Nuclear Energy Security: Emerging Trends and Pakistan

Prolonged impact of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident on health and society Naomi Ito, Research Assistant at the Fukushima Medical University, tells us how the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident impacted and continues to impact local residents. The health effects on local residents following a nuclear power plant accident are diverse, not only because of radiation exposure but also because of changes in lifestyle and social environment. It has also been indicated that various environmental changes that could emerge during the restoration process may affect residents in various ways over a long time. On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck Japan with a magnitude of 9.0. Within an hour, a tsunami hit the shore. Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company) lost power. The reactors could not be cooled, and core meltdowns occurred, which resulted in an explosion due to hydrogen being generated at high temperatures. As a result, radioactive materials were released and scattered northwest from the power plant.

Divided fates of victims after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident

We thank Sani Rachman Soleman et al. for three specific points of criticism concerning our investigation of the ecological association between low birth weight (LBW) and radioactive contamination in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accidents:Ecological variables are not justified enough to adjust potential confounding.The spatiotemporal regression model does not consider temporal reduction in radiation dose rate.Dose-response plot between dose rates and odds ratios overestimates R2and underestimates p-value.This criticism is a good starting point to explain some of the technical backgrounds of our approach in more detail.

Radiocesium accumulation in the anuran frog, Rana tagoi tagoi, in forest ecosystems after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant accident

Changes in the carbon mitigation responsibility of Japan's capital city, Tokyo – analysis of power supply shocks due to nuclear power plant accidents

Development of a quantitative resilience model for nuclear power plants

Environmental contamination with radioactive materials caused by the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) accident in 2011 raised a serious health concern among residents in Japan, and the demand for radiation experts who can handle the radiation-associated problems has increased. The Human Resources Development Center (HRDC) of the National Institute of for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology in Japan has offered a variety of training programs covering a wide range of technologies associated with radiation since 1959. In this study, the time-course change in the number and age of the applicants for training programs regularly scheduled at HRDC were analyzed to characterize the demand after the NPP accident. The results suggested that the demand for the training of industrial radiation experts elevated sharply after the NPP accident followed by a prompt decrease, and that young people were likely stimulated to learn the basics of radiation. The demand for the training of medical radiation experts was kept high regardless of the NPP accident. The demand for the training of radiation emergency experts fluctuated apparently with three components: a terminating demand after the criticality accident that occurred in 1999, an urgent demand for handling of the NPP accident, and a sustained demand from local governments that undertook reinforcement of their nuclear disaster prevention program. The demand for the training of school students appeared to be increasing after the NPP accident. It could be foreseen that the demand for training programs targeting young people and medical radiation experts would be elevated in future.

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (1F) suffered a series of radiation accidents after the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11 March 2011. In a situation where halting or delaying...

Comprehensive Health Risk Management after the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident

2 - The Fukushima nuclear power plant accident: the main sequence of events

Radiocesium (Cs) contamination histories of the Japanese flounder, Paralichthys olivaceus, after the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) accident were examined by analysis of the spatiotemporal changes in observed Cs concentrations, by comparison of the dynamics of the Cs concentrations in several year-classes of fish, and by simulation studies. Two contamination histories were revealed: (1) severe contamination by water that was directly released from the FNPP with extremely high Cs concentrations for a few months after the accident, which had a highly variable spatial distribution; and (2) long-duration contamination at relatively low concentrations resulting from consumption of contaminated food. These two histories were supported by three observations. First, high Cs concentrations with high variability were observed in the first year after the accident. Second, the highest values of the minimum Cs concentrations were observed in the autumn of 2011. Third, Cs concentrations were lower with smaller variation for fish from the 2011 year-class and younger, which were not exposed to the highly contaminated directly released water, than for fish from the 2010 year-class and older. Simulation studies also indicated that the Cs concentrations in some individuals that were exposed to the directly released water might not be in an equilibrium state even at 3 years after the accident. On the basis of these contamination histories, it can be expected that the Cs concentrations in most Japanese flounder will continue to decrease.

One of America’s best kept secrets is the success of its nuclear electric power industry. This paper presents data which support the construction and operating successes enjoyed by energy companies that operate nuclear power plants in the US. The result—the US nuclear industry is alive and well. Perhaps it’s time to start anew the building of nuclear power plants. Let’s take the wraps off the major successes achieved in the nuclear power industry. Over 20% of the electricity generated in the United States comes from nuclear power plants. An adequate, reliable supply of reasonably priced electric energy is not a consequence of an expanding economy and gross national product; it is an absolute necessity before such expansion can occur. It is hard to imagine any aspect of our business or personal lives not, in some way, dependent upon electricity. All over the world (in over 30 countries) nuclear power is a low-cost, secure, safe, dependable, and environmentally friendly form of electric power generation. Nuclear plants in these countries are built in six to eight years using technology developed in the US, with good performance and safety records. This treatise addresses the success experienced by the US nuclear industry over the last 40 years, and makes the case that this reliable, cost-competitive source of electric power can help support the economic engine of the country and help prevent experiences like the recent crises in California and the Northeast. Traditionally, the evaluation of electric power generation facility performance has focused on the ability of plants to produce at design capacity for high percentages of the time. Successful operation of nuclear facilities is determined by examining capacity or load factors. Load factor is the percentage of design generating capacity that a power plant actually produces over the course of a year’s operation. This paper makes the case that these operating performance indicators warrant renewed consideration of the nuclear option. Usage of electricity in the US now approaches total generating capacity. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has pre-approved construction and operating licenses for several nuclear plant designs. State public service commissions are beginning to understand that dramatic reform is required. The economy is recovering and inflation is minimal. It’s time, once more, to turn to the safe, reliable, environmentally friendly nuclear power alternative.

A combination of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM), and Convolutional LSTM (ConvLSTM) is constructed in this work for the fault diagnosis and post-accident prediction for Loss of Coolant Accidents (LOCAs) in Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs). The advantages of ConvLSTM, such as effective feature determination and extraction, are applied to the classification of LOCA cases. The prediction accuracy is enhanced via the collaborative work of CNN and LSTM. Such a hybrid model is proved to be functional, accurate, and adaptive, offering quick accident judgment and a reliable decision basis for the emergency response purpose. It then allows NPPs to have an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based solution for fault diagnosis and post-accident prediction.

Reliable evaluations of the radiological consequences of hypothetical severe accidents in nuclear power plants (NPPs) play a key role in supporting the emergency and preparedness plans during such abnormal events. Also triggered by the growing requests of the national regulators, one of the milestones of the Nuclear Safety Research program (NUSAFE) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is the improvement of the performance of the codes employed for such evaluations in the current and innovative NPPs, which are in operation and going to be built in EU and worldwide. Having this in mind, a calculation platform of state-of-art codes has been assessed at KIT to evaluate the accident progression, the radiological source term, and the behavior of the fission product dispersion to the environment by also taking into account the corresponding uncertainties. In particular, the CASMO5 lattice physics code, developed by Studsvik Scandpower, is used for a proper evaluation of the fuel inventory loaded in the reactor core. The European reference Accident Source Term Evaluation Code (ASTEC), developed by IRSN (France), is employed to evaluate the accident progression from the initiation to the fission produced release to the environment. The use of the KArlsruhe Tool for Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis (KATUSA), developed by KIT, aims at performing the uncertainty quantification of the source term. Finally, the Java Real-time On-line DecisiOn Support (JRODOS) is employed for analyzing the radiological consequences of the accident. The KIT platform has been employing since some years in the frame of the KIT participation to different European projects, i.e., MUSA, SASPAM-SA on SMRs, SANE. In the paper, an overall view of the KIT strategy on severe accident analyses will be provided, and examples of the application of the above-mentioned platform to generic NPPs will be provided, i.e., PWR Konvoi.

Karimunjawa islands are located in the middle of the Java Sea, approximately 83 km northwest of Jepara city. These islands have become an Indonesian marine tourism destination and since 2001 had been designated as a national park. The Indonesian government has chosen Muria peninsula in the district of Jepara, Indonesia as a site for a potential nuclear power plant (NPP). The purpose of this study was to determine the current level of radiocesium (137Cs) activity and forecast its spread if an NPP is operated at Jepara. To determine the distribution of 137Cs in Karimunjawa waters, a sampling of water was done in six stations. Simulation modeling was used to map the distribution of 137Cs should an NPP be constructed in Jepara. The results showed that 137Cs activity in Karimunjawa waters ranges from 0.12 to 0.39 mBq.L-1 with an average of 0.24 mBq.L-1. This value is slightly higher than previous studies in the coastal waters of Gresik, which had an average activity of 0.200 mBq.L-1 because the waters around Karimunjawa have a lower dilution rate than the coastal waters of Gresik. However, these values were considerably lower than those in the waters of Northeast Japan before the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident which registered 137Cs activity at 2-3 mBq.L-1.This indicates that 137Cs in Karimunjawa is not entirely from Fukushima rather from the global fallout. The 137Cs distribution model suggests that after 15 days, a leakage in the Muria Peninsula nuclear plant will not contaminate Karimunjawa waters because the current in the Java Sea is relatively weak and dominant in the westward direction. Thus, when an NPP leak only runs for 15 days, Karimunjawa waters remain safe.Keyword: 137Cs, Karimunjawa, NPP, modeling, Muria Peninsula