Japan Fears Damage to Containment Vessel at Reactor No. 2

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today - Wednesday, March 16, 2011:

Japan Says 2nd Reactor May Have Ruptured With Radioactive Release - Hiroko Tabuchi and Keith Bradsher for The New York Times [link]

• Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified dramatically on Wednesday after the authorities announced that a second reactor unit at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan may have ruptured and appeared to be releasing radioactive steam.
• The break, at the No. 3 reactor unit, worsened the already perilous conditions at the plant, a day after officials said the containment vessel in the No. 2 reactor had also cracked.
• Such were the radiation levels above the plant, moreover, that the Japanese military put off a highly unusual plan to dump water from helicopters — a tactic normally used to combat forest fires — to lower temperatures in a pool containing spent fuel rods that was overheating dangerously.
• The vessel that possibly ruptured on Wednesday had been seen as the last fully intact line of defense against large-scale releases of radioactive material from the stricken reactor, but it was not clear how serious the possible breach might be. The implications of overheating in the fuel rod pool, which is also at the No. 3 reactor, seemed equally dire.

Nuclear Triad Requires Strategic and Fiscal Discipline - Matthew Leatherman for “the Will and the Wallet” a Stimson Center blog [link]

• Dr. James Miller, second in command in the Pentagon’s policy office, recently testified that the FY2012 defense budget contains $125 billion “to sustain and to modernize strategic delivery systems” in the next 10 years.
• At the same time, President Obama’s nuclear security policy is clear, announced first in his 2009 Prague speech and reiterated a year ago at his nuclear security summit. The United States seeks a world free of nuclear weapons even as it recognizes that progress toward that goal will be slow and incremental.
• Investing in our strategic delivery systems is compatible with this policy. But investing in them all at once is far in excess of responsible hedging.
• Nearly everyone, from the President down, realizes that the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons won’t be achieved immediately and that some investment is required. Making that investment while staying on the path toward zero means following the guideposts of strategic and fiscal discipline, though.
• Nothing requires the United States to immediately up the ante on each leg of the triad. In fact, it would directly generate unnecessary and unacceptable risk to our security internationally and to our fiscal stability domestically. Today’s job is to focus on replacing the Ohio-class submarine responsibly, a tall order as it is. The next generation bomber should wait for later.
  

Japan's Nuclear Crisis: 6 Reasons Why We Should – and Shouldn't – Worry - Matt Bunn for The Christian Science Monitor [link]

• 1.  Bad as it is, this accident is dramatically less catastrophic than Chernobyl...Here there is no real prospect of a runaway chain reaction as occurred at Chernobyl. Instead, what has happened is melting of fuel in reactor cores, leading to release of a very modest amount of cesium and other fission products.
• 2.  At the same time, this is the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, and in some respects worse than Three Mile Island (TMI). At TMI, they managed to avoid a hydrogen explosion; in this case, Japan had hydrogen explosions that destroyed much of the buildings at two reactors.
• 3.  This is clearly an example of the huge importance of taking redundant safety systems seriously, and considering carefully the full scope of events that could occur. Given the huge magnitude of the quake, I think it is impressive that all the affected reactors initially managed to shut down automatically as planned, and begin emergency cooling operations.
• 4.  The reason that the disaster hasn’t been worse was that the Japanese system had many, many safety precautions in place....Security, by contrast, is something most people in the nuclear industry might get a half-hour briefing on once a year.
• 5.  There may be several people who die or who are severely sickened by this accident..But the broader impact is likely to be psychological – from the stress and fear that tens or hundreds of thousands of people are suffering.
• 6.  It remains to be seen what impact this will have on the future of nuclear power in Japan, and the future of nuclear power elsewhere. China will likely continue its ambitious plans, for example. But if I had to guess, I would say public and investor perceptions of the safety of nuclear power around the world has been dealt a serious and lasting blow.

Nuclear Cuts Get a Second Look - Tim Fernholz for The National Journal [link]

• A few weeks ago, House Republicans didn’t blink an eye as they enacted hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to programs that safeguard nuclear waste, research nuclear power, and train first responders to respond to weapons of mass destruction.
• But as Japan battles what could be a Chernobyl-level nuclear disaster, those cuts are getting a second look -- especially with members of both parties agitating for the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States.
• [The Republican bill] would cut $131 million from the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, which is responsible for safety research and nonproliferation efforts. It would also cut hundreds of millions from nuclear waste disposal and environmental clean-up programs; $97.1 million from nuclear nonproliferation efforts; and $1.4 billion from first-responder training for radiation, chemical, and biological disasters. That last cut would result in a reduction of 46,000 being trained for such emergencies, according to analyses provided by the House and Senate appropriations committees.
• On Monday, House Democrats, including the House Energy and Commerce Committee's ranking member, Rep. Henry Waxman of California, called on the Energy and Commerce Committee to hold hearings on the state of government nuclear oversight. A Republican committee aide said a budget hearing with the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday will address the situation in Japan and U.S. nuclear safety.

North Korea ‘Not Opposed’ to Discussing Uranium Enrichment if 6-Nation Nuclear Talks Resume - Hyung-Jin Kim for The Washington Post [link]

• North Korea told a Russian envoy it is willing to discuss a recently disclosed uranium enrichment program if long-stalled nuclear disarmament talks resume.
• Five nations — China, the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Russia — had been negotiating since 2003 to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid and other concessions. Pyongyang pulled out of the talks about two years ago after being censured for launching a long-range rocket.
• Pyongyang officials told Russia’s top nuclear envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin, that North Korea “is not opposed” to discussion of its uranium-enrichment program as part of nuclear talks, an unidentified North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
• One analyst said Tuesday’s statement appears aimed at drawing international attention to the North Korean nuclear issue as a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan and anti-government protests across the Middle East dominate global headlines.