TEPCO today formally applied for safety assessments from the NRA for two of its reactors at the currently idle Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata prefecture. The nuclear plant is the largest in the world, with a total of 7 reactors capable of producing 8.2 gigawatts of power - enough to power a small country.
TEPCO is desperate to get some of its reactors started up again as it is currently haemorraghing cash while its reactors are idle. It is due to receive 380 billion yen in loans from the government later this year just to keep ticking over, and it is estimated that turning on 2 reactors could cut fuel costs by 200-300 billion a year.
However it's not clear when or if the NRA will judge the nuclear plants to have fulfilled the new stringent guidelines that are now in place. Among other things, it seems that these days nuclear plant operators seem vulnerable to the accusation that their nuclear plants lie over active geological faultlines. Of course it doesn't help that the definition of 'active' seems to be very generous indeed.
In another entry into the irony files, NHK tonight featured a lengthy broadcast about the new IPCC report on global warming, just after the stories about TEPCO.
The phrase 'a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is needed' was uttered. Oh dear.
Friday 27 September 2013
Wednesday 18 September 2013
"Tainted" rainwater dumped at Fukushima
During Monday's typhoon, massive amounts of rain fell on the Fukushima plant. Some of the rainwater accumulated in the barriers that surround the storage tanks holding contaminated water, and staff allowed about 1000 tons of rain to sluice out into drainage ditches and into the sea. The level of radioactivity in this water was minute - according to the Japan Times 24 becquerels per liter or less - which is thousands of times less radioactive than some of the water being stored in the tanks.
Even this discharge is viewed by some as disastrous. What anti-nuclear activists think might be done with rainwater falling on a damaged nuclear site was never made clear, especially as such rainwater is less radioactive than coffee or Brazil nuts or bananas or any of a hundred different mundance substances.
Although, to be honest, I do know what they would like to be done with it. I think people like Arnie Gundersen and Chris Busby would like all the rain captured and stored, so that they can then proclaim that the amount of contaminated water stored on site has increased by thousands of tons...
Even this discharge is viewed by some as disastrous. What anti-nuclear activists think might be done with rainwater falling on a damaged nuclear site was never made clear, especially as such rainwater is less radioactive than coffee or Brazil nuts or bananas or any of a hundred different mundance substances.
Although, to be honest, I do know what they would like to be done with it. I think people like Arnie Gundersen and Chris Busby would like all the rain captured and stored, so that they can then proclaim that the amount of contaminated water stored on site has increased by thousands of tons...
Monday 16 September 2013
Massive typhoon ... causes no damage to anything nuclear
Japan today was lashed by a large typhoon that hit the island of Honshu. There are a few people dead, others missing.
There's a chance this may turn into another fearmongering session (depending on the news cycle) because TEPCO released water that had accumulated between storage tanks due to the excess rainfall. The radiation level was lower than the accepted level so TEPCO just released it into the sea. It remains to be seen if this becomes a fearful news item.
It's worth making the point that nuclear reactors are much more resistant to natural disasters than non-nuclear facilities, due to layers of stringent engineering. Despite claims to the contrary, for example, it seems clear that the earthquake of 3/ll damaged Fukushima Daiichi not all.
Nuclear plants on board submarines have continued to operate after collisions with undersea mountains, other vessels etc.
Anti-nuclear activists love to press the meme that nuclear power plants are vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes or typhoons. They would do better to worry about non-nuclear facilities like dams and oil refineries, which can sometimes fail catastrophically.
There's a chance this may turn into another fearmongering session (depending on the news cycle) because TEPCO released water that had accumulated between storage tanks due to the excess rainfall. The radiation level was lower than the accepted level so TEPCO just released it into the sea. It remains to be seen if this becomes a fearful news item.
It's worth making the point that nuclear reactors are much more resistant to natural disasters than non-nuclear facilities, due to layers of stringent engineering. Despite claims to the contrary, for example, it seems clear that the earthquake of 3/ll damaged Fukushima Daiichi not all.
Nuclear plants on board submarines have continued to operate after collisions with undersea mountains, other vessels etc.
Anti-nuclear activists love to press the meme that nuclear power plants are vulnerable to natural disasters like earthquakes or typhoons. They would do better to worry about non-nuclear facilities like dams and oil refineries, which can sometimes fail catastrophically.
Saturday 14 September 2013
Fukushima Mutant Fish to Destory Tokyo!
Over the last few weeks there have been a stream of fearmongering articles in the press detailing leakage of contaminated water from Fukushima Daiichi.
The most feverish have described a leaking storage tank said to have discharged up to 300 tons of contaminated water into surrounding soil. Apparently a seal on the tank has failed and water has slipped out, over a rainwater dam and seeped into the ground. The water has been described as highly radioactive - up to 1800 mSv/hour.
Well, 1800 mSv/hour seems a lot, until you read that the vast bulk is beta radiation which only goes 1-2 meters through the air and is stopped by paper or clothing. The reading is so high because the measurement was made right next to the source. In fact, what the fearmongering articles do not say is that this water is nothing special - it's just the same water that has been leaking on and off since March 11 2011, without anybody caring too much, and completely insignificant next to the radiation releases of March and April 2011, which themselves have not impacted anybody's health in any observable way.
For some reason it is only now that these irrelevant figures are being bandied about. The water has not affected worker health in any way and no contamination has been detected offsite. Indeed, there is no special reason to believe that any of this water has entered the Pacific Ocean at all.
Even if it did, any radiation in the water would be swamped by the natural background radiation that exists in every ocean around the world; its impact would be negligible, and, if measurable at all, only because humans are extrememly adept at creating instrumentation that can measure minute traces of radioactive products that would otherwise not be noted by anyone and have no effect on anything.
This hasn't stopped massive overreactions in differernt parts of the world. The Korean government, for example, has banned seafood imports from a bunch of Japanese prefectures based on fear of these leaks. Even my otherwise harmless aunt in Sydney is afraid of the water in Fukushima!
The nuclear debate is filled with ironies that frustrate those who approach the issue rationally. Beta radiation is chump change. So far from these leaks being a real problem, probably the best thing to do with the entire quantity of waste water being stored at Fukushima is to filter out what you can, and just dump the rest into the Pacific!
This New Scientist article points out exactly that.
The most feverish have described a leaking storage tank said to have discharged up to 300 tons of contaminated water into surrounding soil. Apparently a seal on the tank has failed and water has slipped out, over a rainwater dam and seeped into the ground. The water has been described as highly radioactive - up to 1800 mSv/hour.
Well, 1800 mSv/hour seems a lot, until you read that the vast bulk is beta radiation which only goes 1-2 meters through the air and is stopped by paper or clothing. The reading is so high because the measurement was made right next to the source. In fact, what the fearmongering articles do not say is that this water is nothing special - it's just the same water that has been leaking on and off since March 11 2011, without anybody caring too much, and completely insignificant next to the radiation releases of March and April 2011, which themselves have not impacted anybody's health in any observable way.
For some reason it is only now that these irrelevant figures are being bandied about. The water has not affected worker health in any way and no contamination has been detected offsite. Indeed, there is no special reason to believe that any of this water has entered the Pacific Ocean at all.
Even if it did, any radiation in the water would be swamped by the natural background radiation that exists in every ocean around the world; its impact would be negligible, and, if measurable at all, only because humans are extrememly adept at creating instrumentation that can measure minute traces of radioactive products that would otherwise not be noted by anyone and have no effect on anything.
This hasn't stopped massive overreactions in differernt parts of the world. The Korean government, for example, has banned seafood imports from a bunch of Japanese prefectures based on fear of these leaks. Even my otherwise harmless aunt in Sydney is afraid of the water in Fukushima!
The nuclear debate is filled with ironies that frustrate those who approach the issue rationally. Beta radiation is chump change. So far from these leaks being a real problem, probably the best thing to do with the entire quantity of waste water being stored at Fukushima is to filter out what you can, and just dump the rest into the Pacific!
This New Scientist article points out exactly that.
Thursday 12 September 2013
How to lose your faith in the environmental movement.
The Greens have always suffered from a bad image outside the urban middle-class. They are seen as supported by lefty latte-sipping yuppies, a charge I've always thought rather harmless (what's wrong with drinking latte anyway?) A more serious accusation in my view is the common opinion that the Greens are watermelons, green on the outside and red on the inside. Another way of saying this is that if you dig through the envirnomentally-friendly exterior, the Greens are rabid socialists who are bent on destruction, and desperate to start waving red flags around before seizing control of the state and returning control of the means of production to the workers. Followed by bloodbath.
While I don't think there's much truth in this, it appears to me now incontrovertible that the Green movement is compromised by ideology. The Autralian Greens embody this as much as anybody. Their ideology is 100% in line with a vague 'harmony with nature' position that is never really thought through, and which in many cases actually causes conflict with efforts to improve our environment and work towards a sustainable global future.
The regrettable blindness of the Greens is demonstrated in a video debate which featured, amongst others, the leader of the Greens Christine Milne, and the nuclear advocate Ben Heard. The video can be seen here and her answers clearly demonstrate that the Green oppositon to nuclear power is ideological and not rational. The same applies to her clearly unrealistic hopes for renewable energy to produce massive amounts of reliable power in the future.
I have seen and fought the whole Fukushima debacle from the very beginning and it gets my goat to see it brought up as a negative. Even more disconcerting is the realisation that the ultimate source of the Green objection to nuclear power is the natural fallacy. When the natural fallacy is allowed to overrule scientific reality, well, it's all downhill from there.
The whole thing is so regrettable because environmentalists should be rushing to support and demand nuclear power. There is hardly anything in the world which could have such a beneficial effect upon the Earth's environment as the widespread adoption of nuclear technology.
While I don't think there's much truth in this, it appears to me now incontrovertible that the Green movement is compromised by ideology. The Autralian Greens embody this as much as anybody. Their ideology is 100% in line with a vague 'harmony with nature' position that is never really thought through, and which in many cases actually causes conflict with efforts to improve our environment and work towards a sustainable global future.
The regrettable blindness of the Greens is demonstrated in a video debate which featured, amongst others, the leader of the Greens Christine Milne, and the nuclear advocate Ben Heard. The video can be seen here and her answers clearly demonstrate that the Green oppositon to nuclear power is ideological and not rational. The same applies to her clearly unrealistic hopes for renewable energy to produce massive amounts of reliable power in the future.
I have seen and fought the whole Fukushima debacle from the very beginning and it gets my goat to see it brought up as a negative. Even more disconcerting is the realisation that the ultimate source of the Green objection to nuclear power is the natural fallacy. When the natural fallacy is allowed to overrule scientific reality, well, it's all downhill from there.
The whole thing is so regrettable because environmentalists should be rushing to support and demand nuclear power. There is hardly anything in the world which could have such a beneficial effect upon the Earth's environment as the widespread adoption of nuclear technology.
Tuesday 10 September 2013
Whatever happened to climate change in Australia?
From what you might have been reading or hearing about in Australia, climate change might as well have stopped, as it was barely mentioned during the election campaign. Far from being the great moral challenge of our generation it seems no longer to exist at all...
This is very curious because it was climate change and how Australia should best address it that has been the churning engine of the country's insane politics over the last 6 years.
First it was Kevin Rudd who first opened the game with his pulse-raising claim, then let everybody down when he couldn't actually follow through and implement an emissions trading scheme (ETS). To further compound the irony, the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, faced rebellion within his party when he supported an ETS and eventually lost the leadership to Tony Abott, with the rivalry pivoting around this issue. The madness continued when Rudd's public backflip on the policy helped contribute to his image of unreliability when in turn led to the leadership spill and his loss of prime ministership to Julia Gillard.
But all that constitutes only half of the craziness. The Labor party was heavily damaged by the backstabbing of Rudd by Gillard, and barely squeaked into power in the next election by negotiating with independents. Gillard had promised never to introduce a carbon tax in her government, but then found herself in a hung parliament in which her party could only retain power by allying itself with the Greens, who demanded a carbon tax leading to an ETS as their price for support. This unfortunate situation helped cement her image as untrustworthy, a supposed character flaw which the oppostion, led by Abott, harped on relentlessly. The Greens exacted their price and the Clean Energy Bill did eventually became law in November 2011, but has been controversial the whole time.
Gillard's declining popularity and the looming disaster of the upcoming election led to a comeback by Kevin Rudd, but that seemed to have done almost no good at all in reversing Labor's fortunes, and Tony Abbott is now prime minister. It's no secret he is a climate change skeptic and one of his policy stands is a repeal of the Clean Energy Bill. He plans to replace it with a $2.5 billion 'direct action' policy which nobody (let alone Tony Abbott) seriously believes will achieve anything.
All of this raises the question of why the Australia electorate has lost interest in climate change. Well, that's a question for another day.
The last and greatest irony of this whole debacle is that ETS schemes and carbon taxes are almost completely ineffective at mitigating climate change. This entire drama has been unnecessary.
Only nuclear power can both massively reduce emissions and keep global living standards rising.
There's no getting around that fact.
This is very curious because it was climate change and how Australia should best address it that has been the churning engine of the country's insane politics over the last 6 years.
First it was Kevin Rudd who first opened the game with his pulse-raising claim, then let everybody down when he couldn't actually follow through and implement an emissions trading scheme (ETS). To further compound the irony, the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Turnbull, faced rebellion within his party when he supported an ETS and eventually lost the leadership to Tony Abott, with the rivalry pivoting around this issue. The madness continued when Rudd's public backflip on the policy helped contribute to his image of unreliability when in turn led to the leadership spill and his loss of prime ministership to Julia Gillard.
But all that constitutes only half of the craziness. The Labor party was heavily damaged by the backstabbing of Rudd by Gillard, and barely squeaked into power in the next election by negotiating with independents. Gillard had promised never to introduce a carbon tax in her government, but then found herself in a hung parliament in which her party could only retain power by allying itself with the Greens, who demanded a carbon tax leading to an ETS as their price for support. This unfortunate situation helped cement her image as untrustworthy, a supposed character flaw which the oppostion, led by Abott, harped on relentlessly. The Greens exacted their price and the Clean Energy Bill did eventually became law in November 2011, but has been controversial the whole time.
Gillard's declining popularity and the looming disaster of the upcoming election led to a comeback by Kevin Rudd, but that seemed to have done almost no good at all in reversing Labor's fortunes, and Tony Abbott is now prime minister. It's no secret he is a climate change skeptic and one of his policy stands is a repeal of the Clean Energy Bill. He plans to replace it with a $2.5 billion 'direct action' policy which nobody (let alone Tony Abbott) seriously believes will achieve anything.
All of this raises the question of why the Australia electorate has lost interest in climate change. Well, that's a question for another day.
The last and greatest irony of this whole debacle is that ETS schemes and carbon taxes are almost completely ineffective at mitigating climate change. This entire drama has been unnecessary.
Only nuclear power can both massively reduce emissions and keep global living standards rising.
There's no getting around that fact.
Sunday 8 September 2013
Tokyo gets Olympics despite Fukushima
Yesterday the IOC awarded the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo.
The Japanese delegation to Buenos Aires, where the decision was made, was forced continually to defend Tokyo from the accusation that it was in danger from Fukushima radiation. Even prime minster Shinzo Abe had to answer questions from IOC delegates and reassure them that radiaton levels in Tokyo were lower than in Paris or New York.
While it's some comfort to know that IOC delegates were not disturbed enough by Fukushima misinformation to vote against Tokyo, it is far from ideal that the issue had to be raised at all.
It is hard to imagine anything in the universe that will affect the Tokyo Olympics less than radiation from Fukushima Daiichi. Radiation from the accident is measurable now only in parts of Fukushima prefecture itself. Athletes will receive massively more radiation in the international flights going to Japan than from radiation in Tokyo. The irony is that genuine (or at least measurable) threats to health in a big city, such as smog, went completely unmentioned by the IOC or journalists covering the announcement. On the other hand, if actual contamination - in the form of air pollution - were taken seriously, perhaps the Beijing Olympics, for example, would not have been held at all.
The Japanese delegation to Buenos Aires, where the decision was made, was forced continually to defend Tokyo from the accusation that it was in danger from Fukushima radiation. Even prime minster Shinzo Abe had to answer questions from IOC delegates and reassure them that radiaton levels in Tokyo were lower than in Paris or New York.
While it's some comfort to know that IOC delegates were not disturbed enough by Fukushima misinformation to vote against Tokyo, it is far from ideal that the issue had to be raised at all.
It is hard to imagine anything in the universe that will affect the Tokyo Olympics less than radiation from Fukushima Daiichi. Radiation from the accident is measurable now only in parts of Fukushima prefecture itself. Athletes will receive massively more radiation in the international flights going to Japan than from radiation in Tokyo. The irony is that genuine (or at least measurable) threats to health in a big city, such as smog, went completely unmentioned by the IOC or journalists covering the announcement. On the other hand, if actual contamination - in the form of air pollution - were taken seriously, perhaps the Beijing Olympics, for example, would not have been held at all.
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