After the Hanford site was decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, its waste wasn’t cleaned or stored properly, and it is now one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the U.S. There are 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge in underground tanks at the site and the clean-up process is expected to take four decades. While a lot of big and small companies have tried to tackle Hanford, there’s been years of delays and cost overruns on projects, says the New York Times.

Near of the Sea Water intake of Unit2 in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

Kurion wants to use its success in the wake of Fukushima to get the contract from the Department of Energy to clean up Hanford. The Wall Street Journal reports that Kurion opened a testing facility at Hanford last month, but hasn’t yet secured a deal.

If Kurion is able to gain the clean-up job, it would be yet another win for the profitable, four-year-old scrappy startup, which is backed by Lux Capital and Firelake Capital. Kurion was the only startup — among a group of giant conglomerates like Hitachi, Toshiba and AREVA — to work on the cleanup of the Fukushima site, and I called the company “the most successful greentech startup you haven’t heard of,” back in January of this year.

Kurion makes a cleanup material (they call it ion specific media) that soaks up radioactive cesium and iodine in contaminated water and contains the waste by shrinking it down to a small-enough size, then turning it into glass, a process called vitrification. Vitrification is the standard way to cleanup cesium and iodine in nuclear-contaminated water, but Kurion says it makes that process cheaper, faster and more efficient. Often, the standard vitrification process requires the contaminated materials to be moved to a centralized plant, but Kurion’s process brings the technology to the contaminated materials.

A few months ago Kurion bought some more vitrification technology — called GeoMelt technologies developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Labs — which were already under consideration by the DOE for being used to cleanup Hanford.

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The group’s work taps into the nation’s fears about the after effects of the Fukushima disaster, and the government and the national media’s inattention on the issue of continued nuclear exposure. The series also shows how Geiger counters are becoming a common everyday object for some Japanese in the Fukushima region.

This grassroots type of action around the issue of nuclear fallout isn’t uncommon in Japan in the wake of Fukushima. Last month I wrote about how Xbox hacker and co-founder of the Chumby project, Andrew “Bunnie” Huang, had designed an open-source Geiger counter for Japanese citizens. Huang designed the Geiger counter to be “suitable for everyday civilian use,” affordable, intuitive, easy to use and “sufficiently stylish.”

Instagram’s rapid growth, clean and simple design aesthetic, and emotion-focused medium make it the natural fit for a project like this. As Om put it recently, Instagram was partly bought by Facebook for its “passionate community” and the fact that it is “all soul and emotion.” Documenting life under potential nuclear fallout in the Fukushima area is about as emotional as you can get.

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The anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, which claimed the lives of 19,000 and left another 325,000 without permanent housing, was observed on Sunday with a moment of silence and prayer at 2:46pm, the time at which the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck.

In the wake of the disaster, Japan reassessed its energy policy, alongside many nations which have reevaluated their nuclear power programs. Germany decided to shutter all of its nuclear plants, which provide 23 percent of the country’s electricity, by 2022. Even China took action, putting a temporary freeze on nuclear approvals and reducing its nuclear energy targets.

Japan gets 30 percent of its power from nuclear energy but as of the one year anniversary of Fukushima, just two of the countries 54 nuclear reactors are up and running. The rest are shut down, many undergoing testing, with the common belief that the trauma of Fukushima will result in most of these reactors never again coming online.

At a recent conference, I ran into the head of the Japanese office of a global investment bank and we paused to consider the consequences of suddenly shutting off 30 percent of the power for the world’s third largest economy. He didn’t think we’d see many of those 54 nuclear reactors online again anytime soon, and when the conversation turned to acquisitions, I asked if he had considered many of the solar companies that have been so beat up, their valuations at all time lows. He just smiled and said, “Yes, we’re on it.”

There’s a massive cleantech opportunity right now in Japan, and one small way to commemorate those who lost their lives in Fukushima is to create safe and renewable sources of energy fed into a reliable grid infrastructure. Last year’s landmark Japanese renewable energy bill, passed in August, set up a feed-in-tariff system similar to what’s employed in Germany and Italy. Though over five months later, major Japanese companies that are planning solar farms, like Mitsui, Toyota and Hitachi, still await clarification on policies stemming from the bill, like what exactly the feed-in-tariff will be priced at.

There have been other gestures, like the one from Masayoshi Son, the billionaire founder of the Japanese telecom, Softbank, who has set up a renewable energy foundation with a modest billion yen ($12.2 million). Softbank will invest another couple hundred million in a renewable energy power generation business.

Son is betting on the future deregulation of the utility market in Japan and has gone as far as calling for a pan-Asian smart grid that would link Japan’s grid with those of other Asian countries through an undersea cable system. What’s more likely going on is that Son sees a high cash flow business, similar to telecom, on the horizon with utilities getting guaranteed rates for renewable energy.

Son’s not the only one eyeing a Japanese smart grid. Tokyo Electric Power, which operated the Fukushima plant, will begin the first smart meter rollout targeting 3 million customers this year with the goal of getting 17 million smart meters installed by 2019. Japan remains behind smart meter rollouts in the U.S. and Europe, but it could quickly catch up.

Japanese companies have been eyeing smart grid assets as well. Toshiba spent $2.3 billion and reportedly outbid GE to acquire global smart meter maker and grid management software provider Landis+Gyr last May. And more recently, Hitachi invested $30 million in smart grid networking company, Silver Spring Networks, an early stage strategic investment that could help Hitachi maintain a strong position in the implementation of the Japanese smart grid.

These are early days of change in Japan, a country that prior to Fukushima was the third largest producer of nuclear power, and remains the world’s largest importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal. Looking at 2009 figures, 84 percent of Japan’s energy consumption came from oil, coal, and natural gas. And the dream for Japan’s energy future had always been to move nuclear power, as a share of electricity generation, from 24 percent in 2008 to 50 percent by 2030.

What was so attractive about nuclear for Japan was that the country has almost none of its own hydrocarbon resources. Despite the outrage in Japan over Fukushima and the general feeling that nuclear power should be decommissioned, there will be a creeping desire to return to nuclear as the most practical solution.

Ultimately that debate will divide the country at a time when what is required is a new vision for Japan’s energy policy. The Japanese government should move more quickly to articulate renewable energy policies alongside a strong push for government investment in cleantech. Moves over the past year indicate that the private sector in Japan is eager to step up on both the grid side and the power generation side to get clean power to the market. What Japan needs now is stronger leadership on its energy policy.

Image courtesy of flickr user Paul J Everett.

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Three-year-old Kurion makes a cleanup material (they call it ion specific media) that soaks up radioactive cesium and iodine in contaminated water and contains the waste by shrinking it down to a small-enough size, then turning it into glass, a process called vitrification. The company is backed by investors Lux Capital and Firelake Capital, and is the only American company and startup company to work on the Japanese cleanup efforts.

Vitrification is the standard way to cleanup cesium and iodine in nuclear-contaminated water, but Kurion says it makes that process cheaper, faster and more efficient. Often, the standard vitrification process requires the contaminated materials to be moved to a centralized plant, but Kurion’s process brings the technology to the contaminated materials.

Near of the Sea Water intake of Unit2 in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station

Kurion isn’t cleaning the some 90 million gallons of contaminated water on its own. Japanese conglomerates Hitachi and Toshiba, and French nuclear provider AREVA, are also helping to clean the some 90 million gallons. The water was pumped into the turbine buildings at the power plant and wasn’t only contaminated by nuclear materials, but also filled with debris, oil and salt (from seawater).

The group has been working in a haste to clean the massive amount of water. Kurion’s CEO John Raymont told me in an interview back in June that the rainy season just started in Japan, and if the contaminated water overflowed, it could damage the area’s environment even more. There’s also the concern that more earthquakes could occur in the area, which could also cause the water to overflow. Raymont told me that the startup delivered the cleanup material and technology to Japanese utility TEPCO in five weeks, which is a fraction of the time he says it took to start cleaning water at the Three Mile Island accident.

Nuclear waste management is a problem that hasn’t seen a whole lot of innovation over the past few decades. According to some estimates, $1 out of every $4 from the Department of Energy’s budget goes toward nuclear waste management, so there is a sizable opportunity to help the DOE cut that expense. And with the Japanese nuclear disaster, there’s an immediate market.

Images courtesy of Kurion, and TEPCO.

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Dispersing Dust Protectant, Common Pool Area

Nuclear waste cleanup startup Kurion says it has shipped several hundred tons of its equipment that will be used to clean contaminated water at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan that suffered damage in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Kurion says some of its engineers have already arrived at the Fukushima sites, and more will arrive over the next two weeks, and by June Kurion expects its radioactive water cleaning technology to be installed at the nuclear plants. We reported in April that Kurion was working on the Japanese nuclear disaster.

Kurion’s technology, and business plan, is to make the process of vitrification — turning nuclear waste into glass — modular, which makes it cheaper, faster and more efficient. Vitrification is the standard way to clean up nuclear waste, and Kurion essentially brings the technology to the waste tanks, instead of taking the waste to a massive centralized treatment plant.

Before Kurion turns the waste into glass, it uses a material to soak up the waste, which it calls “ion specific media,” and then shrinks the material down to a small enough size so that it can be turned into glass. Vitrification essentially permanently encapsulates the nuclear waste, and while it’s still radioactive, the waste can be stored and transported more easily.

Kurion says at the Fukushima plants, its technology will be used on radioactive contaminated water that is in the turbine buildings, as well as on new cooling water that is being added every day. Some of the more standard nuclear cleanup materials couldn’t be used because they don’t work with saltwater, and sea water was pumped into the Fukushima plants in order to cool the reactor in response to the disaster.

Kurion’s cleanup material has previously been used to clean up contaminated liquids at the Three Mile Island incident. But Kurion CEO John Raymont said in a statement that while the Three Mile Island clean up preparation process took 18 months, it only took five weeks to deliver the technology for the Fukushima project, due to developments in innovation and modularization. As an additional defense against radioactive waste at the Fukushima plants, Areva is also developing a second radioactive removal system that will be used, and both Toshiba and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy are involved in the project, too.

Kurion is a three-year-old company based in Irvine, Calif. backed by Lux Capital and Firelake Capital. Kurion says it is the only American company working on this cleanup project. Kurion has completed other milestones over the past several months, including small scale testing of its technology, and has also moved into “a long series of tests on simulated waste streams.” In addition Kurion says it has a contract with engineering firm CH2MHill to test out its tech to manage uranium metal bearing sludges at a site in the U.S.

Nuclear waste management is a problem that hasn’t seen a whole lot of innovation over the past few decades — according to some estimates $1 out of every $4 from the Department of Energy’s budget goes toward nuclear waste management, so there is a sizable opportunity to help the DOE cut that expense. Now with the Japanese nuclear disaster, there is an immediate market.

Image courtesy of TEPCO (not Kurion’s tech).

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Dispersing Dust Protectant, Common Pool Area

Nuclear waste startup Kurion only came out of stealth back in November to discuss its plan to modularize the process of turning nuclear waste into glass (the generally accepted way of dealing with the waste). Now this morning Reuters reports that the beleaguered Japanese utility that owns the nuclear reactors at Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), plans to start treating contaminated water at its reactors this Summer with technology from Kurion, Toshiba, Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, and Areva.

TEPCO tells Reuters that the amount of water that it has pumped into its reactors to stop them from overheating has reached about 87,500 tons. That water, which is contaminated with radioactive materials, needs to be cleaned, and the group’s technology can “adsorb and isolate radioactive elements, then the treated water would be re-used to cool down the reactors,” reports Reuters.

Kurion’s technology and business plan is to make the process of vitrification — or turning nuclear waste into glass — modular, which makes it cheaper, faster and more efficient. Vitrification essentially permanently encapsulates nuclear waste, and while it’s still radioactive, the waste can be stored and transported more easily. Kurion has also developed a better vitrification pre-treatment process.

Josh Wolfe, a partner with Lux Capital that invested in Kurion along with Firelake Capital, explained to me in an interview late last year that Kurion’s process called the “Modular Vitrification System (MVS),” “brings the technology to the waste tanks, instead of taking the waste to a massive centralized treatment plant.” “Our technology flips the vitrification process on its head,” said Wolfe, “making vitrification an order of magnitude less expensive.”

Kurion has completed other milestones over the past several months, including small scale testing of its technology, and has moved into “a long series of tests on simulated waste streams.” Kurion also says it has a contract with engineering firm CH2MHill to test out its tech to manage uranium metal bearing sludges at a site in the U.S.

Nuclear waste management is a problem that hasn’t seen a whole lot of innovation over the past few decades. Wolfe told me that $1 out of every $4 from the Department of Energy’s budget goes toward nuclear waste management, so there is a sizable opportunity to help the DOE cut that expense. Now with the Japanese nuclear disaster — which was recently raised to the threat level of Chernobyl — there’s also an immediate short term market.

Image courtesy of TEPCO.

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Ouch. NRG said in a statement that given the “diminished prospects” of the South Texas nuclear project it “will not invest additional capital in the STP development effort.” At the same time, NRG said it would fully support any of its current or future partners if they want to continue to develop STP 3&4 units. (Crane will be speaking at our Green:Net 2011 event this Thursday April 21, in San Francisco).

The design work for the project had already essentially been halted, as NRG Energy waited for a review of the industry by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the wake of the incident at the Fukushima reactors in Japan. The NRC is reviewing all nuclear projects built and under construction in the U.S. to see if there could be any lessons learned from the Japanese nuclear incident. Nuclear industry executives fear the NRC review process will be very lengthy and will paralyze any new nuclear projects in the pipeline, which was what happened in the aftermath of the nuclear incident at Three Mile Island in 1979.  Crane told me last month that he hoped a NRC review process wouldn’t last any longer than 3 months.

CPS Energy, which had been in discussions to purchase the nuclear power from NRG’s expanded plants, had already suspended its talks to buy the power. CPS also owns over 7 percent in the expansion project.

The U.S. hasn’t built any new nuclear reactors in decades, thanks to fears after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. The short-term costs of nuclear construction after the Japanese nuclear disaster is expected to soar in the short term, and development of new nuclear technologies from some startups could be stalled as well. Nuclear technology has also crept along because of the low price of natural gas.

NRG’s decision to cut its losses so to speak, is an even greater indication that the Japanese nuclear disaster has set back development of nuclear power in the U.S. by many years. Other countries, like Germany, are moving even more swiftly to halt the construction of nuclear plants.

NRG will be holding a conference call later today to provide more details on its decision.

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Fixing the Grid at Fukushima

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