At the end of last year Japan owned 31.8 tons of fissile plutonium. Apparently 6.6 tons of that is actually in Japan while the rest is held abroad under terms of various nuclear waste reprocessing deals.

That’s a lot of fissile plutonium. You can use it, for instance and if you really wanted to (not that you would being a lovely reader of Nuclear Reaction), as the naughty bit in nuclear weapons. In the case of 31.8 tons of the stuff, that’s a lot of naughty bits in nuclear weapons. Let’s have a little rough fun with the numbers.

There was around six kilogrammes of plutonium in the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb that exploded over Nagasaki on August 9 1945 killing 80,000 people by the end of that year. Japan currently owns enough fissile plutonium to make 4,500 replicas of ‘Fat Man’. ‘Fat Man’ exploded with the force of 21,000 tons of TNT (21 kilotons). Japan’s current stockpile of fissile plutonium has the potential explosive force equivalent to a mountain of TNT weighing 94,500,000 tons (94,500 kilotons) – that’s around a fifth of the total explosive force expended by all the nuclear weapons tests in history (510,000 kilotons).

We told you it was a lot of fissile plutonium. We do hope someone’s keeping a close eye on it all.

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We’ve said before that when it comes to reading news about the nuclear industry, initial reports should never be taken at face value or in isolation. Often the first stories about a nuclear incident consist of industry statements saying, in effect, ‘everything’s fine’. It only by remembering to follow these stories up (if they get followed up at all) does a fuller story emerge.

Take the reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear facility in Japan – the latest to be closed by an earthquake (see also the accident-prone Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant). Initial reports said that reactors 4 and 5 at Hamaoka were closed down safely during the earthquake. So far so good. A steady drip of worsening news then followed.

Reactor 5 was the worst hit of the two by the earthquake. There’s no date for it coming back into service. Hamaoka’s operator, Chubu Electric Power Company, is having to increase coal and gas electricity generation to make up for the shortfall due to the reactor’s closure. The closure is said to be costing the company up to 400 million yen (US$4.2 million) a day.

Now we hear that ‘a small amount of the radioactive iodine-131 has been detected in the exhaust’ of reactor 5. ‘Chubu Electric said it will try to determine if the radioactivity is related to the effects of the quake’. Which is more worrying, do you think, if the leak was caused by the earthquake or if it wasn’t? Keep reading and watching to find out. If this story runs as expected more bad news won’t be far way.

Posted by Justin at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

An earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale hit Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture on Tuesday, injuring 87 people. Two reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power station in central Japan were also shut down.

Hamaoka’s 4 and 5 reactors were the only two operating at the site. Unit 1 has been closed since 2001 after a pipe rupture caused by exploding hydrogen in the reactor’s heat removal system. Unit 2 was closed down in 2004 after similar problems were found in that reactor. A new reactor is being built on the site which is expected to replace units 1 and 2. Cracks were also found in the water pipes of Unit 3. Indeed, the Hamaoka reactors have something of a poor history.

On this occasion reactors 4 and 5 were shutdown safely. As it happens, the Hamaoka reactors ‘are located in the middle of an intraplate earthquake-prone region, where the Great Tokai Earthquake is expected to occur’. That’s the thing about building nuclear reactors in earthquake zones – you have to be lucky all the time but only unlucky once.

Posted by Justin at 7:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At 8.15am on August 6 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay opened its payload doors. The payload was the first atomic bomb, codename ‘Little Boy’.

An estimated 80,000 people were killed by the initial blast. By the end of 1945 up to a further 60,000 had died through radiation, injuries and other conditions. The vast majority of these people were civilians.

Sixty-four years ago today, the Nuclear Age began.

If we are truly committed to ridding our planet of nuclear weapons and preventing such atrocities as happened at Hiroshima, there is one thing we must do…

During my eight years in the White House, every nuclear weapons proliferation issue we dealt with was connected to a nuclear reactor program’
(Former US Vice President Al Gore)

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons go hand in hand - always have, always will. Yet we do not need either of them. Eradicating the first is needed to eradicate the second.

From the first experimental reactors in the US and UK built in the 1950s to the latest in Iran and North Korea, the legacy of human suffering and environmental destruction will be with us for generations. That’s an insulting tribute to the memory of those who died at Hiroshima. Turning away from nuclear power and, in turn, nuclear weapons should be their true lasting legacy and memorial.

Read more today…

- Japan Today: Hiroshima mayor urges support for 'Obamajority' on nuclear-free world

- The Boston Globe: Hiroshima, 64 years ago

- Artvoice: the bombs keep dropping

Posted by Justin at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Daily Kos: The best-kept nuclear secret
’Thirty years ago this week - on July 16 - the worst accidental release of radioactive waste happened at the Church Rock uranium mine and mill site. While the Three Mile Island accident (that same year) is well known, the enormous radioactive spill in New Mexico has been kept quiet. It is the U.S. nuclear accident that almost no one knows about. On July 16, 1979, just 14 weeks after the Three Mile Island reactor accident, and 34 years to the day after the Trinity atomic test, the small community of Church Rock, New Mexico became the scene of another nuclear tragedy. Ninety million gallons of liquid radioactive waste, and eleven hundred tons of solid mill wastes, burst through a broken dam wall at the Church Rock uranium mill facility, creating a flood of deadly effluents that permanently contaminated the Puerco River. However, the accident happened "far from civilization" in a remote area inhabited by possibly the most poverty-stricken and disenfranchised community of people in the country - Native Americans. The massacres and smallpox blankets were over, but another deliberate act of racially-based discrimination - the avoidable radioactive contamination of the Navajo community and likely well beyond it - went unpunished and largely unreported.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Church Rock - The best-kept nuclear secret" »

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Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AP: Exelon delays plan for Texas nuclear plant
’COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Power generator Exelon Corp. said Tuesday it has called off plans for now to build a new nuclear plant in Texas because of worries over the economy and the limited availability of federal loan guarantees. The Chicago-based company, the largest nuclear power generator in the U.S., is the second company in the past two months to postpone work for a new nuclear plant. St. Louis-based AmerenUE said in April that it was suspending work on a reactor in Missouri. "We just aren't in a place to pursue the nuclear project," John Rowe, Exelon's chairman and CEO, told The Associated Press in an interview regarding the company's plans to add two nuclear reactors in Victoria, Texas. But the projects are so expensive, running an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion per unit, that they are proving difficult to finance.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Exelon delays plan for Texas nuclear plant" »

Posted by Justin at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AFP: EPA to rebuild uranium-contaminated Navajo homes
’FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - The federal government plans to spend up to $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Navajo counterpart are focusing on homes, sheds and other buildings within a half-mile to a mile from a significant mine or waste pile. They plan to assess 500 structures over five years and rebuild those that are too badly contaminated. "These families, with the resources they have, they would not be able to put up a new home for themselves," said Lillie Lane, a spokeswoman for the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection
Agency. "We don't know how radiation in the home affected these families, but in the end people will be living in safe homes." Between the 1940s and the 1980s, millions of tons of uranium ore were mined from the 27,000 square-mile reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Many Navajos, unaware of the dangers of contamination, built their homes with chunks of uranium ore and mill tailings.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: EPA to rebuild uranium-contaminated Navajo homes" »

Posted by Justin at 6:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

China View: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria
’CAIRO, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday that it has found traces of processed uranium in a second site in Syrian capital Damascus, Pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV reported on Saturday. The IAEA is investigating a U.S. intelligence report which claimed that a secret DPRK-designed nuclear reactor that Syria has almost completed for the production of plutonium.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria" »

Posted by Justin at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AHN: Pickering Nuclear Power Station Lacks Experienced Staff To Deal With Serious Accident, Emergencies
’Calgary, Alberta (AHN) - The Chalk River nuclear reactor shutdown has Canada take a second look at its nuclear facilities. An assessment made by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission of the country's seven nuclear plants for 2008 showed that the nation's oldest power reactor in Pickering may compromise public safety because of its shortage of experienced staff to handle disaster and emergency situations. Aside from the experienced manpower lack, the assessment report, which will be presented at a hearing next week, pointed to the outages which had occurred at the Ontario Power Generation plant in Pickering because of equipment malfunction and other problem areas.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Pickering Nuclear Power Station Lacks Experienced Staff To Deal With Serious Accident" »

Posted by Justin at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)