You are here

Home

Nuclear Engineering Issues

Primary tabs

Sun, 2011-03-20 10:15 — mdmcdonald
Nuclear Engineering Issues

Working Group email address:  ***@***.***

Add Content to this group

Click to add a new Group Post Simple to this group
Click to add a new Group Post Simple w Images to this group
Click to add a new Group Post to this group
Click to add a new PRIVATE Group Post to this group
Click to add a new TASK to this group

Members

AlMac99 bevcorwin Harry Sauberman Kathy Gilbeaux Maeryn Obley mdmcdonald
Subscribe to group

Email address for group

nuclear-engineering-issues@m.resiliencesystem.org

Tighter Regulation of Industry’s Disaster Preparedness Required

Tue, 2012-03-13 23:25 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - March 13, 2012

Before 11 March 2011, Japan was held up as a paragon for preparedness; they had a national readiness plan, regular disaster drills, and strong civic engagement; the Fukushima disaster exposed a disturbing reality: search and rescue efforts were delayed, shelters ill-equipped, and supply chains broken; worst of all, there was confusion about who was managing the nuclear accident — the power company TEPCO or the Japanese government; information, when forthcoming, was sometimes contradictory

Sunday marked the 1-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, and experts at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University took stock of disaster response, nuclear fears, and lessons learned.

Before 11 March 2011, Japan was held up as a paragon for preparedness. They had a national readiness plan, regular disaster drills, and strong civic engagement. In the face of an unprecedented 9.0 earthquake, massive tsunami, and a nuclear accident at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant, however, the country experienced a host of challenges — many that continue to be felt.

Fukushima Lesson: Be Ready for Unanticipated Nuclear Accidents

Mon, 2012-03-12 21:57 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - March 12, 2012

A year after the Fukushima disaster all but two of Japan’s fifty-four nuclear reactors remain shut down, in a country where nuclear power once supplied nearly 30 percent of the electricity; the Japanese government is awarding an initial $13 billion in contracts to begin decontamination and rehabilitation of the more than 8,000-square-mile region most exposed to radioactive fallout

A year after the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, scientists and engineers remain largely in the dark when it comes to fundamental knowledge about how nuclear fuels behave under extreme conditions, according to a University of Michigan nuclear waste expert and his colleagues.

In a review article in this week’s edition of the journal Science, U-M’s Rodney Ewing and two colleagues call for an ambitious, long-term national research program to study how nuclear fuels behave under the extreme conditions present during core-melt events like those that occurred at Fukushima following the 11 March, 2011, magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.

Fukushima, One Year After

Fri, 2012-03-09 15:40 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Luis Kun

      

by Steven Cherry - spectrum.ieee.org - March 6, 2012

On the somber first anniversary, Japan still has a lot of work ahead.

This is part of IEEE Spectrum's ongoing coverage of Japan's earthquake and nuclear emergency. For more details on how Fukushima Dai-1's nuclear reactors work and what has gone wrong so far, see our explainer and our timeline.

Steven Cherry: Hi, this is Steven Cherry for IEEE Spectrum’s “Techwise Conversations.”

After Fukushima: Managing the Consequences of a Radiological Release - Final Report - March 2012

Fri, 2012-03-09 15:14 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Robert G. Ross

Center for Biosecurity of UPMC

“Outside the Fence” of a Nuclear Power Plant Accident

Offsite Planning to Reduce the Public’s Exposure to Radiation

MARCH 7, 2012—Baltimore, MD—In a report released today, researchers at the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC assess offsite policies and plans that can be put in place to reduce the exposure of the public to radiation in the event of a nuclear power plant accident.

Even amidst the devastation following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last year that killed more than 20,000 people, it was the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that led the country’s Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, to fear for “the very existence of the Japanese nation.”

While such low-probability, high-consequence releases have been rare in the history of existing nuclear power plants, the growing number of plants worldwide increases the likelihood that such releases will occur in the future. Accidents far smaller in scale than the one in Fukushima could have major societal consequences.

Alarms at Japanese Nuclear Power Plant and Processing Facility After Magnitude 5 Earthquake

Thu, 2012-03-01 17:07 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Tokai No2 Power Station

by Lucas W. Hixson - enformable.com - February 29, 2012

At 7:30 am local time March 1st, a magnitude 5 earthquake hit 68 miles from TOKYO, Japan.  After the earthquake, alarms sounded from the nuclear fuel processing plants and Tokai 2 nuclear power plant in Tokai-mura, Ibaraki Prefecture.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety announced that so far, the damage has not been confirmed in any of the facilities.  The alarm in the reprocessing facility was located within the building housing nuclear waste.

The alarms at the plant were reported to have stemmed from sensors in the reactor pool that measure the movement of water from earthquakes.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

New NRC Hazard Analysis Earthquake Study Released

Tue, 2012-01-31 23:32 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Kay Goss

                 

US NRC study released today on "New Seismic Model Will Refine Hazard Analysis at U.S. Nuclear Plants" and performs studies at many central and eastern U.S. susceptible locations. The Central and Eastern United States Seismic Source Characterization for Nuclear Facilities (CEUS SSC) Project was conducted from April 2008 to December 2011 to develop a new, regional seismic source model for use in conducting and reviewing probabilistic seismic hazard analyses (PSHAs) for nuclear facilities in the CEUS. PSHA is a method for assessing site-specific seismic hazard that includes getting the best estimate of ground motions and a transparent quantitative accounting of uncertainty. The results of PSHA are used in seismic design and in calculating seismic risk. 

Country / Region Tags: 
Japan
United States
General Topic Tags: 
Disaster Response
Disaster Risk Reduction
Earthquake
Radiation
Vulnerability
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Solutions
Problem

Video - Inside Fukushima Plant

Tue, 2012-01-03 22:21 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Press Conference - Former Fukushima Plant Worker

(Raw video from inside the Fukushima plant near the end of the video.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llO7pq70Vsc

Decontaminating Radiation-Laced Water at Fukushima Daiichi

Mon, 2011-12-12 22:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Samuel Bendett

Homeland Security News Wire - December 12, 2011

Workers on scaffolding around water decontamination equipment // Source: megaplotek.pl

Thanks to special radiation devices, made by UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, cleanup crews in Japan have been able to treat five million gallons of water contaminated by radiation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Following the devastating 11 March earthquake and tsunami, the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi were badly damaged and emergency crews were forced to pump millions of gallons of water into the reactor units to keep them from melting down.

Now that the reactors have been stabilized, cleanup crews must figure out how to safely process the millions of gallons of water contaminated with radiation.

“There is nothing like this, on this scale, that we have ever attempted to do before,” said Robert Alvarez, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Energy Department, in reference to safely disposing of the radiation-laced water.

Reactor Core Melted Fully, Japan Says

Wed, 2011-11-30 21:46 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Reactors Monitor - (Click on image)

by Mitsuru Obe and Tom Fowler - The Wall Street Journal November 30, 2011

Fuel Breached Vessel Floor, Operator Says, In Its Gravest Fukushima Status Report

TOKYO—Japan's tsunami-stricken nuclear-power complex came closer to a catastrophic meltdown than previously indicated by its operator—who on Wednesday described how one reactor's molten nuclear core likely burned through its primary containment chamber and then ate as far as three-quarters of the way through the concrete in a secondary vessel.

The assessment—offered by Japan's government and Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex—marked Japan's most sobering reckoning to date of the nuclear disaster sparked by the country's March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

IAEA Fukushima Daiichi Status Report - Full Update - November 4, 2011

Sat, 2011-11-05 01:20 — Kathy Gilbeaux

                                        

The IAEA has received new information regarding the detection of xenon-133 and xenon-135 gases on 1 November inside the Primary Containment Vessel (PCV) of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2.

Based on further analysis, Japanese authorities have concluded that the xenon concentrations are not due to a criticality event but rather from the spontaneous fission of curium-242 and 244. (Spontaneous fission is a form of radioactive decay that does not involve chain reactions and is characteristic of very heavy isotopes. Spontaneous fission occurs in low levels in all nuclear reactors.)

This conclusion is based on three key factors outlined and discussed in the report:

Pages

howdy folks