Monju Nuclear Plant Operator Ordered To Stop Restart Preparation 72
AmiMoJo writes "Japan's nuclear regulator has ordered the operator of the Monju fast-breeder reactor to suspend preparation for its restart until measures are put in place for its proper maintenance and management. The regulators acted after finding the operator had missed checkups on about 10,000 pieces of equipment. They ordered that sufficient manpower and funds be allocated for maintenance and management. The reactor in Tsuruga City, central Japan, is at the center of the nation's nuclear-fuel recycling policy. But its operator has been hampered by a series of problems."
Kinda sad... (Score:1, Insightful)
But nuclear power (fission) is the only truly sustainable energy source for the future given the alternatives of today.
Fossil fuels are out due to their CO2 footprint.
Solar and wind are useful supplements but too unreliable to stand alone and still with far too low yield to provide enough power per installation. To supply power to everything world-wide 24/7 with room to grow (triple most likely) would require insane amounts of windmills and square miles of solar arrays which would affect both land for food crops, cause massive noise pollution and seriously damage the recreational value of nature as there would have to be billions of windmills absolutely everywhere. So many mills would most likely also cause massive disruptions in weather patterns. Solar panels also still require rare metals that is in very short supply.
Everything else is not suitable for large scale use.
If fusion ever gets out from the labs and into the commercial market it would be the market changer as it requires basically water to run and has no waste problem. The radioactive He produced can simply be released into the atmosphere where it would rise until cosmic radiation would cause it to decay into harmless isotopes.
Re:So, not a Tepco site (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately Japan seems to easily forget about Fukushima and its effects, side effects and future effects.
I see no indication of this.
The new Japanese government is in favor of a drastic change regarding power plants future: from an all-stopped-and-deep-check (May 6, 2012) to a lets-go-restart-asap-what-you-can policy.
Why do you consider that a worse approach? There's never been a safety or engineering justification for a "all-stopped-and-deep-check" approach. Magnitude 9 earthquakes don't happen all the time and that was a fundamental cause of the Fukushima accident.
They probably estimate the probability of another such F-event very low (F as in Fukushima, but you can put what you want here).
Given that only one "F-event" has happened in the history of nuclear power, I think it is fair to consider the probability of such events to be very low.
This is one of the globalization problem: economical globalization trend, without global consensus on fundamental issues.
No, it is common sense risk management taking over. There's no safety reason to slow down the restarting of well maintained nuclear reactors. And there's plenty of costs to such delays.
And I have to roll my eyes at "global consensus". I think Japan wouldn't be satisfied with the sort of compromises that it'd have to do in order to reach a consensus with say, Russia, the US, and China, all who appear to take some sort of short cuts with respect to nuclear power.
For example, Russia still operates a few reactors of the sort that failed at Chernobyl (and will continue to do so, for at least a decade). China is notorious for its disregard for human health. And the US has a number of oversight issues (and NIMBY politics) hampering the safety of its reactors. A "global consensus" isn't going to be the best practices possible, but rather an ugly compromise.
Re:Ownership != Operatership (Score:4, Insightful)
The hydrogen explosions aren't the issue. You're venting to atmosphere or flaring, or you're putting it in a building and causing it to explode, the only thing the people will here is OMG radiation got out!
The problem is not the hydrogen explosion, the problem is that it got that far to begin with.
Re:Ownership != Operatership (Score:4, Insightful)
The Fukushima Daiichi reactors were in fact fitted with venting apparatus -- if you look at pictures of the site you'll see large white vertical pipes standing beside the reactor buildings, braced with girders to cope with earthquakes. The problem is that if the vents are used they can (and probably will) release radioactivity as well as hydrogen gas since at that point in time the fuel elements in the reactors will have suffered heat damage.
I've heard claims that the decision to not vent the gas buildup was taken by politicians in the Japanese government since they didn't want to be responsible for deliberately releasing radioactive contamination across parts of Japan. Whether that is true or not venting would have released much less radioactivity than the explosions did.