Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[seemslikeadream]

Japan Heading for Energy Death Spiral?

Nobuo Tanaka's hair is on fire. The immediate past executive director of the International Energy Agency is on a mission attempting to alert officials in the United States, Japan, Europe, China and elsewhere that post-Fukushima Japan may be approaching an energy death spiral.

Tanaka's argument is mathematical at its core. He argues that if Japan does not find a way to 'turn on' its now shuttered nuclear energy reactors, not only will Japan's already sluggish economic condition be crushed with much larger oil and gas imports from Russia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East -- but because of the costs and risk uncertainty -- Japan's powerful manufacturing base may begin pulling out of the world's third largest economy. In a morning meeting with me last week, Nobuo Tanaka said that if Japan didn't get its domestic energy production back on line soon, Japan would experience serious 'deindustrialization.'

tanaka 1.jpgTanaka explained that at current levels, Japan consumes about 5 million barrels of oil a day. Without domestically produced nuclear energy -- for which Japan has stockpiled for decades the world's largest non-weaponized highly processed plutonium reserves -- Japan falls about 10% or half a million barrels of oil short of what it must have.

Japan has 54 nuclear energy reactors -- only two of which are running at the moment and both of which are scheduled for regular check ups and will shut down either late this month or in early May 2012. As regular maintenance has required shutting down plant after plant, none of Japan's governors has allowed the nuclear energy plants to be returned to operation.

On top of the post-Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, global tensions with Iran are threatening Japan's dependence on Iranian oil exports, which Japan's share amounts to about 300,000 barrels a day.

This makes Japan's current potential daily energy deficit about 800,000 barrels per day.

Tanaka, who after leaving the International Energy Agency is biding his time now as Global Associate for Energy Security and Sustainability at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics, acknowledges that the Saudis have offered Japan, Europe and others who are jittery about the growing tensions with Iran more of its own domestic capacity, which most put at about 2 million barrels a day. Tanaka says the problem is that that's just not enough to manage global shortfalls if there is a strike on Iran and oil flows are interrupted -- and he believes that the Saudis will favor European needs over Japan's.

tanaka 2.jpgOn top of the gloom about nuclear energy supply doldrums in Japan, the hard consequences of tensions with Iran, there is a third area of concern Tanaka has: the weather. He said that if Japan has a very hot summer -- which some are projecting -- Japan will run another 10% short of supplies on top of the shortages it already projects.

But even all this is not the end of the squeeze.

Japan's other partial energy option is the importation of liquified natural gas (LNG) -- which it imports from Malaysia, Brunei, Qatar, UAE, Indonesia and Australia. Japan needs to further boost imports if it can but prices for LNG are surging. The combined energy deficit Japan is facing would require a net increase, according to Tanaka, of LNG and oil that would run about $40 billion a year -- wiping out completely Japan's trade surpluses and more.

In meetings hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies this past week, Nobuo Tanaka made an appeal for the US to export some of its cheap LNG supply to Japan. The price of LNG in Japan is currently four times the price in the United States.

However, House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Edward Markey has over the last several months been agitating in speeches and correspondence with Energy Secretary for the US to restrict LNG exports -- thus keeping prices low in the United States and leaving key strategic allies like Japan vulnerable to surging global LNG prices and to the geostrategic flirtations from Russia. Tanaka said that with Russia, about which the US has increasing concerns about its mercantilist global energy behavior, Japan may be forced to build new grid and pipeline infrastructure with Russia given the cold shoulder the US is thus far showing Japan.

Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for tanaka 3.jpgTanaka told me that one high-ranking Chinese official recently approached him asking if and when Japan would turn its nuclear reactors back on -- as Japan's massive energy needs now were disrupting supply patterns and costs and could affect China's energy investment picture if Japan's needs were to become structurally permanent.

To some degree, without the Pulitzer and best-selling energy reality books to his name, Nobuo Tanaka is the Daniel Yergin of Japan and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the patterns and vectors of energy production and consumption by all the major global energy actors. His warnings matter -- and yet Japan's political leaders, he believes, have not honestly talked with the Japanese public about the hard choices it faces and a possible economic unraveling that comes with the status quo national nuclear energy allergy.

Tanaka thinks that the U.S. could play a constructive role in helping Japan weather its challenges -- not just in exporting cheaper LNG but it helping bridge the 'trust gap' between Japanese citizens and their government.

The former senior Japan Ministry of Economy Trade & Industry official joked that the only place in the world where an elected legislature may be less popular with its citizens that the US Congress is Japan -- where government incompetence and false statements made during and after the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant disasters have collapsed Japanese trust in their officials. And trust wasn't high before these incidents.

Tanaka realizes that there is a legitimate debate to be had about the safety and management of Japan's nuclear energy facilities and that standards need to be improved and a national conversation has to take place -- but that a total rejection of nuclear energy will send Japan over a cliff as deindustrialization is triggered by energy shocks.

One solution he thinks is for former US Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners and other US-based, respected nuclear energy experts form an ad hoc commission designed to consult with the Japanese nuclear energy industry and political authorities -- and to create what would be a bilateral, or perhaps even an international, peer review structure. This might allow Japanese citizens to possibly fasten their trust in the international Commission even if doubtful about the solvency of their own business, political, and energy leaders.

It's an interesting proposal -- one that gets to the core issue of trust and lurking uncertainties about nuclear energy in Japan. Some critics could argue that creating such a US-Japan or international commission would allow Japan to push this needed debate under the rug and cover up dangers lurking in Japan's energy system.

Maybe so -- but it also seems that Nobuo Tanaka could be right that Japan's economic future further unravels if it doesn't figure out some way to get safe nuclear energy back online.

[Nordic]

Scare tactics, especially the headline. Fukishima put them in a death spiral already. This is an opportunity for Japan to show the world how things can really be done. Crash program for renewables, etc. They can be the Iceland of renewable energy.

[StarmanSkye]

I think I recall reading that like most nations in the volcanic Pacific Rim of Fire region, Japan has a very large geothermal energy-potential that has not been developed at all -- other than a few Hot Springs resorts.

Experts from Iceland for example could be consulted & detailed studies made for the feasability of constructing comprehensive generation facilities -- yet another renewable that Japanese innovation and R&D could develop into a high-value exportable product.

But no small wonder the Japanese public distrusts their elected officials if not actively holding them in scorn & profound contempt, as their reprehensible ass-covering lies, excuses, falsifications and egregious misfeasance in failing to properly warn of and protect the public from the tremendous radiation contamination -- or to hold TEPCO officials accountable for their role in covering up the true facts of complete & uncontrollable meltdowns that occurred within days of the tsunami -- NOT months.

But also, what a horribly mangled farce, the suggestion to form an ad hoc overview committee with the very same kind of US Nuclear Industry-owned 'officials' (despite being 'retired') to help restore the Japanese public's 'confidence' in their elected conmen asskissers -- more likely, a way to end-run around public approval for restarting the nukes by delegating a 'committee' to make recommendations.

Bullshit.

Then too, the abysmal cock-eyed braindead criminal irony of contrived hostility toward Iran's nukes as pretext for blockading Iran which limits Japan's access to Iran's oil thus providing imperative for Japan to restart using its OWN poorly-designed-and-sited another-disaster-waiting-to-happen nukes -- You can't make this kind of outrageous idiocy up, NO ONE would believe it!

Meanwhile, the puppet-master pulling strings behind the curtains is completely ignored.

Abundant examples here of de-evolutionary regression rapidly impelling us towards the ediface of an impending Idiocracy. Our fate -- or 'just reward'?

Perhaps we shouldn't have chewed-off our tails, but rather waited until we outgrew them, learned to fully-use our brains and perfected better ways of grasping esp. concepts & ideas than forcing our premature adaption as tailless scampering monkeys who are outclassed by their smarter Orangatang cousins.

[JackRiddler]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/06/ ... rink/print

Weekend Edition April 6-8, 2012

The End of the Nuclear Renaissance?

New Nukes on the Brink

by HARVEY WASSERMAN


The only two US reactor projects now technically under construction are on the brink of death for financial reasons.

If they go under, there will almost certainly be no new reactors built here.

The much mythologized “nuclear renaissance” will be officially buried, and the US can take a definitive leap toward a green-powered future that will actually work and that won’t threaten the continent with radioactive contamination.

As this drama unfolds, the collapse of global nuclear power continues, as two reactors proposed for Bulgaria have been cancelled, and just one of Japan’s 54 licensed reactors is operating. That one may well close next month, leaving Japan without a single operating commercial nuke.

Georgia’s double-reactor Vogtle project has been sold on the basis of federal loan guarantees. Last year President Obama promised the Southern Company, parent to Georgia Power, $8.33 billion in financing from an $18.5 billion fund that had been established at the Department of Energy by George W. Bush.

Until last week most industry observers had assumed the guarantees were a done deal. But the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, has publicly complained that the Office of Management and Budget may be requiring terms that are unacceptable to the builders.

Southern and its supporters remain ostensibly optimistic that the deal will be done. But the climate for loan guarantees has changed since this one was promised. The $535 million collapse of Solyndra prompted a rash of angry Congressional hearings and cast a long shadow over the whole range of loan guarantees for energy projects. Though the Vogtle deal comes from a separate fund, skepticism over stalled negotiations is rising.

So is resistance among Georgia ratepayers. To fund the new Vogtle reactors, Southern is forcing “construction work in progress” rate hikes that require consumers to pay for the new nukes as they’re being built. Southern is free of liability, even if the reactors are not completed. Thus it behooves the company to build them essentially forever, collecting payment whether they open or not.

All that would collapse should the loan guarantee package fail.

A similar fate may be awaiting the Summer Project. South Carolina Electric & Gas has pledged to build the two new reactors there without federal subsidies or guarantees. But it does require ratepayer funding up front. That includes an apparent need for substantial financial participation from Duke Power and/or Progress Energy customers in North Carolina who have been targeted to receive some of the electricity projected to come from Summer.

But resistance in the Tar Heel State is fierce. NCWarn and other consumer/anti-nuclear organizations are geared up to fight the necessary rate hikes tooth and nail. Should they win—and in a troubled economy there is much going for them—nuclear opponents could well take Summer down before it gets seriously off the ground.

Progress already has its hands full with a double-reactor project proposed for Levy County, Florida. Massive rate hikes granted for CWIP by the Florida legislature have ignited tremendous public anger. Unlike Vogtle and Summer, Levy County has yet to get NRC approval.

Progress is also over its head at Crystal River. Upwards of $2 billion has been poured into botched repairs at this north Florida reactor. Odds are strong it will never reopen.

The same may be true at California’s San Onofre, now shut due to problems with its steam generator tubing, a generic flaw that could affect up to about half the currently licensed 104 US reactors. Nukes at Vermont Yankee, New York’s Indian Point and Pilgrim, in Massachusetts, among others, are also under fierce attack.

These elderly reactors have been routinely issued extended operating licenses by the NRC.

But as their physical deterioration accelerates, official licenses may now be beside the point for these old reactors….and for new nukes as well. The major financial trade publications such as Bloomberg’s, Fortune et. al., now regularly concede that increased efficiency and renewable projects are cheaper, faster to build and more profitable than new reactors. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency, could conceivably pick up the corpse and try to build new reactors, as it did at the dawn of the nuclear age, when no private utilities would touch the untested but clearly dubious promise of the “Peaceful Atom.”

In the decades since, the promise of electricity “too cheap to meter” has proven to be a tragic myth.

And all these years later, the financial pitfalls of what may be America’s last two proposed reactor projects may write the final epitaph for an industry whose fiscal failures are in the multi-billions.

At the end of the road, it will still take citizen activism to finally bury this industry. But we may be very close to making it happen, and now is a critical time to push extra hard.


Harvey Wasserman, a co-founder of Musicians United for Safe Energy, is editing the nukefree.org web site. He is the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He can be reached at: Windhw@aol.com

[Ben D]

Plans For New Reactors Worldwide

Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily but not dramatically, with over 60 reactors under construction in 14 countries.
Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region, though there are major plans for new units in the USA and Russia.

Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading.

Plant life extension programs are maintaining capacity, in USA particularly.

Today there are some 435 nuclear power reactors operating in 30 countries plus Taiwan, with a combined capacity of over 370 GWe. In 2010 these provided 2630 billion kWh, about 14% of the world's electricity.

Over 60 power reactors are currently being constructed in 14 countries plus Taiwan (see Table below), notably China, South Korea and Russia.

[seemslikeadream]

California nuclear plant shut indefinitely amid hunt to find cause of problems
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 8:55 PM EDT, Fri April 6, 2012

The power plant has been shut down since this winter, when a small amount of radioactive gas escaped.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The San Onofre nuclear plant has been shut down since radioactive gas escaped
Officials have said there's no harm to the public health, but can't identify the cause
The head of the NRC says the plant won't restart until a cause and plan is put forward

(CNN) -- A large Southern California nuclear plant is out of commission indefinitely, and will remain so until there is an understanding of what caused problems at two of its generators and an effective plan to address the issues, the nation's top nuclear regulator said Friday.
Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, refused to give a timetable as to when the San Onofre nuclear plant could resume operation. He said only that his agency had "set some firm conditions" as to when that could happen.
"We won't make a decision (to approve the facility's restart) unless we're satisfied that public health and safety will be protected," Jaczko told reporters. "They have to demonstrate to us that they understand the causes, and ... that they have a plan to address them."
The power plant has been shut down since this winter, when a small amount of radioactive gas escaped from a steam generator during a water leak. At the time, federal regulators said there was no threat to public health, though they could not identify how much gas leaked or exactly why it had happened.
The water leak occurred in thousands of tubes that carry heated water from the reactor core through the plant's steam generators.
Leaks occur periodically in older units, but plant owner Southern California Edison replaced the four steam generators at San Onofre in 2010 and 2011 as part of a $680 million project. They are in units 2 and 3 of the nuclear facility; unit 1 went out of service in 1992.
Each of the 65-foot-tall, 640-ton generators -- built by Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries -- are packed with thousands of narrow tubes that carry hot, pressurized water from the reactors. The heat produces steam in a separate loop that drives the plant's turbines and generators.
"Tubes are vibrating and rubbing against adjacent tubes and against support structures inside the steam generators," the agency noted.
Eight of the more than 9,700 tubes in one of the unit 3 generators failed a pressure test, while six tubes in unit 2's reactor needed to be plugged, the NRC has found. Another 186 tubes in unit 2, which was shut down for refueling at the time of the leak, were plugged "as a precautionary measure."
In addition to driving the turbines to create electricity, the steam generators are "one of the barriers between the radioactive material in the reactor core and ultimately the external environment," Jaczko noted.
Located near San Clemente, the San Onofre nuclear plant's twin reactors are "Southern California's largest and most reliable sources of electricity," according to Southern California Edison's website. When operational, the facility -- which is owned by that utility, San Diego Gas and Electric, and the city of Riverside -- supplies power for 1.4 million households at any given time.

[seemslikeadream]

Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.

Fukushima Daiichi Site: Cesium-137 is 85 times greater than at Chernobyl Accident
April 3, 2012

[*Ed: This page was updated on 4/5/12 to reflect corrected calculations]

Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr. Mitsuhei Murata, was invited to speak at the Public Hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012, on the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident. Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air. This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421 (396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375).
I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy, for an explanation of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.
I received an astounding response from Mr. Alvarez [updated 4/5/12]:
In recent times, more information about the spent fuel situation at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site has become known. It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4, which contain roughly 37 million curies (~1.4E+18 Becquerel) of long-lived radioactivity. The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.
The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters. Despite the enormous destruction cased at the Da–Ichi site, dry casks holding a smaller amount of spent fuel appear to be unscathed.
Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19 Bq) of long-lived radioactivity. About 134 million curies is Cesium-137 — roughly 85 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).
It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet.
Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.
There was a Nuclear Security Summit Conference in Seoul on March 26 and 27, and Ambassador Murata and I made a concerted effort to find someone to inform the participants from 54 nations of the potential global catastrophe of reactor unit 4. We asked several participants to share the idea of an Independent Assessment team comprised of a broad group of international experts to deal with this urgent issue.
I would like to introduce Ambassador Murata’s letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to convey this urgent message and also his letter to Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda for Japanese readers. He emphasized in the statement that we should bring human wisdom to tackle this unprecedented challenge.
It seems to us that the Nuclear Security Summit was focused on the North Korea nuclear issue and on the issue of common security from a terrorist attack. Our appeal on the need for the independent assessment at Reactor 4 was regarded as less urgent. We predicted this outcome in light of the nature of the Summit. I suppose most participants fully understood the potential disaster which will affect their countries. Nevertheless, they decided not to raise the delicate issue, perhaps in order to not ruffle their diplomatic relationship with Japan.
I was moved by Ambassador Murata’s courage in pressing this issue in Japan. I know how difficult it is for a former career diplomat to do this, especially in my country. Current and former government officials might be similarly restricted in the scope of their actions, as Ambassador Murata is, but it is their responsibility to take a stand for the benefit of our descendants for centuries to come—to pass on a world safer than our ancestors passed us.
If Japanese government leaders do not recognize the risk their nation faces, how could the rest of us be persuaded of the looming disaster? And if the rest of us do not acknowledge the catastrophe we collectively face, who will be the one to act?

Tokyo, March 25, 2012
Dear Secretary-General,
Honorable Ban Ki-moon,
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude for your considerate letter dated 2 March, 2012. Your moral support for a United Nations Ethics Summit will remain a constant source of encouragement for my activities.
Please allow me to pay a tribute to your great contribution to strengthen nuclear safety and security. The current Nuclear Summit in Seoul is no doubt greatly benefiting from the high-level meeting you convened last September.
I was asked to make a statement at the public hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 23. I raised the crucial problem. of N0.4 reactor of Fukushima containing1535 fuel rods. It could be fatally damaged by continuing aftershocks. Moreover, 50 meters away from it exists a common cooling pool for 6 reactors containing 6375 fuel rods!
It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on NO.4 reactor. This is confirmed by most reliable experts like Dr. Arnie Gundersen or Dr. Fumiaki Koide.
Please allow me to inform you of an initiative being taken by a former UN official who is endeavoring to have the Nuclear Security Summit take up the crucial problem. of N0.4 reactor of Fukushima. He is pursuing the establishment of an independent assessment team. I think his efforts are very significant, because it is indispensable to draw the attention of world leaders to this vital issue.
I am cooperating with him, writing to some of my Korean acquaintances that this issue deserves the personal attention of President Lee Myung-bak. I have written today to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. I asked him to consider taking the initiative of mobilizing human wisdom on the widest scope to cope with the Fukushima reactor No.4 problem, fully taking into account the above-mentioned “independent assessment team”.
The world has been made so fragile and vulnerable. The role of the United Nations is increasingly vital. I wish you the best of luck in your noble mission. Please accept, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the assurances of my highest consideration.
Mitsuhei Murata
Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal
Executive Director, the Japan Society for Global System and Ethics

[JackRiddler]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/16/ ... nics/print


April 16, 2012

The Perils of Technological Hubris
Nuclear Titanics

by KARL GROSSMAN


On the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, The Japan Times yesterday ran an editorial titled “The Titanic and the Nuclear Fiasco” which stated: “Presenting technology as completely safe, trustworthy or miraculous may seem to be a thing of the past, but the parallels between the Titanic and Japan’s nuclear power industry could not be clearer.”

“Japan’s nuclear power plants were, like the Titanic, advertised as marvels of modern science that were completely safe. Certain technologies, whether they promise to float a luxury liner or provide clean energy, can never be made entirely safe,” it said.

It quoted from a piece by Joseph Conrad written after the Titanic sank in which he noted the “chastening influence it should have on the self-confidence of mankind.” The Japan Times urged: “That lesson should be applied to all ‘unsinkable’ undertakings that might profit a few by imperiling the majority of others.” http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ed20120415a1.html

Yes, the same kind of baloney behind the claim that the Titanic was unsinkable is behind the puffery that nuclear power plants are safe. The nuclear power promoters are still saying that despite the sinking of atomic Titanics: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants.

In fact, underneath the PR offensive are government documents admitting that nuclear power plants are deadly dangerous.

The first analysis of the consequences of a nuclear plant accident was done in 1957 by

Brookhaven National Laboratory, established a decade before by the since disbanded U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to develop civilian uses of nuclear technology. Its “WASH-740” report said a major nuclear plant accident could result in “3,400 killed and about 43,000 injured” and property damage “could be about 7 billion dollars.” However, this analysis was based on nuclear power plants a fifth to a tenth of the size of those being constructed in the 1960s.

So Brookhaven National Laboratory conducted a second study in the mid-60s, “WASH-740-update.” It stated repeatedly that for a major nuclear plant accident, “the possible size of such a disaster might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania.” It increased the number of deaths to 45,000, injuries to 100,000 and property damage up to $280 billion.

Then, in 1982, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories did a study they titled “Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences” that analyzed the accident consequences for every nuclear plant in the U.S. It projected, for example, for a meltdown with a breach of containment at the Indian Point 2 plant just north of New York City: 50,000 “peak early fatalities; 167,000 “peak early injuries;” 14,000 “peak cancer deaths;” and $314 billion in “scaled costs” of property damage in, it noted, “1980 dollars.”

As to likelihood, in 1985 there was a formal written exchange between U.S. Congressman Edward Markey’s House Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations and the NRC in which the panel asked: “What does the commission and NRC staff believe the likelihood of a severe core melt accident to be in the next twenty years for those reactors now operating and those expected to operate during that time?”

The NRC response: “In a population of 100 reactors operating over a period of 20 years, the crude cumulative probability of such an accident would be 45%.” But then it went on that this might be off by “a factor of about 10 above and below.” Thus, the chances of a meltdown during a 20-year period among 100 U.S. nuclear plant plants (there are 104 today) would be about 50-50.

These are not good odds for disaster.

Steven Starr, a board member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, speaks further of the “fatal and deadly flaw” of nuclear power “that cannot be remedied by any technological fix or redesign. Nuclear power plants manufacture poisons thousands and millions of times more deadly to life than any other industrial process, and some of these poisons last for hundreds of millennia, and thus have great potential to become ubiquitous in the global environment.” And the “clear evidence” is that it is “beyond the means of the nuclear industry to keep these poisons contained during even the average lifespan of a nuclear reactor. It is beyond belief that anyone can promise that we can contain them for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.”

The current issue of Popular Mechanics features an article “Why Titanic Still Matters” by Jim Meigs, the magazine’s editor and chief, which states: “In one respect, little has changed. As the recent loss of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia demonstrates, bad decision making can overcome even robust engineering. Virtually all man-made disasters—including the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the space shuttle Challenger explosion, and the BP oil spill—can be traced to the same human failings that doomed Titanic. After 100 years, we must still remember—and, too often, relearn—the grim lessons of that night.”

Indeed, human error is a big part of what can go wrong at a nuclear power plant. However, even without human error, nuclear power is fraught with the potential for immense catastrophe. A mechanical malfunction simple or complex, an earthquake, a tornado, a tsunami, a hurricane, a flood, a terrorist attack, these and other threats can result in catastrophe. Nuclear power plants and the process of atomic fission in them are inherently dangerous—at a scale of technological disaster that is unparalleled.

Some 1,500 souls were lost with the Titanic. For a nuclear plant accident, it is anticipated that tens of thousands could die—and the most recent estimates by independent scientists is that a million have died as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. It is expected that even more will perish as a result of the six-nuclear plant Fukushima catastrophe.

And it’s not a ship sinking to the bottom of the sea but a part of the Earth rendered uninhabitable for millennia—as a huge area around Chernobyl has been, and now a large area around Fukushima will be. They become “sacrifice zones.”

And what for? In 1912 there was no other way to cross an ocean than on a ship—there were no airplanes flying passengers from continent to continent. But now there are numerous and truly safe, clean energy technologies available that render nuclear power totally unnecessary. Thus, we can avoid sinking with the atomic Titanics which the nuclear power promoters insist we board.


Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College of New York, is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet (Common Courage Press) and wrote and presented the TV program Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens (www.envirovideo.com). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.

[seemslikeadream]

Sen. Wyden Sounds The Alarm on Fukushima

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is the catastrophe that everyone wishes would just go away. After all, it's out of the headlines, so surely it's not such a big deal a whole year later, right?

Wrong. The Unit #4 spent fuel pool (SFP) at Fukushima is in grave danger of collapsing. This SFP is a matter of a few feet from the ocean. Only a modest earthquake would be needed for the structure to collapse, and if this should happen a much larger explosion and fire, and a radiological release far more vast than any that has occurred so far is almost certain.

Many people, including experts like Arnold Gunderson, Chairman Jaczko, and interested observers such as myself have been very worried about this very possibility for much of the past year. Now, according to Reuters, Senator Wyden of Oregon has declared that the situation at Fukushima is "far worse than he expected". Thus, he's raised the alarm at the diplomatic level in hopes that the world can collectively preempt even more devastating planetary radioactive contamination than has already occurred. He is making a push for the nations of the world to collaborate on this problem, Manhattan project style, to secure the nuclear material in SFP #4 at Fukushima before it's too late.

This is an important problem because this SFP that's in jeopardy holds the equivalent of thousands of bombs worth of nuclear material. If SFP #4 goes bad, we're talking some very serious nuclear fallout worldwide.

before it's too late?

[Simulist]

We had just finished watching a Jason Bourne movie for the umpteenth time, and when I turned the player off I saw cable news video showing boats and bridges being devastated by the earthquake-engendering tsunami last year in Japan.

Mere moments later I said out loud, "All those nuclear power plants they've got over there! This could be a global catastrophe..."

I'm frequently wrong, and I really wish right now that I had been then.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/04/1 ... ear-waste/


Road workers began vomiting and were hospitalized Wednesday after being exposed to suspected nuclear material, unearthed during a highway upgrade in Australia.

Meanwhile the country's nuclear authority was scrambling for answers after the apparent radioactive waste was uncovered on the Pacific Highway south of Port Macquarie, in New South Wales.

The material, said to include cesium, is believed to have been buried after a truck carrying radioactive isotopes from Sydney's Lucas Heights nuclear reactor crashed in the area in December 1980, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph reported. The isotopes are believed to have been destined for the US.

The upgrade's project manager, Bob Higgins, said the workers became sick after unearthing a strange clay-like material, according to Australian Associated Press.

"As we've taken down the cutting there we exposed the face of the existing material [and] came across a clay material that when it's exposed to air it gets an orange streak through it," he told ABC Radio.

"There were a number of workers that felt a little bit of nausea and there was a bit of vomiting when they were in close proximity."

Specialists in the area were assessing what to do with the radioactive materials, and if they pose any further risk.

And in scenes akin to a Hollywood disaster film, officials from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANTSO) -- the government agency behind the Lucas Heights reactor -- were digging through 30-year-old files for information.

"We are currently going through our archives to find out ourselves," a spokesman said about the details of the 1980 crash. "We're also ringing old-timers," who used to work at the reactor, he added.

But if conspiracy websites are to be believed they may not find much.

Several anti-nuclear blogs claim at the time 16 people near the crash site suffered from radioactive poisoning and accused ANSTO's predecessor the Australian Atomic Energy Commission and the then Health Commission of a cover-up.

[crikkett]

Scare tactics, especially the headline. Fukishima put them in a death spiral already. This is an opportunity for Japan to show the world how things can really be done. Crash program for renewables, etc. They can be the Iceland of renewable energy.

Or the Cuba

"We are currently going through our archives to find out ourselves," a spokesman said about the details of the 1980 crash. "We're also ringing old-timers," who used to work at the reactor, he added.

THIS is what pensions are for!

[seemslikeadream]

Fukushima is Falling Apart: Are You Ready?
Posted by Michael Vara on April 22, 2012 at 1:56amView Blog

Thirteen months have passed since the Fukushima reactors exploded, and a U.S. Senator finally got off his ass and went to Japan to see what is going on over there.
What he saw was horrific.
And now he is saying that we are in big trouble.
See the letter he sent to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Ichiro Fujisaki, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and NRC’s Chairman Gregory Jaczko here.
But what is so ironic about this is that we have been in this heap of trouble since March of 2011. March 17th, to be exact, when the plume of radioactive materials began bombarding the west coast of California.
And Oregon. And Washington. And British Columbia. And later Maine, Europe, and everywhere in between.
Independent researchers, nuke experts, and scientists, from oceanography to entomology and everywhere in between, having been trying to sound the alarm ever since.
The scientists most upset are those who have studied the effects of radiation on health. I’ll say it again, so its really clear: we are in big trouble.
The most preliminary reports of soil contamination are starting to come in from the USGS, who has seemed reluctant to share this information. Los Angeles, California, Portland, Oregon, and Boulder, Colorado, so far have the highest radioactive particle contamination out of the entire US.
That being said, every single city tested across the country showed contamination from Fukushima. What is even more alarming, however, about the numbers coming in, is that they are from samples taken April 5th, of last year.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, has only recently confirmed that there were three meltdowns, and they have been ongoing, unabated, for thirteen months, and no effort has been made to contain them.
Technology has to be developed/invented to deal with the melted out corium under the reactors. Until then, they will keep doing what they have been doing.
TEPCO just keeps dumping water on them, after which they let it pour into the ocean, and steam up through the ground, every second of every day.
The jet stream, and a highly dynamic portion of our atmosphere called the troposphere, have been swirling around massive amounts of radioactive particles and settling them out, mostly in rain, over the entire northern hemisphere, especially the west coast of North America, from Alaska down to Baja and even further.
Iodine, cesium, strontium, plutonium, uranium, and a host of other fission products have been coming directly from Japan to the west coast for thirteen months.
Maybe you have heard about sick seals, polar bears, tainted fish, mutations in dandelions and fruits and vegetables, possibly even animals already, and seaweed.
In fact the kelp from Corona del Mar contained 40,000,000 bcq/kg of radioactive iodine, as reported in Scientific American several weeks ago.
If you don’t know your becquerels, its a lot. That’s what your pacific fish feed on. And that was only ONE isotope reported. There were up to 1600 different isotopes that have been floating around in our air, pouring out of the reactors, and steaming out of the ground, every second of every day, for 13 months.
And there has been silence from our mainstream media, for which the depths of depravity are so severe I will devote an entire article just to the “why” at a future time.
But back to the research: reports in the past week indicate the pollen in southern California is radioactive now too, and it is flying around, and if you live there and go outside, you are breathing it in. And so are your children.
Along with fission products blowing over from Japan. And radiation in your drinking water. And in your rain. And in the fish you are eating. And your vegetables. And the milk supply. And its happening every second, of every day. For 13 months. Are you starting to see a problem here?
Problem is, that’s not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is what Senator Wyden is all bent out of shape about, even though independent researchers and nuke experts have been warning about this for a year.
And that is that the Reactor #4 building is on the verge of collapsing.
Seismicity standards rate the building at a zero, meaning even a small earthquake could send it into a heap of rubble. And sitting at the top of the building, in a pool that is cracked, leaking, and precarious even without an earthquake, are 1565 fuel rods (give or take a few), some of them “fresh fuel” that was ready to go into the reactor on the morning of March 11th when the earthquake and tsunami hit.
If they are MOX fuel, containing 6% plutonium, one fuel rod has the potential to kill 2.89 billion people. If this pool collapses, as Senator Wyden is now saying too, we would face a mass extinction event from the release of radiation in those rods.
That is, if we aren’t in one already. Nuke experts like Arnie Gundersen and Helen Caldicott are prepared to evacuate their families to the southern hemisphere if that happens. It is that serious.
So now you know, if you didn’t before. We are in big trouble.
Get informed. Start paying attention to this. Every single statement in this article is verifiable, and I will continue to verify and validate the seriousness of this situation at every opportunity I have.
This may be the most important thing you ever pay attention to, for the sake of your family, friends, your neighbors, every one you know

[Nordic]

What the fuck are we all supposed to do, move to the Southern Hemisphere? Just write off the Northern Hemisphere and abandon it forever?

I had this strong feeling years ago that that's what we should do anyway. Maybe it was just one of my clairvoyant things.

[eyeno]

What the fuck are we all supposed to do, move to the Southern Hemisphere? Just write off the Northern Hemisphere and abandon it forever?

I had this strong feeling years ago that that's what we should do anyway. Maybe it was just one of my clairvoyant things.

Nordic considering where you live (everybody else too no matter where you live) you might want to google "turmeric radiation protection" and check it out. Rosemary herb too. Neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock among many others say that Turmeric Root has amazing protective properties against radiation. Half a teaspoon a couple of times a day could make the difference between getting cancer or not getting cancer.