Identity, much of what Jim wrote is bullshit. I'm too tired now to address all he's gotten wrong, but will. He is either completely naive as to how a reactor and its spent fuel is cooled or the temperatures of straight-through, un-cooled water being discharged.
The warm water's discharge always impact negatively on fish, even after being cooled.
That said, the image looks to me not to be boiling water but eddies and whirlpools created by the plants discharge. It is entirely possible some of the discharge water boiled.
He's also wrong about his claims of no incidents of Thryoid cancer, there or here.
Iamwhomiam » Mon Feb 22, 2016 9:47 pm wrote:Identity, much of what Jim wrote is bullshit. I'm too tired now to address all he's gotten wrong, but will. He is either completely naive as to how a reactor and its spent fuel is cooled or the temperatures of straight-through, un-cooled water being discharged.
The warm water's discharge always impact negatively on fish, even after being cooled.
That said, the image looks to me not to be boiling water but eddies and whirlpools created by the plants discharge. It is entirely possible some of the discharge water boiled.
He's also wrong about his claims of no incidents of Thryoid cancer, there or here.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to when you mention "all he's gotten wrong," and "much of what Jim wrote is bullshit," so by all means go ahead and educate us when you are rested and have ample time to devote to your analysis, but please be more specific than you've been here. Otherwise, I and perhaps others will be as confused as they are now reading your words,
"He's also wrong about his claims of no incidents of Thryoid cancer, there or here"
when Jim actually says in his comments,
In Japan the rate or thyroid cancer in children is about 8 times normal. So we know that about 8 out of every 9 cases of thyroid cancer are a result of the accident. THE PROBLEM IS THAT THERE IS NO WAY TO DISTINGUISH NATURAL CANCERS (THAT WOULD HAVE OCCURRED WITHOUT THE ACCIDENT) FROM THOSE CAUSED BY IT. This is why governments like the USA very aggressively prevent the collection of statistics: they know that, without good data, it's impossible to estimate how many cancers were caused.
Am I misunderstanding something here, or are you?
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition. It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.
Richard Smith, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal 1991-2004, in a published letter to Nature
Yes, Identity, it seems I have. I should have been more careful while reading and provided what it was he got wrong. That said, any who choose to protest nuclear power is an ally of mine.
I'll need to refresh my memory and will reread the comments. Initially I did not read all of them, but will now.
Allow me to apologize for wrongly claiming he stated there were no incidents of Thyroid cancers in NA or Japan. I have no idea how I got that because no one wrote any such thing. Skimming the comments last night, I though he had. Please accept my apology.
We all should be aware of the term "Hot" when used to described radioactivity. Hot in this sense is taken to mean "highly radioactive." Highly radioactive environments can also be "Hot" regarding temperature. Earlier I explained how the discharge water could actually boil, although I believe the author misunderstood and confused the term, in this case thinking only of heat.
Nuclear power is, by a massive margin, the most severe pollution known to Man. Most toxins, even dioxins can be biodegraded. Even plastics break down after a measly few hundred years. But some radioactive isotopes have half lives measured in 10's of thousands of years.
There is no operational cooling of waters pouring over the melted cores or spent rod storage ponds at Fukushima Daiichi. Directly from the melted cores and storage ponds, the extremely hot water in temperature and radioactivity, pours into the ocean daily.
So when Jim says, "The contamination is radioactive isotopes and not HEAT," he is wrong. It is indeed both. Highly radioactive water is hot, boiling hot. Radioactive water is radioactive because it is laden with radioactive isotopes.
While Jim is correct about nuclear power being the worst pollutant, he is incorrect when he says plastics can be biodegraded and dioxins being biodegradable. No plastic is actually biodegradable, it will only break down into tiny bits of polymers. Considering only a few of the 200+ chemical compounds in the dioxin family of chemicals are capable of being biodegraded through bacterial anaerobic digestion, many more are as persistent as radioactive isotopes. Dioxins, too, are measured in PPT, parts per trillion, because they are so dangerous. There is no safe level for humans to exposure to dioxins. http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Dioxin But there are safe levels of human exposure to certain forms of deadly radioactivity.
I should have included "Most toxins" in bold, but there are so many toxins that cannot be it would not be practical to list here all those that can and those that can't be biodegraded. We also have hundreds of new chemicals being added to the inventory that we have never examined for their persistence or toxicity.
The ideas that Fukushima added significant amounts of heat to the ocean and that Fukushima caused the California drought are so ludicrous...
It is disingenuous of Jim to say that after five years of pumping boiling hot water into the Pacific it has not added significant amounts of heat to the ocean. It has warmed and irradiated a great swath of the sea nearest Fukushima, irradiated it forever, and has killed millions if not billions of organisms, which it will continue to do for eons to come. But he's dead-on right about Fukushima not causing the California drought.
Radioactive isotopes act chemically the same as important nutrients (although being atomically different) and get picked up and stored/used in organisms exactly the same.
Now having read all the comments, I better understand his analogy. I would not have chosen to correlate ingestion of radioactive particles with the body's use of nutrients.
What is particularly bizarre is his relating the close range deadly penetration of an exposed body to high concentrations of radiation compared to one's exposure to radioactive isotopes, which he claims presents no danger to humans. Clearly he understands the dangers posed by RA isotopes when they've been ingested occurs from their decay. He says so himself.
Ironically (a form of real "natural justice") one of the species most likely to be harmed is Homo (so called) "sapiens". Radioactive isotopes act chemically the same as important nutrients (although being atomically different) and get picked up and stored/used in organisms exactly the same. The critical difference is that radioactive isotopes break down and when they do they release radiation. The critical point is that this radiation is released inside the body.
The difference between radioactivity released in a nuclear accident and radioactive isotopes (the ones that are chemically equivalent to nutrients) is that radioactivity only affects those close to the point of release. If you don't work at or live very close to the accident, you're not at risk. It's radioactive isotopes that get picked up in the wind and carried hundreds or thousands of miles away. Then EVEN IF IN VERY LOW CONCENTRATIONS they get absorbed by microbes who concentrate them. Then a bigger microbe or a very small animal eats them and, because it's eating them continuously and storing the isotopes, further concentrates them. And so on up the food chain for many steps. And each step concentrated them by roughly a factor of 10. Go up 6 steps and the concentration may be a million times as great.
This is why the media ignores radioactive isotopes and concentrates on radioactivity.
Even at the top of the food chain there won't be a "die off" because radioactive isotopes are like a lottery ticket: you may get "lucky" and get cancer or you may not. Most likely not. But in humans a 1% or 0.1% or even 0.001% cancer rate is not acceptable, because it would translate into many thousands of deaths.
It seems to me that Jim thinks radioactive isotopes are not radioactive until they decay after some time, but they are always emitting electrons and always, until their complete decay, remain radioactive.
Is Jim under the impression that only short-lived microbes absorb radioactive isotopes, and that's the only way a human can ingest them, through the food chain? It seems so. If an RA isotope can be ingested by microscopic microbes, how is it that humans or larger life forms cannot, unless they eat them in their food?
While humans can tolerate low exposure to RA isotopic decay, even the slightest bit can and often does cause chromosomal damage and therefore also genetic damage. He does recognize this, but says really dumb things, like when he responds to another commentator:
Most types of radioactivity do not even penetrate your skin.
Thank you Identity, for pointing out my rather gross error. I do try to be accurate. I cannot figure how I could have been so wrong, but surely, I was. I appreciate your input. Regarding nuclear power, Jim's goal and mine are the same, even if he's gotten some of his facts wrong. Of course, that never happens to me!
Thank you Identity, for pointing out my rather gross error. I do try to be accurate. I cannot figure how I could have been so wrong, but surely, I was. I appreciate your input. Regarding nuclear power, Jim's goal and mine are the same, even if he's gotten some of his facts wrong. Of course, that never happens to me!
Thanks for responding in greater detail, Iam; also thanks for the apologies (though unnecessary), and happy to see that you and Jim share the same goals (even if you don't always seem to agree with his expression of the finer details...). I think the most important thing he draws attention to is the degree to which the nuclear weapons industry is dependent on the nuclear energy industry for a cheap(er) source of plutonium via spent fuel.
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition. It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.
Richard Smith, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal 1991-2004, in a published letter to Nature
Dr. Tetsunari Iida is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP) in Japan. As such, one might have expected a recent presentation he gave in the UK within the hallowed halls of the House of Commons, to have focused on Japan’s capacity to replace the electricity once generated by its now mainly shuttered nuclear power plants, with renewable energy.
But Dr lida’s passionate polemic was not about the power of the sun, but the power of propaganda. March 11, 2011 might have been the day the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. But it was also the beginning of the Great Japan Cover-Up.
On the ISEP website, Iida extols the coming of the Fourth Revolution, following on from those in agriculture, industry and IT. “This fourth revolution will be an energy revolution, a green industrial revolution, and a decentralized network revolution”, he writes.
But in person, Iida was most interested in conveying the extent to which the Japanese people were lied to before, during and after the devastating nuclear disaster at Fukushima-Daiichi, precipitated on that same fateful day and by the deadly duo of earthquake and tsunami.
“Shinzo Abe says ‘everything is under control'”, said Iida, speaking at an event hosted by Nuclear Free Local Authorities, Green Cross, and Nuclear Consulting Group in late January. It was headlined by the former Japan Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, who was at the helm when the triple disasters struck. “Yes – under the control of the media!”
A trial for Tepco like post-war Tokyo Trials
The media may have played the willing government handmaiden in reassuring the public with falsehoods, but in July 2012, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission concluded that the disaster was really no accident but “man-made“. It came about, the researchers said, as a result of “collusion” between the government, regulators and the nuclear industry, in this case, Tepco.
“There should be a Tepco trial like the post-war Tokyo Trials”, Iida said, referring to the post World War II war crimes trial in which 28 Japanese were tried, seven of whom were subsequently executed by hanging.
Hope for such accountability – without advocating hanging – is fleeting at best. In 2011, while addressing a conference in Berlin hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, I suggested the Tepco officials should be sent to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, (a body the US still conveniently refuses to recognize) to answer for what clearly amounts to crimes against humanity.
The remark caused a bit of a stir and earnest questions about the mechanism by which Tepco could be brought there. Needless to say, nothing of the kind ever happened, or is likely to.
Instead, the Abe’s government’s preferred tactic is to go full out to restart reactors and move everybody back home as soon as possible, as if nothing serious had happened. Just scoop off a little topsoil, cart it away somewhere else and, Abracadabra! Everything is clean and safe again!
Normalizing radiation, a policy and now a practice
Of course radiological decontamination is not that easy. Nor is it reliable. It is more like “pushing contamination from one spot to the next”, as independent nuclear expert, Mycle Schneider describes it. And radiation does not remain obediently in one place, either.
“The mountains and forests that cannot even be vaguely decontaminated, will serve as a permanent source of new contamination, each rainfall washing out radiation and bringing it down from the mountains to the flat lands”, Schneider explained. Birds move around. Animals eat and excrete radioactive plant life. Radiation gets swept out to sea. It is a cycle with no end.
Nevertheless, efforts are underway to repopulate stricken areas, particularly in Fukushima Prefecture. It’s a policy, and now a practice, of ‘normalizing’ radiation standards, to tell people that everything is alright, when clearly, there is no medical or scientific evidence to support this. And it was an approach already firmly and institutionally in place, even on March 11, 2011 as the Fukushima disaster first struck and much of the decision-making was left to individual judgement.
“We were told that evacuating poses a greater risk than radiation,” recalls Hasegawa Kenji, a farmer from Iitate, a village situated 45 kilometers from the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Featured in the Vice documentary ‘Alone In The Zone‘, Hasegawa criticizedIitate’s mayor for making what he called a terrible mistake.
“Even when the scientists told the mayor that Iitate was dangerous, he ignored them all. He brought in experts from around the country who preached about how safe it was here. They said we had nothing to worry about. They kept telling us that. Eventually the villagers fell for it and began to relax. And the mayor rejected the idea of evacuating even more. That’s why nobody left, even though the radiation levels were so high.”
The nuclear industry did not tell the public the truth
The confusion surrounding evacuation was so profound that, as Zhang et al. noted in a September 11, 2014 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health: “Unclear evacuation instructions caused numerous residents to flee to the northwestern zone where radiation levels were even higher.”
All par for the course, said Iida. “I must emphasize, the people in the nuclear industry did not tell the public the truth and keep us informed.”
Next in the ‘normalization’ process came the decision to raise allowable radiation exposure standards to 20 millisieverts of radiation a year, up from the prior level of 2 mSv a year. The globally-accepted limit for radiation absorption is 1 mSv a year.
This meant that children were potentially being exposed to the same levels of radiation that are permitted for adult nuclear power plant workers in Europe. Some officials even argued that zones where rates were as high as 100 mSv a year should be considered ‘safe’. Writing on his blog, anti-pollution New Orleans-based attorney, Stuart Smith, observed wryly:
“Instead of taking corrective measures to protect its people, Japan has simply increased internationally recognized exposure limits. It seems that the priority – as we’ve seen in so many other industrial disasters in so many other countries – is to protect industry and limit its liability rather than to ensure the long-term health and well being of the masses. Go figure.”
The great repatriation lie
All of this set the perfect stage for the Great Repatriation Lie. “It’s the big cover-up,” Iida told his Westminster audience. “People are being told it’s quite safe to have a little [radiation] exposure.”
Indeed, at a recent conferences of prefectural governors, young people in particular were urged to return to Fukushima. “If you come to live with us in Fukushima and work there, that will facilitate its post-disaster reconstruction and help you lead a meaningful life”, said Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori.
Young people in Japan, however, appear not to be cooperating. Where evacuees are returning, the majority are senior citizens, who have less to lose from a health perspectiveand are more traditionally tied to the land and their ancestral burial grounds.
“They want to die where they were born and not in an unfamiliar place”, said Yoshiko Aoki, an evacuee herself who now works with others, and who also spoke at the London conference.
All of this impacts revenue from the inhabitants’ tax which constitutes 24.3% of all local tax sources and is collected by both prefectures and municipalities. It is levied on both individuals and corporations but with the bulk of revenue coming from individuals.
Senior citizens who have retired do not contribute to income tax, so the onus is on governors and mayors to lure as many working people as possible back to their towns and regions in order to effectively finance local public services.
Radioactive areas are hardest hit economically
Late last year, the Asahi Shimbun looked at tax revenues in the 42 municipalities affected by the triple 2011 disasters of earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima meltdowns.
Unsurprisingly, the areas hardest hit by radiological contamination had suffered the biggest economic blows. Those areas free from radioactive fallout could simply rebuild after the tsunami and earthquake, and had consequently recovered economically, some even to better than pre-3/11 levels.
“On the other end of the scale, Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, marked the biggest decreasing rate – 72.9 percent – in tax revenues for fiscal 2014”, the Asahi Shimbunreported. “All residents of the town near the crippled nuclear plant remain in evacuation. Although tax payments from companies increased from decontamination work and other public works projects, income taxes paid by residents and fixed asset taxes have declined.”
To return or not to return is the question of the hour – or it will be come March 2017, when the Abe government has announced it will revoke many evacuation orders. At that point, government compensation to evacuees would be lifted, putting them under financial pressure to return. Cue more confusion.
People are confronted, said Iida, with “two extreme views, either that it’s very dangerous or quite safe. So it’s very difficult to decide which is the truth and it has been left up to individuals.”
One of those towns that could be declared ‘safe’ is Tomioka, Japan’s Pripyat, formerly home to close to 16,000 people but now uninhabited.
“It’s like a human experiment, that’s how we feel,” said Aoki in London, herself a former Tomioka resident. “The Governor of Fukushima spoke about a safe Fukushima. We want it to become safe, but our thoughts and reality are not one and the same.”
Observes Kyoto University professor of nuclear physics, Koide Hiroaki, in the Vice film, who has been outspoken for decades against the continued use of nuclear energy:
“Once you enter a radiation controlled area, you aren’t supposed to drink water, let alone eat anything. The idea that somebody”, he pauses, ” … is living in a place like that is unimaginable.”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
Nearly five years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the plant's operator has admitted that its staff should have reported the meltdowns almost immediately, stressing that TEPCO employees failed to follow damage assessment guidelines. According to Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) Disaster Management Manual, a reactor must be declared “in meltdown” if 5 percent or more of its fuel rods are determined to be “damaged.”
TEPCO staff knew just days after the disaster that 55 percent of the fuel rod assemblies of Reactor No. 1 and 25 percent of those at Reactor No. 3 were “damaged,” based on the levels of radiation detected, TEPCO spokeswoman Yukako Handa told the Japan Times.
“Executives in charge of public relations at the time of the accident were not aware of the assessment criteria written in the Disaster Management Manual,” Handa said, adding that TEPCO will investigate why the employees failed to follow the guidelines.
“They believed there was no clear definition of a ‘meltdown,’ so they didn’t make any clear remarks about one,'” she said.
Handa's Wednesday statement was the first confirmation of the existence of a Disaster Management Manual.
Instead of announcing the situation at the nuclear plant, TEPCO refused to use the word ‘meltdown’ for about two months following the disaster, and chose to promptly remove a PR representative who stated following the incident that a “meltdown of a reactor's core” may be taking place at the facility.
The removal of the employee fueled speculation of the government trying to cover-up the extent of the damage.
Although Handa noted that meltdowns would have been declared if the guidelines had been correctly followed, she said that no regulations were broken, because TEPCO reported its estimates of damage to the government immediately, as required by law.
This is not the first admission by TEPCO that the company did not act properly following the disaster. It stated in a 2012 report that it downplayed safety risks caused by the incident, out of fear that additional measures would lead to a shutdown of the plant and further fuel public anxiety and anti-nuclear campaigns.
The Fukushima meltdown occurred after an earthquake hit the region in March 2011, resulting in a tsunami, further devastating the facility. It was the worst nuclear accident to take place since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
so disingenuous ...
It was the worst nuclear accident to take place since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
wrong. It is, then and now, the worst nuclear accident taking place, ever.
"Now that the assertive, the self-aggrandising, the arrogant and the self-opinionated have allowed their obnoxious foolishness to beggar us all I see no reason in listening to their drivelling nonsense any more." Stanilic
ONAHAMA, FUKUSHIMA PREF. – Fish market vendor Satoshi Nakano thinks he knows which fish caught in the radiation-tainted sea off the Fukushima coast should be kept away from dinner tables.
Yet five years after the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl there is still no consensus on the true extent of the damage — exacerbating consumer fears about what is safe to eat.
Environmentalists are at odds with authorities, warning that the huge amounts of radiation that seeped into coastal waters after the disaster in 2011 could cause problems for decades.
The government is confident it has stemmed the flow of radioactive water, but campaigners insist contaminated ground water has continued to seep into the Pacific Ocean, and the situation needs further investigation.
“It was the single largest release of radioactivity to the marine environment in history,” Greenpeace nuclear expert Shaun Burnie said, speaking aboard the campaign group’s Rainbow Warrior ship, which has sailed in to support a three-week marine survey of the area the environmental watchdog is conducting.
Fukushima is facing an “enormous nuclear water crisis,” Burnie said.
“The whole idea that this accident happened five years ago and that Fukushima and Japan have moved on is completely wrong.”
Fishermen are banned from operating only within 20 kilometers of the plant.
Although there are no figures for attitudes on seafood alone, the latest official survey by the government’s Consumer Affairs Agency showed in September that more than 17 percent of Japanese are reluctant to eat food from Fukushima.
Nakano knows it is best for business to consider carefully the type of seafood he sells, in the hope it will quell consumer fears.
“High levels of radioactivity are usually detected in fish that move little and stick to the seabed. I am not an expert, but I think those kinds of fish suck up the dirt of the ocean floor,” he said in his coastal hometown of Onahama.
Greenpeace is surveying waters near the Fukushima plant, dredging up sediment from the ocean floor to check both for radiation hot spots as well as places that are not contaminated.
On Monday, the Rainbow Warrior sailed within 1.6 kilometers of the Fukushima coast as part of the project — the third such test it has conducted, but the closest to the plant since the nuclear accident.
Researchers Tuesday sent down a remote-controlled vehicle attached with a camera and scoop in order to take samples from the seabed, which will then be analyzed in independent laboratories in Japan and France.
“It’s very important (to see) where is more contaminated and where is less or even almost not contaminated,” Greenpeace’s Jan Vande Putte said, stressing the importance of such findings for the fishing industry.
Local fishermen have put coastal catches on the market after thorough testing, which includes placing certain specimens seen as high risk through radiation screening — a program Greenpeace lauds as one of the most advanced in the world.
The tests make sure no fish containing more than half of the government safety standard for radiation goes onto the market.
The 2011 disaster was caused by a magnitude-9.0 earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast, which sparked a massive tsunami that swamped cooling systems and triggered reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, run by operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Today, about 1,000 huge tanks for storing contaminated water occupy large parts of the site, but as 400 tons of groundwater a day flows into the damaged reactor buildings, many more will be needed.
Tepco’s measures to reduce the water influx include building an underground wall, freezing the land itself and siphoning underground water.
The government, too, insists the situation is under control.
“The impact of the contaminated water is completely contained inside the port of the Fukushima plant,” Tsuyoshi Takagi, the Cabinet minister in charge of disaster reconstruction, told reporters on Tuesday.
But Greenpeace’s Burnie says stopping the groundwater flow is crucial to protecting the region.
“What impact is this having on the local ecology and the marine life, which is going on over years, decades?” Burnie asked.
“We can come back in 50 years and still be talking about radiological problems” at the nuclear plant as well as along the coast, he said.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
New measurements at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in upstate New York show levels of radioactive tritium 80 percent higher than reported last week. Plant operator insists the spill is not dangerous, as state officials call for a safety probe.
Entergy, which operates the facility 25 miles (40 km) north of New York City, says the increased levels of tritium represent “fluctuations that can be expected as the material migrates.”
“Even with the new readings, there is no impact to public health or safety, and although these values remain less than one-tenth of one percent of federal reporting guidelines,” Entergy said in a statement.
New measurements at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in upstate New York show levels of radioactive tritium 80 percent higher than reported last week. Plant operator insists the spill is not dangerous, as state officials call for a safety probe.
Entergy, which operates the facility 25 miles (40 km) north of New York City, says the increased levels of tritium represent “fluctuations that can be expected as the material migrates.”
“Even with the new readings, there is no impact to public health or safety, and although these values remain less than one-tenth of one percent of federal reporting guidelines,” Entergy said in a statement.
(The video leads with the Flint issue and then goes into Indian Point; the last, about the LA gas leak before it was capped, is now irrelevant and should be skipped. I'd advise all to watch the entire ad about concentrated solar ~ Iam)
New York governor Andrew Cuomo raised an alarm last Saturday over the reports of groundwater contamination at Indian Point, noting that the company reported “alarming levels of radioactivity” at three monitoring wells, with “radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000 percent” at one of them.
The groundwater wells have no contact with any drinking water supplies, and the spill will dissipate before it reaches the Hudson River, a senior Entergy executive argued Tuesday, suggesting the increased state scrutiny was driven by the company’s decision to shut down another nuclear power plant.
“There are a number of stakeholders, including the governor, who do not like the fact that we are having to close Fitzpatrick,” Michael Twomey, Entergy’s vice president of external affairs, said during an appearance on ‘The Capitol Pressroom,’ a show on WCNY public radio.
The James A. Fitzpatrick plant is located on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, near Oswego, New York. Entergy said it intended to close the plant once it runs out of fuel sometime this year, citing its continued operations as unprofitable.
"We’re not satisfied with this event. This was not up to our expectations,” Twomey said, adding that the Indian Point spill should be seen in context.
Though it has never reported a reactor problem, the Indian Point facility has been plagued by issues with transformers, cooling systems, and other electrical components over the years. It currently operates two reactors, both brought on-line in the 1970s.
In December, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowed Entergy to continue operating the reactors, pending license renewal. The facility’s initial 40-year license was set to expire on December 12, but the regulators are reportedly leaning towards recommending a 20-year extension.
By contrast, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine was only three years old when it exploded in April 1986. To this day, an area of 1000 square miles around the power plant remains the “exclusion zone,” where human habitation is prohibited.
The tritium leak at Indian Point most likely took place in January, during the preparations to shut down Reactor 2 for refueling, according to Entergy. Water containing high levels of the hydrogen isotope reportedly overfilled the drains and spilled into the ground.
According to Entergy, tritium is a “low hazard radionuclide” because it emits low-energy beta particles, which do not penetrate the skin. “People could be harmed by tritium only through internal exposure caused by drinking water with high levels of tritium over many years,” an Entergy fact sheet says.
Environmentalist critics are not convinced, however.
“This plant isn’t safe anymore,” Paul Gallay, president of environmental watchdog group Riverkeeper, told the New York Daily News. “Everybody knows it and only Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission refuse to admit it.”
New York City’s nuclear power plant leaking ‘uncontrollable radioactive flow’ into Hudson River
February 28, 2016
New York governor Andrew Cuomo recently called for an investigation after Indian Point, a nuclear power plant on the Hudson River, reported a leak of radioactive material flowing into the groundwater. Now, new samples taken from the local groundwater show that contamination levels are 80% higher than previous samples, prompting experts to claim this leak is spreading in “a disaster waiting to happen” and calling for the plant to be shut down completely. The Indian Point nuclear power plant is located just 25 miles north of New York City, and it’s a crucial source of of power for over 23 million people living in the greater NYC metropolitan region.
The Indian Point plant is located upriver from NYC, and it’s a serious threat to the whole region, according to watchdog group Riverkeeper. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen and it should be shut down,” Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper, told CBS News. Indian Point has been operating for around 40 years, and generates about 25 percent of the electric power for Westchester and New York City. The plant, owned by Entergy, is leaking tritium, a radioactive substance. Three of the forty Indian Point wells showed an increase in radioactive material, and one of the wells showed a 65,000 percent increase. Entergy states that this leak will not harm local inhabitants, as the groundwater is located on their property. John J. Kelly, former director of licensing for Indian Point and a certified healthy physicist, said that tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen that is found naturally. “It’s more of a regulatory problem than an environmental problem,” said Kelly.
This isn’t the first problem at the plant, though. Power failures, fires and an alarm failure have all plagued the site in the past year. “This latest failure at Indian Point is unacceptable and I have directed Department of Environmental Conservation Acting Commissioner Basil Seggos and Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to fully investigate this incident and employ all available measures, including working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to determine the extent of the release, its likely duration, cause, and potential impacts to the environment and public health,” Cuomo said in an official statement.
“For over 40 years, Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear facilities have been damaging the coastal resources of the Hudson River estuary…New York is home to four commercial nuclear facilities. When properly located and safely functioning, these facilities are regarded as important generators of electricity… However, by virtue of its location as well as its operations, the Department cannot make the same finding as to Indian Point,” Secretary of State Cesar Perales said.
Indian Point has experienced other leaks in the past, and the investigation may influence whether the power plant continues to operate in the future.
65,000% Spike in Radiation Outside New York Nuclear Plant is Likely Worse than Fukushima
February 27, 2016 By Jay Syrmopoulos
Buchanan, NY — An uncontrollable radioactive flow from the Indian Point nuclear power plant continues leaking into groundwater, which leads to the Hudson River, raising the specter of a Fukushima-like disaster only 25 miles from New York City.
The Indian Point nuclear plant is located on the Hudson River, approximately 25 miles North of NYC, and serves the electrical needs of an estimated 2 million people. Last month, while preparing a reactor for refueling, workers accidentally spilled some contaminated water, containing the radioactive hydrogen isotope tritium, causing a massive radiation spike in groundwater monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing by as much as 65,000 percent.
Entergy, the Louisiana-based company that owns the plant, chalked up the readings to “fluctuations that can be expected as the material migrates.” According to Entergy, the tritium contaminated water spill was contained within the plant, and never reached the Hudson or any other water source.
“There is no impact to public health or safety,” Entergy spokeswoman Patricia Kakridas told RT.
Of course, the tritium leak is the ninth in just the past year, four of which were serious enough to shut down the reactors. But the most recent leak, however, according to an assessment by the New York Department of State as part of its Coastal Zone Management Assessment, contains a variety of radioactive elements such as strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and nickel-63, and isn’t limited to tritium contamination.
Despite the assurances from Entergy, the area around Indian Point is a “cancer cluster,” with the local rate of thyroid cancer rates registering at 66 percent higher than the national average, according to Joseph Mangano, Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP).
According to a report by RT:
RPHP researchers compared the state and national cancer data from 1988-92 with three other five-year periods (1993-97, 1998-02, and 2003-07). The results, published in 2009, show the cancer rates going from 11 percent below the national average to 7 percent above in that timespan. Unexpected increases were detected in 19 out of 20 major types of cancer. Thyroid cancer registered the biggest increase, going from 13 percent below the national average to 51 percent above.
Incredibly, Entergy completely rejects the notion that their plant’s operations have caused an increase in cancer rates.
“There is no relation whatsoever,” Kakridas claimed.
When the study was conducted by RPHP, over 20 million people lived within a 50-mile radius of the nuclear plant.
“Everybody who lives near a nuclear plant is exposed to radiation. Some plants are worse than others,” Mangano told RT. In the case of Indian Point, it is a very old plant, and “there is a greater danger because of a large population living close by.”
Numerous environmental groups call the latest problems just a symptom of a much larger issue and Gov. Andrew Cuomo is partnering with organizations The Sierra Club, Riverkeepers, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, Scenic Hudson and Physicians for Social responsibility in seeking the permanent closure of the plant.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a representative to the Indian Point plant, Neil Sheehan, who told CBS News that the NRC is continuing to review the recent tritium leakage at Indian Point.
“We recently sent a radiation protection specialist to the plant to assess the situation and learn more about what happened. He was assisted by our three Resident Inspectors assigned to the plant on a full-time basis,” he wrote in an email to CBS.
NRC is also currently reviewing Indian Point’s renewal license, which would authorize it to continue operating for another 20 years.
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen and it should be shut down,” Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper, a watchdog organization dedicated to protecting the Hudson River, told CBS News.
“The good news is, advances in alternate power sources, grid management and energy conservation have brought us to the day when the aging, unsafe Indian Point can close,” Gallay said.
He pointed out numerous sources of energy for the region, including 600 megawatts in transmission system upgrades and another 500 megawatts available through energy savings achieved through efficiency and renewable energy.
“There will be enough power to keep the lights on in our homes and hospitals, our businesses and schools — in every place that makes our communities healthy and vibrant,” Gallay said.
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer has rejected calls for the immediate closure of the nuclear power plant by Cuomo and environmental groups, saying they should first demonstrate how to replace the energy produced at the power plant, which supplies 25 percent of the power to the New York City area.
“I have told some of the environmental people, if you can show me a plan to figure out a way to replace that electricity, fine, but if you can’t, it’s going to raise electricity rates 30 or 40 percent, which are high enough on average people and that’s not the way to go. In the meantime, I have emphasized very strong safety,” Schumer said.
While Schumer’s sentiments are understandable, the reality is that the sheer economic health costs of this plant’s operation far exceed the savings in energy bills. With so many alternative sources of producing clean energy, the reasoning for keeping such a toxic plant operational is baffling. One can safely assume that there is some vested financial interest in keeping this plant running; as always, simply follow the money.
Jay Syrmopoulos is a political analyst, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on Ben Swann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, Raw Story, MintPress News, as well as many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.
The stricken Fukushima power plant in JapanImage copyrightTokyo Electric Power Co
Fukushima suffered a series of meltdowns after a huge earthquake and tsunami Three former executives at a Japanese power giant have been formally charged with negligence over the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant. The trio, formerly of Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), will be the first to go to court over the incident. A citizen's panel ruled last year they should face trial, forcing prosecutors to pursue the case. The Fukushima Daiichi plant suffered a series of meltdowns following a massive earthquake and tsunami. Among those charged is Tsunehisa Katsumata, who was Tepco chairman at the time of the disaster. He and two other former executives have been charged with professional negligence. They have not been taken into custody. Rare legal move Prosecutors in Tokyo had twice decided against pressing charges, citing insufficient evidence. But in a rare legal move, the panel's ruling forced a compulsory indictment of the three. The panel said the three men did not take sufficient measures despite being warned of a risk of a tsunami near the Fukushima plant. Japan's national broadcaster NHK said they planned to plead not guilty on the grounds they could not have anticipated the size of the tsunami. One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Japan in March 2011, triggering a huge tsunami. Almost 16,000 people died and more than 2,500 are still listed as missing. None of the deaths, however, have been linked to the nuclear disaster, although there were a number of deaths in the subsequent evacuation.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
There are still more than 100 nuclear power plants operating in the United States, 23 are the same GE Mark 1 design (Gen 1) as used at Fukushima Daiichi. Those 23 are located at 16 different sites.
All should be calling for the immediate shut down, (actually a many year process), the decommissioning of, and eventual dismantling of all 23 GE Generation 1 nuclear power plants.
Do all you can to create the world you desire, for only when you work towards a goal, will you reach it.
This is to bring to mind the ever-present danger we live with daily.
A bit of a time warp back to '66,
The Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant on the shore of Lake Erie near Monroe, in Frenchtown Charter Township, Monroe County, Michigan, USA, approximately halfway between Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio. On October 5, 1966 Fermi 1 suffered a partial fuel meltdown. There was no abnormal radiation release to the public, and no one was injured. At the time of the accident, two fuel rod subassemblies reached high temperatures of around 700°F (with an expected range near 580°F), causing an alarm and the potential for evacuation. Fabled 70’s era singer/poet Gil Scott-Heron sang in his popular song “We Almost Lost Detroit”, about the 1966 partial meltdown. He proclaimed that when it comes to public safety “money wins out every time…” Referencing the inherent dangers for massive devastation in nuke plants Scott-Heron remarked that “Odds are, we gonna loose somewhere sometime.” In 2010, a report released a day after the nuclear disaster in Japan by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) on the performance of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)—the government agency that enforces safety regulations for U.S. nuclear reactors–ends with this observation, echoing Scott-Heron’s sentiments: “That plant operators could have avoided all 14 near-misses in 2010 had they corrected known deficiencies in a timely manner, suggests that our luck at nuclear roulette may someday run out.”
All power plant have outlived their safe lives at the time their permit expires, which is usually 20 years after issuance. No plant's permit should be allowed to be renewed after 20 years of operation.
“People’s understanding of disasters will continue to be constructed by media. How media members frame the presence of risk and the nature of disasters matters.”
-Celine Marie Pascale, American University, Mar 10, 2015
Fearing radiation; terrified by the nuclear option. Perfectly sensible instincts that never seem to convince establishments and those who have long ceased to loathe nuclear power and its various dangerous by-products. Each nuclear disaster, such as the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plants five years ago, come with its treasure of apologetics and justifications. The reason is always the same: nuclear energy is safe and we cannot really do without it.
To that end, the emergence of “radiophobia” is a designation that dismisses as much as it supposedly diagnoses. It pokes fun at those ninnies who think that they are about to perish because of the effects of nuclear catastrophe and radiation contamination. Risk, according to this philosophy of concerted denial, is always exaggerated.
Shunichi Yamashita, a proclaimed expert on the effects of radioactivity, was invited by the Fukushima prefecture in the aftermath of the meltdown to reassure rather than investigate. “The effects of radiation,” he claimed, “do not come to people who are happy and laughing, they come to people who are weak-minded.”
This Dr. Strangelove dismissiveness is as much an advertisement for the virtues of doom as it is about the brutal consequences, real and imaginary, of radiation poisoning. Radiation is the invisible killer that stalks the earth, but for many, it is hardly worth a thought. For one, it suggests a simple calculation in environments that are not, supposedly, that dangerous. “With low radiation doses,” argued this doctor of nuclear apologetics, “the people have to decide for themselves whether to stay or to leave.”
Despite this bubbling confidence on the part of his colleagues, Japanese American physicist Michio Kaku had little time for such views as Yamashita’s. In an interview soon after the meltdown, Kaku claimed that, “The slightest disturbance could set off a full-scale meltdown at three nuclear power stations, far beyond what we saw at Chernobyl.”
Smile with upbeat confidence, and the problem goes away. If people are depressed before radiation, suggests Yamashita, they will succumb as the negative dramatists they are. “Stress is not good at all for people who are subjected to radiation.” Then again, stress could hardly be deemed good for anybody in particular, irrespective of radiation.
Such fabulously misguided nonsense is central to the amnesiac context of Fukushima. Makiko Segawa put it rather poignantly in his contribution in the Asia-Pacific Journal: initial enthusiastic snaps and coverage by the press corps, an insatiable lust for disaster imagery, quietened in due course. Writing a year after the disaster, Segawa noted how “the journalists have packed up and gone and by accident of design Japan’s government seems to be mobilizing its agenda, aware that it is under less scrutiny.”
Robert Jacobs similar notes that Fukushima conforms to that litany of disasters that has afflicted the human experience, a matter of rejection and experience rather than learning and adapting. “Fukushima is taking its place alongside the many forgotten nuclear disasters of the last 70 years.”
Sociologist Celine Marie Pascale of the American University, on scouring some 2,100 news stories from four media outlets (The New York Times, Washington Post, The Huffington Post and Politico) came to the conclusion that a strategy of minimisation was underway. The implications of such an event had to be downplayed, de-emphasising the risk of massive contamination and environmental disaster. A mere 6 percent of the articles examined the health implications of the event. “We see articles in prestigious news outlets claiming that radioactivity from cosmic rays and rocks is more dangerous than the radiation emanating from the collapsing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.”
A necessary process of mendacity has to come into play. The Tokyo Electric Power Plant (TEPCO), Japan’s largest power company and owner of the affected power plants, initially denied the existence of meltdowns when it knew three had taken place. It was a process of deception that continued for three months after the event, a situation made even more absurd for the fact that hundreds of thousands were evacuated in the vicinity. It is a disaster episode that keeps on giving.
Even in March 2015, their reassurances seemed less than comforting. Chief Decommissioning Officer Naohiro Masuda would claim rather blandly that, “Even if some contaminated water remains, I feel that we can reduce a substantial amount of risk.”
The nuclear genie is a creature that encourages the lie in planning establishments. There are lies about safety; there are lies about legacies. As Jacobs suggests, the Disneyfication of disaster sites affected by the nuclear or atomic scourge is all too real. The Manhattan Project that led to the development of the atomic weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki became “Disney theme parks of American exceptionalism”. The quest for the nuclear option in both the military and energy contexts saw massive environmental degradation.
Even now, the ghostly sense of Fukushima should be a reminder of errors and negligence rather than dismissal and indifference. Jacobs suggests a simple but necessary formula to combat nuclear amnesia: see the impacts of radiation exposure “before they become vaguely visible as cancers nestled in health population statistics”.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
Five years ago today, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered a massive tsunami that hit the northeastern coast of Japan. It obliterated several prefectures, killing nearly 19,000 people and damaging four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Clean up efforts have been slow and now remote-controlled robots sent to the power plant to remove melted fuel rods have died –their wiring fried by the high amounts of radiation still leaking from the plant. Robot Suit for Nuclear Workers Unveiled
The untimely death of these bots leaves Tokyo Electric Power Company in a quandary, as it struggles to deal with the disaster and the radiation leaking into the water.
According to ScienceAlert, the Tepco has dealt with only 10 percent of the mess created by the tsunami and subsequent meltdown.
Justin McCurry of the Guardian reports, “Of greatest concern, though, is reactor 1, where the fuel may have burned through the pressure vessel, fallen to the bottom of the containment vessel and into the concrete pedestal below – perhaps even outside it – according to a report by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning. Reactors 2 and 3 are thought to have suffered partial meltdowns.”
The Lost Pets Of Fukushima: Photos
The good news is that the robots, built by Toshiba, were able to remove 1,535 spent fuel-rod assemblies from the reactor 4 building before they went kaput, but the radiation levels were lower there, making the job easier to perform.
But Reactor 3 has been a different story. The radiation levels are much higher and the sensitive electronics and wires inside the robots couldn’t handle it.
Unfortunately, a new robot cannot be sent in to complete the job. Each one was customized for the job at hand and took two years to build. There don’t seem to be any understudies waiting in the wings. And in fact, a robot capable of withstanding the high levels of radiation environment doesn’t exist.
Tepco thinks a serious effort toward clean up can begin in 2021 and says it will take between 30 and 40 years to complete.
Fla. Nuke Plant Leaking Radioactive Contamination into Biscayne Bay Mar 10, 2016
Radioactive contamination linked to the Miami-area Turkey Point nuclear power plant is entering Biscayne Bay, a new study (pdf) shows.
The findings of the University of Miami study were released this week by Miami-Dade County, and showed increased salinity as well as “tritium levels up to 215 times higher than normal in ocean water,” the Miami Herald reports.
The problem is that the water used to cool the Florida Power & Light (FPL) plant is not being contained to the canal system it set up for that purpose.
The study “shows conclusively that the cooling canal water is polluting and contaminating Biscayne Bay,” Miami Waterkeeper Rachel Silverstein told local news NBC6.
That contamination, according to Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), “is threatening South Florida’s drinking water supply and Biscayne National Park.”
The problems at the plan began years ago, as the Herald continues: “After the 2013 plant expansion to increase power output by 15 percent, the canals began running dangerously high,” and it then got the OK “from nuclear regulators to operate the canals at 104 degrees, the hottest in the nation.” FPL attempted to address the high temperatures by pumping fresh water into the canals, but that just worsened and expanded a saltwater plume.
“This study confirms that FPL miscalculated the impact uprating Turkey Point’s reactors to generate more power would cause,” Laura Reynolds of SACE said Tuesday. “They continue to make record profits while our water supply gets loaded with at least 600,000 pounds of salt daily and our national park is polluted and drinking water is threatened.”
The location of the plant is a problem itself, critics have charged.
Philip Stoddard, South Miami Mayor and biological sciences professor at Florida International University, told the Miami New Times: “You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.”
Rep. Jose Rodriquez responded to the report by calling for federal action. “I have watched with increasing alarm the potential public safety threat emanating” from the facility, he wrote to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
“State regulators have, unfortunately, failed to adequately [protect the public] and I ask for your agency’s direct involvement.”
NBC6‘s Tony Pipitone adds: “A former head of DEP is now a top FPL executive and the company gives millions of dollars to Florida politicians.”
