Tepco said Saturday it has finished removing all fuel rods from the spent-fuel pool in the shattered reactor 4 building at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, in a rare piece of positive news from the decommissioning process.

An unidentified drone has been spotted hovering over a Belgian Nuclear power plant, prompting an investigation. The Doel nuclear plant has just been repaired and reopened after an incident considered to be sabotage caused millions in damages.

"We can confirm that the East Flanders prosecutor's office has opened an investigation into a drone flight over the Doel nuclear plant," a spokesman for the investigation told Belga news agency.

The plant's operator, GDF-Suez unit Electrabel disclosed the incident on Saturday. "We will not provide further information for the time being," the spokesman added.

The United States government recently argued in court filings that the state of Washington’s request of $18 billion over 14 years to address the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site should be rejected based on expense.

[D]ocuments obtained by The New Mexican… raise questions about the stability of dozens of other nuclear waste drums that were in the same chamber as the drum that ruptured [after a] chemical reaction… Radiation leaked into the air, and temperatures in the underground chamber peaked at nearly 1,600 degrees… One internal lab report described the [contents] as similar to plastic explosives… Investigators believe the organic material may be one reason temperatures in the chamber rose so high… Internal emails… detail concerns about the stability of drums… exposed to the extreme temperatures… June 17 draft of a LANL report… suggested the high temperatures may have made other nuclear waste drums in the chamber more unstable than ever…

Mikhail Gashev, the first deputy chairman of the Ukrainian State Inspection of Nuclear Regulations, said last week that he signed three fundamental documents regarding supplies of upgraded nuclear fuel TBC-WR from US company Westinghouse.

According to Gashev “the fuel will be delivered to the South-Ukrainian NPP in December and uploaded into the third power unit of the plant in late December or early January.”

Sergei Kondratyev, a senior expert with the Russian Institute for Energy and Finance, voiced concern last week over the sharp switch from Russian-to US-produced nuclear fuel as it could pose a threat to the safety of Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which were built in the Soviet Union era.

In an interview with ITAR-TASS Kondratyev said that Ukraine’s decision to switch to the US-produced upgraded nuclear fuel did not take into account technical characteristics and peculiarities of the Soviet-built NPPs.

Officials with the Energy Department and Nuclear Waste Partnership, the private consortium that operates the repository, say they are taking abundant precautions to ensure their workers and the public are safe.

But emails and documents obtained by The New Mexican describing safety assessments in May, June and July raise questions about the stability of dozens of other nuclear waste drums that were in the same chamber as the drum that ruptured. More recent WIPP safety assessments have not been released, even to the union representing more than 300 WIPP workers.

Regional authorities in Japan have approved the restart of the idle nuclear power plant at Sendai, paving the way for a revival of the nuclear industry three years after it was shut down in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The southern Kagoshima prefecture has voted to back a move by a local township to restart the two-reactor Sendai plant.

BOONE DAM STABILITY ISSUES… “TVA conducted a briefing for government officials… after discovery of a sink hole near the base… water and sediment [has been] found seeping from the river below the dam. TVA is continuously monitoring the dam… The dam is located upstream of all three TVA nuclear sites… The NRC Senior Resident Inspector was notified. The licensee is evaluating this event for potential impact on the design basis flooding level.”

There was a confirmed uranium hexafluoride release at Honeywell Works in Metropolis, IL at 8pm tonight. Sirens have sounded and Honeywell guards have told people to shelter in place, close windows, and turn off A/C.

The Dukovany nuclear power plant in the southern Czech Republic has halted operations of two of its reactors after a pipe in the facility’s cooling system started to leak.

The Wednesday shutdown was necessary as the repair was likely to take more than three days, which is allowed under safety regulations, the plant’s operator, Czech electricity company CEZ said.

The leaking in the technical water system, which is used for cooling the important technical and safety devices at the plant, was discovered Monday, the company said.

Oct. 20 inspection of [Tennessee's Boone] dam revealed a sink hole… Six days later, an uncommon occurrence happened when seepage was found near the location of the sink hole at the base of the dam.

Thirty billion dollars in funding for roads, bridges and thousands of new homes in areas devastated by the tsunami in Japan three and a half years ago is still languishing unspent in the bank. That means Keiko Abe is heading into a fourth winter of sub-zero temperatures in a cramped, temporary dwelling that is succumbing to the elements.

Scientists warned that an earthquake could take out Fukushima. The Japanese ignored the warning … and even tore down the natural seawall which protected Fukushima from tidal waves.

Fukushima is getting worse. And see this and this.

Have the Japanese learned their lesson? Are they decommissioning nuclear plants which are built in dangerous environments?

Of course not!

Instead, they’re re-starting a nuclear plant near a volcano which is about to blow …

Prosecutors must decide this week whether to charge Tokyo Electric Power Co. executives over their handling of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear disaster, in a process that could drag the company into criminal court.

The judicial review is unlikely to see Tepco executives go to prison, legal experts say, but rehashing details of the meltdowns and explosions that followed the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami will cast a harsh light on the struggling utility and will not help Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s unpopular effort to restart the nation’s idled reactors.

New cracks found in the core of the Hunterston-B nuclear reactor could threaten operator EDF's plans to extend the Scottish power station's life.

The ship holds more than 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel and authorities are concerned it could interfere with the course of other vessels as it drifts through shipping lanes. A Coast Guard cutter was headed out to the ship on Thursday with plans to fire cannons loaded with high explosive rounds to sink the vessel.

...

The Japan earthquake triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since the Chernobyl accident in 1986, but Alaska state health and environmental officials have said there's little need to be worried that debris landing on Alaska shores will be contaminated by radiation.

Japan's reconstruction minister has hinted unofficially that some areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant may have to be declared off-limits indefinitely.

Following the introduction of new safety regulations in Japan, several types of food have been found to contain radioactive cesium above the legal limit.

Stricter health standards for staple foods such as vegetables and rice were introduced on Sunday. Permissible levels of radioactivity were reduced from 500 to 100 becquerels per kilogram.

Health ministry officials said bamboo shoots harvested in the Kisarazu and Ichihara regions east of Tokyo were contaminated with 120 and 110 becquerels of radioactive Cesium per kilogram respectively.