On March 15, 2007, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) received a report from Hokuriku Electric Power Company (HEPCO) on a criticality accident at Shika Nuclear Power Plant unit 1 (BWR). The accident occurred in 1999 during periodic inspection, but was not reported to NISA at that time. The fact was discovered by HEPCO during full check of data falsification being conducted according to NISA’s order issued on November 30, 2006.
The report of the accident was submitted from HEPCO to NISA on March 30 and April 6, 2007.
The report describes that the event occurred during the test of the hydraulic control rod system at the time of reactor shutdown. False steps taken in the test caused the pressure increase in the control rod withdrawal pipes and resulted in a simultaneous drops at 3 control rods that made reactor criticality for approximately fifteen minutes.
Everywhere you look, the nuclear industry’s hype machine is in overdrive. Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and the UK government all tout small modular reactors as the silver bullet for climate change and energy security. Tech billionaires are hiring nuclear veterans. Wall Street is whispering about “round-the-clock power” for artificial intelligence data centers. For those old enough […]
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Big batteries and EVs to the rescue again as faults with new nuclear plant cause chaos on Nordic grids The Finnish nuclear power plant Olkiluoto was finally connected to the grid last year, at an estimated cost of €11 billion compared to the original budget of €3 billion. That cost blowout forced its developer, the […]
A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK. The project [UK's nuclear waste dump] is now predicted to take more than 150yrs to complete with lifetime costs of £66bn in today’s money...The […]
Last year, the Dutch Province of Limburg started an alliance in which, besides the local government, research institutes, small nuclear reactor (SMR) developers, utilities, industrial customers and funders cooperated. With this "Limburg SMR alliance" Limburg tried to lead the way towards an SMR in Limburg. The preferred site for a first SMR would be Chemelot, […]
