Post by
ldoggy on Apr 06, 2012 9:24am
UNDT
April 6, 2012 - Bloomberg News - EDF Says Fires at Penly Nuclear Reactor Extinguished - Electricite de France SA, the biggest operator of nuclear reactors, said two fires were put out in their early stages at its Penly plant in Normandy. It didn’t say what caused the blazes and where they started. No casualties or damage to the environment were reported. Unit 2 shut down automatically after smoke was detected in the reactor building, the Paris-based company said today on its website. Earlier, data on the website of Reseau de Transport d’Electricite, the French grid operator, showed that EDF halted the 1,330-megawatt reactor at 12:20 p.m. local time. There are two reactors at the site in northern France. Penly-1 was generating normally this morning, according to the latest data available. The fire comes as the future of nuclear energy in France has sparked debate between President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Socialist Party rival Francois Hollande ahead of presidential elections this month and next. Sarkozy backs atomic power while Hollande is seeking to reduce France’s dependence on atomic energy and close the country’s oldest plants.
April 6, 2012 - Associated Press - NRC chief heads to sickly Calif nuke plant - The twin reactors at the San Onofre nuclear plant have been sidelined, more than 300 tubes that carry radioactive water will be scrapped because of excessive wear, and investigators are trying to figure out why tubing is rattling inside the lungs of the plant — its massive steam generators. How sickly is San Onofre? The chief of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will get a firsthand look Friday, at a time when some officials in nearby communities have been calling for the plant to shut down permanently because of safety concerns. NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, joined by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, will meet with plant managers and "they are going to be discussing the issues of the steam generators" where hundreds of tubes have shown unexpected wear, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said. The visit to the seaside plant, located between San Diego and Los Angeles, comes 10 days after the NRC announced that San Onofre will remain dark until operator Southern California Edison fixes the widespread problem with tubing that carries radioactive water.
April 6, 2012 - Informer - Radioactive Rain Detected in Los Angeles - Rain and mist that fell in Los Angeles last weekend was five times as radioactive as normal, environmental journalist and LA Weekly contributor Michael Collins reported on his website this week. Collins tests samples with his own equipment and says that, on Saturday, he measured the highest proportion of radioactivity in the local environment since he began monitoring the local fallout from the Japanese Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in March of 2011: One misty rain sample collected in downtown Santa Monica was over five times normal background radiation, the highest level in Los Angeles Basin rain since this reporter began sampling and testing different media March 15, 2011, four days after the Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns begin. He called the findings "shocking" and said his readings would qualify that sample as a hazardous material under the California Highway Patrol's protocols. Even background radiation Saturday night, which had apparently diminished significantly since his earlier sample, was 30 percent "hotter" than normal, he says. Time for a good umbrella?