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Monju Nuclear Plant Operator Ordered To Stop Restart Preparation
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."
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.
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.
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.