The Lede: Wildfire Continues to Burn Near Nuclear Facility in New Mexico

Video of a “controlled burn” carried out on Wednesday near the western boundary of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The laboratory explained on YouTube that “firefighters conducted the burn to remove fuel available to the Las Conchas Fire.”

Updated | 7:50 p.m. The Las Conchas wildfire in northern New Mexico has blazed through nearly 93,000 acres since Sunday and stands poised to become the largest in the state’s history, according to officials.

A U.S. Forest Service Web site with information on the fire includes a frequently-updated map showing the area currently affected.

According to firefighters, efforts near the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility, were holding the fire at bay. As our colleague Kirk Johnson reported earlier this week, the lab was created during World War II as the cornerstone of the Manhattan Project, the country’s first nuclear weapons development program. Kevin Roark, a laboratory spokesman, described the plant’s present mission as ensuring the “safety, security and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.”

Controlled burns, like the one shown in the video above, have been set to deprive the fire of fuel, and water has been sprayed to moisten flammable materials. There were no fires burning on the laboratory’s 36-square-mile property Thursday.

“In my professional opinion,” Los Alamos County Fire Chief Doug Tucker said Wednesday evening, “there is a less than ten percent chance of spot fires on Lab property this evening, diminishing tomorrow.”

The Laboratory Director, Charlie McMillan, said Thursday that nothing unusual was appearing in area air samples and that the risk to the lab were “lower today than they were earlier in the week.”

Winds, however, were expected to reach 40 miles per hour later on Thursday, and the fire remained only three percent contained, so efforts to combat the flames continue. The lab, which has been closed since Monday, would stay shuttered through Friday, said a laboratory spokesman, Jeff Berger, though essential functions and personnel would remain.

Lab representatives are using the facility’s Twitter account to get information to the public and the press, and even to combat false rumors, Mr. Berger said. One recent update described firefighting measures near the Los Alamos radioactive waste storage and disposal facility, called Area G.

Earlier this week, The Associated Press reported that an anti-nuclear group, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, “said the fire appeared to be about 3 1/2 miles from a dumpsite where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a low-level radiation dump site in southern New Mexico.”

Officials at the laboratory at first declined to confirm that there were such drums at Los Alamos, but, as CBS News reported on Tuesday:

lab spokeswoman Lisa Rosendorf said such drums are stored in a section of the complex known as Area G. She said the drums contain cleanup from Cold War-era waste that the lab sends away in weekly shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. She said the drums were on a paved area with few trees nearby and would be safe even if a fire reached the storage area.

Laboratory representatives are also posting pictures of the firefighting efforts on the facility’s Flickr page, where a photo stream usually dedicated to experiments and lab equipment has become dominated by fire trucks, smoke and flames. (Earlier in the week, NASA posted this satellite image, of the blaze around Los Alamos on Monday.)

The laboratory’s Twitter feed also points to relevant video and information elsewhere on the Internet, like this time-lapse video of the fire posted on YouTube by a blogger named Michael Zeiler:

Mr. Zeiler explained on YouTube:

On this fourth day of the devastating Las Conchas fire which is threatening Los Alamos, New Mexico, the night sky finally cleared enough to see the flames licking all around the labs and the city.

This time-lapse video is comprised of 113 photographs taken 30 seconds apart. Each photograph is shown for one second. My vantage point is from my home on a ridge just to the north of Santa Fe.

You can see quick changes in the fires, stars in the sky, and emergency vehicles making their way on fire duties. The brightest lights are the headquarters of the Los Alamos labs and other technical areas are to the left. To the right is the Los Alamos town site. Below the headquarters is the suburb of White Rock.

Earlier this week, Mr. Zeiler posted this striking video of the fire on his YouTube channel:

Updated information on the fire can be found on the laboratory’s Web site and at an inter-agency site called New Mexico Fire Information.

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Japan to Cancel Plan to Build More Nuclear Plants

Mr. Kan’s announcement came as Japan allowed residents of evacuated areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to briefly revisit their homes for the first time since the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March caused the nuclear accident at the plant.

Tuesday’s decision will mean the abandonment of a plan that the Kan government released last year to build 14 nuclear reactors by 2030 and increase the share of nuclear power in Japan’s electricity supply to 50 percent. Japan currently has 54 reactors that before the earthquake produced 30 percent of its electricity.

The cancellation of the planned nuclear plants is the second time that Mr. Kan has suddenly announced big changes in Japanese nuclear policy without the usual endless committee meetings and media leaks that characterize the country’s consensus-driven decision-making process. Mr. Kan appears to be seeking a stronger leadership role after criticism of his government’s sometimes slow and indecisive handling of the Fukushima accident.

Last week, Mr. Kan asked a utility company to suspend operations at the Hamaoka nuclear plant, which sits atop an active earthquake fault line, about 120 miles southwest of Tokyo. After three days of delays, the utility, the Chubu Electric Power Company, finally agreed Monday to shut down the plant until a wave wall could be built and other measures taken to strengthen its defenses against earthquakes and tsunamis.

The announcement Tuesday came just days after Mr. Kan said Japan remained committed to nuclear power. His apparent pull- back may be driven partly by public opinion, which has significantly soured on nuclear power since the Fukushima accident.

Even before the announcement, the disaster had damped the nuclear industry’s hopes for a worldwide revival of reactor building. With demand for electricity and concerns about global warming both growing, the industry had projected rapid expansion, but Japan’s nuclear crisis had already caused several countries to become skittish about nuclear power. Germany, for instance, declared a temporary moratorium on building new plants.

Still, several experts and nuclear industry representatives said Tuesday that they expected demand in two important markets — China and India — to remain strong even though those counties had said they would proceed more cautiously. Both nations have rapidly growing demand for electricity, and neither has nearly enough domestic fuel to meet its needs.

Nils J. Diaz, a former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a consultant for companies that want to build reactors, said he did not think the prime minister’s announcement would cause “a domino effect.” And Jonathan Hinze, vice president for international operations at the Ux Consulting Company in Roswell, Ga., which tracks the market for reactors,?added that Japan’s suspension of new reactor building?was less damaging than it seemed because many in the industry?had doubted that Japan would have the demand to justify that much construction.

A downturn in reactor construction would hurt Japanese companies that export nuclear plant designs and components, including Toshiba, which owns Westinghouse, and Hitachi, which is in a worldwide partnership with General Electric. Companies in France and South Korea also have a big stake in reactor building.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kan said Japan would retain nuclear and fossil fuels as energy sources, but vowed to add two new pillars to Japan’s energy policy: renewable energy and conservation. While Japan has been a global leader in energy conservation, it lags behind the United States and Europe in adopting solar and wind power, and other new energy sources.

“We need to start from scratch,” Mr. Kan told reporters. “We need to make nuclear energy safer and do more to promote renewable energy.”

The wording seemed to at least leave open the possibility that some new nuclear plants could be built in the future.

On Tuesday, Japan was reminded of the human costs of the Fukushima disaster, when the first group of 92 people paid two-hour visits to their homes in Kawauchi, within the 12-mile zone around the plant that was evacuated after the nuclear crisis.

The residents wore white antiradiation clothing and traveled in buses under tight supervision by nuclear officials. They retrieved belongings like photo albums and the tablets traditionally used in Japan to honor dead relatives in household Buddhist shrines, according to local media reports.

The government appeared to agonize for weeks over whether to allow even brief trips. Officials were concerned about whether civilians could be kept safe from exposure to potentially high radiation doses near the plant.

Complicating their decision was the lack of scientific knowledge on the health effects of the radiation doses now found in many of the evacuated areas. Some scientists say radiation levels even in many evacuated areas are too low to cause immediate illness, while others worry that the incidence of cancer could rise over the long term.

Last week, the government staged a trial run; officials played the role of returning residents to see if the trips could be made safely. Screened for radiation on their return, those participating were found to have been exposed to a dose of up to 25 microsieverts during the two-hour visit.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington, and Andrew Pollack from Los Angeles.

 

Japan to Cancel Plan to Build More Nuclear Plants

Mr. Kan’s announcement came as Japan allowed residents of evacuated areas around the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to briefly revisit their homes for the first time since the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March caused the nuclear accident at the plant.

Tuesday’s decision will mean the abandonment of a plan that the Kan government released last year to build 14 nuclear reactors by 2030 and increase the share of nuclear power in Japan’s electricity supply to 50 percent. Japan currently has 54 reactors that before the earthquake produced 30 percent of its electricity.

The cancellation of the planned nuclear plants is the second time that Mr. Kan has suddenly announced big changes in Japanese nuclear policy without the usual endless committee meetings and media leaks that characterize the country’s consensus-driven decision-making process. Mr. Kan appears to be seeking a stronger leadership role after criticism of his government’s sometimes slow and indecisive handling of the Fukushima accident.

Last week, Mr. Kan asked a utility company to suspend operations at the Hamaoka nuclear plant, which sits atop an active earthquake fault line, about 120 miles southwest of Tokyo. After three days of delays, the utility, the Chubu Electric Power Company, finally agreed Monday to shut down the plant until a wave wall could be built and other measures taken to strengthen its defenses against earthquakes and tsunamis.

The announcement Tuesday came just days after Mr. Kan said Japan remained committed to nuclear power. His apparent pull- back may be driven partly by public opinion, which has significantly soured on nuclear power since the Fukushima accident.

Even before the announcement, the disaster had damped the nuclear industry’s hopes for a worldwide revival of reactor building. With demand for electricity and concerns about global warming both growing, the industry had projected rapid expansion, but Japan’s nuclear crisis had already caused several countries to become skittish about nuclear power. Germany, for instance, declared a temporary moratorium on building new plants.

Still, several experts and nuclear industry representatives said Tuesday that they expected demand in two important markets — China and India — to remain strong even though those counties had said they would proceed more cautiously. Both nations have rapidly growing demand for electricity, and neither has nearly enough domestic fuel to meet its needs.

Nils J. Diaz, a former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a consultant for companies that want to build reactors, said he did not think the prime minister’s announcement would cause “a domino effect.” And Jonathan Hinze, vice president for international operations at the Ux Consulting Company in Roswell, Ga., which tracks the market for reactors,?added that Japan’s suspension of new reactor building?was less damaging than it seemed because many in the industry?had doubted that Japan would have the demand to justify that much construction.

A downturn in reactor construction would hurt Japanese companies that export nuclear plant designs and components, including Toshiba, which owns Westinghouse, and Hitachi, which is in a worldwide partnership with General Electric. Companies in France and South Korea also have a big stake in reactor building.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kan said Japan would retain nuclear and fossil fuels as energy sources, but vowed to add two new pillars to Japan’s energy policy: renewable energy and conservation. While Japan has been a global leader in energy conservation, it lags behind the United States and Europe in adopting solar and wind power, and other new energy sources.

“We need to start from scratch,” Mr. Kan told reporters. “We need to make nuclear energy safer and do more to promote renewable energy.”

The wording seemed to at least leave open the possibility that some new nuclear plants could be built in the future.

On Tuesday, Japan was reminded of the human costs of the Fukushima disaster, when the first group of 92 people paid two-hour visits to their homes in Kawauchi, within the 12-mile zone around the plant that was evacuated after the nuclear crisis.

The residents wore white antiradiation clothing and traveled in buses under tight supervision by nuclear officials. They retrieved belongings like photo albums and the tablets traditionally used in Japan to honor dead relatives in household Buddhist shrines, according to local media reports.

The government appeared to agonize for weeks over whether to allow even brief trips. Officials were concerned about whether civilians could be kept safe from exposure to potentially high radiation doses near the plant.

Complicating their decision was the lack of scientific knowledge on the health effects of the radiation doses now found in many of the evacuated areas. Some scientists say radiation levels even in many evacuated areas are too low to cause immediate illness, while others worry that the incidence of cancer could rise over the long term.

Last week, the government staged a trial run; officials played the role of returning residents to see if the trips could be made safely. Screened for radiation on their return, those participating were found to have been exposed to a dose of up to 25 microsieverts during the two-hour visit.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington, and Andrew Pollack from Los Angeles.

 

Japan’s Nuclear Future in the Balance

 

Prime Minister Naoto Kan and other government officials said over the weekend that Japan would not abandon nuclear power as an important energy source.

But many experts say it will now be difficult for Japan to realize a policy goal that predates the Fukushima disaster: building at least 14 new reactors by 2030, to go with the 54 that exist now. If completed, those plants would raise nuclear power’s share of Japanese electricity generation to about 50 percent, from nearly 30 percent now.

Advocates for renewable energy argue that the March earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident have given the nation a reason to rebuild its economy as a world leader in clean, renewable energy — even though solar, wind and geothermal combined now account for only 1 percent of Japan’s electricity. An additional 8 percent or so comes from hydroelectric power.

“It is a battle between the future and the past,” said Tetsunari Iida, executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, a nonprofit policy research organization here.

Some members of Parliament recently held a forum, called Energy Shift Japan, to promote a move toward renewable sources.

And Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank and Japan’s richest man, said last month that he would donate about $12 million to start a research foundation for renewable energy. Continued reliance on atomic energy, he told a news conference, “would be a sin against our children, grandchildren and future generations.”

Those more attuned to the official government position, however, contend that renewable energy is too costly and requires too much land in this crowded country, leaving Japan little choice but to continue hitching its future to atomic energy, with fossil fuels filling any gap. “In the midterm, up to 2030, we cannot see the technological breakthrough that will allow us to get rid of nuclear power,” said Masakazu Toyoda, chief executive of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan.

Even so, the future of the envisioned 14 reactors being planned is now unclear, with the public and local officials becoming more wary about living near such facilities. Already, the Tokyo Electric Power Company has been forced to drop plans to build two new reactors on the site of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.

And just last Friday, the government requested that another utility, Chubu Electric Power, shut down a nuclear power plant 120 miles southwest of Tokyo until the company can fortify its earthquake and tsunami defenses. The company said on Monday that it would comply with that request. So many reactors have been shut down because of the earthquake or other factors, that soon only about 43 percent of Japan’s 49 megawatts of nuclear capacity will be operational, according to Reuters.

Japan’s heavy dependence on nuclear power stems from its energy insecurity. With virtually no oil and natural gas of its own, it is almost totally reliant on imported fossil fuels, making the nation vulnerable to disruptions, for example any that might arise from unrest in the Middle East. And the cost of imported fossil fuels has risen from the equivalent of 1 percent of Japan’s gross domestic product in 1998 to almost 5 percent now.

Japan also imports uranium. But because the fuel is easier to stockpile than oil and gas, the government considers nuclear energy a quasi-domestic source. Atomic energy, to the extent it replaces fossil fuels, also reduces greenhouse gas emissions and is a little less expensive than energy from fossil fuels, according to the government.

Over the decades, nuclear power has been fostered by a close alliance between the government, electric companies and reactor manufacturers. Nuclear plants, as large, centralized sources of power, have helped Japan’s 10 main electric utilities maintain their control over the power grid.

The advent of a so-called smart grid that would handle power supplied by numerous small producers could threaten the utilities’ dominance. “What they want to do as much as possible is to keep distributed power off the agenda,” said Andrew DeWit, an expert on Japan’s energy policy at Rikkyo University.

While others beside the electric companies can generate electricity, so far this has not caught on in a big way. Now, though, some are calling for more competition in power production in an effort to spur innovation and bring down prices.

The government and power companies have not totally ignored renewable energy, but critics say they have not been aggressive enough. Over all, Ernst & Young ranks Japan 15th in the world in terms of attractiveness of its renewable energy markets and policies.

 

Nuclear firm Chubu shares plummet

9 May 2011 Last updated at 00:15 ET  Scientists said the chances of a powerful quake striking the Hamaoka region was high Shares in Japan's Chubu Electric, a power supplier, fell heavily on Monday, after calls for the closure of a key nuclear facility.

On Friday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked Chubu to halt operations at its plant in Hamaoka, central Japan.

Mr Kan said three reactors in Hamaoka should be suspended until new safety measures were put in place.

A shutdown may result in power disruptions to Toyota Motor and many other major manufacturers.

"This news is triggering uncertainty not just about Chubu Electric, but the whole utility sector," said Yoshinori Nagano, a senior strategist at Daiwa Asset Management.

"Investors are concerned that on the back of this news, other reactors currently under inspection may not resume operations soon."

Chubu stock fell as much as 14% at one point on Monday, pulling down other electricity and gas shares.

Board meeting

The Hamaoka plant, which lies 200km (120 miles) south of Tokyo, is in Shizuoka prefecture - an area which seismologists say is overdue for an earthquake.

Chubu Electric has told BBC News it plans to hold an extraordinary board meeting later on Monday to decide whether to comply with the government's request.

The board met on Saturday to discusss the potential closure without reaching a decision.

Mr Kan's government is under intense pressure to review its energy policy after Japan suffered a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March.

Engineers are still struggling to contain the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in northeastern Japan.

Nuclear 'cheapest option' for UK

 8 May 2011 Last updated at 20:07 ET  By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News  Concentrated solar power could be piped in from overseas, the committee says - maybe from North Africa Nuclear power will remain the cheapest way for the UK to grow its low-carbon energy supply for at least a decade, according to government advisers.

But renewables should provide 30-45% of the nation's energy by 2030, says the Committee on Climate Change (CCC).

Its new report suggests ministers may want to temper ambitions for offshore wind, which is still fairly expensive.

The coalition asked the CCC to advise on options for a low-carbon future shortly after taking office a year ago.

"People argue that offshore wind is very expensive - and it's true, it is more expensive at the moment than some other technologies, so nuclear at the moment looks like the lowest cost low-carbon option," said CCC chief executive David Kennedy.

"But we can expect significant cost reductions over the next two decades across a range of technologies, whether wind, marine or solar, and that's why these technologies are promising."

Wind could replace nuclear as the cheapest option within about 15-20 years, he indicated.

By 2030, the cost of using these low-carbon technologies rather than fossil fuels would put about ￡50 onto the average household's energy bill.

However, bills could actually go down if plans to improve energy efficiency, such as boosting home insulation, come to fruition.

Hard target

The committee's advice comes against a number of different targets and constraints.

Continue reading the main story

We have to ask, 'why would you expect anybody to build an offshore wind turbine factory in the UK?”

End Quote David Kennedy CCC First, there are European Union targets under which the UK has to achieve a 15% share of renewables by 2020, and a 34% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels.

It is already most of the way to the second of those targets, thanks mainly to the "dash for gas", measures to clean up methane emissions from landfill sites and the recession; but the renewables target is likely to prove tougher.

The government's main strategy is to encourage the installation of offshore wind farms - committee calculations suggest that even if 10MW turbines come into the market, at least 3,600 would be needed.

Here, the committee has two concerns. Some of that electricity could be generated more cheaply through onshore wind or buying renewable electricity from overseas; and currently, financial incentives end in 2020.

Nuclear continues to be the cheapest low-carbon energy source, the committee says

"There isn't anything in the way of government support after 2020 - it falls off a cliff - so we have to ask, 'why would you expect anybody to build an offshore wind turbine factory in the UK?'" said Mr Kennedy.

"So we're saying the government should commit to renewables support through the 2020s, and we've got offshore wind and marine technologies in mind here."

The committee is also looking at the government's long-term target of a cut of at least 80% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and asking what policies are needed in order to get on the right road.

They say that by 2030, it would mean generating virtually all electricity through low-carbon technologies - nuclear, renewables, and perhaps fossil-fuel stations that capture and store the carbon dioxide they produce.

Nuclear and renewables would each have about a 40% share, the report envisages.

This would require an additional two or three nuclear reactors on top of those developers are already planning to build.

The total amount of electricity generated would be about 20-25% larger than today, with the additional energy going to replace some of the heating currently done through burning gas and coal, and to power a burgeoning fleet of electric vehicles - 10 million by 2030.

"Smart batteries" in those vehicles would be among the resources used to store electricity at times of low demand and release it during peaks, helping to "smooth out" the supply across the day.

About 30-35% of the remaining heat requirement could be supplied through renewable technologies such as heat pumps and biogas, the committee says.

Only in transport would there be an enduring requirement for fossil fuels, with biofuels constrained by issues such as the increasing need for land to grow food crops.

Clean future?

Environmental groups have given the report a mixed reception.

"It's great that the committee has recognised the huge role renewable energy could and should be playing in taking Britain towards a clean, prosperous future - and is right to call for a dramatic increase in investment to make this happen," said Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns with Friends of the Earth.

"But nuclear power can't be part of the answer - our analysis shows it will divert vital money and effort away from developing renewable energy, and the jobs and industries it could bring to the UK.

"We've had 50 years of successive governments pandering to the nuclear lobby. If their promises of cheap, low-carbon energy were true, they would have been delivered by now."

EDF, one of Europe's largest energy companies that is aiming to build new reactors in the UK, welcomed the nuclear emphasis.

"The CCC has said that safe nuclear power, the lowest cost, large scale, low-carbon electricity source, is a key element; we agree," it said in a statement.

"EDF Energy has already taken steps to respond to early lessons from Fukushima.

"The designs we propose for the future already build in the lessons from previous extreme events, inside and outside our industry [and] we will take account of new lessons from Japan."