Sep 29, 2024: The case against restarting Three Mile Island’s Unit-1

From boston.com:

Disputes over funding of local emergency preparations to deal with a nuclear accident reveal a patchwork of agreements between the Pilgrim nuclear plant’s owner and the five communities closest to the Plymouth facility. Some town officials say the system is working well for them, but others complain they’re getting the short end of the stick.

Under federal law, the Pilgrim plant’s owner, Entergy, is required to provide funding to offset the costs of emergency response preparation to the towns that fall within the 10-mile Emergency Planning Zone: Carver, Duxbury, Kingston, Marshfield, and Plymouth. But how much funding is a matter the law leaves up to negotiations between the plant owner and the individual towns.

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From the Brattleboro Reformer:

Entergy wants the state to pay it "in excess of" $4.62 million.

In a filing submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Vermont, Entergy, which owns and operates Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, stated it is entitled to be reimbursed for the money it spent presenting its case in Entergy v. Shumlin et al.

"(The $4.62 million) amount is likely to increase if the fee petition is extensively litigated and/or Defendants appeal the Judgment," wrote Entergy's attorneys.

On Jan. 20, Federal District Court Judge J. Garvan Murtha ruled in favor of Entergy, finding the state Senate had overstepped its bounds when it prohibited the Public Service Board from issuing a certificate of public good for the continued operation of Yankee. Though the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Yankee's relicensing, allowing it to operate for another 20 years past its original license expiration date of March 21, 2012, Entergy must still receive a CPG from the state to keep the plant operating. After his ruling, Murtha reaffirmed the PSB's role in deciding whether the plant should receive a certificate.

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From Kyodo News:

High levels of radioactive cesium were found in an area that used to be used as a waterway near an elementary school in Yokohama's Seya Ward, Yokohama city officials said Friday.

Local officials detected 6.85 microsieverts per hour of radioactive cesium in the air about 1 centimeter above the ground and found that nearby soil contained 62,900 becquerels of the element per kilogram.

The city government sees the high radiation levels to be likely caused by the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and plans to decontaminate the area, the officials said.

While the area is close to the elementary school, it is closed off by a fence, the officials said. "The radiation dose on the elementary school premises is not high but we will examine the situation in detail," an official said.

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BRANCH CHIEF REASSIGNMENT FOR SUSQUEHANNA STEAM ELECTRIC STATION, UNITS 1 AND 2

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NORRISTOWN -- The Department of Environmental Protection is asking anyone who knows the history of an antique medical kit found in a Chester County trash bin to contact the agency’s Bureau of Radiation Protection.

“The radioactive material may have been contained in the kit for more than 80 years,” Bureau Director David Allard said. “The metal box likely came from a basement, an attic or a collector’s stash. Anyone who tampered with it or stored it for a long time may have been exposed to high levels of radiation.”

The material was found Jan. 19, when a load of construction debris set off radiation alarms at Waste Management Inc.’s Norristown transfer station. The company deployed a health physicist to recover the radioactive material, identified as approximately one curie of radium-226. Exposure to one curie of radium-226 is equivalent to having more than 100 CT scans at once, and it has the potential to create skin burns within a few hours of contact.

DEP health physicists worked with Waste Management to properly evaluate and store the radium, and traced its source to a roll-off container that had come from the Hershey’s Mill retirement community in West Chester. 

The radium-226 was contained in four capsules inside a small lead safe marked “Radium Chemical Co., Inc.” The safe and some antique surgical equipment were stored inside a larger, locking metal box, which had been pried open.

“Although the capsules do not appear to be leaking, we believe that someone could have had direct contact with these sources of radium-226,” Allard said. “The radioactive radium they contain is about five times the amount found in modern medical sources, and we are concerned about the health of anyone who may have handled them.”

Anyone with information about the kit is asked to contact Allard at 717-787-2480. All calls are confidential. To view photos of the lead safe and other contents of the box, visit www.dep.state.pa.us and click on “Bureau of Radiation Protection.”

From the Independent:

The Japanese government feared that millions of Tokyoites might have to be evacuated during the worst of last year's nuclear crisis, but kept the scenario secret to avoid panic in some of the world's most crowded urban areas, according to an internal report.

The 15-page report, by the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission, was delivered to the then-Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, two weeks after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami triggered the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

It warned that if the situation spiralled out of control, compulsory or voluntary evacuation orders would have to be issued to residents living within 250 kilometres (155 miles) of the damaged facility, a radius that would have included the Tokyo metropolitan area that is home to around 30 million people.

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From the Patriot News:

After just one operating cycle, inspectors at Three Mile Island nuclear facility have detected unexpected flaws in the facility’s new steam generators.

There’s no indication radiation was released.

Officials say the flaws are well below regulatory thresholds, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a meeting Thursday morning to get more information.

The two 70-foot, 510-ton “once-through” generators sit on either side of the nuclear core, and were installed at TMI in 2009.

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