A statement that was sent to the NRC on Waste Fuel Handling, Deadline Today Dec 20

 From ZOMBO at ENENEWS

Zombo sent me this directly, and its great.

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With hindsight it is clear that the public was not informed of critical developments during the first few days and weeks of the Fukushima disaster. The public was harmed as a result. We should learn from this historical fact.

Not only was Tepco silent about what FOIA documents now reveal as 3 meltdowns in the early days of the Fukushima accident, but FOIA documents also reveal that a contingent of US nuclear engineers and scientists were active participants in the technical response to the 3 meltdowns, as they occurred.

For me it is clear that the development of the 3 meltdowns was well known to the US nuclear industry as the meltdowns occurred. And yet this situation was kept secret.

Regardless of why--whether it was considered a national security issue, or whether it was merely to prevent panic--the dire situation at Fukushima, and the likely creation of radioactive fallout, was kept secret.

As a result of the meltdowns, airborne radioactive Iodine-131 was beginning to circle the globe. But the public was not informed.

Pregnant women in the northern hemisphere should have taken steps to minimize their exposure. But they were not informed.

Sailors on the USS Reagan were exposed to high doses of radiation from the radioactive plumes. But they were not informed.

Regardless of why, We the People were not informed.

If we are looking for confidence in our nuclear waste management, then we should consider the above historical lesson as we plan our escape from the nuclear waste quagmire. We should do the right thing. We cannot allow a repeat of Fukushima on our own soil.

Each spent fuel pool can contain up to six times the mass of nuclear fuel as is stored in the reactor core itself. Spent fuel is much dirtier--much more radioactive--than new fuel. Any event that causes a single spent fuel pool to lose its integrity could result the release of a large portion that highly radioactive spent fuel into the environment, as airborne radioactive contamination similar to what was seen in Fukushima. With six times the fuel of an operating reactor core, it would release twice the contamination compared to the 3 Fukushima cores which became meltdowns. But because it is dirty spent fuel, it would be much worse. We simply cannot allow such a development. And most certainly, we cannot allow such a development to be kept secret. But if recent history is any indication, we cannot expect to be informed.

This new reality requires that we take action on three fronts:

1. Begin an emergency program to put spent fuel into dry cask storage.

2. End the madness of the overstocked spent fuel pools. The spent fuel pools should contain only the minimum inventory required for safe operation of the NPP, plus the inventory that is less than 5 years old and is too hot to remove. This should be made an operating requirement.

3. Require that the spent fuel pool situation begin improving immediately. Regulate the industry so that any refueling activity must result in a net improvement of the situation. Require that for each kilogram of new fuel delivered to the NPP site, 2 kilograms of spent fuel must be taken out of the spent fuel pool and put in dry cask storage.

Madam Curie was Wrong

Marie Curie stated "Nothing in Life is To Be Feared, Only to Be Understood"

She was wrong on several levels.  

1) Her pursuit of her Precious killed her via leukemia.
2) Some things in life are to be feared, even after they are understood
3) When a Pro-Nuker is speaking, you should fear the fact than many People will believe them based on confusion and the so called sanctity of science.
4) Grizzly Bears - no matter how well understood, should be feared

and

5) Cherubs, always fear Cherubs

NRC Nuclear Waste Confidence Docket Comments from ENENEWS

From HoTaters

To NRC regulators and U.S. Judiciaries:
You are urged to locate, study, and approve a storage area for spent nuclear fuel in the U.S.. NRC FOIA documents, and numerous reports by international experts such as those at Woods Hole have shown the Fukushima accident had dire consequences.

NRC documents released under FOIA dated March through May of 2011 clearly indicate the severity of the Fukushima Daichi disaster. This event was supposedly was mathematically impossible; it nonetheless occurred. It could occur in the U.S.

The events taking place at Fukushima are horrifying; perhaps thousands of people are already dying from radiation-related illnesses. The incidence of cancers and diabetes have risen dramatically. These facts are well documented.

Hundreds of U.S. Navy personnel from the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan are now sick and dying from radiation poisoning they got when exposed to the Fukushima reactor melt-down plumes during "Operation Tomadachi."

Three nuclear reactor cores escaped containment, and are "MIA." They are contaminating the aquifer and an underground river running under the plant. Water flows directly into the Pacific Ocean ….Tepco has had to release highly radioactive water during typhoon events, and due to failure of its water storage tanks.

Tepco and the IAEA recently asked for public "permission" to dump all the contaminated water into the Pacific. Itis unthinkable; unconscionable. "Dilution" is irrelevant; isotopes harm and kill when ingested or inhaled.

The Pacific Ocean food chain could collapse, or entire species and fisheries be wiped out due to Pacifc Ocean radiation contamination. The plume of radioactive water emanating from the Kurushio current in Japan travels directly across the Pacific. Destination: the U.S. West Coast, and in particular, California. The plume is supposed to arrive in March, 2014. It will impact our coastline for at least 10-20 years.

Fishery collapses (sardines, herring, salmon) in the Pacific, and massive die-offs of marine mammals from Alaska to Southern California, indicate something is terribly wrong in the Pacific biosphere. The immune systems of marine animals and plankton are likely being damaged by all the radiation coming from Fukushima; disease ensues.

There is also a massive amount of tsunami debris drifting toward the U.S. West Coast from Japan. A lot of chemical toxins are contained in the water, in those debris flows. Imagine all the chemical plants and manufacturing facilities on the Japanese coastline, destroyed when the tsunami struck in March, 2011.

The Pacific is being hammered by multiple sources of intense contamination. The radioactive isotopes coming from the Fukushima Daichi plant are highly suspect in the die-offs of marine mammals, fishes, and crustaceans. The scope of problems in the Pacific biosphere are truly staggering, when one considers them in their entirety.
We can ill afford to have such a disaster occur in the U.S., even if it were to occur inland, and away from our coastlines, or the Gulf area.

Robert Alvarez, formerly of the DOE, has said the spent fuel from Reactor 4 at Fukushima alone, if its building were to fail and it fell to the ground, could "end civilization" as we know it.
In the U.S. reactors have been granted extensions to operate far beyond their useful lives, and beyond design capacity. Our air and aquifers are being contaminated; billions of gallons of water containing dangerous tritium are allowed to enter waterways and our coastal areas.
The U.S. has tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting in waste storage ponds and spent fuel pools. This is a disaster in the making. It has the makings of an event of Biblical proportions. The potential consequences of the failure of one of these pools is unthinkable, and could destroy the Northern Hemisphere, if not the entire world.
We truly should learned more, and applied the lessons from Fukushima Daichi. An international response to the crisis is desperately needed.
Requests:

1. Find a way to store low level and high level nuclear waste on a permanent basis (nearly impossible in principle, since humans only live for 70-80 years or so). Find a safe storage area ASAP. Build it. Use it.
2. Move all spent nuclear fuel into dry cask storage post-haste, and get it out of the spent fuel pools.
1. Do not allow reactors to operate beyond their design lifespans;
2. Do not allow the use of dangerous MOX fuel;
3. Do not allow fuel reprocessing. There is more than enough nuclear material already in existence to destroy all life on earth;
4. Stop allowing shipment of spent fuel to the U.S. from other nations for reprocessing or disposal;
5. Do not allow the disposal of fracking waste and radioactive waste in salt caverns, as this destabilizes the ground in surrounding areas (think Bayou Corne);
6. Do not allow the storage of nuclear waste in Texas, which could impact the Oglalla Aquifer.
Signed, former Yucca Mtn. Seismic Studies team member

Pimps for nuclear are still trying to get away with the "Banana analogy"

This one is on "The Truth Wins" who is the author who broke the "28 Signs the West Coast is Absolutely Getting Fried With Radiation"

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/28-signs-that-the-west-coast-is-being-absolutely-fried-with-nuclear-radiation-from-fukushima

The PIMP is a self stated nuclear operator for the US Navy, David McFarland

PIMP
We know how that it's safer to eat a Tuna Steak from Fukushima than a banana when you're talking about contamination. This isn't comparable to the "scientists" of old believing mice spawned from straw, this is comparable to them noticing that mice physically existed.

More TRUTH ==You argue gibberish. Are you connected to the nuclear industry financially?
Your banana fallacy is disproven and is essentially junk science thought up by public relations monkeys.
Radioactive cesium is the issue, chimp.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories...

 
PIMP: So you're saying you trust public relation junkies with vague information (and false assumptions) rather than a guy who actually measured contamination in Japan following Fukushima and is nuclear trained.
I don't argue jibberish. I use bananas because they sound ridiculous and they are something you don't freak out over. No one freaks out over a banana. So when I say that the levels are very banana-like, why would you freak out over them?
I hate the unit "becquerel." It's like trying to use a nanometer to measure a centimeter. It's rarely useful. You can say something has twenty terabecquerels of contamination, and it could actually do nothing at all, whereas something with something with ten kilobecquerels could very well be harmful.
People need to stop talking about becquerels without providing any additional information. Radiation emitted. Strength of those particles. Biological half-lives. Actual half-lives. Concentration. Method of dispersion. All of those things are important and critical to figuring out how harmful they are.
I challenge anyone to say more facts aren't useful on this matter.

TRUTH: Jesus, if you don't understand the falseness of the Banana analogy, you are in sad shape to be pimping nuke

PIMP" How is it false? Cesium -137 decays at 110% the power of Potassium-40. It has a biological half-life of 70 days to Potassium's 16 days.
So, if you eat the Tuna around Fukushima, currently contaminated at 15 becquerels/100kg (a single banana weighing .12kg has 15 becquerels), that means you can - if you do the math, eat more than 20 Tuna Steaks weighing 1kg each, and, - with the assumption that you don't expel any cesium until day 70 - you'll get as much of a dose as you would a singular banana.
I use bananas because they sound ridiculous - because it is. It's a perfectly valid argument.
Do the math again, and you'll find a banana is 166 times more radioactive than the Tuna around Fukushima if you do it by kilogram.
I find many of these doctors to be a bit nonsensical, as they seem to be implying that cesium stays in the body - it does not. You expel all cesium from your body within 70 days.
I still have yet see anyone providing any information stating the falseness of the banana analogy, whereas I've provided the math.
It requires knowledge of the difference between Radiation, Contamination. Dose, Radiation Levels, and conversions. If you don't know the difference between any of those, you don't even know Radiation 101

TRUTH" LOL because the body self regulates level of potassium, and ALL potassium in the world has same level of radioactivity. So there is zero net change. Your statement of "all cesium is expelled in 70 days" is laughably false. The biological half life of cesium is 70 or 90 days. AND if you continue to intake rad cesium, then your level does not fall off with time.
Whether you know it or not, you are a pimp for radiation death. Stop that!

PIMP: Your own potassium irradiates you more than anything you'll eat from Fukushima. (More importantly, unless you live in Japan, my body will irradiate me more than anything I'll cumulatively eat that's been contamination by Fukushima. I still eat sushi, and my dose readings are still fine.) Your body doesn't instantly reject extra potassium, and it constantly needs more.
All, "continue to intake Cs-137" is the key phrase. It doesn't stick around that long.

TRUTH: Potassium is spread evenly throughout the cells....it has been in us for millions of years.    Some ability to repair single strand breaks at the cellular level has been gained, works pretty good.    Because of the even spread, particular cells/DNA DO NOT get multiple attacks as when you have a PARTICLE of cesium bound into your muscle or heart, like an MMA fighter delivering multiple blows to the same tissue.   

not the same thing at all.

Your body DOES quickly, as in within 8 hours reject excess potassium.      You try not to lie by saying INSTANTLY

You are a pimp for death that ought to know better, there is a special place in hell waiting for you.

Your Chance to Officially Let the NRC and the Courts Know How You Feel About Spent Fuel in Your Backyard

See below from the NRC blog website.

 In the link immediately below, is the NRC page you can paste in a comment on Continued Storage of Spent Fuel. 

http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=NRC-2012-0246-0456

It's easy.   You have to leave your name, that shouldn't be a big deal to you.    At the bottom of this post, I will addend my comment to them.

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The public comment period on the Waste Confidence proposed rule and generic environmental impact statement (GEIS) ends December 20. During the 98-day public comment period (the end date was extended due to the government shutdown), the NRC staff conducted 13 meetings around the country to receive your feedback.

We’d like to thank the more than 1,400 people who attended these meetings, either in person or by teleconference. We have posted transcripts of the public meetings on the Public Involvement section of our Waste Confidence webpage. We appreciate all of you who spoke at the meetings providing your thoughtful comments. The safe storage of spent nuclear fuel and the impact on the environment are critical issues in the country’s nuclear policy. We here at the NRC are committed to ensuring that spent fuel remains safely stored until a repository can be built for permanent disposal.

So what’s next? The staff of the Waste Confidence Directorate is busy cataloguing the tens of thousands of public comments we have received so far. You can read the comments we’ve processed already using ADAMS and http://www.regulations.gov/(search for Docket ID NRC-2012-0246). We are continuing to post comments, and of course we expect to receive additional comments up to the December 20 deadline. Instructions on how to submit comments are on the Public Involvement section of our Waste Confidence webpage.

Once the comments are fully catalogued, the staff will consider them and prepare responses to be included in the final GEIS and rule. These final versions will of course include any changes from the drafts stemming from the comments. We are working to issue the final rule and environmental study later in 2014.

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Testimony to NRC 

When nuclear power plants were first built, the spent fuel pool was designed as a very temporary storage site.   The pools were never intended for long term storage.    I have studied the situation to a large degree, and I feel qualified to speak on these matters with several thousand hours of training in nuclear processes and radiation physics.   

I have a BSME from Northwestern University, and MSME from University of Michigan, and have worked as a Safety and Security officer on important Government projects, as well as being a Mechanical and Electrical Construction Estimating specialist. 

    

Because no Government knows how to handle the spent fuel “hot potato” in the long term, the problem has not even begun to be addressed.     There is no good long term solution, but we do have a good short term solution, and it immediately creates good productive jobs while making the spent fuel a whole lot safer than it is sitting in fuel pools near reactors. 

 

Dry Cask everything that can be Dry Casked now.    Typically spent fuels that have been cooling for 5 years can be Dry Casked. 

 

Until the fuels are put into Dry Cask, there is a risk of a regional economy killing event due to power loss/natural diasaster, or terrorist action.    There have been far too many close calls in the last few years, in the USA.    We are flirting with disaster.  Our good judgment in risk control has been decimated by lack of good choices and the hope of a Yucca mountain, always right around the corner. 

     

There is a GREAT interim solution, which creates good jobs in America, and we need that badly, and solves much of the problem, immediately increasing our safety and reducing our risk of terrorist attack. 

The numbers are simple, a dry cask can handle about 10 tons of material, and costs between $1M to $2M.

There is roughly 60,000 tons of spent fuel in the USA that is not already Casked.    USA generates around 2000 tons a year, and it takes 5 years to cool enough to be Casked, therefore 5 * 2000 = 10,000 tons have to wait to be Dry Casked, leaving 50,000 tons that could be and SHOULD BE Casked now.    

At 10 tons per Cask, that is 5000 Casks

Material cost of $1.5M each, that is $7.5 B in Cask material cost.   

Let’s allow 50% of the material cost as a labor cost related to making the slabs the Casks will sit on, and moving the fuel, documentation and testing, or $3.75B.    The security cost of monitoring and protecting the Dry Cask will be far less than securing the much more dangerous spent fuel pools, so there will out years savings on that cost item.

So the total cost with labor and materials will be around $11.25B to dry cask everything that can be Dry Casked now.    This is about $225,000 per ton.     Let’s say the process takes 7 years, an additional 14,000 tons will be created, that’s another $3.125B needed.   Or a total of $14.375B to dry cask ALL of the spent fuel in the USA up to 2020.    But keep in mind $4.8B of that will be going into the hands of US trade workers, who will immediately put that income back into the economy, and create a further economic boost when we need it the most.

In 2013 President Obama commissioned a study on the costs of “doing nothing” and found that Utilities have already sued the US Gov with 80 victories to recover their storage costs because USA did not come through with a Yucca mountain or similar.     Direct payouts around $2B, and further they estimated that as more plants age and close that the USA taxpayers could be on the hook for $20B in judgments by the year 2020.   And up to an additional 20% could be legal and consultants fees, bringing the tab to $24B

How much more simple can this be?     $14.375B to “pretty darn well” fix to the problem for 50 years and reduce our risk of disaster or terrorist attack, create good jobs, or squander $24B in judgment fees and lawyer costs and NO PROGRESS?

Although no viable long term solutions are currently available, we insist on the immediate transfer of spent fuel rods which have sufficiently cooled for 5 years in the vulnerable pools into more secure, hardened on site, dry cask storage.

Making matters far worse, years ago the NRC quietly approved burning the fuel in the reactors longer, resulting in "high burnup" waste, which turns out may not actually be safe for storage or transport. High burnup fuel, and it's excessive thermal and radioactive heat accelerating the degradation of dry cask storage containers, has not been adequately addressed in the GEIS.

While the NRC has licensed the storage of "normal" radioactive fuel for up to 50 years, they can't endorse the storage of high burnup fuel for even 20 years.   STOP high burn up fuel now.

MOX reprocessing IS NOT an answer.  MOX reprocessing is attempting to “burn up” the fuel by removing the plutonium from the spent fuel and concentrating it in new fuel rods to be burned in a nuclear plant.  There are 2 problems with this. 

 

 1) It is much more expensive to process and create the MOX fuel than it is to simply cask it.    A study by Princeton presented April 4, 2008 to Congress estimated that processing MOX including the costs of the MOX facility and decommissioning the MOX facility is about 10 times more expensive than simply Dry Casking.

2) The MOX fuel is far more likely to blow up in a modified nuclear explosion called a Moderated Prompt Criticality.    Even in the 1940’s it was theorized that a nuclear explosion could happen in a nuclear reactor, and in the 1950’s Argonne National Laboratory did a series of experiments that were filmed and proved that even with normal nuclear fuel rods, under the right conditions, and uncontrolled criticality could blow up the reactor.     With MOX, enriched with bomb making plutonium, this type of nuclear explosion is much more likely, as Japan found out in their Reactor 3 at Fukushima, which was running MOX.   The amount of Uranium detected by the EPA in Saipan, Guam, Honolulu, and California could only be caused by one thing….and explosion from within the reactor vessel, that launched the inventory into the air.    MOX is too dangerous, MOX can turn a 80 foot tall reactor with 6” steel walls into a “Canon” which can launch the entire inventory.   

The Dry Cask is proven technology, we can produce them in the USA, we can create jobs in the USA, and we can increase safety, all at an acceptable cost.    Most or all of the cost should be borne by the existing utilities, since they had the obligation to decommission their plants.    But I also propose that the US Government, using taxpayer dollars, assist the utilities, as it is in our common interest to Dry Cask as soon as possible, by providing 50% of the cost of the cask itself.   

NRC Soups up Another Old Boiling Water Clunker, Stop the Madness

Just 6 months after a major error during maintenance that caused a massive water drop in the reactor, and thus an emergency shutdown.     XCEL energy instead convinces the NRC that what they need instead of a trip to the woodshed, is to soup up this old 1970 clunker.   NRC agreed to let them burn hotter and heavier to increase their profits.    

 Xcel promised costs of around $100M for the uprate Soup Up....and instead it was $267M over budget.    Which the rate payers will have to suck up all the costs for.

Monticello is a Boiling Water Design, the worst design, the one that is destroying the Islands of Japan via Fukushima.

 I love these Puke Green control rooms from the 1970's, sheesh, such a feeling of confidence!

Note how Monticello in 2012 looks just like Fukushima.    Wow.    

Sure glad they got a power update.    And no worries...if they melt down, its only the located at the top of the Mississippi  river....sheesh, no one uses that water anyway.....<ouch sarc>

 

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NRC Approves Uprate at Monticello Nuclear Plant

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Nuclear Street News Team

Wed, Dec 11 2013 10:31 AM

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In the next month, Xcel will take advantage of recent upgrades to increase the power production at its Monticello nuclear plant by 71 megawatts.

The utility completed an uprate at the plant near Minneapolis in July. On Monday, Xcel announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved its application for the power increase. Operators will begin to gradually ramp up the power at the reactor in the coming weeks. According a release from the company, Xcel will wait for "an NRC decision in spring 2014 that will allow more operator flexibility before the plant ascends to the full 671 megawatts."

Monticello is a General Electric Type 3 boiling water reactor first licensed in 1970. According to the NRC, the agency last approved an uprate for the unit in 1998. The recent upgrades represented about 40 percent of a larger $320 million refueling and service outage. It experienced cost overruns in excess of $267 million, drawing scrutiny from state regulators.

Entergy is a Slumlord and Palisades is Leaking Into Lake Michigan and a long list of violations

This from a Nuke Worker.......
Desperation is no excuse for shitting where you live.
And the violations have continued since this was written



Palisades can't seem to get a break.  It's one of the two Nuclear power plants I live near, so I hope it the best.  I have a lot of friends that work there, and the local economy desperately needs those jobs.

Here is a summary of some of the news posted lately.

Quote from: Yvonne Zipp | yzipp@mlive.com  http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/05/palisades_nuclear_power_plant_14.html May 12, 2013 at 12:01 PM

A timeline of incidents at Palisades Nuclear Power Plant since 2007

COVERT TOWNSHIP, MI -- The leak that shut down Palisades Nuclear Power Plant May 5 is one of a series of incidents that have bedeviled the nuclear reactor in recent years.
Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Kristine Svinicki will tour Palisades Nuclear Power Plant on Monday, May 13, at the invitation of U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, who will accompany her.
Palisades officials will host an open house to answer questions from the public about the plant Tuesday, May 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Beach Haven Event Center in South Haven. 
Entergy Corp. bought Palisades from Consumers Energy in 2007 for $380 million. The one-reactor plant, which is located along Lake Michigan in Covert Township, supplies about 20 percent of the utility's power. The facility came online in 1971 and its license runs until 2031.  Below is a timeline of incidents at Palisades since 2007, based on NRC reports and previous MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette articles.

2007 -- Palisades' head of security resigned amid revelations he had fabricated some of his credentials.

2008 -- An NRC safety assessment found Palisades failed “to recognize and assess the impact of radiological hazards in the workplace.” The NRC found that Palisades failed to determine how much radiation employees were exposed to after radiation monitors worn by the workers warned of an exposure.

August 2008 -- Five workers were trapped for 90 minutes inside a high-temperature area when a hatch malfunctioned. The NRC launched a probe and found the plant did not take proper precautions to prevent such occurrences.

2009 -- During an inspection, the NRC found that workers failed to notice a problem in the pool where spent fuel rods are kept. The finding, labeled a “low to moderate safety” risk that did not endanger the public, kept Palisades on the NRC's list of plants that required additional regulatory oversight for a second year. The plant’s 2009 safety assessment also found problems with human performance regarding “error-prevention techniques.”

May 2010 -- A Palisades manager left the control room without following protocol and the event was not reported within 24 hours, the NRC found.

January 2011 -- Palisades operated at 55 percent power for eight days after a cooling-water pump lost power when an electrical bus failed. The event did not represent a threat to health and safety, the NRC said.

May 2011 -- While NRC inspectors were conducting a routine test of the plant’s auxiliary feed water system, a turbine-driven pump was tripped. Investigators found a component of the pump that was greased and should not have been. The NRC classified the event as a "low to moderate" safety significance.

August 2011 -- The NRC launched a special inspection after the failure of a coupling that holds pipes together. It found Palisades did not follow industry standards when choosing the coupling and the cracking was preventable. Palisades replaced all couplings.

September 2011 -- Palisades shut down between Sept. 16 and Sept. 20 for repairs, after workers discovered a leaking valve in the system that cools the reactor.

September 2011 Palisades shut down for a week after a breaker fault in the plant's electrical system Sept. 25, when a worker performing maintenance on an electrical panel when a piece of metal came into contact with another metal piece and caused an arc. There were no injuries reported. The NRC launched a special investigation, the second in two months. The investigation found that during the incident, which it named of "substantial significance to safety," Palisades did not follow proper safety protocols before the shutdown.

November 2011 -- The NRC bumped Palisades down a level to the Regulatory Response column as a result of the May 2011 incident.

January 2012 -- Palisades shut down for 3-1/2 days to repair a wearing seal on a control rod mechanism.

February 2012 -- The NRC downgraded Palisades to the third regulatory column, making it among the four-worst performing reactors in the U.S. The downgrade came as a result of the two special investigations launched in 2011.

June 2012 -- Palisades shut down for a month to repair a leak in its safety injection refueling water tank. Numerous cracks were found within the 300,000-gallon storage tank, according to reports. When the plant returned to service, the tank was still leaking, but due to its size, it did not pose a safety risk, the NRC found.

July 2012 -- An independent review of Palisades found "examples of a lack of accountability at all levels." The study, conducted by Conger & Elsea Inc. in January and February 2012, looked at plant operations related to human performance, safety-conscious work environment, problem identification and resolution.

August 2012 -- Palisades shut down for 18 days to repair a leak in the control rod mechanism drive in the containment building. The NRC sent a three-inspector team and launched a special inspection of the pressure-boundary leak. During the 30 days before the location of the leak was discovered, up to 10,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked from the containment vessel. The water was contained and did not pose a safety risk to the public, the NRC found.

September 2012 -- An NRC inspector found what it characterized as a small leak in a valve in the service water system. The water was not radioactive and did not represent a health or safety risk, the NRC said.

September 2012 -- Entergy sued the federal government over a lack of a waste disposal site. The New Orleans-based company said it paid the government $6 million in fees a year to take its waste. Since the Department of Energy has not done so, Entergy said it has spent an estimated $100 million storing the waste.

November 2012 -- Palisades shuts down for three days to repair a steam leak inside the plant's auxiliary building.

November 2012 -- The NRC upgraded Palisades after an 11-day inspection in September found that Entergy had made improvements and addressed deficiencies. The NRC ordered an additional 1,000 hours of inspections in 2013, on top of the standard 2,000 hours.

February 2013 -- Palisades shut down for six days to repair a leak in the component cooling water system. It was leaking 35 gallons of non-radioactive water an hour before the shutdown, the NRC said. The leak did not represent a threat to the public or the plant, the NRC said.

March 2013 -- Palisades was one of three U.S. plants with significant safety events, or "near-misses" in the past three years, according to a report by the independent Union of Concerned Scientists. The near-misses at Palisades resulted from long-standing problems, the UCS said, and it charged the NRC with failing to enforce violations.

May 2013 -- On May 5, Palisades shut down after the leak in the safety injection refueling water tank accelerated from one a day to 90 gallons within a 24-hour period, the NRC said. On May 4, before the shutdown, some 79 gallons of radioactive water from the tank went down a drain into a capture basin, where it was extremely diluted, according to the NRC, and ended up in Lake Michigan. The NRC has sent an additional inspector to Palisades, and one of its health physicists is also investigating the incident. As of May 10, Palisades was still offline while workers and inspectors search for the source of the leak and make repairs.

Get in the Christmas Spirit sung to "The NSA is coming to town"

1400 Cubic Meter Radioactive Collapse at Uranium Mine

It has been revealed that the collapse of a leach tank at the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory was the second such incident at a Rio Tinto mine in less than a week.

Rio is a majority shareholder of Ranger operator, Energy Resources of Australia (ERA).
An investigation is under way at the Ranger site, inside Kakadu National Park, after a 1,400 cubic metre tank holding uranium oxide slurry and acid collapsed at the weekend.

But the local regulator assures us that no radiation has been released to the environment.    Excuse me?      1400 Cubic Meters?    Thats huge....I guess they caught it with a napkin.

And second leak, THIS WEEK,  of this magnitude from this company.    Their stock is down 30%, I hope this bankrupts them.      

Sell Rio Tinto, tell your broker to check if your funds have any Rio Tinto and sell them.    Lock in a loss for this year, and then buy back another better miner next year.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/12/11/another-spill-rio-tinto-uranium-mine


http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/rio-tinto-reports-spill-at-namibian-uranium-mine-2013-12-11