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

Three Mile lsland, Unit 1: NRC Component Design Bases Inspection Report 05000289/2012007

Download: ML12129A062

Three Mile Island Nuclear Station, Unit 1 - Issuance of Amendment Re: Administrative Technical Specification changes (TAC No. ME7357)

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PEACH BOTTOM ATOMIC POWER STATION: NRC EVALUATED EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS EXERCISE - INSPECTION REPORT NO. 05000277/2012503 AND 05000278/2012503

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From Truthout:

With a half-life of 30, years, Cs-137 gives off penetrating radiation, as it decays. Once in the environment, it mimics potassium as it accumulates in biota and the human food chain for many decades. When it enters the human body, about 75 percent lodges in muscle tissue, with perhaps the most important muscle being the heart. Studies of chronic exposure to Cs-137 among the people living near Chernobyl show an alarming rate of heart problems, particularly among children. As more information is made available, we now know that the Fukushima Dai-Ichi site is storing 10,833 spent fuel assemblies (SNF) containing roughly 327 million curies of long-lived radioactivity About 132 million curies is cesium-137 or nearly 85 times the amount estimated to have been released at Chernobyl.

The overall problem we face is that nearly all of the spent fuel at the Dai-Ichi site is in vulnerable pools in a high risk/consequence earthquake zone. The urgency of the situation is underscored by the ongoing seismic activity around NE Japan in which 13 earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 - 5.7 have occurred off the NE coast of Honshu in the last 4 days between 4/14 and 4/17. This has been the norm since the first quake and tsunami hit the site on March 11th of last year. Larger quakes are expected closer to the power plant.

Last week, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) revealed plans to remove 2,274 spent fuel assemblies from the damaged reactors that will probably take at least a decade to accomplish. The first priority will be removal of the contents in Pool No. 4. This pool is structurally damaged and contains about 10 times more cesium-137 than released at Chernobyl. Removal of SNF from the No. 4 reactor is optimistically expected to begin at the end of 2013. A significant amount of construction to remove, debris and reinforce the structurally-damaged reactor buildings, especially the fuel- handling areas, will be required.

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SUMMARY OF APRIL 10, 2012, PUBLIC MEETING WITH EXELON GENERATION COMPANY, LLC REGARDING ITS FUTURE SUBMITTAL OF TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION CHANGES OF LICENSED OPERATOR ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS (TAC NOS. ME8163, ME8164, ME8165, ME8166, ME8167, ME8168, IVIE8169, ME8170, ME8171, ME8172, ME8173, ME8174, ME8175, ME8176, ME8177, ME8178, ME8179).

Download: PDF of Summary

Susquehanna Steam Electric Station - Susquehanna - NRC Integrated Inspection Report 05000387/2012002 and 05000388/2012002

Download: ML12123A026

Three Mile Island Nuclear Station, Unit 1 - Three Mile Island - NRC Integrated Inspection Report 05000289/2012002

Download: ML12122A131

From Huffington Post:

From her home, Mary Lampert, 70, has a clear view of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, which sits just across the Duxbury and Plymouth Bays in coastal Massachusetts. The proximity, Lampert says, lends itself to a good deal of contemplating "what ifs." Among these: what if the Pilgrim plant experienced a meltdown like the one that unfolded just over a year ago in Fukushima, Japan?

"I live just six miles from that plant across open water," says Lampert, a staunch advocate for tougher oversight of the nuclear power industry. "It always comes down to public safety versus the cost to industry of implementing something."

So it has been, Lampert argues, with one seemingly straightforward emergency feature: Requiring a filtered vent in the concrete containment buildings surrounding nuclear reactors like the one at Pilgrim.

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Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, Units 2 and 3 – Issuance of Amendments Re: Revise Actions for Reactor Coolant System Leakage Instrumentation (TAC Nos. ME6008 and ME6009)

Download: ML120940055

From Japan Realtime:

It’s official: Japan now has four fewer nuclear reactors than it did the day before.

That’s because on April 19, one year, one month and one week after Fukushima Daiichi units 1 through 4 lost power and either melted down or blew up, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. formally announced it had taken them out of service forever, never to be restarted ever again.

JRT readers may be wondering why it took so long for this to happen. After all, by the end of March 2011, most of the fuel rods of units 1, 2 and 3 had melted, while explosions had destroyed the reactor buildings at units 1, 3 and 4. The radiation around most of those units is still so high that people can’t go inside.

Tepco says its board of directors had actually bitten the bullet and decided to decommission the units last May. But they only started on the paperwork needed in December, after the government had declared the crisis stage of the Fukushima Daiichi accident to be over.

Since this wasn’t a routine power-plant decommissioning, it took about three months for the company to confirm what the right procedure under Japan’s electric utilities law was, says Tepco spokesman Yoshikazu Nagai. Tepco submitted the paperwork on March 30 of this year, and it took effect 20 days later. Bureaucracy has now caught up with reality.

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