In a new report, the Chinese government has laid out a plan to upgrade the security at its http://blog.cleantechies.com/category/energy/nuclear/ reactors over the next decade, suggesting that the country may be ready to resume a planned expansion of its nuclear sector halted in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.
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radioactive waste
Just days after it received a new 20-year license extension from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey was found to be leaking radioactive tritium .
Located about 60 miles east of Philadelphia in Lacey Township, New Jersey, the Oyster Creek plant is the oldest in the United States, and the tritium leak from underground pipes that was discovered on April 9, 2009 may have spread further than officials previously thought.
New Jersey environmental officials now say that radioactive tritium has leached into the nearby water aquifer and that the plant’s owners need to install new monitoring wells to keep tabs on the spread of the chemical. Commissioner Bob Martin is worried about the tritium — currently being found at concentrations 50 times higher than those allowed by law — which has been slowly spreading underground at one to three feet a day.
A Russian company has announced that it will build the world’s first floating nuclear plant, opening up the possibility that the Russians could use such reactors to power operations to extract oil and minerals in remote regions of the Arctic.
Russia’s United Industrial Corporation said its floating reactor will go into operation in 2012 off the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East and will be used to help power Vilyuchinsk, a small city that serves as an atomic submarine base. The 472-foot plant will be built in the shape of a ship, will accommodate two 35-megawatt reactors, and will cost $316 million to construct, United Industrial said.