June, 2011

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Plant Status Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has repaired faulty hoses and restarted the new cooling system for the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The system resumed operations after the repair. The system, which on June 27 began circulating decontaminated water through reactors...

Last night, I saw a “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” segment of a chat show that focused on Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun station, which is sitting in an area now flooded by the swollen Missouri River. The speaker stressed that, despite the mutual presence of water around Fort Calhoun and Fukushima Daiichi, the...

Plant Status Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has partially restored a cooling water recycling system at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. Of the 16 tons of water injected per hour to cool reactors 1, 2 and 3, 13 tons are decontaminated water that has been processed through this system....

We’ll continue to bring you Japan updates on this page, but you may also want to take a look at NEI’s new site dedicated to Japan and Fukushima Daiichi. Called Nuclear Answers , it contains the updates, some new videos (we played some of them here in March), and – a lot of other material. Despite the...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 27, 2011—Eighty percent of residents living near nuclear energy facilities favor the use of nuclear energy as one way to provide electricity in the United States. Half of them “strongly favored” the use of nuclear energy, compared...

Plant Status Tokyo Electric Power Co. is continuing efforts to reduce the accumulation of radioactive water from cooling operations at Fukushima Daiichi reactors 1, 2 and 3. With reactor temperatures stabilizing, the company is reducing the water injection flow rate into the reactors. The total inflow...

John Keeley, NEI’s media relations manager, interviews Tony Pietrangelo, NEI’s chief nuclear officer and senior vice president, on the selective reporting, inaccuracies and mischaracterizations in a recent series of articles by The Associated Press on nuclear plant safety and regulatory oversight...

NEI has updated its fact sheet, “Emergency Preparedness at Nuclear Energy Facilities.” Key Facts America’s nuclear energy facilities are designed and built to safely withstand a wide variety of natural and other severe events and staffed by highly trained, federally licensed operators with...

Looking at recent stories from the AP and Al-Jazeera, as we’ve done over the last week, may make one think that the media has the knives out for the nuclear energy industry. To be honest, journalists never, and never should, put the knives back in the case. Trying to find malfeasance is a goal of journalism...

This fact sheet explains how energy companies develop and exercise emergency response plans to protect public health and safety near nuclear power plants. ...read more

Plant Status Tokyo Electric Power Co. workers have installed 32 steel pillars to support the reactor 4 spent fuel pool at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility and improve its capability to withstand earthquakes. The company next will wrap the pillars in concrete. It plans to finish the project...

You may have heard the International Atomic Energy Agency is having a ministerial conference in Vienna – ironic, of course, as Austria has no nuclear facilities. But the pastries are nice and the tourist council always appreciates the visitors. I think the most interesting part of the conference, which...

Michael Moyer over at SciAm’s Observations blog made the easy calculations to discover how “physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano” manipulated radiation data to scare folks about the Fukushima accident. After digging into the Centers for Disease Control data, here’s what Moyer...

It’s reasonable for journalists to beaver around the nuclear energy industry to find evidence that the industry is a nest of vipers plotting disaster and misery. That’s what journalists do. And I guess one can always find something that can be ratcheted into a breathless story. But the nuclear energy...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Nuclear Energy Institute criticized the Associated Press today for selective, misleading reporting in a series of new articles on U.S. nuclear power plant safety. The coverage has factual errors, fails to cite relevant reports on...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Obama administration announced a decision to withdraw one million acres of land surrounding the Grand Canyon from new hardrock mining claims, for 20 years. The region is believed to be rich in uranium deposits. ...read more

Plant Status Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) is working to restart full-scale tests of the water filtration system it will use to decontaminate and recycle radioactive water that has flooded the basements of buildings at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy facility. The system went into full operation...

An article at Al-Jazeera is called Fukushima: It’s Much Worse Than You Think. Generally, I find Al-Jazeera worth a look, especially for news from the Arab world, but this story misses the mark by a wide margin. Al-Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail interviews a few anti-nuclear energy advocates and tries out...

Yesterday, SCANA held an Analyst Day that mostly talked about the construction of the two nuclear units at their Summer station. Here’s the link to the 164 page slide deck (18 mega-byte pdf). Below are a few noteworthy slides. The first slide to mention is “Why Nuclear?” If you look at the chart at the...

Plant Status The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff said it now appears the agency was mistaken in its early conclusion that the used fuel pool at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor 4 may have lost all cooling water. “According to the latest information, it is unlikely it ever went completely dry,”...

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By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press – 1 day ago WASHINGTON (AP) — Water used to cool radioactive waste at the stricken nuclear complex in Japan did not dry up, as earlier feared, U.S. regulators said Wednesday in a reversal of a claim that pitted U.S. officials against Japan in the days after that country’s...

This last part discusses Paul Gipe’s analysis of nuclear’s costs and risks which was based on questionable assumptions from a California Energy Commission study, a report published in German by the country’s renewable energy association, and an unknown study on energy externalities. Let’s get into it...

One of the points that is made again and again about nuclear energy – on this blog, certainly, but really, in many places – is that if the world pulled away from nuclear energy, it would be very hard to achieve the carbon emission reduction goals that are wanted – needed – to stave off climate disaster...