Antinuclear

They would also probably face opposition from sections of the Chinese public after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan….One of the technical difficulties is that the molten salt produces highly corrosive chemicals such as fluoride that could damage the reactor. Continue reading →

The Woods Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying GEOFF MANAUGH   http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/03/the-woods-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying/ 19 Mar 14, Like a landscape of the undead, the woods outside Chernobyl are having trouble decomposing. The catastrophic meltdown and ensuing radiation blast of April 1986 has had long-term effects on the very soil and ground cover of the forested region, essentially leaving the dead trees and leaf litter unable to decompose. The result is a forest full of “petrified-looking pine trees” that no longer seem capable of rotting. Indeed, Smithsonian reports, “decomposers — organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay — have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil.”

All of that now has been slowed way down, as explored in a new study led by University of South Carolina biologist Timothy Mousseau, just published in Oecologica.Mouseeau and his colleagues explain that they would normally expect to see between 70 per cent and 90 per cent loss of dead plant matter over the course of a year as the discarded leaves and branches are consumed by local microbes; however, at the various test points they established throughout the Chernobyl forested region, the sampled vegetation had lost less than 40 per cent over the same time frame.

This means the woods are decaying approximately twice as slowly, stretching out their period of decay for years, if not decades, and, in the process, piling up fuel for future forest fires.

As Smithsonian also mentions, this is perhaps the most worrisome aspect of all of this, and all the more reason to be concerned about the radioactive side-effects of such a fire: “Other studies have found that the Chernobyl area is at risk of fire, and 27 years’ worth of leaf litter, Mousseau and his colleagues think, would likely make a good fuel source for such a forest fire. This poses a more worrying problem than just environmental destruction: Fires can potentially redistribute radioactive contaminants to places outside of the exclusion zone, Mousseau says. ‘There is growing concern that there could be a catastrophic fire in the coming years,’ he says.”

Either way, there is something immensely surreal in this dream-like vision of a dead forest that simply cannot decay, its branches lifeless yet ever-present, petrified or fossilized in place, its carpet of leaves always growing deeper and seeming to never go away.

That grim posting is one of the starkest indications yet of an increasingly troubled search for workers willing to carry out the hazardous decommissioning at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant.

The plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., known as TEPCO, has been shifting its attention away, leaving the complex clean-up to an often badly managed, poorly trained, demoralised and sometimes unskilled work force. At the same time, the company is pouring its resources into another plant, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, that it hopes to restart this year as part of the government’s push to return to nuclear energy three years after the disaster.

Regulators, contractors and more than 20 current and former workers interviewed in recent months say the deteriorating labour conditions are a prime cause of a string of large leaks of contaminated water and other embarrassing errors that have already damaged the environment and, in some cases, put workers in danger.

“There is a crisis of manpower at the plant,” said Yukiteru Naka, founder of Tohoku Enterprise, a contractor and former plant engineer for General Electric. “We are forced to do more with less, like firemen being told to use less water even though the fire’s still burning.”That crisis was especially evident last October, when a crew of contract workers was sent to remove hoses and valves as part of a long-overdue upgrade to the plant’s water purification system.

According to regulatory filings by TEPCO, the team received only a 20-minute briefing from their supervisor and were given no diagrams of the system they were to fix and no review of safety procedures. Worse yet, the labourers were not warned that a hose near the one they would be removing was filled with water laced with radioactive caesium.

As the men shambled off in their bulky protective gear, their supervisor, juggling multiple responsibilities, left to check on another crew. They chose the wrong hose, and a torrent of radioactive water began spilling out. Panicked, the workers thrust their gloved hands into the water to try to stop the leak, spraying themselves and two other workers who raced over to help.

TEPCO has refused to say how experienced these workers were, but according to regulatory filings, the company that hired them signed a contract for the work a week before the leak.

Similarly, TEPCO has refused to divulge a full accounting of a recent leak at the plant – the worst spill in six months – which occurred when workers filling storage tanks with contaminated water remotely diverted it into the wrong tank…….. Struggling to maintain 3000 workers at the plant – compared with 4500 at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant – labour brokers are getting desperate. Mostly chased away by labour activists from urban areas where day labourers and homeless people congregate, the brokers have increasingly taken their pleas online and made clear their standards are low.

One ad, for work involving radiation monitoring, said: “You must have common sense, and be able to carry out a conversation.””Tokyo Electric has no idea who’s really handling the job on the ground,” said Takeshi Katsura, who helped one worker win back pay. “It’s a free-for-all.” http://www.theage.com.au/world/unskilled-recruited-for-fukushima-duty-20140318-hvk08.html

The competitiveness of large French power consumers has “dropped off in a way that is extremely worrying,” the Uniden lobby group said today in a statement. The regulated rate is set at 42 euros ($58.50) a megawatt-hour. Uniden has written a position paper in response to a state consultation on power prices. While the body’s 41 members, which include PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG) and Total SA (FP), strive to compete with foreign peers, EDF has embarked on a cost-cutting drive as spending increases to maintain and upgrade its 58 reactors.

France has said it will announce any revisions to the power rate or the way it’s calculated at the end of the month. The government already forces state-controlled EDF to sell about a quarter of its nuclear output to other French distributors to increase domestic competition. The country gets about three-quarters of its power production from EDF’s atomic fleet.

Large German industrial power users will pay 35 percent less for their electricity next year than those in France, Uniden said. “Even more preoccupying” is France’s inability to compete with North America, where the boom in shale gas has lowered the cost of energy supply, it said.

EDF, based in Paris, has said it can’t make ends meet unless it gets permission to raise the price of wholesale nuclear power. “One can’t demand of a company to sell a quarter of its output below cost in the long term,” Chief Executive Officer Henri Proglio said last month. The regulated rate helps EDF make “a step toward” meeting its costs of 50 euros a megawatt-hour, he said. Uniden called for tighter control of EDF’s costs and more “visibility” on the power price over the next five years.