ITER Forum Website Update 9/13

ITER Forum Website update 9/13

B.J.Green (17/9/13)

1. Grave warning over reactor leak

BY: RICK WALLACE, TOKYO CORRESPONDENT From: The AustralianAugust 22, 2013 12:00AM

JAPAN's nuclear regulator has issued the gravest warning about the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant since the disaster two years ago, following news of another radioactive water leak at the site.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said it had assessed the incident - which involved the discharge of 300 tonnes of contaminated water - as a level-three "serious incident" on the international scale, which runs to level seven.

Highly radioactive water was thought to still be leaking from a large metal storage tank on site yesterday as efforts to find and plug the leak continued.

Plant operator TEPCO said puddles with extremely high radiation levels had been found near the tank. "This means you are exposed to the level of radiation in an hour that a nuclear plant worker is allowed to be exposed to in five years," a TEPCO spokesman said.

Level-three cases on the INES scale are described as "serious incidents" with "exposure in excess of 10 times the statutory annual limit for workers".

The March 2011 disaster at Fukushima was originally rated level five, but was upgraded to level seven, the highest level on the INES scale. The 1986 Chernobyl incident rated seven, while the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the US was rated five.

This water leak is obviously much less severe, but is just one of a string of worrying mishaps and radioactivity at the plant, and will increase pressure on the Japanese government to end its arms-length approach to managing the disaster and step in to assist the beleaguered TEPCO.

Workers at the plant have anonymously condemned the work practices there, accusing TEPCO of cutting corners and refusing to implement sensible solutions if the cost was too high. The company has also been reluctant to accept foreign expertise to assist with the clean-up.

Under orders from the NRA, TEPCO had begun extracting soil from the area alongside the tank where the water was thought to have leaked.

There are about 350 such tanks and they are used to store contaminated water used in cooling the stricken reactors. TEPCO said yesterday it had identified which tank was faulty but had yet to find the spot from where it was leaking.

There have been four similar leaks from tanks of the same design since the tsunami that followed the quake knocked out power to the plant, sparking the world's second-worst nuclear disaster. This one is the largest in terms of volume.

TEPCO calculated the amount of leakage based on the water level within the tank, which was about 2.9m lower than it should have been. The company said given the volume that had leaked, it was possible that the leak had been going on for some time without workers noticing it.

Japan's Kyodo news agency reported that some of the water had leaked beyond a kind of metal drip tray installed beneath the tank because a valve had been left open. TEPCO has also been under fire over radioactive groundwater found to be leaking into the Pacific Ocean earlier this month.

It has tried to harden the soil between the reactors and the ocean to form a barrier and is considering elaborate plans to freeze the ground to make it impermeable. The volume and radioactivity of the water being used to keep damaged and melted fuel assemblies in the reactors is the major problem at the site.

Additional reporting: Agencies

2. Use sea as nuclear sink, says Tokyo

BY: RICK WALLACE, TOKYO CORRESPONDENT From: The AustralianSeptember 03, 2013 12:00AM

THE head of Japan's nuclear watchdog has flagged dumping contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean amid mounting woes over storage and seepage of radioactive water.

But Nuclear Regulation Authority chairman Shunichi Tanaka said any water released would be treated to an extent that the level of contaminants was well below international limits.

"If (the situation) becomes more severe, and some water falls below regulatory limits, it might have to be discharged into the ocean," he said yesterday in a speech to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.

"I know this (previously) created a great stir in some circles. However, I will absolutely not support the dumping of water where the level of contamination is above the limits."

Mr Tanaka said properly functioning nuclear plants dumped contaminated water into the ocean as part of normal operations, provided it met the limits.

But any discharge of water - irrespective of the level of decontamination carried out - is likely to spark outrage from environmentalists, fishing operators and neighbouring countries.

Mr Tanaka said he realised there would be "negative effects, based on rumours" and efforts would have to be made to counteract these.

The pressure to dump water stems from the sheer volume (400 tonnes a day) that is being generated to keep the damaged fuel assemblies below reactors one to three cool.

Some of it is being decontaminated and recycled as cooling water, but much of it is piling up in large storage tanks hastily assembled on site. "I believe we will have to dispose of this water, whether it's in the ocean or another way," Mr Tanaka said.

The recent leak of 300 tonnes of water, which Mr Tanaka said yesterday might have partly seeped into the Pacific Ocean, was from one of the storage tanks. The apparent failure of the tank, and the fact it went undetected for so long, has increased pressure on power company TEPCO over its handling of the crisis - which Mr Tanaka described as "haphazard".

"The fact that the water level was not checked on a regular basis is an indication that management was not done in a very effective way," Mr Tanaka said.

"Even over the weekend some of our fears have come to be realised. We have detected relatively high levels of radiation around similar tanks."

Mr Tanaka stressed that the NRA had decided to go beyond its mandate and actually provide advice and guidance to TEPCO. But these actions stop well short of the demands from some quarters for a government takeover of the emergency response.

Mr Tanaka called for a more pro-active approach from TEPCO, saying there were many other issues at the site that had the potential to become serious problems and early intervention was needed.

3. Japan to spend $470M on 'ice wall'

Posted: Sep 04, 2013 1:40 AM SGT

Tuesday, September 3, 2013 1:40 PM EST

Updated: Sep 04, 2013 2:41 AM SGT

TOKYO (CNN) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has waded deep into the effort to deal with the aftermath of the world's worst nuclear accident in a quarter century.

His government said Tuesday it would spend the equivalent of $470 million to try to tackle the alarming toxic water crisis at the country's tsunami-crippled nuclear power plant.

National authorities are stepping in as Tokyo Electric Power Company struggles to cope with an array of daunting problems at its stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The move is a gamble for Abe, who comfortably won elections last year and has so far remained popular.

"Today, instead of the previous stopgap countermeasures, we have put together a basic policy for countering the contaminated water issue," Abe said after a ministerial meeting Tuesday.

TEPCO has accumulated a huge volume of tainted water at the site since a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 set off meltdowns at three of the plant's reactors.

A litany of leaks

Last month, it said one of roughly 1,000 huge storage tanks at the site had leaked 300 tons of toxic water, prompting Japan's nuclear regulator to declare the situation a Level 3 serious incident, its gravest assessment since the meltdowns at the plant in 2011.

Now, the regulator says it suspects more leaks from other containers after the company detected high radiation levels in some parts of the water storage system over the weekend.

TEPCO is also having difficulty managing the large quantities of groundwater that flow into and out of the area around the plant each day. In July, it admitted that radioactive groundwater was leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the site, bypassing an underground barrier built to seal in the water.

Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear plant operator and engineer, described the groundwater problem as one of the biggest long-term issues at the plant.

"It's like having a leak in your basement," he told CNN Tuesday.

Government measures

Amid mounting concerns about the crisis and TEPCO's ability to deal with it, Abe said last month his government would step in.

In the plan outlined Tuesday, the government said it intends to spend roughly $320 million on a technologically challenging project to freeze the ground around the reactors to prevent groundwater from leaking into the plant and carrying radioactive particles with it as it seeps out.

The plan to freeze the ground had already been proposed by TEPCO, but the government says it is trying to speed up measures to get a grip on the water crisis.

It earmarked a further $150 million for a new, more effective processing system for the tainted water at the plant.

Authorities will also replace water storage tanks that are held together by bolts with welded tanks, which have a lower risk of leaking.

The three main elements of the government's plan are to decrease the amount of contaminated water in and underneath the reactor buildings and surrounding trenches, keep groundwater away from already toxic water and prevent tainted water from seeping into the ocean.

Frozen ground

The plan to freeze the ground around the reactors is particularly ambitious. The Japanese government has previously described the task as "unprecedented."

The technology has been used before in the construction of tunnels, but never on the massive scale that the Fukushima plant would require. It also has never been used for the years or decades that experts think will be needed at the plant.

It is likely to involve plunging tubes carrying a powerful coolant liquid deep into the ground. The liquid would freeze the ground solid so that no groundwater could pass through it.

Friedlander said that the ground freezing is "a good solution as an interim fix" until the leaks underneath the reactors are permanently sealed.

TEPCO has been grappling with water issues ever since the plant was hit by the natural disasters in 2011. The resulting meltdowns constituted the second-worst nuclear accident in history, trailing only the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl, in the former Soviet Union.

4. Oettinger aims to get ITER back on track

By Dave Keating - 05.09.2013 / 05:15 CET

Discussions planned on the project's continuing financing and its organisational woes.

Günther Oettinger, European commissioner for energy, has summoned representatives of the seven countries investing in the ITER nuclear-fusion project for a meeting on Friday (6 September) to discuss the project's continuing financing and its organisational woes.

The EU and its member states contribute more than 45% of the project's funding, with the remainder coming from Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States. The project has been plagued by cost rises and long delays since it was set up in 2006.

ITER's funding became a political football during EU budget negotiations in 2011. The EU's commitment to the project faced a €1.4bn funding shortfall in the 2012-13 period and the situation was resolved only when money was taken from other budget items, including administration and natural resources. The item will instead come from member states' budgets in the long-term 2014-20 multiannual financial framework (MFF).

Holy grail

Fusion has often been described as the ‘holy grail' of nuclear energy because it does not present the same safety and environmental risks as nuclear fission. But some environmental campaigners say the money being thrown at what could be a doomed project would be better spent on renewable energy. Experts predict that a commercially-available fusion reactor will not exist for another 50 years. The estimated total cost of the project is now €15 billion.

Another focus of the meeting, which will take place at the ITER headquarters at Saint Paul lez Durance, in the south of France, will be the project's organisational structure. Contributions are made in kind through the procurement of components by individual national agencies, a process that has been described as bureaucratic and cumbersome.

A recent report by Ernst & Young for the European Parliament's budgetary control committee found that the existing organisational structure was partly responsible for the cost overruns.

5. Chinese-UK agreements will advance drive towards fusion power

September 2nd, 2013

Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) has signed two Memoranda of Understanding for co-operation with Chinese scientific institutes, in the interests of pursuing research into nuclear fusion.

The agreements, covering a two-year initial period, are between:

1. CCFE and the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei and the School of Nuclear Science and Technology of the University of Science and Technology, Hefei; 2. CCFE and the Southwestern Institute of Physics, Chengdu and the Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology of the Sichuan University, Chengdu.

Both Memoranda will see secondments of scientists and engineers between the UK and China to take part in joint experiments on their respective fusion devices, and other activities such as the provision of experts to contribute to design reviews for future projects by the other parties. Chinese fusion professionals will gain experience of the compact 'spherical tokamak' approach being developed by CCFE on the MAST device at Culham; their British counterparts will travel to work on the superconducting EAST tokamak in Hefei, and the HL-2A facility in Chengdu. Both MAST and HL-2A will be upgraded substantially in the period of interest covered by the Memoranda.

The collaboration will extend an already strong spirit of co-operation between the UK and China in fusion. It will cover a range of high priority areas in fusion research, including plasma physics, fusion engineering and technology, plasma heating techniques and computer simulations and modelling. With an eye on nurturing the fusion experts of tomorrow, there will be provision for exchange of students between the two countries, and for Chinese and British Professors to share their knowledge to improve training opportunities at MSc, PhD and post-doctoral level. This will build on the strong fusion education and training programmes led by the York Plasma Institute at the University of York and existing links with several Chinese institutes and universities involved in fusion.

Tom Todd, Chief Technologist at CCFE, said: "We are pleased to link up with four of China's leading institutes to take this research forward. Both countries have dynamic fusion programmes and are closely involved in the international ITER experiment, a vital step towards commercial fusion power. China has been investing heavily in fusion in recent years, and we in the UK have considerable expertise, demonstrated in operating world-leading tokamaks at Culham. Working together on some of the main science issues will be of mutual benefit and will boost the global drive to put fusion power on the grid."

China also plans to build a pilot fusion power plant on an early timescale, and these agreements will help the UK participate in those discussions.

Tom Todd added: "CCFE is glad to have the enthusiastic backing of the UK Government in this initiative. In fact the idea came from a visit by Culham, University of York and University of London scientists to China in 2012 that was sponsored by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Now the Memoranda have been signed, the five organisations will organise projects to get the most out of the collaboration."

Provided by Culham Centre for Fusion Energy

This Phys.org Science News Wire page contains a press release issued by an organization mentioned above and is provided to you “as is” with little or no review from Phys.Org staff.

6.Don’t give up on nuclear energy yet

By Editorial Board,September 04, 2013

OVER THE past couple of weeks, two of the arguments made against nuclear power by opponents seem to have gotten stronger: that it is too dangerous, and that it is too expensive. Yet it still would be wrong to rule out a near-carbon-free technology that produces a fifth of the country’s electricity.

On Tuesday, the Japanese government announced a new plan to deal with the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility. Though the Fukushima meltdowns occurred more than two years ago, the facility’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), is still struggling to contain the damage. The latest problem to attract alarm has been tons of contaminated water. Some 400 tons of groundwater mixes with tainted coolant inside the reactors every day. From there, much of it seeps into the ocean. On top of that, makeshift storage tanks containing radioactive coolant have started to leak. Last month, about 300 tons escaped from one tank. Last weekend, Tepco admitted that it found high radiation levels around another, and contamination readings spiked Tuesday.