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G-8 Energy Ministers Pledge Support for Stricter Nuclear Safety Tests

June 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment

PARIS — International energy ministers and officials of nuclear agencies pledged support Tuesday for a global push to improve safety tests at nuclear power plants.

The pledge emerged from a meeting in Paris that also highlighted divergent national approaches to the sector following the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.

The meeting, described as an “informal seminar,” was suggested by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France at a Group of 8 leaders’ meeting last month. Mr. Sarkozy has proposed drafting new global standards for nuclear security and updating international conventions in the wake of the accident that struck the reactors in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami March 11.

“It quickly become apparent that we need to draw conclusions from the accident and improve and lift our standards and cooperation on nuclear safety,” said Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the French ecology minister, who led the meeting.

Representatives attended from around 30 countries drawn from the G-8 and members of the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. According to a statement released afterward, there was a consensus that countries with nuclear facilities should carry out stress tests and periodic safety reviews and that the role and missions of the International Atomic Energy Agency should be bolstered.

Attendees also discussed how to develop international nuclear intervention teams and possible modifications to existing international conventions, including those concerning liability.

The talks will continue among ministers at an I.A.E.A. meeting in Vienna on June 20-24, a gathering expected to propose more concrete steps, possibly including mandatory international safety regulations going beyond the agency’s existing recommendations.

Among those represented Tuesday were leading nuclear energy producers like France, which has 58 reactors providing around 80 percent of its electricity. Other attendees were Germany and Switzerland, which are abandoning their programs, and India, which is turning to the sector to sate its growing energy needs.

“There was no debate on whether to abandon nuclear or to start a program,” Ms. Kosciusko-Morizet said. “There was a general, uncontested agreement from everyone at the meeting that nuclear safety must come first — whether it’s a question of more or less nuclear power. And that depends on international cooperation.”

One European country wavering on the question is Italy, where the Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that a referendum on restarting nuclear power projects could proceed Sunday, the ANSA news agency reported. The Italian public voted to reject nuclear energy after the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986.

The Swiss government decided in May to phase out nuclear energy by 2034. “We think that it’s firstly very important that all states with nuclear plants put in place the existing nuclear safety requirements,” the Swiss federal energy minister, Doris Leuthard, said. “Then we think peer reviews are very helpful.”

“We would love, from the Swiss government, that these peer reviews are not only on a voluntary basis, that people would accept it would be mandatory,” she said. “Why don’t we give transparency to our populations.”

Ursula Heinen-Esser, a state secretary at the Federal Environment Ministry of Germany, another country that is turning away from nuclear power, said the immediate priority should be stress tests. She added that Berlin welcomed the G-8’s call for those countries that have not started such tests to carry them out.

Srikumar Banerjee, the chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, said his country had little choice but to turn to nuclear power, given that its energy demand is growing 10 percent or more a year. “This power demand is so genuine,” he said, “the only alternative is that we burn coal.” He said that India currently contributed 5 percent of global carbon emissions, but that would rise to 50 percent if it met its energy needs from coal. New Delhi, he added, was investing in solar energy, “but it cannot sustain a metropolis or a heavy industry.”

Milan Hovorka, the Czech Republic’s deputy minister for industry and trade, said the meeting highlighted “some minor differences here and there regarding the measures to be taken and sequences,” but he added, “I belive that we are united and that we are determined to proceed with a view to bringing the issue of nuclear safety to the highest possible level.”

Hideichi Okada, Japan’s deputy minister for international affairs at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said Tokyo had been “as transparent as possible” in releasing data on radiation since the accident. “As soon as we get the information, we disseminate.”

On Monday, the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that radioactive emissions from the Fukushima plant might have been more than twice as large as a previous estimate.

Luis E. Echávarri, director general of the Nuclear Energy Agency at the O.E.C.D., said the Fukushima accident was not a result of bad design or operation but had “shown the weaknesses of nuclear power plants” in facing unforeseen external events like natural disasters.

“We have realized still we can improve significantly nuclear designs and this is what is being done,” he said.

On Wednesday, the heads of the nuclear regulatory agencies “will continue the discussion to join the political view with the technical and regulatory view,” Mr. Echávarri said, seeking to coordinate safety reviews under way and “draw lessons to apply to all power plants.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/business/global/08nuke.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Company Believes 3 Reactors Melted Down in Japan

May 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The plant’s operator also said that it was possible that the pressure vessels in the three stricken reactors, which house the uranium fuel rods, had been breached as well. But most of the fuel remained inside the vessels, the company said — far from a more severe nuclear meltdown in which molten fuel penetrates the ground, a calamity known as the “China Syndrome.”

Also Tuesday, a team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear oversight body of the United Nations, began an investigation into Japan’s handling of the accident, amid criticism that a slow response made matters worse.

“We’re here to gather info and to seek to learn lessons that we can apply across the world to improve nuclear safety,” Michael Weightman, the chief nuclear inspector of Britain and the team’s leader, said at a meeting with Japan’s trade minister.

Tuesday’s disclosure by Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, could delay efforts to bring the plant’s reactors under control. Earlier this month, the company released an updated plan to bring all reactors at the plant to a stable state known as a “cold shutdown” in six to nine months. But that goal was based on an understanding that workers could efficiently cool the fuel in the three reactors, a harder task if their inner pressure vessels are breached.

It is also likely to trigger more criticism over what many critics have called a lack of timely disclosure by Tokyo Electric, and by the Japanese government, of important details of the accident. Prime Minister Naoto Kan has apologized in parliament for fanning public mistrust.

“We take this disclosure very seriously. But what’s important now is our response,” said Goshi Hosono, who heads the Japanese government’s nuclear crisis task force.

“Though we now know the situation is very severe, the fuel still remains inside the reactors,” Mr. Hosono said. “There is no change to our strategy of continuing to cool the reactors until we can bring them to a stable state,” he said.

Experts had long suggested that meltdowns occurred at the three reactors after a 50-foot tsunami knocked out power for their cooling systems, causing the nuclear fuel at the reactors’ cores to overheat.

Three other reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, about 150 miles north of Tokyo, were not operating at the time of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Last week Tokyo Electric for the first time acknowledged that the fuel at one of the reactors, Unit 1, likely melted and fell to the bottom of the reactor’s inner pressure vessel.

On Tuesday, Tokyo Electric said that meltdowns likely occurred at units 2 and 3.

It took time for Tokyo Electric to reach that conclusion because it has been gradually retrieving data from the damaged plant and analyzing its findings, Junichi Matsumoto, a senior nuclear official at the company, said at a press conference.

Mr. Matsumoto said data showed that damage to unit 2 began three days after the quake, when its back-up cooling system failed, with most fuel rods eventually melting and collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessel. At unit 3, fuel rods showed signs of damage by the afternoon of March 13.

But many of the details of how the accident unfolded still remain murky. The 18-person I.A.E.A. team, which includes experts from the United States, China, Britain and Russia, will interview officials at Tokyo Electric, as well as Japanese nuclear regulators, before drafting a preliminary report next month.

Greeting the team, Banri Kaieda, Japan’s trade minister, promised full cooperation.

“We are prepared to disclose all the information we have,” Mr. Kaieda told the team’s leader, Mr. Weightman.

Later speaking to reporters, Mr. Weightman expressed some understanding for the severe circumstances workers at the plant faced in the early hours of the crisis.

“In these severe circumstances, when roads, electricity, communications is severely disrupted, how do you manage to have an effective response?” he said.

The Japanese government is conducting separate independent inquiry into the accident. On Tuesday, the government appointed Yotaro Hatamura, known for pioneering a field that studies systematic failures, to head an investigation into the government’s response to the disaster.

“We hope that the inquiry is wide-ranging, and treats nothing as off limits, including actions taken by cabinet ministers and the prime minister himself,” said Yoshito Sengoku, deputy chief cabinet secretary.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=3f3c1424544c10ccf9c6426483f21e10

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Nuclear Company to Compensate Evacuees in Japan

April 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Masataka Shimizu, the company’s president, said individuals would receive about $9,000 and larger households would receive about $12,000. Only people who live within a radius of 19 miles of the damaged power plant, who were initially evacuated, will be eligible for the payments.

The government on Monday ordered the evacuation in the coming month of people in five additional communities that lie farther from the stricken power plant but received higher levels of radiation than elsewhere because of wind and rain patterns. Once residents of these communities have been certified by the government as also qualifying as victims of a nuclear disaster, the company will make the same payments to them, Mr. Shimizu said. Tokyo Electric Power Company officials had no immediate data on how many people might qualify from these communities.

The government said the company acted after a request from Banri Kaieda, the minister of economy, trade and industry. The utility’s full liability for the nuclear accident has not been established and will depend heavily on whether the government characterizes the earthquake and tsunami on March 11 as an exceptional event that could not have been readily anticipated.

No decision has been made on possible compensation to farmers and fishermen who may have lost their livelihoods at least temporarily because of the nuclear accident.

Repair efforts continued slowly at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. An announcement late Thursday of sharply rising temperatures at the base of Reactor No. 3 had provoked brief concern, but regulators said Friday morning that the readings appeared to have come from a malfunctioning thermometer.

In another development, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Japan had reported that 28 of the approximately 300 workers trying to stabilize the nuclear plant had received high radiation doses. The 28 workers have accumulated doses of more than 100 millisieverts, the agency said, though none have received a dose of more than 250 millisieverts.

Japan’s Health Ministry said on March 15 that it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts. That is five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.

In a sign of a return to normality on Friday, Tokyo Disneyland reopened with limited hours, after closing a month ago to conduct repairs and conserve electricity. Throngs of people showed up outside the amusement park’s gates before opening time, vying to be among the first to return.

The United States government, saying the situation at Fukushima Daiichi has become less perilous, lifted its travel warning for Tokyo and said it would allow dependents of government employees to return to Japan.

The travel alert issued by the State Department on Thursday said that although the situation at the nuclear plant “remains serious and dynamic,” the health risks in areas outside the 50-mile evacuation zone recommended by the American government “are low and do not pose significant risks to U.S. citizens.” It said that even in the event of an unexpected disruption at the plant, harmful exposures to people beyond 50 miles were “highly unlikely.”

The State Department said the new policy was based on the assessment of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Energy Department and the unanimous opinion of American scientific experts in Japan. It came three days before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was scheduled to visit Japan in what is described as a show of support for the Japanese people.

The State Department had authorized the voluntary departure of dependents of government employees in Tokyo and some other areas on March 16 and had advised American citizens to defer nonessential travel to the Tokyo area and to northeastern Japan, where the nuclear plant is located.

In its new alert, the State Department said the situation at the plant “is dramatically different today than it was on March 16, when we saw significant ongoing releases of radioactivity, the loss of effective means to cool the reactor cores and spent fuel, the absence of outside power or fresh water supply for emergency management, and considerable uncertainty about the condition of the site.”

Now, it said, the efforts to cool the reactors and spent fuel were “ongoing and successful,” power and water were partly or fully restored and planning had begun to control radioactive contamination and mitigate future dangers.

Moshe Komata and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting.

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