Last month former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Jaczko
said all 104 operating U.S. nuclear power reactors are unsafe.
This month former Indian
Atomic Energy Regulatory Board Chair Gopalakrishnan
says the reactors currently building in India, already three years
behind schedule and now found to incorporate numerous defects and
deficiencies amid gross lack of transparency, must be stopped.
When will the NRC stop the restart of the flawed and non-transparent San Onofre 2?
When will the NRC or GA PSC or the GA legislature or even Southern Company
coming to its senses stop the 19-month-late $1-billion-overbudget
flawed-concrete Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 before they waste any more
of our resources that could be going to solar and wind jobs and energy?
Tag Archives: Nuclear
When contamination gets into the watershed
Underground may be out of sight, but it just keeps seeping farther,
getting into more wells, poisoning more wetlands, and getting into the air,
causing cancer and other diseases.
Katie Leslie and Shannon McCaffrey wrote for the AJC 13 April 2013, 20 years later, Fort Gillem contamination still spreading,
In the early 1990s the U.S. Army discovered hazardous chemicals dumped at Fort Gillem seeping into residential wells in neighboring Forest Park. The finding prompted the military to pass out bottled water and convert many residents to a county water system from their private wells.
But two decades and a base closure later, state officials say the Army still hasn’t done enough to clean up known and suspected carcinogens that are migrating from groundwater into surface water and, potentially, into the air residents breathe.
We might want to think about that before importing coal ash; oh, wait, we already did! Maybe at least we should not import any more of it. We already have cancer-causing arsenic in some of our wells; we don’t need more. And what about that Continue reading
Southern Company Stockholder Meeting @ SO 2013-05-22
Spring means soon time for the Southern Company Stockholder meeting!
See what one of the biggest electric utilities in the world is up to,
and maybe make a few suggestions.
Here are videos of what you missed last year, and here is the official SO notice for this year (I got a link to it because I’m a shareholder): Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders of The Southern Company
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 TIME: 10:00 a.m., ET PLACE: The Lodge Conference Center at Callaway Gardens
Highway 18
Pine Mountain, Georgia 3182
It includes a list of Items of Business, which doesn’t mention that
stockholders are usually allowed to ask questions.
Those questions are usually answered by Thomas A. fanning,
Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer,
who included a letter (text below) in which he recites
his usual list of energy sources, in his usual order: Continue reading
5.8 quake in Japan today
A quake big enough to shake houses, about 100 miles from the broken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. Details from Japan Meteorological Agency:
Earthquake Information (Information on seismic intensity at each site)
Issued at 21:10 JST 17 Apr 2013
Occurred at (JST) Latitude
(degree)Longitude
(degree)Depth Magnitude Region Name 21:03 JST 17 Apr 2013 38.5N 141.6E 60 km 5.8 Miyagi-ken Oki
-jsq
PS: Owed to Masaichi Shiozaki.
Believe So. Cal. Edison about San Onofre?
Should we believe the operator of the broken San Onofre 2 nuclear plant that it’s safe to restart at 70% power? The same operator that knew the now-broken steam generators were flawed before it installed them? Recommended by the same NRC staff who couldn’t answer opponents’ questions? The same NRC that doesn’t publish licensee documents and says that’s never been a practice?
SanDiego6.com wrote yesterday,
Sen. Boxer Blasts Report on San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,
On Monday, Southern California Edison announced it had formalized a request to amend its operating license to allow it to operate its Unit 2 reactor at 70 percent beginning June 1.
The reactor was undergoing scheduled maintenance in January 2012 when a small, non-injury leak was discovered in plant’s other reactor. The plant has been shut down since.
According to Edison, vibrations that led to premature wearing of steam pressure tubes in the reactors don’t occur at 70 percent power. The utility wants to operate on limited power for the five warm weather months and then shut down for an inspection of the tubes.
After the inspection, the reactor would resume operating at 70 percent power. The company said it would use the collected tube data to determine an appropriate power setting for the long term.
There’s the catch:
Continue readingAlcohol, drugs, and broken nuke equipment
A broken cooling water pump at Fermi 2 yesterday plus
60% lost safety data today.
Airflow and quality problems at Kewaunee and Three Mile Island.
Drugs at Saint Lucie in Florida
and alcohol at Nine Mile Point 1 in New York and
at Braidwood in Illinois.
And four workers injured at Callaway in Missouri.
Apparently nuke employees can get terminated for off-site
recreational drug use, but not for fires or broken equipment.
We’ve already seen the event about fire at Plant Vogtle. Here are more events in the NRC Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013 and also today, April 5, 2013,
Continue readingFire at Plant Vogtle
Does a
Nuclear Operations Unusual Event (NOUE) give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?
When it’s a fire at a nuke on the Savannah River?
They didn’t shut Unit 1 down for that,
but Unit 2 has been down for almost a month.
NRC Current Event Notification Report for April 4, 2013,
Continue readingNOTIFICATION OF UNUSUAL EVENT BASED ON A FIRE IN THE PROTECTED AREA LASTING GREATER THAN 15 MINUTES
“Vogtle Unit 1 has declared an NOUE based on a fire within the protected area boundary not extinguished within 15 minutes of detection.
“At 0632 [EDT] Unit 1 received a fire alarm in the Unit 1 control building. A systems operator was dispatched to investigate and reported back that a small flame was visible inside 1ND3I1, computer inverter. Fire brigade was dispatched in accordance with fire response procedures. No other systems or parameters affected.
Even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts, and most nukes leak tritium.
Received yesterday on
Nuclear Plant Hatch radioactive leaks. Tritium (3H, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen)
is the stuff nuclear Plant Hatch
is letting leak into our groundwater.
NRC lists 44 leaking sites
out of 65 active reactor locations.
No solar or wind plants leak tritium.
-jsq
Continue readingIn case you haven’t seen this yet: TRITIUM: HEALTH CONSEQUENCES. Excerpt:
Most studies indicate that tritium in living creatures can produce
Apple: from 35% to 75% renewable energy in two years
All it takes is the will to get it done, and Apple is doing it:
from 35% renewable energy in 2010 to 75% in 2012, and 100%
at all Apple data centers.
Cost? They’ll save more than they spent.
Time for Georgia Power and Southern Company to stop dragging their feet
and help us get on with it in Georgia.
Peter Burrows wrote for Bloomberg Thursday that Apple got nudged:
Continue readingNuclear Plant Hatch radioactive leaks
The NRC publishes annual Radioactive Effluent and Environmental Reports for every operating nuclear power reactor. The reports for Plant Hatch 1 & 2 say radioactive tritium has repeatedly leaked into the soil and groundwater, but the internal swamp is getting less radioactive. Reports like this are not needed for wind or solar plants.
Annual Radiological Environmental Operating Reports for 2011
According to a 2007 Industry Groundwater Protection Initiative Voluntary Data Collection Questionnaire,
Continue reading