Having said that, building new nuclear plants have mostly moved into the pipe dream category. It is jut not happening. But maintaining and continuing to run existing plants is probably important, no what you think about nukes.

Here’s the thing. There are two reasons to shut down an existing plant. 1) It is too old or otherwise unsafe and needs to be closed. This is fairly rare but will become more common over the ext 30 years, and eventually, every one will be shuttered and converted over to nuclear waste storage facility. 2) it is too damn expensive to run.

We need to shut down the type 1 plants. We can have a conversation some other time about the strategy of replacing such plants with new nukes. We should not be shutting down type 2 plants now, because that puts pressure on the industry, which is relatively dumb when it comes to making long term decisions, to maintain or even build new methane, oil, or even coal plants.

But how do we save these type 2 plants from premature decommissioning?

With a carbon dividend. (I do not call this a carbon fee and divided or carbon tax because those terms are inaccurate. See: “The Carbon Dividend Is Not A Tax“)

This post at Think Progress outlines the problem and the solution. Warning: Ironies are exposed, so wear your face gear.

This bill has a strange and unusual set of detractors and supporters. It is supported by some Republicans and some Democrats. It is opposed by the usually conservative Chamber of Commerce (of Minnesota). The usual indicators of whether this is a good bill or a bad bill are ambiguous. Cats and dogs are lying down together on this one. This will require … wait for it … thinking! So let’s give that a try.

I’m going to give you a giant pile of information and maybe you can help figure this bill out. But since this isn’t a mystery novel, I’ll tell you up front what I think. This is a proposed law that will fix a problem that doesn’t seem to exist. It appears that there is nothing stopping Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, the maintainer of the nuclear plants in this state, from maintaining its plants. At the same time, Minnesota has a strong and effective, if often annoying to some in the energy business, Public Utility Commission (PUC). This bill seems to weaken the role of the PUC in future decisions about the nuclear plants. The Public Utility Commission is probably overly bureaucratic and at times inefficient, because it is a government agency. But the nuclear power industry is historically untrustworthy and, of course, profit driven. Given the lack of visible problem, and the lack of the bill’s supporters to articulate a problem that needs to be solved, and the exceeding obscure language used in the bill, and the fact that similar bills are being introduced in legislatures across the country, I’m giving this bill the evil eye.

Criticism of the bill suggests that it guarantees that energy company Xcel’s customers (as opposed to the company and its shareholders) will cover the cost for nuclear plant upkeep. The bill would allow Xcel Energy to file for additional funding any time there is a change in costs with reduced or minimal Public Utility Commission (PUC) input (though this changes with different iterations of the bill as it is amended, possibly). Xcel would be able to add “riders” onto its rate structure to guarantee return on investment into the nuclear plants. (It might be helpful to know that Minnesota has three nuclear reactors located in two plants, which currently provide about 20% of the energy used in the state.)

Critics are concerned that there is no cap on spending, which is why this is sometimes called a “Blank Check Bill.” And, the bill seems to diminish the ultimate power of the main regulatory agency overseeing the nuclear plants in Minnesota, the Public Utility Commission.

An opposition group FAQ notes:

Q: Xcel’s CEO has claimed this is a “good deal” for customers; why do you think differently?

A: This bill is the equivalent of giving a credit card to a teenager that’s already proven they can’t
be trusted.

Xcel has a terrible track record of managing costs on nuclear plants. Xcel claimed that
Monticello nuclear plant upkeep would cost Minnesotans $320 million; their mismanagement
ballooned costs to $748 million. Then Xcel turned around and asked the PUC to ensure
shareholders profited off of their $400 million mistake. The PUC said, “no”.
Xcel’s bill eliminates the PUC’s power to protect customers and removes any barrier between
their shareholders and profit. If Xcel makes another $400 million screw up, Minnesotans will
pay for it.

Here is the bill.

A bill for an act relating to energy; establishing a carbon reduction facility designation for certain large electric generating facilities; proposing coding for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter 216B.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1. [216B.1697] CARBON REDUCTION FACILITIES; NUCLEAR ENERGY.

Subdivision 1. Qualifying facility. A carbon reduction facility is an existing large electric generating power plant that employs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

Subd. 2. Proposal submission. (a) A public utility may submit to the Public Utilities Commission a proposal to designate a carbon reduction facility under this section. The proposal must:

(1) demonstrate that the facility meets the requirements of subdivision 1; and

(2) include a proposed statement of the total expected costs, including but not limited to capital investments and operation and maintenance costs associated with the facility’s operation.

(b) If the information submitted in the original proposal changes, a utility may at its sole discretion and at any time file additional proposals for the same facility.

Subd. 3. Proposal approval. (a) The commission must approve or reject the proposed facility designation and the total expected costs submitted by the public utility. The commission must make a final determination on the petition within ten months of the filing date.

(b) With respect to any carbon reduction facility, approval by the Public Utilities Commission constitutes a finding of prudency for the proposal’s total costs. The utility is entitled to recover any documented costs that do not exceed the costs provided in the carbon reduction facility designation proposal using the carbon reduction rider under subdivision 4 or a subsequent rate case.

(c) If additional proposals are filed for a single facility, the commission must treat each proposal the same as an original proposal under this section.

Subd. 4. Carbon reduction rider. A public utility may annually petition the commission to approve a carbon reduction rider to recover a qualifying facility’s total costs outside of a general rate case proceeding under section 216B.16. In the filing, the public utility must describe the costs the public utility seeks for rider recovery.

Subd. 5. Rider approval.

(a) The commission may approve, modify and approve, or reject the proposed carbon reduction rider.

(b) The commission may approve a rider that:

(1) allows the utility to recover the facility’s total costs;

(2) allows an appropriate return on investment associated with the facility;

(3) allocates appropriately between wholesale and retail customers; and

(4) recovers costs from retail customer classes in proportion to class energy consumption.

The Chamber of Commerce says the bill will move financial risks to ratepayers and from the company and reduce the relevance of the Public Utility Commission (PUC). Governor Dayton opposes any bill that weakens the role of the PUC, and is quoted in the Star Tribune as saying, “These end runs to the Legislature to try to give special interests what they want violates the whole purpose of the Public Utilities Commission.”

One of the Senators on the energy committee, Democrat John Marty, noted that Xcel “didn’t like the results they got from the commission [previously, and are now] tying the hands of the commission.”

The position of the Republican sponsors is echoed in a statement by Democratic Senator John Hoffman, who is ranking member of the state Senate’s energy committee (and a guy I have a lot of respect for), in his newsletter:

The Energy and Utilities Finance and Policy committee discussed SF 3504 this week, also known as the “Nuclear Rider” bill. This bill creates an efficient channel for public utility proposals involving nuclear power plant maintenance projects. It also allows for electric companies to petition to add a “carbon reduction rider” onto customer electric bills in order to finance those projects. Nuclear plants are an important source of energy in the Upper Midwest, with Xcel Energy’s two Minnesota plants alone generating 30% of the region’s electricity. These plants are both reliable, have strong safety records, and operate nearly carbon emission free. To continue this service, the nuclear power plants must undergo costly maintenance projects. This bill is intended to aid in the funding and completion of those projects in a timely fashion.

Opponents have called SF 3504 a “blank check” to Xcel Energy because it does not specify limits to the cost of projects or to the amount of the rider. There is a concern over how much this will end up costing ratepayers. As a ratepayer I have the same concerns, however, this is not a “Blank Check.” These rider proposals will not go unchecked; each will still be reviewed and potentially modified by the Public Utilities Commission. Additionally, Xcel will be expected to adhere to the budgets originally proposed and all overruns will have to be re-approved by the commission. That is accountability. I only wish our HMO’s had the same transparency and accountability built in to their existence. Matter of fact, I wish our Health Care HMO’s operated like our Utility providers. That my friends is another argument.

This bill ensures that nuclear energy will remain a safe and reliable way of meeting Minnesota’s energy needs while reducing our carbon footprint. It passed through the Energy and Utilities committee on Tuesday and will make its way to the Senate floor shortly.

It may be the case that the initial version of the bill went over a line of some sort, and it has been revised. From the Star Tribune:

The bill originally did not allow the PUC to modify Xcel’s nuclear cost recovery requests, giving it only an up-or-down vote. The amended bill allows the PUC to modify Xcel’s requests.

The bill was amended again during Tuesday’s hearing to address concerns about a new “rider” — i.e., a separate line item — that would have been added to customers’ bills for nuclear improvement costs. The amendment, brought forward by Osmek, axed the rider in favor of nuclear cost recovery through a rate case, the traditional path.

Opponents, including the Chamber of Commerce, said after the hearing that rate case recovery was better than a rider, but they remained opposed to the legislation.

Of concern is the fact that several similar bills are working their way through legislatures across the country. This is often a signal of dark money at work. Also, note that the language used in the bill is a good example of green washing.

Fresh Energy is a state-wide think tank that addresses clean energy development in Minnesota, and I find them to be the go to place for policy in this area. According to Matt Privratsky, their Director of Public Affairs (from written testimony):

While Fresh Energy wholeheartedly supports Xcel’s business plan to become 85 percent emissions free by 2030, we cannot support abandonment of consumer protections as Xcel proposes in this bill. This bill would place an unnecessary risk on Minnesota rate payers, the energy system they rely on, and the workers and communities who keep that energy system going. In short, though it aims to address a very critical issue – aging nuclear plants – it very clearly falls short.

Even with changes made in the amendment, the risk to rate payers in this bill is significant. There is no cap on the amount of money Xcel may spend to repair and operate its nuclear plants, and, even though the amendment seems to allow the PUC to modify the amount needed for repairs and operation, Xcel Energy alone is still able to decide whether to proceed under those parameters. Later this spring, an independent engineering report will be released that details the repairs necessary at each plant and estimates how much they will cost. Rushing a bill through the process without numbers in front of you seems irresponsible, especially considering it will be Minnesota residential, commercial, and industrial rate payers on the hook to pay.

The bill would also put our energy system at risk by short changing the comprehensive process used to review investments of this size. Last year, Xcel sidestepped the PUC in favor of direct legislative approval for a large power plant, leading Governor Mark Dayton to unequivocally state that, going forward, he would “not accept any bill that limits or weakens the Commission’s authority to protect the interests of Minnesota’s energy consumers.” Though the amendment makes it appear as though proposals will be reviewed as part of a comprehensive resource plan, this bill short changes that process. Unless there is a significant change of position by the Governor, this bill will have little chance to become law.

Lastly, this bill does very little to address the issues facing these power plant communities and others across the state. Several other states have sought to address ways to ensure continued operation of aging power plants and to better prepare for their eventual closure. But those were comprehensive packages that address transition aid for local tax payers, support for worker retraining programs, commitments for worker pensions, programs to expand clean energy options to people of low incomes, expand renewable energy commitments, and more. This bill doesn’t actually even include a commitment to keeping the plant open, so it really only represents the narrowest of concerns – protecting Xcel’s shareholders.

The point about there being a report as to how much this all may eventually cost, coming out after this bill would be passed, is potentially important. Why not wait until after that report? If this bill is passed, will we have regrets?

There is a good chance that if this bill is passed by the House and Senate, it will be vetoed by Governor Dayton. This bill may, however, be an interesting historical note once the instances of similar legislation across the country are examined and contextualized. Who is behind the bill? Is this an ALEC project? Koch Brothers? Nobody?

Stay tuned.

I’m not going to explicitly disagree with the various elements of the solutions part of this article (the last parts). But the run-up to that discussion, in my opinion, reifies and supports a number of falsehoods, mainly the dramatic (and untrue) dichotomy between the perfect and wonderful large-plant mostly coal and petroleum sources of energy on one hand with alternatives fraught with All The Problems on the other. Since this VOX piece is a “beginner’s guide” I would hope we can stick a little more nuance into beginner’s thinking.

I choose to Fisk. Thusly:

“Doing that — using electricity to get around, heat our buildings, and run our factories — will increase demand for power. “

It decreases the demand for power, overall. Internal combustion engines are inefficient compared to electric, to such a degree that burning huge amounts of petroleum or coal in one place to ultimately power electric vehicles in a reasonable size region is more efficient than distributing burnable material to all those vehicles to run them. Electrification is inherently more efficient and lower maintenance.

“That means the electricity grid will have to get bigger,”

Our grid, in the US and generally, in the west, is fully embiggened. Globally, maybe. That depends on if a “big grid” is the best way to deliver power everywhere. It probably isn’t.

[The grid must become] “more sophisticated, more efficient, and more reliable — while it is decarbonizing. ”

This contrasts the improvement of the grid with decarbonizing as though they were opposites, but for most of the expected improvements of the grid, improvements of the grid and decarbonizing are the same actions. They are not in opposition to each other.

“On the other side are those who say that the primary goal should be zero carbon, not 100 percent renewables. They say that, in addition to wind, solar, and the rest of the technologies beloved by climate hawks, we’re also going to need a substantial amount of nuclear power and fossil fuel power with CCS.”

This is a false dichotomy in my opinion. There is uncertainty here, of course. But let’s try this. Let’s try decarbonizing 50% of our current power without nuclear. At that point we will know whether or not to invest trillions into an unpopular solution (and nuclear is unpopular). If we need to, we’ll do it. If we don’t, we won’t. Maybe something in between. But worrying about this now, and using uncertainty to argue one way or another, is a waste of conversational energy.

“(If you shrug and say, “it’s too early to know,” you’re correct, but you’re no fun to dispute with.)”

LOL. But no. Rather, I’m thinking that it is too early to know and, in contrast, you are hiding a pro-nuclear argument in a blanket of uncertainty! Maybe you are not, but this is what such arguments almost always look like. Beware the nuclear argument wearing sheep’s clothing. A greenish tinged sheep, yes, but still a sheep.

“The sun is not always shining; the wind is not always blowing.”

Another falsehood. Technically the sun is not always shining on us, true, but as sure as the Earth is spinning, the wind is always blowing. People who say this have never been to the Dakotas.

It does vary in intensity and by region. So does nuclear, by the way. Nuclear plants have to be shut down or slowed down regularly for refueling. When severe storms threaten, nuclear plants are often shut down, and that is not on a schedule. When any big power plant suffers a catastrophe there is a long term and catastrophic break in the grid, as compared to a cloudy day, or even, a broken windmill.

The sun is up during the day, and in may places and for many times, generally everywhere, the demand for power is greater during the day.

Overall, this is a falsehood because it attributes perfection to the traditional sources, especially to Nuclear, and great imperfection to the non-Carbon and non-Nuclear alternatives. That distinction is not nearly as clear and complete as generally stated.

“The fact that they are variable means that they are not dispatchable — the folks operating the power grid cannot turn them on and off as needed.”

Another falsehood. First, you can’t turn a major traditional power plant on or off as needed. Indeed, there are already major storage technologies and variation methodologies at work. There are high demand industries that are asked to increase or decrease their use, on the fly, to meet production variation on large grids. There are pumped storage systems. Etc. The fact is that there is variation and unpredictability in the current big-plant system, it is a problem, and it is a problem that has been quietly addressed. Quietly to the extent that people making comparisons between traditional big-plant electricity and clean energy systems often don’t even know about it.

“As VRE capacity increases, grid operators increasingly have to deal with large spikes in power (say, on a sunny, windy day), sometimes well above 100 percent of demand. “

Yes indeed, and this is the challenge being addressed as we speak. Enlarging grid balancing systems, increasing storage, developing tunable high energy industries, and so on. This is the challenge, it is being met as we speak.

“They also have to deal with large dips in VRE. It happens every day when the sun sets, but variations in VRE supply can also take place over weekly, monthly, seasonal, and even decadal time frames.”

Yes indeed, and this is the challenge being addressed as we speak. Enlarging grid balancing systems, increasing storage, developing tunable high energy industries, and so on. This is the challenge, it is being met as we speak.

“And finally, grid operators have to deal with rapid ramps, i.e., VRE going from producing almost no energy to producing a ton, or vice versa, over a short period of time. That requires rapid, flexible short-term resources that can ramp up or down in response.”

Yes indeed, and this is the challenge being addressed as we speak. Enlarging grid balancing systems, increasing storage, developing tunable high energy industries, and so on. This is the challenge, it is being met as we speak.

The article mentions the economic problems. I don’t see those as difficult to solve but they are important, but I’ve got no comments on that at the moment. Read the article.

“The last 10 to 20 percent of decarbonization is the hardest”

Absolutely. And, know what? The first 25% will be the easiest. Do that now, and we’ll know a LOT more about the next 25% and maybe it won’t seem so hard after all. Maybe a major technological solution will come along before we get to that last 10%, maybe society will change enough that people will simply agree to having occasional reductions in energy availability. But certainly, the greatest difficulty and uncertainty is linked to that last 10%.

Our goal should be to have that problem soon.

“A great deal can be accomplished just by substituting natural gas combined cycle power plants for coal plants.”

Yes, if by “a great deal” you mean the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Before extolling the virtues of methane, do check into it further. I once thought methane as a bridge was a good idea too, until I learned about what it involves, about leaking methane, etc. No, not really a good idea for the most part.

“Natural gas is cleaner than coal (by roughly half, depending on how you measure methane leakage), but it’s still a fossil fuel.”

My impression is that every time we learn something new about leakage, it is that the leakage is worse than we previously thought.

“If you build out a bunch of natural gas plants to get to 60 percent, then you’re stuck shutting them down to get past 60 percent.”

Well put.

Do read the article, but please, keep in mind that it is unfair (in the context of an argument) to attribute undue perfection to one option while emphasizing uncertain problems with the other. We need to forge ahead into that uncertainty and speed up this whole process. Everybody get to work on this please!

…. this is a biography of an important age in our history, one that we are currently leaving but will still be with us for hundreds of thousands of years, seeping into the groundwater. It is a fascinating story. I mean, seriously, the whole idea of nuclear physics is fascinating. Everything we knew about everything prior to the discoveries related to the cracking of the atom have two important characteristics: 1) almost off of that applies perfectly to the world around us (basic chemistry and Newtonian physics) and 2) it is all wrong. The opening days of the nuclear age involved that remarkable discovery. There was research, radiation, x-rays, then bombs and power generation. The cold war, terrorism, accidents. Nelson’s book is, really, just full of interesting stories.

Here is a video by Fairewinds about this operation, which I believe was made before TEPCO decided to not continue with the removal at this time:

As you can see, there are several possible problems. Most of these problems are not related to the reasons TEPCO has given to halt the operation at this time; they are additional .

The overall expected health risks of the Fukushima disaster overall and continued health risks because of the ongoing leakage are hard to estimate. There is almost certainly an elevated cancer risk for people living in the area, though the extent of this is unknown. Concerns that we see around the Internet that dangerous levels of radiation are reaching the US are incorrect.

Having said that, I think people often evaluate the significance of the Fukushima disaster incorrectly, for political reasons. Those who want to claim that nuclear power (including existing old-generation nuclear plants) is just honkey-dory seem to do so by feeding off of anti-nuke misconceptions and irrational fears about radiation. Yes, people do get it wrong; the average person has no clue what risks radioactive materials or radiation pose. For this reason, it is easy to creates straw men and then disprove them. The fact that the region around Fukushima is not littered with skeletons of people who were zapped into oblivion by the Fukushima multiple meltdowns, or that all babies in Japan are born with only one head and ten fingers, does not mean that nothing happened there. The fact is that you can’t go near this power plant without taking a serious health risk, and there is a moderate but real health risk because of the prior large scale dispersal of radioactive material and the ongoing lower level but still important outpouring (literally) of radioisotopes.

If we were to propose the construction of 22 nuclear power plants and noted that over a 30 year period one of them would suffer multiple meltdowns, spew enormous amounts of nuclear icky stuff into the air and sea, continued to spread contaminated water into the sea and groundwater for years after at a lower rate, create a very expensive problem that would last for decades and create a deadly no-entry zone filled with millions and millions of gallons of radioactive water and piles of nuclear material in the disabled reactors and spent fuel pools that could not be cleaned up for decades in a zone susceptible to serious earthquakes and tsunamis … the designers of that system might well be asked to go back to the drawing board or seek other alternatives. (Japan has about 22 plants operated over about 30 years, give or take.)

In fact, they were. They were asked to not do what they did, but those who opposed nuclear plants in Japan. The specific reasoning of the anti-nuclear activists and others may have included faulty logic and bad information about nuclear power, but on the list of potential problems was the possibility that what actually happened would happen. They were right. And they were not “stopped clock” right. They were right because they saw a real danger that really existed.

We probably have to build new nuclear power plants. Burning fossil fuels at the rate we are burning them will cause disasters that will make us forget bout our nuclear woes. But it is not true that the nuclear power industry is ready to step in and build significantly safer plants now, and it is not true that “alternative” (a term we should stop using!) energy solutions such as geothermal, solar, wind, and so on deployed on a smart grid with significant enhancements of efficiency at both production and use ends of the grid comprises a secondary solution.

Anyway, I gave only a short summary of what Kiger outlines in his excellent piece. Go now and read: Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Leak: What You Should Know

I think he is far to pessimistic on the use of solar and wind energy than he needs to be and notice that he, and no one else ever, seems to mention geothermal, which could reduce our release of carbon by double digit percentages using existing technology in a few years. Having said that, there is probably no way to solve our energy problem without implementing next generation nuclear power to some degree.

Photo Credit: u? via Compfight cc

A handful of news items have come up recently mainly pertaining to contamination and other issues, so we thought an update was in order.

Conflicts of Interest Involving Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Other Stakeholders

There have been a number of points where it looked like conflicts of interest between the regulators and the regulatees (as it were), or at least the appearance thereof, were in effect since the time of this disaster. It is happening again.

A commission was formed late last month, including six experts, to set up new safety standards for nuclear reactors in Japan. Four of the six members of the commission have received various amounts of money from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). This is not necessarily a bad thing, or unexpected, as experts get hired and one needs experts on a commission like this. Also, these individuals were required to report these associations and payments. Nonetheless, the time has passed when people (the victims in nuclear disasters) can easily be told “Don’t worry, we’re acting in your best interest” by any nuclear regulatory agency or by any utility operating nuclear plants, or, for that matter, “experts” in the field in general who have in the recent past demonstrated an almost cult-like adherence to untenable pseudoscience regarding nuclear safety.

The journal Nature has the story.

Much of the uproar over the handling of the Fukushima disaster came from the public perception that conflicts of interests led regulators … to favour cost-savings over safety. … It seems that Japanese policy-makers, despite the many public demonstrations, still haven’t got to grips with the tendency for conflicts of interest to lead to bad decisions and, even if they don’t, to breed mistrust.

Similarly troubling is the rush with which the government reopened two of the country’s shuttered nuclear reactors in July without fully evaluating the seismology of the ground beneath. Last week, at its second meeting, a subcommittee of the NRA could not confirm whether a fault line running under a seawater-intake channel — used to cool the reactors in an emergency — is active.

At stake is whether the fault is a landslide fault or a more dangerous, deeper tectonic one. …

Large sectors of the public opposed the reactor restarts with demonstrations of a fervour not seen in Japan in decades. The country had already proved that it could get by, at least in the short term, with no nuclear power. Some scientists had pointed out the uncertainty over the seismic fault, and suggested how to deal with it, before the reactors were restarted. Japan was supposed to emerge from the Fukushima crisis with a new respect for reactor safety and better awareness of the need to convince people of that safety. It hasn’t made a very good start.

US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to recommend new rules for Mark I and Mark II reactors

The Fukushima plant used Mark I and Mark II reactors, an early General Electric product, which are also used in several other plants around the world including at the two nuclear plants in Minnesota. These systems have a core that includes the nuclear fuel, surrounded by a primary containment vessel, which in turn is enclosed in a building which serves as secondary containment. During certain kinds of nuclear accidents, gasses can escape the primary containment, possibly through cracks or pipes being blown off from pressure build up, and fill the secondary containment area. These gasses would consist of water vapor, hydrogen in concentrations sufficient to explode, and radionucleotides. Under these conditions, the secondary containment can explode, spreading nasty nuclear stuff around the landscape in an uncontrolled way.

One way to reduce the likelihood of this happening is to install vents to relieve the pressure. This allows a plant operator to open the vent and avoid a catastrophic explosion. The down side of this, of course, is that radionuceotides are released into the atmosphere.

One way to reduce mitigate against this effect is to filter the vents. This is technologically difficult and expensive, costing in excess of abut $16 million dollars per plant. The filter designs are diverse and interesting but beyond the scope of this post.

Most Mark I reactors have had vents installed, and some Mark II have as well, but most of these vents are not filtered.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is poised to recommend that filtered vents be installed on all US based plants. Here’s what is interesting about this: Using their own method of determining cost benefit ratios, adding a $16 million dollar plus filtered vent to each plant is way more expensive than the estimated cost of cleaning up after a release from an unfiltered event, given their estimates of the likelihood of such an event happening. But the are recommending the change anyway, stating that this fits with the policy of “deep protection” against disaster. It is an overt and clear response to Fukushima. In the post Fukushima world, at least parts of the nuclear power industry are willing to spend mucho extra dollars on safety, even beyond what the usual cost-benefit risk assessments tell them to do.

This story is addressed HERE by the New York Times.

Radionucleotides are Accumulating in Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture

Kasumigaura is a system of lakes forming an artificially closed basin (with presumed underground communication with the sea?) near the Fukushima plant. The catch basin for this lake was blanketed in nuclear fallout from the disaster, and it can be assumed that this material has to some extent eroded into the lake. This material is moving into the lake very slowly and will continue to do so for a long time, possibly decades.

Most of the material in question is cesium–134 and cesium–137. Cesium is very sticky, so it adheres to surfaces very well. This probably means that much of the cesium moved into the lake while stuck to various size sediments. Kilo for kilo, then, a given mass of gravel would contain a certain amount of cesium, sand much much more owing to the extra surface area, silt even more, and clay even more, all else being equal.

Scientist have been sampling the lake bottom mud as well as the water. From an article in the Japan Times

According to the latest round of monitoring, which was the fourth of its kind, and carried out in September and October, no traceable amount of cesium was detected in the water itself. The mud samples from the lake and the rivers, meanwhile, were found to contain up to 5,200 becquerels/kg of cesium–134 and cesium–137, compared with a maximum of 500 Bq/kg detected a year ago, a maximum of 5,800 Bq/kg in February this year and a maximum of 4,800 Bq/kg in July. The sludge sampled from the bottom of the lake registered cesium contamination ranging from 97 Bq/kg to 520 Bq/kg. That is lower than the maximum 1,300 Bq/kg registered in February, but higher than the 340 Bq/kg detected in the first round of monitoring a year ago. The government safety limit for cesium-tainted food is 10 Bq/kg for water and 100 Bq/kg for most other foods. The mud samples from Kasumigaura have surpassed these figures, but mud is usually not ingested as food. Government regulations state that soil containing more than 8,000 Bq/kg of cesium is considered to emit levels of radiation that pose a danger to human health and therefore must be sealed away.

So, the amount of contamination of the lake bottom seems to be both rising over the long term and variable, possibly leveling off. The problem is, given the nature of sediment flow into the lake, these numbers should be continuing to rise steadily. For this reason, there is some confusion and concern as to how to interpret these results.

Several species of fish that live on the bottom of the lake have been sown to regularly exceed the safe limits of contamination and their sale has been banned. The water is known to contain cesium but at levels designated as safe.

The density an intensity of sampling in this catchment has probably been insufficient, and is being criticized. Sampling has shown that some of the rivers and streams have a decreasing level of contamination while others are “hot spots” with very high levels. It has been proposed that one way to deal with the contamination is to use the Fukushima Method: Dump the water into the sea, in this case by opening the dam that separates the freshwater of the lake from the salt water of the sea. Ironically, the demand for water from this lake has dropped because the economy of the immediate area was ruined by the nuclear disaster, so this would have reduced effects.

Highly Radioactive Fish Have Been Found

Related to this, some interesting things have been discovered among the local fish. As noted, bottom feeders have been shown to be contaminated beyond usability. A different kind of fish, the Ayu, or Sweetfish (Plecoglossus altivelis) has a very rapid turnover and short lifepan, and is not a bottom feeder. This is a key element in the Japanese diet, and is the fish eaten by the famous Japanese Cormorants. These fish don’t live long enough, or feed enough on the bottom, to accumulate very much contamination and have been shown to be generally safe to eat. They form a special sort of sampling procedure whereby spontaneous levels of contamination in the water can be assessed. That they are not particularly “hot” is a good thing.

But other fish turn out to be highly contaminated. From Asia and Japan Watch:

…in August, two greenlings caught 20 kilometers north of the Fukushima plant were found to have cesium levels of 25,800 becquerels per kilogram, the highest level ever measured in fish since the nuclear accident. The government standard for food is 100 becquerels per kilogram.

And in March, tests recorded a level of 18,700 becquerels per kilogram in freshwater salmon in the Niidagawa river near Iitate, a village northwest of the nuclear plant.

Furthermore, the concentration of cesium in freshwater salmon and char caught since March has not been decreasing, leading to restrictions on the shipment of such fish from Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding areas.

Greenlings are “lingcod” and live in the sea, and tend to feed on the bottom and I believe they are relatively long lived. Freshwater salmon and char live in the freshwater streams feeding into the Lake Kasumigaura system, and eat a variety of foods and are much longer lived, depending on when caught, than the sweetfish.

The extremely high levels of contamination in these fish in waters that should be decreasing in contamination levels seems enigmatic, and a study is being launched to look further into this.

I have a hypothesis that explains many of these observations. Fish like trout, salmon, and char eat, among other things, insects on the surface, gorging on hatches. A hatch is a large number of insects flying around and spending time over water, or often, just falling into the water, after emerging from a body of water where they spent an aquatic phase. I’ve written before about the role that insects such as dragonflies and lake flies serve the role of moving nutrients from their “final” resting place at the bottom of ponds and lakes, out across the landscape. These animals start off as an egg, and then turn into their adult form underwater, accumulating nutrients …. and cesium? …. as they grow. Then they fly out of the water and die everywhere. Or, are eaten by selected species of fish. From clay-rich lake bottom, where radioactive cesium can accumulate in sufficient density to disqualify bottom feeders from human consumption, to the mouths of trout, salmon and char. I don’t know if the Japanese researchers are thinking about it this way, but I hope it is given some thought.

Previous updates on this disaster are archived HERE.

I’m speaking specifically of the reliability of, or variation in, wind over time. Many people live in places where they personally experience highly variable wind, or at least, think they do, so it is easy to assume that wind generators would be sometimes running on full, sometimes standing still, in a more or less random and unpredictable way, but this is not necessarily true. There are regions where wind is much more consistent than people might imagine, though of course it is always somewhat variable. In fact, a bigger problem with wind may be not so much the variation, but the fact that in some regions it is out of sync with energy demands. In some temperate zones, wind may be weak during the day but stronger at night when electricity demands are low (but this can vary from region to region, and seasonally; there are places where winds tend to come up during the day and calm down at night)

The thing is, we often hear about how wind varies and thus wind can’t make up more than a certain percentage of our energy production. But this statement, while probably partly true until much better batteries are invented, ignores two things: 1) other forms of electricity generation also vary; and 2) we may have to live, in the future, with variable amounts of electricity. Oh, and 3) we can probably fix this all with a DC smart grid, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Regarding this first point, let’s compare wind to nuclear. A nuclear power plant like the one nearest me gets turned off now and then to replace fuel rods. This is not too often, and in theory this is done on a highly predictable schedule, but it is still a large amount of variation. That power plant, I assume, at best goes from normal high capacity to zero capacity for a while then back to high capacity. While wind may vary unpredictably, investing the cost of one smallish nuclear power plant in one small nuke plant vs. dozens of wind farms distributed across a very large area of the Dakotas and Minnesota will get you less difference in variation over time than one might expect.

As I noted, this variation in generation by a nuclear power plant is very predictable, so it doesn’t really count as variation. Variation you know is going to happen can be planned for. Predictability is the problem. But, that happens too with nuclear power plants. Whenever there is a tornado warning at the aforementioned plant, it gets powered down. That is not predictable. All sorts of other things happen at nuke plants that cause them to be powered down to some extent as well.

The point here is simple: When considering alternative forms of energy generation, it is not fair to say “wind is unpredictable and variable” and leave it at that, because it is not the case that all other forms of energy are perfectly “predictable and non-variable.”

I won’t say much about the second point, but it is obviously true. You can’t rely on being able to do whatever you want whenever you want it with whatever technology you want if we live in a world where doing these three things is causing us to lumber steadily towards self-inflicted Armageddon. Technology is not going to fix everything. We will have to make some adjustments. Please expect that and start growing accustomed to the idea now.

There is another form of variability that I want to mention: Catastrophic failure. If you build a whole bunch of wind farms across the Dakotas and Minnesota and spend the same amount on a small nuke plant somewhere in that region, catastrophic failure will have different patterns. Really bad storms, a rare earthquake, or terrorism (Canadians sneaking over the border and blowing up our stuff, presumably) will not take out all, or even most, of the wind farms, but a total “melt down” figuratively or literally, of the nuke plant will put the long term kibosh on that method of making electricity.

It is very difficult or even impossible to figure in the likelihood of catastrophic failure of any of these systems, but we can compare the form of such failure, and the worst case scenario for hundreds of wind generators distributed over three states is very different than the worst case scenario for a single nuclear power plant.

A few facts that might help frame this discussion in proper scale:

The annual generation of power at the aforementioned nuclear power plant is said to be 4,192 GWh. The plant is rated at 610 MW. That is the smaller of two plants in Minnesota, the other with an annual generation of 8,914 GWh (two 548 MW reactors).

A wind turbine may have a capacity anywhere from about 1.5 MW to over 7 MW (the latter are very rare) with the largest in design but not yet built closer to 10. Realistically, it would take about 600 to 1000 wind generators to equal this nuclear power plant. In Minnesota, the total wind energy capacity is about 2196 MW with about 10% more being constructed. This translates into 657 GWh annually, compared to 13,106 GWh annually for nuclear. The current plan in Minnesota is to more than triple wind capacity by 2021.

All the above numbers are based on capacities and estimates that may not fully add up. Another way of making the comparison is to look at recent estimates of the total percentage of energy generated by various sources statewide. At present, about 57% of our energy is from coal, 23% from nuclear, 9.4% from wind, 4.8% from natural gas and the remaining few percent from other sources. That nearly a fourth of our energy is produced by three nuclear reactors at two plants is both impressive (that’s a lot of electricity!) and somewhat concerning (that’s a lot of pressure to keep the plants working, and a big problem if one breaks).

Sources: Minnesota Energy Facts, and Wikipedia.

There appears to be very high levels of radiation at Fukushima plant reactor #3, and at either reactors 1 and 3, or both, nuclear fission may have been occurring in the melted down remains. Ideally, once a plant is turned off, i.e., control rods inserted etc. etc., the state of “criticality” is stopped and there is no more fission, or at least, only a small background level. But, if a nuclear power plant’s core melts down, nuclear material can re-accumulate in some uncontrolled manner in the wreckage beneath the plant or in lower areas of a reactor containment vessel, and critical mass can be re-attained. This apparently has been detected over the last few weeks at Fukushima. This is evident from the presence of Xenon-135, a product of nuclear fission with a half life of just over 9 hours.

However, TEPCO appears to be making adjustments to the definition of the term “criticality” so this problem is expected to go away soon. (You will remember that some time ago when it became apparent that TEPCO would be unable to effect a true “cold shutdown” of the melted down reactors, the definition of “cold shutdown” was changed. Now, there is discussion of the meaning of the term “criticality.”) Also, TEPCO reassures us that the detection of the products of “spontaneous fission” is not really a new phenomenon. Rather, they just started to be able to detect this accidental nuclear process. It has presumably been going on all along (which could go a long way to explaining why it has been impossible to obtain a “cold shutdown” of the reactors without having to resort to redefining “cold”).

Of increasing concern is the amount of evidence that people, including some school children, nuclear plant workers, and others have been found to have internal exposure, meaning particles of nuclear material were breathed in or ingested. In a possibly related move, the upper limits of contamination for food is being lowered significantly. One rescue worker who was found to have been internally exposed has died and some are suggesting that there is a link.

One report indicates that about 79 percent of the fallout from Fukushima ended up in the ocean, 19% has been deposited on the land in Japan, about 2% on other land surfaces mainly in Asia and North America. The report indicates that about twice as much Cesium 137 was released at Fukushima than had bee previously reported. Another report indicates that measurable amounts of Iodine-131 have been found in several European countries, of uncertain origin.

Speaking of contamination, have a look at this discussion of bird brains and radiation at Chernobyl.

Robotic exoskeletons are being developed to help the workers work harder – there are ~3,000 people working there every day. It is interesting to observe over these months since the meltdowns how many procedures and technologies are being invented and deployed for the very first time, as though the nuclear power industry actually, really, truly believed that nothing could ever go wrong. Had the possibility of a major disaster such as this been considered earlier, not only would TEPCO and others have been more prepared, but also, the costs may have been manged better.

Speaking of cost, there is talk of recalculating the cost of nuclear energy – internalizing waste costs and accident costs when planning plants. Interesting idea, and utterly surprising that this has never occurred to anyone before. It turns out that nuclear energy is fairly expensive. Floridians are upset over two or three billion dollars of state funds being used to upgrade a nuclear power plant plant; TEPCO has asked for and will get a trillion yen. It adds up.

The Japanese Genkai reactor has restarted, and this is the first restart of a nuke plant shut down for technical problems in Japan since the massive Fukushima meltdown. The technical problem was caused by a screw-up that was, in turn, caused by using a faulty operation manual. Perhaps the instructions were written originally in English and translated poorly into Japanese. In any event, it is telling that a) Nuclear industry lies and cheats to get a major plant that should not have been built constructed where it should not be; b) plant melts down causing worst nuclear power disaster ever; c) Other plants start to resume operations d) within weeks, another plant is shut down because of a bad photocopy job in a manual.

Oh yes, of course we can trust the Nuclear Power Industry to get it right.

NHK asked plant operators if they’d been cyber attacked and many said yes, but that they had not been compromised. And of course, the would never lie. Later it was reported that sensitive data was leaked through these attacks, including design plans, etc.

And now, it is time for Ana’s Feed of all the latest Fukushima and other Nuclear Power related news: