WND (World Nuclear News) Daily Sept. 7

7 September 2016 NEW NUCLEAR: Construction starts on sixth Tianwan unit The first safety concrete has been poured for the containment building basemat of Tianwan nuclear power plant's sixth reactor,  in Jiangsu province, marking the official start of the unit's construction. NEW NUCLEAR: Fuqing 3 starts supplying electricity to the grid The third unit of the Fuqing nuclear power plant in China's Fujian province has been connected to the grid. The CPR-1000 is scheduled to enter commercial operation later this year. CORPORATE: Ikata 3 back in commercial operation Unit 3 of the Ikata nuclear power plant in Japan's Ehime prefecture has resumed commercial operation, Shikoku Electric Power Company announced today. Only two other Japanese reactors are currently in commercial operation. NEW NUCLEAR: Russia and Belarus meeting obligations under Ostrovets agreement State financial controllers in Belarus and Russia have carried out an audit of the intergovernmental agreement between the countries for construction of Belarus' first nuclear power plant, in Ostrovets, in the Grodno region. According to Nuclear.Ru, the State Control Committee of Belarus and the Accounts Chamber of Russia have looked at the "performance of obligations" laid out in the agreement.   IN OTHER NEWS: The ceremony to mark laying of the first foundation stone for units 2 and 3 of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran will take place on 10 September, Russia's AtomStroyExport said yesterday. The Russian delegation will be led by Rosatom director general Sergey Kirienko. AtomStroyExport and Nuclear Power Production and Development Company of Iran signed an EPC turnkey contract for construction of the units at the Bushehr site in November 2014. AtomStroyExport said the two VVER-1000 units will be built with Generation III+ technology, including the latest safety features, and have a combined capacity of 2100 MWe, it said. The recently-elected governor of Japan's Kagoshima prefecture, Satoshi Mitazono, has again requested Kyushu Electric Power Company immediately suspend operation of units 1 and 2 of its Sendai nuclear power plant for safety checks, the Kyodo news agency reported today. Earlier this week, Kyushu rejected a 26 August request from the governor to take the units offline while agreeing to carry out additional checks when they are idled later this year for routine scheduled outages. As governor, Mitazono has no legal power to halt operation of the reactors. USA-based GSE Systems Limited announced yesterday that it has been awarded contracts to provide "mission-critical" updates to multi-unit nuclear site simulator platforms for customers in the UK and Japan. The UK contract involves updating a simulator originally delivered in the early 1990s and modelling a second unit on the site, while in Japan GSE will replace all existing models on a simulator. The company said the two projects will add $6 million to its backlog and "include options that could grow backlog significantly further". The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting with officials from the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Co on 21 September to discuss a preliminary finding regarding "the licensee's failure to adequately maintain emergency diesel generators" at the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant, in Kansas. Emergency diesel generators are used to supply power to safety-related systems in the event of a loss of off-site power. NRC requires that Wolf Creek has emergency diesel generators that must be tested monthly to ensure operability.