repairs.
Oyster Creek Generating Station is the nation's oldest operating nuclear power plant. It has been generating electricity for 40 years and earlier this month renewed its license for another 20 years.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7014947393
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