Italy Minister: No Nuclear Return Unless Sure Fukushima Unrepeatable (WSJ)

[flamingdem]

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110504-713794.html

Italy Minister: No Nuclear Return Unless Sure Fukushima Unrepeatable

ROME (Dow Jones)--The Italian government won't allow nuclear facilities in the country, reversing its energy policy, unless it is certain that the atomic accident in Japan can't be repeated elsewhere, said Industry Minister Paolo Romani Wednesday.

"Until we are sure that what happened in Fukushima won't re-occur, we have cancelled the rules that would have allowed for a nuclear comeback," said Romani at the annual meeting of electricity association Assoelettrica.

The government has had to abandon its plans for 25% of Italy's future electricity to be generated from nuclear, said the minister.

"Something happened that wasn't expected to happen," he said.

[kristopher]

1. I hope they consider incidents like Davis Besse's near meltdown.

...the NRC had ranked Davis-Besse as one of the plants most susceptible to nozzle cracking, which was first found at Oconee-3. Nevertheless, plant operator First Energy kept pressing for a time extension to the 31 December deadline. After initially threatening to order a shutdown, the NRC backed down and allowed the plant to continue operation. Finally, inspections took place during Davis-Besse's refueling outage, which began on 16 February. Five of the 69 control rod nozzles were found to have cracks, and the maintenance team began to repair them.

Bizarre incident
At this point, the incident occurred which led to the discovery of the hole. A machine used to repair the nozzles was prematurely moved, bending one of the nozzles so much that it touched another nozzle. While investigating this, maintenance workers noticed then noticed that the nozzle had fallen into a hole 4 inches by at least 5 inches across (10 by 12.5 cm). Most alarming was that the hole was 6 inches (15 cm) deep, and ran right through the reactor head, down to the stainless steel lining, which is resistant to boric acid corrosion.

Just 3/16 inch (less than 5 mm) of this liner separated the reactor's highly radioactive and pressurized internal environment (150 times atmospheric pressure) from blasting into the reactor containment building, damaging safety equipment and possibly setting into motion a core melt accident. What is more, the liner had bulged out about 1/8 inch (3mm), illustrating how close the reactor came to bursting.

The boric acid deposits on the reactor were far from new - the NRC had known since 1998 that boric acid had accumulated in the area where the hole was found. However, not all boric acid was cleaned off the vessel, apparently because this would have led to high radiation doses for workers. As a result, corrosion of the reactor pressure vessel - the most fundamental component of a nuclear reactor - was allowed to continue unchecked.

Another reason that the hole was not noticed is ...

http://www.klimaatkeuze.nl/wise/monitor/565/5385

http://s259.photobucket.com/albums/hh285/taos-eddy/Energy/Davis%20Besse%20Photos/

[FBaggins]

2. DB had a near meltdown? When?

Surely you're not talking about the incident you keep spamming?

That's not quite as ridiculous as the BS claims of "near misses" all over the place for things that were by no means "near misses"... but it's pretty close.

There are several other systems that would have to fail before there would be a meltdown. The UCS fable proposing such a possible scenario involved a station blackout, a failure of the remaining steel where the corrosion was (no sure thing), the steam release from the hole during blowdown blasting off sufficient paint/coating from piping above it to clog the filter in the containment sump (also far from a sure thing), the flooding of the containment resulting in collapse of the containment structure or shorting out electrical equipment (both highly unlikely).

It was "nearer" than any reactor should ever be allowed to get... but it was still nothing like a "near meltdown".

[kristopher]

4. March 2002

That cracked cladding, the only barrier to a full rupture of the reactor vessel, was down to 1/5th of an inch in the area around one of the tightly packed control rods.
3/8 crack in remaining cladding


If you don't want to consider that a near-meltdown, that is your choice, but you have no idea what the actual consequences of a blow-out in the reactor head in that area would have been.

In my estimation, it is a near-meltdown.

[FBaggins]

5. You have "no idea" either

In fact... almost certainly much less of an idea.

But you allow your imagination to fill in the gaps.

"This image link contains an illegal code"

Presuming that was an image that validates your claim... that still doesn't get you close to a meltdown.

[FBaggins]

3. Uh oh... that doesn't sound too rock-certain... does it?

How do you usually translate it when someone who is pro-nuclear says that nuclear power will be suspended until safety can be assured?

Simple... it means that he plans later claim that it's safe now and renew his plans.


Of course... while nuclear is on hold, so are Italy's plans to reduce fossil-fuel generation. Not that any anti-nuke will own that reality.

[kristopher]

6. I don't know. Italy has a lot of sun, wind and coastal water resources.

There is no indication that they need nuclear or coal any more than we do - which is not at all.

That's according to John Wellinghoff Chairman of FERC - the top electric regulator in the country. It's towards the end of the second half of the interview.

http://greenmonk.net/smart-grid-heavy-hitters-jon-wellinghoff-chair-of-us-federal-energy-regulatory-commission-part-1/

http://greenmonk.net/smart-grid-heavy-hitters-jon-wellinghoff-chair-of-us-federal-energy-regulatory-commission-part-2/

[FBaggins]

9. A regulator?

Why... that means he's part of the nuclear industry. Right?

Italy has a lot of sun,

Compared to Germany (which has inexplicably focused so much on PV), sure. It's comparatively sunny. Compared to areas that most benefit from solar... not so much.

wind

Don't know where you get that idea. They are, in fact, probably the worst in Europe (at least western europe).

and coastal water resources

Obviously plenty of per-capita coastline... but the wave power density isn't so great in the Med.

And, of course, wave power is far from a mature "off the shelf" technology. Isn't it? :)


Regardless, I wasn't making it up. Presumably Italy knows what their options are... and they're ramping back up on fossil-fuel generation.

[kristopher]

7. Abound Solar Wants Italian Sun

At the Solarexpo in Verona, Italy, this week, a big question on everyone's mind will no doubt be the fate of the feed-in tariff. The Italian government has wrestled over how to shrink it in order to control the solar market growth and its impact on consumers who help to pay for it.

On Friday, the government is supposed to approve an extension of the current feed-in tariff policy – which was originally to end in June – until this August. So what does it mean for one of the hottest markets in the world? Despite anticipated cuts, the country remains sought-after by manufacturers and developers.

“Even the most pessimistic analyst will say this year Italy will still be 3-5 gigawatts,” said Mark Chen, director of marketing at Abound Solar. “Let’s say 3 gigawatts, and that’s still larger than the U.S. market.”

Abound Solar, a Colorado maker of cadmium-telluride solar panels, announced this week the signing of distribution agreements with Italian firms Thesan and DW Europe. Thesan and DW are both distributors and integrators, and Thesan in particular has designed its own mounting systems for solar panels, Chen said. Thesan is set to showcase a solar electric system design pairing Abound Solar’s panels with its own racking at the Solarexpo...

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/05/abound-solar-wants-italian-sun?cmpid=SolarNL-Tuesday-May3-2011

[kristopher]

8. Italy passes feed-in tariff extension

Italy passes feed-in tariff extension

06 May 2011

The tariff classifies solar photovoltaic rooftop systems up to 1000 kW as ‘small’, whereas the boundary for open space systems will be 200 kW, EuPD Research reports.

...Furthermore, system operators will receive a 5% bonus on their tariff when at least 60% of the investment costs (excluding installation), are sourced from the EU.

Italy is also attempting to secure grid access for solar PV with net operators having a 30-days deadline to connect finished solar PV systems to the grid.

From 2012, there will be half year degressions of the solar PV tariffs, but an increase is expected in 2013 when an increase between 5 and 10 cents across the tariff is planned...

http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/17804/italy-passes-feedin-tariff-extension/