Residents sue to suspend Chubu Electric nuclear reactors

[Sandy, Perle]

Index:



Residents sue to suspend Chubu Electric nuclear reactors

TEPCO likely to restart another reactor in mid-July

Experimental Joyo reactor reactivated following renovations

Study: Cosmic Brake Slows Spin of Pulsars

Photo exhibit gives close look at Palomares accident

Unusual Event Declared at Three Mile Island

=======================================



Residents sue to suspend Chubu Electric nuclear reactors



SHIZUOKA, Japan, July 3 (Kyodo) - A group of 11 residents on Thursday 

filed a lawsuit calling for the suspension of four nuclear reactors 

at Chubu Electric Power Co.'s Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka 

Prefecture in the hope of demonstrating the danger posed by the 

plant, where numerous cracks were found in its reactors last year.



The 11 residents from Tokyo, Shizuoka and Chiba prefectures filed the 

suit with the Shizuoka District Court to seek an injunction to 

suspend the operation of the nuclear power plant back in April 2002.



The injunction is sought because the facility is too obsolete to 

withstand a major earthquake, which some experts predict could hit 

the Tokai region, including Shizuoka, in the near future, according 

to the lawsuit filed with the same court.



While the court was expected to rule on whether or not an injunction 

is needed by next March, the group said it decided to file the 

lawsuit because full-fledged legal action is necessary to prove the 

danger of the power plant.



''Since filing for the injunction, a series of problems have surfaced 

such as new data on a possible Tokai earthquake and cracks have been 

found,'' they said.



The group said the suit allows it to ask the court to order Chubu 

Electric to present documents concerning the plant. It will also be 

able to conduct on-the-spot inspections of the plant and seek more 

powerful orders to gain witness testimonies.



To expedite court proceedings, the group is asking the court to start 

the lawsuit as a continuation of the proceedings taken so far on the 

injunction request. It is asking the court to rule simultaneously on 

the injunction and the suit.



Chubu Electric said, ''While the suit is regrettable, we have fully 

demonstrated safety through deliberations so far. We will continue to 

seek to have the filing of the lawsuit rejected.''



The government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said last month 

the cracks in a steel reactor shroud at the Hamaoka nuclear power 

plant require no immediate repairs.

-------------------



TEPCO likely to restart another reactor in mid-July



KASHIWAZAKI, Japan, July 3 (Kyodo) - Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) 

is expected to reactivate a reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear 

power plant in Niigata Prefecture in mid-July after the government 

declares it is safe, government officials said Thursday.



Local government leaders are likely to decide whether to back the 

restart of the reactor after Economy, Trade and Industry Minister 

Takeo Hiranuma visits the Sea of Japan coastal prefecture to declare 

the reactor safe, they said.



The plant could be reactivated legally upon approval by nuclear 

regulators without local consent, but the central government hopes to 

win local consent so that it can operate without trouble with locals.



Earlier in the day, Yoshihiko Sasaki, director general of the 

ministry's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, met members of the 

Kashiwazaki city assembly and asked them to give Hiranuma ''an 

opportunity to explain to the assembly safety checks on the No. 4 

reactor'' at the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.



Following the meeting, Kashiwazaki Mayor Masazumi Saikawa said, ''I 

saw no turbulent factors that would prevent us from backing 

reactivation'' of the reactor.



The ministry made similar requests to the Niigata prefectural 

assembly and the Kariwa village assembly. The plant sits on the city 

of Kashiwazaki and the village of Kariwa.



Ministry and local officials are in negotiations to have Hiranuma 

visit the three assemblies around Wednesday to declare the reactor 

safe.



TEPCO, Japan's largest utility, shut down the No. 4 reactor to 

conduct safety checks in January. On finding cracks in six places in 

recirculation pipes, the company removed the cracked segments and 

replaced them with new pipes, according to TEPCO officials.



Meanwhile on Thursday, the nuclear safety agency allowed Tohoku 

Electric Power Co. to resume operations at the No. 1 reactor at its 

Onagawa plant in Miyagi Prefecture without repairing cracks found on 

its shroud.



The agency is expected to let the company reactivate the reactor on 

July 25.



Public concerns about the safety of nuclear power plants have 

increased sharply since revelations in August 2002 that TEPCO 

falsified safety reports. The scandal forced the company to shut down 

all 17 of its nuclear reactors -- seven in Niigata Prefecture and 10 

in Fukushima Prefecture -- to conduct safety checks.



TEPCO has since resumed operations of the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at 

the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant. As the No. 4 reactor is ready to be 

restarted, the company wants to reactivate it as soon as possible to 

meet soaring summer demand for electricity.

-------------------



Experimental Joyo reactor reactivated following renovations



MITO, Japan, July 2 (Kyodo) - The Joyo experimental fast breeder 

reactor in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture, was reactivated and attained 

criticality Wednesday for the first time in three years after 

renovations were completed, the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development 

Institute said.



With power output being raised from 100,000 to 160,000 kilowatts 

during the renovations that began in October 2000 following a 

suspension four months earlier, the institute plans to resume full 

operations in April next year, it said.



The renovations were undertaken to develop fast breeder reactor 

technologies.



The Joyo was built in 1977 as Japan's first fast breeder reactor 

under the government's policy to recycle spent nuclear fuel to 

maximize energy production.



Based on the results of research and development carried out at the 

Joyo, the 280-megawatt prototype fast breeder reactor Monju was built 

in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, and first taken critical in April 1994.



The Monju, however, has been shut since a sodium leak there sparked a 

fire in December 1995.

-------------------



Study: Cosmic Brake Slows Spin of Pulsars



WASHINGTON (AP) - Pulsars are the fastest spinning stars in the 

universe - rotating at hundreds of revolutions per second - and they 

could go twice as fast before flying apart. A new study by NASA 

suggests that these exotic stars are held together by gravitational 

radiation that puts on the brakes.



Observations by NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer of 11 pulsars 

found that there seems to be a natural limit on how fast the strange 

stars can spin, astronomers said Wednesday at a news conference.



``The fastest-spinning pulsars could technically go twice as fast, 

but something stops them before they break apart,'' said Deepto 

Chakrabarty, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology astronomer and 

the lead author of a study appearing in the journal Nature.



Chakrabarty called the natural brake ``a cosmic speed limit'' and 

said it may be the result of rotational energy being emitted from the 

stars as gravitational waves.



Pulsars are the remnants stars that were once eight to 20 times 

bigger than the sun. When their fuel was exhausted, the stars 

exploded and then collapsed into a very dense body equal to about 1.5 

solar masses, but measuring only about 10 miles across.



The collapse starts the pulsar spinning at about 30 turns a second.



If there is a nearby star, the pulsar, with its superior density, 

will begin pulling material from its stellar companion. As this 

material spirals into the pulsar, the spin of the star rapidly 

increases.



In theory, said Chakrabarty, the star could spin up to 3,000 

revolutions per second and eventually fly apart.



But in the study, Chakrabarty said the researchers found that the 

maximum speed for the 11 pulsars analyzed was below 760 revolutions 

per second, a velocity that approaches about 20 percent of the speed 

of light.



Pulsars give off beams of energy, such as X-rays, from fixed points 

on their surface. Since the objects are rapidly spinning, the beams 

appear to rapidly blink on and off, or pulse. By measuring these 

pulses, astronomers can estimate the rate of spin.



Chakrabarty said that Lars Bildsten, a University of California, 

Santa Barbara, astrophysicists, had theorized that the spinning speed 

of pulsars would be limited because irregularities on the star's 

surface would allow rotational energy to stream away as gravitational 

waves.



Bildsten, who took part in a NASA news conference, said the 

observation by Chakrabarty and others was unusual because it actually 

supported with observations an astrophysical theory.



``We're usually proven wrong,'' Bildsten, ``so this is kind of 

exciting.''



On the Net:



Pulsar study: 

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0702pulsarspeed.html

---------------------



Decades after U.S. H-bombs fell on Spain, photo exhibit gives close 

look at Palomares accident



PALOMARES, Spain (AP) - In a sunny corner of the world where nothing 

much ever happened, Martin Moreno climbed atop a leaking American 

hydrogen bomb and smiled as he tried to pry loose a souvenir.



Oblivious to the danger, the fruit wholesaler poked a screwdriver in 

a crack in the weapon as it released plutonium, working 

unsuccessfully to secure his prize. ``I've never regretted that, nor 

have I been afraid,'' Moreno, an engaging, healthy-looking man of 68, 

said in recounting that winter morning in 1966.



But his bird's-eye view of those 1.5 megatons of destructive power - 

Hiroshima 75 times over - didn't last long.



U.S. troops and Spanish police, sent to find that H-bomb and three 

others that plummeted from a B-52 in a mid-air refueling accident, 

swarmed around the three-meter-long (10-foot) weapon and carted if 

off.



Most people in this sleepy farming hamlet on Spain's southeast tip 

never saw the weapons, one of which ended up in the Mediterranean. 

Nor did they get a peek inside the tent city thrown up to house the 

800 American troops who searched for the bombs and cleaned up the 

radioactive mess.



But now the camp and much of Spain's worst-ever nuclear scare are on 

display for the first time in this country at a photo exhibit based 

on 16-mm footage from the National Archives in Washington.



Another B-52 carrying four H-bombs crashed off Thule, Greenland, in 

1968 but the plutonium contamination occurred at sea. Palomares was 

the first case of nukes lost in a populated area.



In 1966, Spain was under the thumb of Gen. Francisco Franco, and 

about the only image most Spaniards remember from the disaster is a 

chirpy newsreel in which Information Minister Manuel Fraga and U.S. 

Ambassador Angier B. Duke took a swim at a Palomares beach to show it 

was safe to go back in the water.



In the exhibit, the photos show charred wreckage of the B-52 and the 

tanker plane, soldiers hauling thousands of barrels of contaminated 

soil onto ships bound for a nuclear cemetery, doctors sticking swabs 

up people's noses to extract samples for radiation checks, and 

military divers and mini-subs looking for the bomb that fell into the 

sea and eluded recovery for 75 days.



The exhibit titled ``Operation Broken Arrow: Nuclear Accident in 

Palomares'' opened in May in the provincial capital Almeria and will 

make a tour of Spain.



It is the work of Spanish film producer Antonio Sanchez Picon and 

photographer Jose Herrera, who has been researching the Palomares 

incident for nearly 20 years.



Assuming U.S. forces would have filmed themselves in Palomares - as 

they had in World War II - Sanchez Picon searched the National 

Archives Web site under the word Palomares.



``Eureka! Eight hours of film,'' he said.



The exhibit features 60 frames selected from 36 reels - 700,000 

frames altogether - of declassified U.S. military footage.



With the Cold War then in full swing, U.S. policy was to keep nuclear-

armed warplanes in the air constantly near the Soviet border. Under 

an accord with the Franco regime, American B-52s had permission to 

fly over Spain on the mission and rendezvous in Spanish airspace with 

KC-135 tanker refueling planes.



On the morning of Jan. 17, 1966, a routine refueling operation turned 

disastrous. It is believed the B-52 flew too fast as it approached 

the tanker from below. The planes collided, killing seven of 11 crew 

members and raining 100 tons (90 metric tons) of flaming wreckage 

over a 15-square mile (38 square-kilometer) area.



And down came the four H-bombs aboard the B-52.



While one bomb splashed into the sea, the other three hit the ground. 

None exploded - layers of safeguards made that virtually impossible - 

but 7 pounds (3 kilos) of plutonium 239 were released when two bomb 

detonators did go off. The three bombs on the ground were found in 

the first 24 hours.



The villagers of Palomares - population 600 then, 1,400 today - went 

days without knowing they were at ground zero of an unprecedented 

nuclear accident. ``H-bomb, butane gas canister, what difference 

would it have made?'' said Mayor Juan Jose Perez. ``This is a rural 

area. What did people know about bombs?''



But some people caught on when doctors speaking a strange language 

came around asking for urine samples and waving gadgets that ticked, 

as seen in the exhibit.



Crops were dug up and burned - a mistake, it turns out, that only 

served to disperse radioactive particles - and contaminated land was 

scooped up with tractors.



The mayor says Palomares today has the same cancer rate as the rest 

of Spain, although the government still tests people at random. Late 

last year, the government warned against construction where the two 

semi-detonated bombs fell, saying it wasn't a good idea to stir up 

that land.



Eduardo Rodriguez Farre, a Barcelona toxicologist who studied the 

Palomares accident, said that given the level of sophistication in 

1966, the Americans handled the crisis adequately from a technical 

standpoint.



But while the United States cleaned up its soldiers and monitored 

them for the rest of their lives, it neglected people in Palomares. 

``Whatever happened to the Spaniards was their business,'' Farre 

said.



Planes tend not to carry nuclear bombs now, so the main lesson from 

the crisis was what to do with tainted land. One photo shows row 

after row of black barrels of tainted earth - labeled in English as 

poison - waiting to be rolled onto U.S. vessels headed for South 

Carolina where they were buried.



At the time, the danger of contamination was largely overshadowed by 

the frantic search for the bomb lurking on the seabed.



A crisis flotilla was assembled: 34 ships, 2,200 sailors, 130 navy 

divers and four mini-subs. A Spanish fishermen had come forward 

quickly to say he'd seen something fall that looked like a bomb, but 

experts ignored him.



A supercomputer calculated where the bomb might be from its possible 

trajectory, but after weeks only chunks of airplane had been found.



Media around the world expressed stupefaction. Newsweek magazine 

couldn't help but rib the Pentagon: ``Where, oh, where has our H-bomb 

gone? Oh where, oh where can it be?''



The fisherman, a garrulous man named Francisco Simo, was summoned 

back and shown a flawed sketch of the bomb. He sent searchers in the 

right direction, having memorized the site with visual triangulation, 

a mariner's trick used since the time of the Phoenicians. A two-man 

sub called Alvin finally located the errant nuke under 655 meters 

(2,162 feet) of water on March 1, 1966.



But the nightmare was not over. The sub surfaced to recharge its 

batteries and went back down for the bomb, only to find it had 

vanished, tumbling 120 meters (400 feet) down an undersea slope. 

Several attempts to grab it with mechanical arms failed. The bomb 

rolled farther down the hill, and when Alvin finally secured the 

weapon it was perched near a 1,500 meter (5,000 foot) abyss.



``If they hadn't got it then, they might never have,'' Mayor Perez 

said. 

--------------------



Unusual Event Declared at Three Mile Island



LONDONDERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa., July 2 /PRNewswire/ -- AmerGen Energy 

Company declared an Unusual Event today at Three Mile Island at 11:10 

a.m. EDT due to a transformer fire in the TMI Unit 2 turbine building 

switchgear room.  The station requested off-site assistance to 

extinguish the fire, which was put out at 11:25 a.m. EDT. At 12:45 

p.m. EDT the station exited the Unusual Event.



The transformer is part of the distribution system that feeds power 

to Unit 2 non-safety related equipment. Unit 2 is decommissioned and 

owned by First Energy Corporation and has not operated since 1979.



Three Mile Island Unit 1 continues to operate at full power.  There 

has been no impact to the safe operations of the plant or safety to 

the public. There have been no injuries.  There has been no release 

of radiation.



The station has notified all local and state officials as well as the 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission.



-------------------------------------------------

Sandy Perle

Director, Technical

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  Extension 2306

Fax:(714) 668-3149



E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net

E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/



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