"Japan to relaunch six reactors in 2013"

[yanpa]

Areva says Japan to relaunch six reactors in 2013

Paris, Mar 4:

The head of French nuclear group Areva, a major supplier to Japan, said today six reactors would reopen in the country before the end of the year and that most of the country’s nuclear plants would eventually be put back on line.

Once a major consumer of nuclear power, the 2010 Fukushima disaster brought the archipelago’s nuclear industry to a standstill, but Areva and many Japanese companies hope the situation will soon be reversed.

“We think that there could be a half dozen reactors that will restart by the end of the year”, in addition to two reactors already put back into operation, Luc Oursel said at a news conference.

He said the company projection was based on what they expected Japan to decide in new regulation set for July and on the preparedness of Japanese engineers.

The forecast is much more optimistic than a report published yesterday forecasting no new reactors put into operation before the end of the year.

The Kyodo press agency said Japan’s major electricity providers believed that nuclear power would remain frozen in 2013.

Orsel said a newly created nuclear agency would “take years” to greenlight all of Japan’s reactors for activity, and that some, including those in Fukushima, would remain shut.

source

Fukushima-Meltdown-Merit-Badge.gif

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[Taro Toporific]

[Japan to relaunch six reactors in 2013
source...

Oh noooos! I've gotta start working on new designs for official Meltdown Merit Badges.

[Coligny]

I see 3 possibilities...

-stop giving a fuck
-move to the southern hemisphere (*)
-topple the governement and put shit straight



(*)lucky we still have bits of France downthere... where we did most of our nukular testings... awww crap...

[Taro Toporific]

Japan plans to restart its unrepaired nuclear reactors to celebrate ‘Cesium Week’...

Renaming-witter-_-DailyGomi.png

via

[pallidknight]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/ ... 3Y20130310
70 % of those polled want nuclear energy to be phased out.

[Samurai_Jerk]

I know it's just an editorial but ...

Ill-prepared for nuclear accidents

The exposure of 33 researchers to radiation on May 23 at a Japan Atomic Energy Agency research facility in Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, revealed the JAEA’s failure to uphold basic safety standards. Education and science minister Mr. Hakubun Shimomura said May 28 that the ministry will thoroughly reform the JAEA. But unless the mind-sets of JAEA officials and researchers are radically changed, the reform will be meaningless.

JAEA also manages the prototype fast-breeder reactor Monju in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, which has been inoperative for most of the past 19 years. The Nuclear Regulation Authority on May 15 decided to order JAEA not to engage in further preparatory work to restart the trouble-plagued Monju reactor until it improves its safety management. The NRA pointed out that JAEA failed to inspect nearly 10,000 reactor components in and after 2010. JAEA head Mr. Atsuyuki Suzuki resigned May 17.

What happened at JAEA’s Hadron Experimental Facility in the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai shows that officials and researchers were not prepared at all for the possibility of a radiation accident.

On May 23, an experiment was taking place in which a proton beam was aimed at gold to generate elementary particles. An alarm went off at 11:55 a.m. when the proton beam grew 400 times stronger than planned due to a malfunction. This caused the gold to evaporate, releasing radioactive particles.

A researcher restarted the equipment just 13 minutes later, thinking there was no danger. But radiation readings in the facility then alarmingly rose to 4 microsieverts per hour — 10 times greater than normal — and officials shut down the equipment. To make matters worse, they vented the facility but the ventilator had no radiation filters so the radioactive particles were released into the environment. (A similar incident happened on a much larger scale during the nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, when contaminated steam was released from a reactor containment vessel.) Deplorably it took about 1½ days for JAEA to report the accident to NRA.

A JAEA official said the organization had not expected such an accident and thus was ill-prepared for it. This shows that officials and researchers lack a basic awareness of the inherent dangers of nuclear research and thus were not prepared to adequately respond to an accident. It’s clear that they have learned nothing from the Fukushima disaster. This lax mind-set stems from the fact that the organization is overseen only personnel with strong ties to the nuclear power establishment. For example, two former bureaucrats of the education and science ministry — part of Japan’s nuclear village — joined the JAFA as directors upon their retirement.

[matsuki]

TIFJ...don't even ask what the "F" is for

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

Maybe they should think about moving the Diet, national government offices without customer services and TEPCO headquarters to the Fuckushima Zone?

[Samurai_Jerk]

Maybe they should think about moving the Diet, national government offices without customer services and TEPCO headquarters to the Fuckushima Zone?

WhenPigsFly.jpg

[Coligny]

Monju Nuclear Plant Operator Ordered To Stop Restart Preparation

http://m.slashdot.org/story/186819

Judging by the usual "the fuck with it" attitude on nuke safety... This one might be really bad...