All Entries Tagged With: "nuclear"

Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit 1

Recent press reports have discussed the possibility that Fukushima Unit 1 may be having a nuclear chain reaction. New data released by TEPCO indicates that even though Fukushima Unit 1 was shut down during the March 11 earthquake, it appears to have “gone critical” again without human intervention. The detection by TEPCO of short-lived radioactive isotopes substantiates the existence of this inadvertent criticality.

Engineers fail to seal leak at Japan nuke plant

Engineers failed to seal a crack where highly radioactive water was spilling into the Pacific from a Japanese nuclear power plant incapacitated by last month’s earthquake-spawned tsunami but said a search of the site found no other leaks Sunday.

The wave has carved a path of destruction up and down the coast and is believed to have killed 25,000 people. The first deaths at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant itself, though, were confirmed Sunday by the operator. A 21-year-old and a 24-year-old were believed to be conducting regular checks at the complex when the 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit March 11.

“It pains me that these two young workers were trying to protect the power plant while being hit by the earthquake and tsunami,” Tokyo Electric Power Co. Chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata said in a statement.

Full Story Here: Excite News – Engineers fail to seal leak at Japan nuke plant.

Japan nuclear struggle focuses on cracked reactor pit

Japanese officials grappling on Sunday to end the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl were focussing on a crack in a concrete pit that was leaking radiation into the ocean from a crippled reactor.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it had found a crack in the pit at its No.2 reactor in Fukushima, generating readings 1,000 millisieverts of radiation per hour in the air inside the pit.

“With radiation levels rising in the seawater near the plant, we have been trying to confirm the reason why, and in that context, this could be one source,” said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy head of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), said on Saturday.

He cautioned, however: “We can’t really say for certain until we’ve studied the results.” <

Full Story Here: Japan nuclear struggle focuses on cracked reactor pit | Reuters.

Japan Nuclear Crisis: Radioactive Water Leaks Into Sea From Crippled Plant

Highly radioactive water spilled into the ocean off a tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant Saturday, as Japan’s prime minister surveyed the damage in a town gutted by the wave.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex has been spewing radioactivity since March 11, when a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing wave knocked out power, disabling cooling systems and allowing radiation to seep out of the overheating reactors. Authorities said the leak they identified Saturday could be the source of radioactivity found in coastal waters in recent days.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan went to the plant and flew over the tsunami-ravaged coast soon after the wave hit, but Saturday was the first time he set foot in one of the pulverized towns.

Dressed in the blue work clothes that have become almost a uniform for officials, Kan stopped in Rikuzentakata, where the town hall is one of the few buildings still standing. All its windows are blown out and a tangle of metal and other debris is piled in front of it.

Full Story Here: Japan Nuclear Crisis: Radioactive Water Leaks Into Sea From Crippled Plant.

TEPCO recruiting nuclear workers for up to $5,000 per day

What would you do for $2,500 a day? How about $5,000 a day? Do you have “a passport, a family willing to let you go”, and a “willingness to to work in a radioactive zone”? Then you could have what it takes to work at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and even become a “jumper”, a highly paid individual who rushes into a radioactive area, performs a task, and quickly returns to safety before absorbing a dangerous dose of radioactivity.

Reuters is reporting that TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company which owns the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, is offering workers exorbitant amounts of money in a bid to persuade them to help stabilize the reactors damaged in the March earthquake and tsunami. Some workers report being offered 200,000 yen ($2,500) a day, for what amounts to only an hour of work on the reactor.

“Ordinarily I’d consider that a dream job, but my wife was in tears and stopped me, so I declined,” said (an) unidentified worker who is in his 30s, “The working time would be less than an hour, so in fact it was 200,000 yen an hour, but the risk was too big.”

Full Story Here: TEPCO recruiting nuclear workers for up to $5,000 per day | The Raw Story.

Groundwater at nuclear plant ‘highly’ radiation-contaminated: TEPCO

More signs of serious radiation contamination in and near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were detected Thursday, with the latest data finding groundwater containing radioactive iodine 10,000 times the legal threshold and the concentration of radioactive iodine-131 in nearby seawater rising to the highest level yet.

Radioactive material was confirmed from groundwater for the first time since the March 11 quake and tsunami hit the nuclear power plant on the Pacific coast, knocking out the reactors’ key cooling functions. An official of the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said, ”We’re aware this is an extremely high figure.”

The contaminated groundwater was found from around the No. 1 reactor’s turbine building, although the radiation level of groundwater is usually so low that it cannot be measured.

Full Story Here: Groundwater at nuclear plant ‘highly’ radiation-contaminated: TEPCO | Kyodo News.

NRC: 3 U.S. Nuclear Plants Need Increased Oversight

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says three U.S. nuclear power plants need increased oversight from federal regulators, although officials stressed that all are operating safely.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko (YAHT’-skoh) says the three plants – in South Carolina, Kansas and Nebraska – need more intensive review than other plants because of problems with safety systems or unplanned shutdowns.

Jaczko told a House subcommittee Thursday that the plants “are the ones we are most concerned about” among the 65 U.S. nuclear power plants in 31 states.

Jaczko did not identify the plants, but an agency spokesman said they are the H.B. Robinson nuclear plant in South Carolina, Fort Calhoun in Nebraska and Wolf Creek in Kansa

Full Story Here: NRC: 3 U.S. Nuclear Plants Need Increased Oversight.

Obama Doubles Down on Dirty Energy, Continues to Call Nukes ‘Clean,’ Ignores Clean Air Act

In response to President Obama’s speech today on the subject of energy security, as well as supporting documentation released by the White House, Friends of the Earth Climate and Energy Director Damon Moglen had the following statement:

“This speech was more about polluting the future than winning it. President Obama today doubled down on his support for dirty energy sources including the nuclear, corn ethanol, oil, natural gas, and coal industries, while going AWOL on a crucial fight over the Clean Air Act.

“Given the escalating radiation disaster in Japan, it’s dumbfounding that President Obama believes it’s justifiable to call nuclear energy ‘clean.’ After such misguided nuclear boosterism, in addition to the multibillion dollar bailout guarantees for the nuclear industry that the President supports, it’s easy to see why Duke Energy was willing to offer the President’s party a $10 million line of credit for the 2012 Democratic convention.

Full Story Here: Obama Doubles Down on Dirty Energy, Continues to Call Nukes ‘Clean,’ Ignores Clean Air Act | Common Dreams.

Japan Nuclear Crisis: Setbacks Mount In Leaking Plant

Setbacks mounted Wednesday in the crisis over Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear facility, with nearby seawater testing at its highest radiation levels yet and the president of the plant operator checking into a hospital with hypertension.

Nearly three weeks after a March 11 tsunami engulfed the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, knocking out power to the cooling system that keeps nuclear fuel rods from overheating, Tokyo Electric Power Co. is still struggling to bring the facility in northeastern Japan under control.

Radiation leaking from the plant has seeped into the soil and seawater nearby and made its way into produce, raw milk and even tap water as far as Tokyo, 140 miles (220 kilometers) to the south.

Full Story Here: Japan Nuclear Crisis: Setbacks Mount In Leaking Plant.

Chernobyl: The Nuclear Disaster, 25 Years Later (VIDEO)

The catastrophic ramifications of Chernobyl’s nuclear disaster are still felt twenty-five years later. In light of the unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan, science correspondent Miles O’Brien of PBS NewsHour returns to the site of Chernobyl’s meltdown to explore what life is like now.

Upon entry, O’Brien finds the “infamous ghost town” to be surprisingly busy. In the exclusion zone office, phone calls flood in; a newfound curiosity has been sparked by the Fukushima crisis.

Physicist Gennadi Milinevsky offers O’Brien a tour of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They stop at a monument for the firefighters who worked for 10 days to end the nuclear inferno. Milinevsky attests that these firefighters were heroes, remarking, “Many of them received a dose not connected with — with life.” The men were sent to a Moscow clinic for treatment, but died within one month.

Full Story Here: Chernobyl: The Nuclear Disaster, 25 Years Later (VIDEO).

“Safe” Radiation is a Lethal Lie

There is no safe dose of radiation.

We do not x-ray pregnant women.

Any detectable fallout can kill.

With erratic radiation spikes, major air and water emissions and at least three reactors and waste pools in serious danger at Fukushima, we must prepare for the worst.

When you hear the terms “safe” and “insignificant” in reference to radioactive fallout, ask yourself: “Safe for whom?” “Insignificant to which of us?”

Full Story Here: “Safe” Radiation is a Lethal Lie | BuzzFlash.org.

Nuclear Radiation ‘The Greatest Public Health Hazard’

Helen Caldicott says it is impossible to have a safe nuclear power plant

When she was an adolescent, Helen Caldicott says, she read the nuclear apocalypse novel “On the Beach.” The story was set in the aftermath of an atomic war; the protagonists must await the arrival of a deadly fallout cloud.

It was a formative event, she says, and later, in medical school, the connection between health and nuclear energy would galvanize her. “I learned about genetics and radiation in first-year medicine and became acutely aware of nuclear weapons, nuclear war and the damage radiation does to genes and all life forms.”

Caldicott went on to become one of the most vocal, ubiquitous and controversial opponents of nuclear power during the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, severely damaged after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, has given a fresh urgency, she says, to a “medical problem of vast dimensions,” highlighted by reports that emerge daily on the spread of radiation.

Full Story Here: Nuclear Radiation ‘The Greatest Public Health Hazard’ | Common Dreams.

Level of iodine-131 in seawater off the chart – Contamination Spreading

Contamination 1,250 times above maximum limit

The level of radioactive iodine detected in seawater near the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant was 1,250 times above the maximum level allowable, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday, suggesting contamination from the reactors is spreading.

Meanwhile, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. turned on the lights in the control room of the No. 2 reactor the same day, and was analyzing and trying to remove pools of water containing radioactive materials in the turbine buildings of reactors 1 to 3.

The iodine-131 in the seawater was detected at 8:30 a.m. Friday, about 330 meters south of the plant’s drain outlets. Previously, the highest amount recorded was about 100 times above the permitted level.

Full Story Here: Level of iodine-131 in seawater off chart | The Japan Times Online.

Senators question nuke experts

Zion Nuclear Power plant - on the shores of Lake Michigan

In light of the crisis in Japan, Illinois needs to review the size of evacuation zones around its six nuclear power plants and ensure there is a sufficient stockpile of potassium iodide pills, U.S. Sens. Mark Kirk and Dick Durbin said Friday during a forum on nuclear safety in the state.

“Illinois is the most nuclear state in the country. We have the largest fleet of 11 reactors and we need to make sure in light of what happened at Fukushima that they’re run safely. I think there are some lessons learned,” Kirk said.

The forum in a Chicago federal courtroom resembled a congressional hearing with the two Illinois senators on a raised judge’s bench quizzing four nuclear experts from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, Argonne National Laboratory and Exelon Corp. Exelon operates the reactors in the state, including the Braidwood plant in Braceville and the Dresden plant in Morris.

Full Story Here: Senators question nuke experts – Naperville Sun.

Japan nuke workers grapple with radioactive water

Workers grappled Sunday with how to remove and store highly radioactive water pooling in three troubled units at a nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan that has been leaking radiation making its way into food and water.

The discovery of puddles with radiation levels 10,000 times the norm sparked a temporary evacuation of the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant on Thursday. Two workers who stepped into the water were hospitalized with possible burns.

The development set back feverish efforts to start up a crucial cooling system knocked out in a massive March 11 earthquake and tsunami, but has helped experts get closer to determining the source of the dangerous leak.

Full Story Here: Excite News – Japan nuke workers grapple with radioactive water.

Americans Favor Moratorium On New Nuclear Reactors

While a drop in public support for nuclear power would be expected after an incident like the Fukushima reactor crisis, the nuclear disaster in Japan has triggered a much stronger response among Americans.

Huge Radiation Spike At Fukushima Nuclear Plant An Error, Japan Officials Say

Emergency workers struggling to pump contaminated water from Japan’s stricken nuclear complex fled from one of the troubled reactors Sunday after reporting a huge increase in radioactivity – a spike that officials later apologetically said was inaccurate.

The apology came after employees fled the complex’s Unit 2 reactor when a reading showed radiation levels had reached 10 million times higher than normal in the reactor’s cooling system. Officials said they were so high that the worker taking the measurements had withdrawn before taking a second reading.

On Sunday night, though, plant operators said that while the water was contaminated with radiation, the extremely high reading was a mistake.

“The number is not credible,” said Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Takashi Kurita. “We are very sorry.”

Full Story Here: Huge Radiation Spike At Fukushima Nuclear Plant An Error, Japan Officials Say.

OPS: So it’s “TRUST me guy, go on back in there…..” ? Really?

Japan’s government criticizes nuke plant operator

SENDAI, Japan (AP) – Japan’s government revealed a series of missteps by the operator of a radiation-leaking nuclear plant on Saturday, including sending workers in without protective footwear in its faltering efforts to control a monumental crisis. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, rushed to deliver fresh water to replace corrosive saltwater now being used in a desperate bid to cool the plant’s overheated reactors.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano urged Tokyo Electric Power Co. to be more transparent, two days after two workers at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi plant suffered skin burns when they stepped in water that was 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found near the reactors.

“We strongly urge TEPCO to provide information to the government more promptly,” Edano said.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA, said TEPCO was aware there was high radiation in the air at one of the plant’s six units several days before the accident…..

Full Story Here: Excite News – Japan’s government criticizes nuke plant operator.

US Radiation Detectors Under Construction, Out Of Service

Parts of America’s radiation alert network have been out of order during Japan’s nuclear crisis, raising concerns among some lawmakers about whether the system could safeguard the country in a future disaster.

Federal officials say the system of sensors has helped them to validate the impact of nuclear fallout from the overheated Fukushima reactor, and in turn alert local governments and the public. They say no dangerous levels of radiation have reached U.S. shores.

In California, home to two seaside nuclear plants located close to earthquake fault lines, federal authorities said four of the 11 stationary monitors were offline for repairs or maintenance last week. The Environmental Protection Agency said the machines operate outdoors year-round and periodically need maintenance, but did not fix them until a few days after low levels of radiation began drifting toward the mainland U.S.

Full Story Here: US Radiation Detectors Under Construction, Out Of Service.

Germany Nuclear Power Protest Draws 200,000

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday turned out in Germany’s largest cities to protest the use of nuclear power in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima reactor disaster, police and organizers said.

In Berlin alone more than 100,000 took to the capital’s streets to urge Germany’s leaders to immediately abolish nuclear power, police spokesman Jens Berger said.

Organizers said some 250,000 people marched at the “Fukushima Warns: Pull the Plug on all Nuclear Power Plants” rallies in the country’s four largest cities, making them the biggest anti-nuclear protest in the country’s history.

“We can no longer afford bearing the risk of a nuclear catastrophe,” Germany’s environmental lobby group BUND said.

Full Story Here: Germany Nuclear Power Protest Draws 200,000.

Seawater near Japan plant tests high for radiation

 

 

Emergency workers continue efforts to stabilize the quake- and tsunami-riddled power plant

U.S. naval barges loaded with freshwater sped toward Japan’s overheated nuclear plant on Saturday to help workers struggling to stem a worrying rise in radioactivity and remove dangerously contaminated water from the facility.

Workers at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant have been using seawater in a frantic bid to stabilize reactors overheating since a tsunami knocked out the complex’s crucial cooling system March 11, but fears are mounting about the corrosive nature of the salt in the water.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. is now rushing to inject the reactors with freshwater instead to prevent pipes from clogging and to begin extracting the radioactive water, Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday.

Full Story Here: Seawater near Japan plant tests high for radiation – Japan Earthquake – Salon.com.

Inside America’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant

Bad Times at Indian Point

By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

These are desperate days for Entergy, the big Arkansas-based power conglomerate that owns the frail Indian Point nuclear plant, located on the east bank of the Hudson River outside Buchanan, New York—just twenty-two miles from Manhattan.

First, a scathing report issued in 2005 by a nuclear engineer fingered Indian Point as one of the five worst nuclear plants in the United States, and predicted that its emergency cooling system “is virtually certain to fail.”

This disclosure was hotly followed by the release of a study conducted by the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that ominously concluded that the chances of a reactor meltdown increased by a factor of nearly 100 at Indian Point, because the plant’s drainage pits (also known as containment sumps) are “almost certain” to be blocked with debris during an accident.

Full Story Here: Jeffrey St. Clair: Inside America’s Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant.

Japan Radioactive Iodine Releases May Exceed Three Mile Island by 100,000 Times

Institute Calls for More Intensive Contingency Planning by Japanese Authorities; U.S. Should Move as Much Spent Fuel as Possible to Dry Storage to Reduce Most Severe Risks, Suspend Licensing and Relicensing During Review

TAKOMA PARK, MD – March 25 – The damaged Fukushima Daiichi reactors in Japan continue to release radioactivity into the atmosphere. So far, the accident has released far more radioactivity than the 1979 Three Mile Island (TMI) accident. While Chernobyl had one source of radioactivity, its reactor, there are seven leaking radiation sources at the Japanese site. Together, the three damaged reactors and four spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi contain far more long-lived radioactivity, notably cesium-137, than the Chernobyl reactor.

The French radiation protection authority, Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN), estimates the radioactive releases of iodine-131 in Japan had reached about 2.4 million curies by March 22, 2011. That is about 160,000 times the best estimate of the amount released during the TMI accident in Pennsylvania (15 curies) and about 140,000 times the maximum estimate of 17 curies. It is about 10 percent of the estimated amount released during the Chernobyl accident, according to the IRSN. Combined cesium-134 (half-life: about 2 years) and cesium-137 (half life: about 30 years) releases from Fukushima are estimated at about half-a-million curies, about 10 percent of estimated Chernobyl cesium releases. The TMI accident did not emit measurable amounts of radioactive cesium, according to the presidential commission that investigated the accident.

Full Story Here: Japan Radioactive Iodine Releases May Exceed Three Mile Island by 100,000 Times | Common Dreams.

Fear and devastation on the road to Japan’s nuclear disaster zone

Daniel Howden travels through a post-tsunami wasteland to the gates of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi power station

Once this road was thronged with traffic: an expressway, one of the arteries of a nation’s economic life, as familiar and modern a sight as you would find anywhere in Japan. The only barriers on the route to Fukushima Daiichi were the other people heading in the same direction.

Today the journey is different. It is a journey to the heart of a catastrophe. About 10 kilometres beyond the half-deserted city of Iwaki, the coastal road is blocked not by commuters but by landslides; the satellite navigation system that might once have flashed up traffic jams shows clusters of red circles that denote barred roads. And when we reach the inland expressway itself, the only vehicles disturbing the silence are the rumbling military trucks of Japan’s Self Defence Force. Twenty kilometres out from the nuclear plant, abandoned road blocks mutely signal our entry into the nuclear exclusion zone.

It is a scene of devastation. Underneath us the road cuts across rice fields strewn with cars, their wreckages seemingly tossed by the hand of an angry child: in one paddy an upturned Nissan Micra; in another a Toyota people carrier filled to its sunroof with mud. The second storey of a nearby house perches on a single pillar, like a boxy flamingo. The ground floor has been erased, splinters of wood pointing the way the wall of water had gone.

Full Story Here: Fear and devastation on the road to Japan’s nuclear disaster zone – Asia, World – The Independent.

Dangerous breach suspected at Fukushima

“It is possible there may be damage somewhere in the reactor,” an official tells reporters

A suspected breach in the reactor core at one unit of a stricken Fukushima nuclear plant could mean more serious radioactive contamination, Japanese officials said Friday, revealing what may prove a major setback in the mission to bring the leaking plant under control.

The uncertain situation halted work Friday at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, where dozens had been working feverishly to stop the overheated plant from leaking dangerous radiation, officials said.

Suspicions of a possible breach were raised when two workers waded into water 10,000 times more radioactive than normal and suffered skin burns when the water splashed over their protective boots, the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency said.

Full Story Here: Dangerous breach suspected at Fukushima – Japan Earthquake – Salon.com.

Oldest US nuclear reactor: a ‘disaster’ in waiting?

A sleepy New Jersey town has popped onto people’s radar screens because it has the oldest running nuclear power plant in the United States — and, some say, the most dangerous.

Named for a Revolutionary War general, Lacey is the kind of American town that few from outside the seaside settlement knew much about before the earthquake and tsunami in Japan triggered a nuclear crisis.

Down the road from the 1950s-style diner and across from the bridge that locals use as a fishing pier stands the Oyster Creek nuclear plant.

Full Story Here: Oldest US nuclear reactor: a ‘disaster’ in waiting? | The Raw Story.

The Nuclear Myth Melts Down

The world is exploding. TomDispatch can’t cover it all. Still, a comment is in order on our Libyan intervention. As a start, it could be the first intervention that actually escalated before it even began. It went from no-fly-zone to no-fly-no-drive-zone before a U.S. cruise missile was launched or a French jet took off. Within two days, it seemed to be escalating even further into a half-baked, regime-change(ish)-style operation. (As of Wednesday, 162 Tomahawk cruise missiles had already been sent Libya-wards, most of them from American vessels, at more than $1 million a pop.) To make the intervention even stranger, it was initially opposed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon, and counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan, as well as many conservatives. Instead, the (not very) liberal warhawks of the administration — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Council senior aide Samatha Powers, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice — were evidently in the lead on this one (along with various neocons in full hue and cry).

As on so many issues, where exactly the president was, other than blowing in the wind, remains unclear. Congress played no significant role — neither advice nor consent — in the decision. It now seems almost quaint, if not exceedingly retro, even to suggest that the people’s representatives have anything to do with American war-making. And it goes without saying that the people themselves, who seemed to be deeply unenthusiastic about a Libyan intervention before it happened according to the polls, were in no way consulted. Gates spoke of a “spirited debate” within the administration — just nowhere else.

Full Story Here: Tomgram: Chip Ward, The Nuclear Myth Melts Down | TomDispatch.

New Problems Arise at Japanese Nuclear Plant

The Japanese electricians who bravely strung wires this week to all six reactor buildings at a stricken nuclear power plant succeeded despite waves of heat and blasts of radioactive steam.

The restoration of electricity at the plant, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, stirred hopes that the crisis was ebbing. But nuclear engineers say some of the most difficult and dangerous tasks are still ahead — and time is not necessarily on the side of the repair teams.

The tasks include manually draining hundreds of gallons of radioactive water and venting radioactive gas from the pumps and piping of the emergency cooling systems, which are located diagonally underneath the overheated reactor vessels. The urgency of halting the spread of radioactive contamination from the site was underlined on Wednesday by the health warning that infants should not drink tap water — even in Tokyo, 140 miles southwest of the stricken plant — raised alarms about extensive contamination.

Full Story Here: New Problems Arise at Japanese Nuclear Plant – NYTimes.com.

IAEA tracks radiation leaks at Japan’s crippled plant

Japan‘s earthquake-hit nuclear complex is still emitting radiation but the source is unclear, a senior U.N. atomic agency official said, as workers faced another day of struggle on Wednesday to cool damaged reactor cores.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also raised concerns about a lack of information from Japanese authorities, as rising temperatures around the core of one reactor threatened to delay work.

“We continue to see radiation coming from the site … and the question is where exactly is that coming from?” James Lyons, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told a news conference in Vienna on Tuesday.

Despite hopes of progress in the world’s worst nuclear crisis in a quarter of a century, triggered by an earthquake and tsunami that left at least 21,000 people dead or missing, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said it needed more time before it could say the reactors were stabilized.

Full Story Here: IAEA tracks radiation leaks at Japan’s crippled plant | Reuters.

Chernobyl Cleanup Survivor’s Message for Japan: ‘Run Away as Quickly as Possible’

Natalia Manzurova, one of the few survivors among those directly involved in the long cleanup of Chernobyl, was a 35-year-old engineer at a nuclear plant in Ozersk, Russia, in April 1986 when she and 13 other scientists were told to report to the wrecked, burning plant in the northern Ukraine.

It was just four days after the world’s biggest nuclear disaster spewed enormous amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and forced the evacuation of 100,000 people.

Manzurova and her colleagues were among the roughly 800,000 “cleaners” or “liquidators” in charge of the removal and burial of all the contamination in what’s still called the dead zone.

Full Story Here: Chernobyl Cleanup Survivor’s Message for Japan: ‘Run Away as Quickly as Possible’.

FDA Halts Imports Of Dairy And Produce From Area Of Japan Affected By Nuclear Radiation

The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it will halt imports of dairy products and produce from the area of Japan where a nuclear reactor is leaking radiation.

The FDA said those foods will be detained at entry and will not be sold to the public. The agency previously said it would just step up screening of those foods.

Other foods imported from Japan, including seafood, still will be sold to the public but screened first for radiation.

Full Story Here: FDA Halts Imports Of Dairy And Produce From Area Of Japan Affected By Nuclear Radiation.

Workers Flee Japan Nuclear Plant As Smoke Rises

Officials raced Monday to restore electricity to Japan’s leaking nuclear plant, but getting the power flowing will hardly be the end of their battle: With its mangled machinery and partly melted reactor cores, bringing the complex under control is a monstrous job that is anything but a quick-fix.

Restoring the power to all six units at the tsunami-damaged complex is key, because it will, in theory, power up the maze of motors, valves and switches that help deliver cooling water to the overheated reactor cores and spent fuel pools that are leaking radiation.

Ideally, officials believe it should only take a day to get the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear under control once the cooling system is up and running. In reality, the effort to end the crisis is likely to take weeks.

Full Story Here: Workers Flee Japan Nuclear Plant As Smoke Rises.

Workers Flee Japan Nuclear Plant As Smoke Rises

Officials raced Monday to restore electricity to Japan’s leaking nuclear plant, but getting the power flowing will hardly be the end of their battle: With its mangled machinery and partly melted reactor cores, bringing the complex under control is a monstrous job that is anything but a quick-fix.

Restoring the power to all six units at the tsunami-damaged complex is key, because it will, in theory, power up the maze of motors, valves and switches that help deliver cooling water to the overheated reactor cores and spent fuel pools that are leaking radiation.

Ideally, officials believe it should only take a day to get the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear under control once the cooling system is up and running. In reality, the effort to end the crisis is likely to take weeks.

Full Story Here: Workers Flee Japan Nuclear Plant As Smoke Rises.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu: Indian Point Nuclear Plant Near New York City Will Be Reviewed

Energy Secretary Steven Chu weighed in on Sunday on a controversial nuclear reactor located near New York City, saying that the administration needs to look at whether it should stay where it is.

At issue is the Indian Point Energy Center, located just 34 miles from New York City. The nuclear plant supplies approximately 25 percent of the city’s power, and it has the backing of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I). As WNYC notes, “Reactors two and three were built in the 1970s and were slated for a 40-year-life. As in the rest of the country, plant operators are hoping to get an additional 20 years of productivity [out of] their reactors.”

But New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is calling for the plant to be shut down. His comments came after MSNBC recently reported that Indian Point’s No. 3 reactor has a high risk of earthquake damage, based on an analysis of data from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Full Story Here: Energy Secretary Steven Chu: Indian Point Nuclear Plant Near New York City Will Be Reviewed.

Japan: Renewed nuclear chain reaction feared at spent-fuel storage pool,

.Status of Fukushima nuclear power plants Sunday midnight

The following is the known status as of Sunday evening of each of the six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and the four reactors at the Fukushima Daini plant, both in Fukushima Prefecture, which were crippled by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami on March 11.

…snip…

– Reactor No. 4 (Under maintenance when quake struck)

Renewed nuclear chain reaction feared at spent-fuel storage pool, fire at building housing containment of reactor Tuesday and Wednesday, only frame remains of reactor building roof, temperature in the pool reached 84 C on March 14, water sprayed at pool on Sunday.

Full Story Here: Status of Fukushima nuclear power plants Sunday midnight | Kyodo News.

Japan mulls Fukushima food sale ban

Japan is considering whether to halt sales of food products from near a crippled nuclear plant because of contamination by a radioactive element which can pose a short-term health risk, the U.N. atomic agency said.

“There is an investigation into the possible need to stop food sales,” Graham Andrew, a senior official of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told reporters.

The IAEA had earlier said Japan’s health ministry “ordered a stop to the sale of all food products from the Fukushima Prefecture” but Andrew said this was due to a mistranslation of information provided in Japanese.

Full Story Here: Japan mulls Fukushima food sale ban | The Raw Story.

Nuclear Nightmare

Ralph Nader: :

The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States—many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.

Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.

Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry’s promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area “the size of Pennsylvania” and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.

Full Story Here: Nuclear Nightmare | Common Dreams.

U.S. nuclear plants store more spent fuel than Japan’s

U.S. nuclear plants use the same sort of pools to cool spent nuclear-fuel rods as the ones now in danger of spewing radiation at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, only the U.S. pools hold much more nuclear material. That’s raising the question of whether more spent fuel should be taken out of the pools at U.S. power plants to reduce risks.

Workers in Japan have been struggling for days to get water into the spent-fuel pools at the plant, so that the fuel rods won’t be exposed to the air, burst into flames and set off a large radiological release.

Experts are debating whether America’s spent fuel pools would fare as badly or worse in an accident, and whether they could be made safer.

Full Story Here: U.S. nuclear plants store more spent fuel than Japan’s | McClatchy.

At California Nuclear Plant, Emergency Response Plans Don’t Include Earthquakes

As the world’s attention remains focused on the nuclear calamity unfolding in Japan, American nuclear regulators and industry lobbyists have been offering assurances that plants in the United States are designed to withstand major earthquakes.

But the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which sits less than a mile from an offshore fault line, was not required to include earthquakes in its emergency response plan as a condition of being granted its license more than a quarter of a century ago. Though experts warned from the beginning that the plant would be vulnerable to an earthquake, asserting 25 years ago that it required an emergency plan as a condition of its license, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fought against making such a provision mandatory as it allowed the facility to be built.

Officials at Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the utility that operates Diablo Canyon, did not respond to calls seeking comment before the story was published. After publication, a spokesman for the company said the plant does have an earthquake procedure that had been implemented during a 2003 earthquake near the facility, and that staff are trained to respond. The company did not provide further details upon request.

Full Story Here: At California Nuclear Plant, Emergency Response Plans Don’t Include Earthquakes.

U.S. Concerned Japan Facing Situation That Could Be ‘Deadly For Decades’

The White House is preparing for a situation in Japan that could be “deadly for decades,” a U.S. official tells ABC News.

According to the official, the U.S. believes a larger evacuation zone should be imposed and that the next 24-48 hours are “critical.”

“It would be hard to describe how alarming this is right now,” ABC quoted the anonymous official as saying.

The nuclear crisis in Japan has intensified since the massive earthquake first damaged nuclear facilities. On Wednesday, the White House advised Americans within 50 miles of the Fukushima nuclear facility to evacuate and plant employees were temporarily forced to retreat as radiation levels “soared.”

Full Story Here: U.S. Concerned Japan Facing Situation That Could Be ‘Deadly For Decades’: ABC News.

Worse Than a Meltdown

Mike Whitney: :

News of a third explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant sent stocks plunging on the Nikkei exchange which dropped 1,015 points on the session. After 2 days of battering, the stock index is off more than 1,600 points in its worst performance since Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has ordered the evacuation of all people living within a 18 mile radius of the power station and warned homeowners to remain indoors to avoid contact with “elevated levels of radiation”.

“Substantial amounts of radiation are leaking in the area,” Kan said in an emergency broadcast on television at 0200 GMT.

Already, the disaster at Fukushima is the second biggest nuclear catastrophe on record, just behind Chernobyl. But reactor volatility suggests that the problem could persist for some time to come, perhaps months.

According to CBS News:

Full Story Here: Mike Whitney: Worse Than a Meltdown.

Fukushima’s Spent Fuel Rods Pose Grave Danger

Four atomic reactors in Fukushima, Japan, seem to be in partial meltdown. One of them, reactor No. 2, seems to have ruptured. The situation is spinning out of control as radiation levels spike. The US Navy has pulled back its aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, after seventeen of its crew were exposed to radiation while flying sixty miles off the Japanese coast.

But despite three major explosions—at reactor No. 1, then No. 3, then No. 2—the Fukushima containment vessels seem to be holding. (Chernobyl lacked that precaution, having only a flimsy cement containment shell that collapsed, allowing the massive release of radioactive material.)

But there is another, potentially far more dangerous problem: the spent fuel rod pools that sit right next door to the reactors. The storage pools are packed with radioactive uranium, rise several stories above ground and are always close to the reactor, thus facilitating easy transfer of the fuel rods. Their name—especially “spent” and “pool”—conveys calm dissipation. But spent fuel rod pools are actually highly radioactive, very unstable, extremely dangerous and, compared with reactors, not well supported, contained or looked over.

Full Story Here: Fukushima’s Spent Fuel Rods Pose Grave Danger | The Nation.

Reactors At Heart Of Japanese Nuclear Crisis Raised Concerns As Early As 1972, Memos Show

In the early 1970s, just as a number of reactors were about to be licensed, Stephen Hanauer, a senior member of the Atomic Energy Commission staff, suggested banning “pressure suppression” methods to contain radiation in the event of a meltdown — methods built into General Electric’s Mark I and Mark II containment designs as well as Westinghouse’s ice condenser design. The advice was considered and disregarded.

“Steve’s idea to ban pressure suppression containment schemes is an attractive one in some ways,” Joseph Hendrie, then a deputy director with the AEC, wrote in a Sept. 25, 1972, memo. Hendrie acknowledged that alternative, “dry” containments — featuring the towers or domes commonly associated with nuclear plants — had the “notable advantage of brute simplicity in dealing with a primary blowdown, and are thereby free of the perils of bypass leakage.”

But regulators ultimately decided that the technology developed by General Electric and Westinghouse was “firmly embedded in the conventional wisdom.” Banning it, Hendrie wrote, “would generally create more turmoil than I can stand.” His memo was obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Full Story Here: Reactors At Heart Of Japanese Nuclear Crisis Raised Concerns As Early As 1972, Memos Show.

Leaked cable: Japanese lawmaker pointed to cover-up of nuclear accidents

As engineers and scientists struggle to control six Japanese nuclear reactors, three of which are in near-meltdown status, the world watches with horror.

But even as efforts continue in earnest across Japan, the search for why this is happening has already begun.

At least one man might have some theories.

His name is Taro Kono, a liberal Democrat and member of Japan’s DIET, or parliament. Kono’s father was the president of the liberal Democrats. He’s been an outspoken critic of the country’s nuclear program, and once resigned a high-ranking post in the House of Representatives in protest of the Iraq War.

Full Story Here: Leaked cable: Japanese lawmaker pointed to cover-up of nuclear accidents | The Raw Story.

US ill-prepared for emergency radiation: study

Most American states are not prepared to cope with a major nuclear radiation event, said a study published Monday that happened to coincide with a feared nuclear disaster in quake-hit Japan.

The survey of state health departments was conducted in 2010 and found that almost half of the 38 states that took part had no plan for protecting public health in the event of a radiation emergency.

“Most states had completed little to no planning for public health surveillance to assess potential human health impacts of a radiation event,” said the study in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, a journal of the American Medical Association.

Full Story Here: US ill-prepared for emergency radiation: study | The Raw Story.

Germany and Switzerland freeze development of nuclear reactors

Germany and Switzerland said Monday that they would be the first industrialized nations to freeze development of nuclear power facilities while they reassess safety procedures, in the wake of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis following last week’s devastating earthquake.

Despite assurances, six of their reactors are said to be melting down or in near-meltdown status at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, following last week’s massive earthquake and tsunami. All of the reactors were constructed in the 1970s.

As a result, the Swiss said they would suspend three forthcoming nuclear sites and launch an in-depth study of how Japan’s crisis was created and whether their own reactors posed a similar threat.

Full Story Here: Germany and Switzerland freeze development of nuclear reactors | The Raw Story.

Nuclear Power Madness

Norman Solomon: :

Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more disconnected from reality than ever.

Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of “safe nuclear power.” It’s up to us — people around the world — to peacefully and insistently shut those plants down.

There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.

As the New York Times reported on Monday, “most of the nuclear plants in the United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances.”

Full Story Here: Nuclear Power Madness | Common Dreams.

Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants in Texas

Greg Palast »

The no-BS info on Japan’s disastrous nuclear operators

I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.

I don’t know the law in Japan, so I can’t tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.

But what will Obama plead?  The Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas — by Tokyo Electric Power and local partners.  As if the Gulf hasn’t suffered enough.

Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven’t heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan’s nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.

Full Story Here: Greg Palast » Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear PlantsThe no-BS info on Japan’s disastrous nuclear operators.

Japan Frantic to Avert Multiple Nuclear Meltdowns

Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified Sunday as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple reactor meltdowns and more than 170,000 people evacuated the quake- and tsunami-savaged northeastern coast where fears spread over possible radioactive contamination.

Nuclear plant operators were frantically trying to keep temperatures down in a series of nuclear reactors – including one where officials feared a partial meltdown could be happening Sunday – to prevent the disaster from growing worse.

If a full-scale meltdown were to occur, experts interviewed by The Associated Press said melted fuel would eat through the bottom of the reactor vessel, then through the floor of the containment building. At that point, the uranium and dangerous byproducts would start escaping into the environment.

Full Story Here: Japan Frantic to Avert Multiple Nuclear Meltdowns | Common Dreams.

Thousands form human chain in protest against nuclear energy in Germany

The explosion at the Japanese nuclear power plant has given new fuel to a long-running dispute in Germany, where tens of thousands demonstrated on Saturday against plans to extend the life of the country’s nuclear power stations.

According to the police, some 50 000 people took part in the protest which saw a human chain spread from a nuclear power plant in Neckarwestheim to the city of Stuttgart.

Those participating in the demonstration said it was time for the German government to move away from nuclear power.

Full Story Here: Thousands form human chain in protest against nuclear energy in Germany | euronews, world news.

Japan Earthquake, ‘Chernobyl in The Making’ Nuclear Dangers Discussed by Dr. Michio Kaku

Nuclear Power Plants:

According to the Associated Press, Japan has declared a state of emergency following the failure of the cooling system at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Officials say there has been no leak of radiation or radioactive material.

One facility in Fukushima developed a mechanical failure in the reactor cooling system after it was shut down and emergency power supply failed but there was no radiation leak. Past midnight local time, it was reported that The Tokyo Electric Power Company was considering venting out superhot gas from the reactor vessel into the atmosphere, which could result in the release of radioactives. The core of the reactor remains hot however, so cooling is still required. Unnamed officials at the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that due to lack of electricity the emergency cooling system is currently powered by a battery, which lasts about eight hours. Another six batteries have been secured, and the government may use military helicopters to fly them in. A precautionary state of emergency has been declared. More than 2,000 residents living within a 3-kilometer (1.9 mi) radius of the plant were evacuated, while residents living within a zone 3 to 10 kilometers (1.9 to 6.2 mi) away were asked to evacuate.

YouTube – Japan Earthquake, ‘Chernobyl in The Making’ Nuclear Dangers Discussed by Dr. Michio Kaku, 12/03/2011.

Japan scrambles to avert nuclear meltdown

Japan fought on Sunday to avert a disastrous meltdown at two earthquake-crippled nuclear reactors as estimates of the death toll from the tsunami that charged across its northeast rose to more than 10,000.

Broadcaster NHK, quoting a police official, said more than 10,000 people may have been killed as the wall of water triggered by Friday’s 8.9-magnitude quake surged across the coastline, reducing whole towns to rubble.

Officials worked desperately to prevent the fuel rods in the damaged plants from overheating after radiation leaked into the air. The government said a building housing a second reactor was at risk of exploding after a blast blew the roof off a different plant the day before.

Full Story Here: Japan scrambles to avert nuclear meltdown | The Raw Story.

California ‘closely monitoring’ Japan nuclear leak

California is closely monitoring efforts to contain leaks from a quake-damaged Japanese nuclear plant, a spokesman said Saturday, as experts said radiation could be blown out across the Pacific.

While officials downplayed any immediate danger, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission deployed two experts to Japan, where the Fukushima plant, which was rocked by a large explosion earlier in the day in the aftermath of Japan’s strongest-ever earthquake.

“At present there is no danger to California. However we are monitoring the situation closely in conjunction with our federal partners,” Michael Sicilia, spokesman for California Department of Public Health, told AFP.

“California does have radioactivity monitoring systems in place for air, water and the food supply and can enhance that monitoring if a danger exists,” he added.

Full Story Here: California ‘closely monitoring’ Japan nuclear leak | The Raw Story.

IAEA: 170,000 evacuated near Japan nuclear plant

The U.N. nuclear watchdog says Japan is evacuating 170,000 people from the area near a nuclear power plant damaged in the devastating earthquake and tsunami.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, says the people were ordered out of a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius surrounding the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

Full Story Here: IAEA: 170,000 evacuated near Japan nuclear plant.

OPS: Japan has 54 of these time bombs

Video of blast at Fukushima nuke plant, radiation leak reported

An explosion at a Japanese nuclear power station tore down the walls of one building on Saturday as smoke poured out and Japanese officials said they feared the reactor could melt down following the failure of its cooling system in Friday’s powerful earthquake and tsunami.

Atomic Safety Agency: Reactor Fuel Rods May Have Begun to Melt

A nuclear reactor in the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station about 220 kilometers (140 miles) north of Tokyo may be starting to melt down after Japan’s biggest earthquake on record hit the area yesterday.

Fuel rods at the No. 1 reactor at the plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. may be melting after radioactive Cesium material left by atomic fission was detected near the site, Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, spokesman Yuji Kakizaki said by phone today.

“If the fuel rods are melting and this continues, a reactor meltdown is possible,” Kakizaki said. A meltdown refers to a heat buildup in the core of such an intensity it melts the floor of the reactor containment housing.

Full Story Here: Japan Reactor Fuel Rods May Have Begun to Melt, Atomic Safety Agency Says – Bloomberg.

Japan earthquake and tsunami: State of emergency after nuclear power plant crippled

* 2,800 residents already evacuated within two-mile radius of the plant

* Pressure rises to 2.1 times normal level

* Experts warn the situation ‘could turn grave’

There has been an explosion at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Several workers have been injured by the blast as they continue the struggle to contain radiation leaks at the crippled reactor.

Thousands of people within a six-mile radius of the Fukushima facility were evacuated as radiation rose to 1,000 times the safe level and pressure grew, fueling fears of an explosion.

With growing tension at the plant 150 miles north of Tokyo, a second state of emergency was declared as pressure rose in two reactors at the facility.

Earlier officials had proposed releasing radioactive vapour into the atmosphere in a bid to prevent an explosion after its cooling system failed.

Full Story Here: Japan earthquake and tsunami: State of emergency after nuclear power plant crippled | Mail Online.

Chernobyl: 25 Years After The Nuclear Disaster (PHOTOS)

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. At 1:23am on April 26th, 1986, operators in the control room of Reactor #4 botched a routine safety test, resulting in an explosion, and a fire that burned for 10 days. The radioactive fallout spread over tens of thousands of square miles, driving more than a quarter of a million people permanently from their homes. It remains the world’s worst nuclear disaster to date.

Since 1993, renowned National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig has visited the site several times, creating an in-depth look at the many consequences of tragedy. The thawing of bureaucratic barriers in Ukraine enabled him to move freely within the Exclusion Zone and delve deeper into contaminated reactor than any other Western still photographer. “I know that my explorations are not without personal risk. However,” he says, “I do this on behalf of otherwise voiceless victims who allow me to expose their suffering solely in the hope that tragedies like Chernobyl may be prevented in the future.”

Full Story Here: Chernobyl: 25 Years After The Nuclear Disaster (PHOTOS).

Georgia Nuclear Power Plant to Be Made In China

The Obama administration is working to encourage domestic energy production, but the machinery and parts required may not be from domestic sources.

A major benefit of further nuclear power production would be the need to manufacture the machinery required to operate these power plants. However, many companies are considering importing these parts from Japan and China.

“Combining outsourcing with nuclear safety is dangerous chemistry – and risky politics,” American Alliance of Manufacturing Executive Director Scott Paul said. Fortunately, United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard has filed a complaint with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the matter.

Full Story: Georgia Nuclear Power Plant to Be Made In China | Economy In Crisis.

OPS: It’s just suicidal.

Federal Nuclear Waste Panel Overlooks Public Mistrust, Experts Say

A renewed federal effort to fix the nation’s stalled nuclear waste program is focusing so much on technological issues that it fails to address the public mistrust hampering storage and disposal efforts, according to 16 social science researchers from across the country.

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Science, experts including Sharon Friedman of Lehigh University say that President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future is not focusing enough on the social and political acceptability of possible solutions.

“While scientific and technical analyses are essential, they will not and arguably should not carry the day unless they address, substantively and procedurally, the issues that concern the public,” the experts write.

Full Story: On The Hill: Federal Nuclear Waste Panel Overlooks Public Mistrust, Experts Say.

6 Reasons Nuclear Energy Advocate Stewart Brand Is Wrong

Nuclear energy is a Dark Age technology, defined by unsustainable costs, inefficiencies, eco-destruction, radiation releases and much more.

Stewart Brand has become a poster boy for a “nuclear renaissance” that has just suffered a quiet but stunning defeat. Despite $645 million spent in lobbying over the past decade, the reactor industry has thus far failed to gouge out major new taxpayer funding for new commercial reactors.

In an exceedingly complex series of twists and turns, no legislation now pending in Congress contains firm commitments to the tens of billions reactor builders have been demanding. They could still come by the end of the session. But the radioactive cake walk many expected the industry to take through the budget process has thus far failed to happen.

The full story is excruciatingly complicated. But the core reasons are simple: atomic power can’t compete, and makes global warming worse.

Full Story: 6 Reasons Nuclear Energy Advocate Stewart Brand Is Wrong | Environment | AlterNet.

The Upcoming Nuclear Peril: Worse Than the BP Oil Disaster

How many crises will it take? The recent destruction wrought by Big Finance and Big Oil will pale in comparison to the destruction wrought by Big Nuclear if we do not use the Gulf disaster as an opportunity to end our dangerous addiction to dirty fuels and to reject the illusion that any industry will “regulate” itself.

The nuclear industry has captured our government and governments around the globe. One single nuclear mistake, whether it be an accident or a security breach, could leave a 10,000-year path of destruction. Even while functioning properly and in accordance with the law, nuclear power plants produce cancer-causing poisons, which enter the bodies of humans at toxic levels.

Today we face a nuclear peril unlike anything we have ever known. We are approaching a tipping point in the global spread of nuclear technology because of a largely out-of-sight, worldwide free-for-all among nuclear power companies and their allied national governments to expand their share of the fast-growing international nuclear energy market. Unless we begin to confront the mounting dangers, we have little chance of keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists and carcinogenic toxins out of our bodies.

Full Story: t r u t h o u t | The Upcoming Nuclear Peril: Worse Than the BP Oil Disaster.

Billions of New Nuke Giveaways in Kerry-Lieberman Bill Exposed

BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TAX BREAKS FOR EACH NEW REACTOR UNDER KERRY-LIEBERMAN WIPE OUT RISK FOR UTILITIES ALREADY BENEFITING FROM MASSIVE LOAN GUARANTEES

Earth Track Analysis Finds That Just Two of the Subsidies Add Another $1.3 Billion to $3 Billion in Tax Breaks Per Reactor; May Make It More Likely Taxpayers Will Face Downside Risk.

Washington, D.C. — The nuclear industry could end up facing no risk under massive tax break subsidies in the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill, according to an important new analysis conducted for Friends of the Earth by the research organization Earth Track. These tax breaks totaling $9.7 billion to $57.3 billion (depending on the type and number of reactors) would come on top of the Kerry-Lieberman measure’s lucrative $35.5 billion addition to the more than $22.5 billion in loan guarantees already slated for nuclear power.

Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica said: “Doling out an additional $1.3-$3 billion in tax breaks per new reactor means the industry would be at the table playing almost entirely with taxpayer money. Industry will have little to lose when a reactor goes belly up. While taxpayers are bankrolling the industry’s nuclear gamble they would share in none of the reactor’s financial returns. In fact, all taxpayers will receive if the reactors are built is responsibility for disposing of the waste. By contrast, investors stand to make billions with no risk should their reactor gambit goes belly up and enter bankruptcy.”

Full Story: Billions of New Nuke Giveaways in Kerry-Lieberman Bill Exposed | Friends of the Earth.

Strontium-90 found in soil at Vermont nuke plant

Vermont Yankee officials say that while cleaning up after a leak of radioactive tritium at the nuclear power plant, they found another, more potent radioactive isotope in soil near where the leak occurred.

Strontium-90 is a byproduct of nuclear fission that has been linked to cancer and leukemia.

Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said Friday that the substance hasn’t been found in any groundwater and plant officials believe they’ve removed all the soil containing it. He said they believe it poses no threat to public safety or health. Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Wendy Davis didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment late Friday.

New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. owns the plant.

Full Story: Nation & World | Strontium-90 found in soil at Vermont nuke plant | Seattle Times Newspaper.

OPS: is it all going to come down at once? And don’t forget kids, unlike the Oil industry, the American Taxpayer insures these little time bombs

French Nuclear Industry Faces Meltdown

A much-awaited report on France’s nuclear industry — due out later this week — is understood to offer ways for France’s diverse nuclear industry to work together to garner big contracts around the globe.

It may succeed. That is, if the government can use it to end, or at least calm, a complex of feuds among the heads of France’s biggest energy companies.

The stakes are high. Clean nuclear power is enjoying a renaissance and France is home to some of the world’s largest players in the nuclear industry. Indeed, it is president Nicolas Sarkozy’s dream to streamline the nuclear power sector, from design to operation, working as a team to win high profile contracts around the world.

“All bosses of France’s biggest energy companies more or less hate or at least despise each other, for one reason or another,” an executive at one French energy company told Dow Jones Newswires under conditions of anonymity

Full Story: French Nuclear Industry Faces Meltdown – The Source – WSJ.

Report: IAEA to discuss Israel’s nuclear activities for first time

Israeli nuclear capabilities are on the provisional agenda for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s June 7 meeting.

Israel’s secretive nuclear activities may undergo unprecedented scrutiny next month, with a key meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency tentatively set to focus on the topic for the first time, according to documents shared Friday with The Associated Press.

A copy of the restricted provisional agenda of the IAEA’s June 7 board meeting lists Israeli nuclear capabilities as the eighth item – the first time that that the agency’s decision-making body is being asked to deal with the issue in its 52 years of existence.

The agenda can still undergo changes in the month before the start of the meeting and a senior diplomat from a board member nation said the item, included on Arab request, could be struck if the U.S. and other Israeli allies mount strong opposition. He asked for anonymity for discussing a confidential matter.

Full Story: Report: IAEA to discuss Israel’s nuclear activities for first time – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Nuclear Power Nearly as Dangerous as Weapons, Critics Say

The quest for nuclear disarmament is likely to fail if governments and corporations continue to promote nuclear technologies as a solution to the world’s energy needs, say independent experts.

Their warning comes as international talks on the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) continue here at U.N. headquarters in New York. The review meeting on the 1970 treaty is due to conclude by the end of this month.

At the meeting, many delegates from countries that do not possess nuclear weapons called for those nations who have them to take speedy actions towards disarmament. Citing the treaty, some also said it was their “inalienable” right to use peaceful nuclear technologies.

Just like the representatives of nuclear weapons states, almost none of the delegates from non-nuclear countries offered any views on the pros and cons of the use of nuclear technologies for so-called “civilian and peaceful purposes”.

Full Story: Nuclear Power Nearly as Dangerous as Weapons, Critics Say – IPS ipsnews.net.

Book’s Astounding Allegation: Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People | Environment | AlterNet

Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki according to a new book.

Nearly one million people around the world died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor, finds a new book from the New York Academy of Sciences published today on the 24th anniversary of the meltdown at the Soviet facility.

The book, “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment,” was compiled by authors Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus.

The authors examined more than 5,000 published articles and studies, most written in Slavic languages and never before available in English.

Full Story: Book’s Astounding Allegation: Chernobyl Radiation Killed Nearly One Million People | Environment | AlterNet.

Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms

President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Full Story: Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms – NYTimes.com.

Foreign Companies Dominate Nuclear Energy Market

“If we’re going to start shoveling a lot of money at nuclear, and nuclear is part of America’s plan to get less oil-dependent, then we need to build it ourselves,” Thomas M. Conway, vice president for the United Steelworkers union said in a statement.

While proponents of nuclear power claim that increased usage of the technology would create countless jobs, provide cheaper energy and lessen the nation’s dependence on foreign energy sources, others claim that when taking into account the cost of clean up and subsidies and the fact that much of the production is foreign-owned, it is simply too costly.

According to D.A. Barber, writing in The Huffington Post, foreign-owned companies dominate the domestic uranium mining and milling market.

“Ironically, most mining and milling proposals of recent years are from foreign-owned companies … Even the newest enrichment plant to convert uranium to reactor fuel is wholly foreign owned,” he writes.

Full Story: Foreign Companies Dominate Nuclear Energy Market | Economy In Crisis.

OPS: Just one more reason to not go forward with nuclear power

You Are Now Paying for the Next 3 Mile Island

Harvey Wasserman -

As radiation poured from 3 Mile Island 31 years ago this weekend, utility executives rested easy.

They knew that no matter how many people their errant nuke killed, and no matter how much property it destroyed, they would not be held liable.

Today this same class of executives demands untold taxpayer billions to build still more TMIs. No matter how many meltdowns they cause, and how much havoc they visit down on the public, they still believe they’re above the law.

Fueled with more than $600 million public relations slush money, they demand a risk-free “renaissance” financed by you and yours.

As if!

Full Story: You Are Now Paying for the Next 3 Mile Island | CommonDreams.org.

Nuclear Industry to Vermont: ‘Drop Dead’

Harvey Wasserman -

The nuclear power industry is sending a clear and forceful message to the citizens of Vermont: “Drop Dead.”

The greeting applies to Ohio, New York, California and a nation under assault from a “renaissance” so far hyped with more than $640 million in corporate cash.

The Vermont attack includes:

1) A direct threat to ignore the state Senate’s 26-4 February vote against renewing the Yankee reactor’s operating license. As a condition of buying Yankee, Entergy long-ago ceded to the legislature approval of any extension of an operating license, which expires in 2012. But Entergy now says it will spend all the corporate cash it needs to evict the current Senate and install one more to its liking.

Full Story: Nuclear Industry to Vermont: ‘Drop Dead’ | CommonDreams.org.

Cracks found in critical reactor parts at Davis-Besse power plant

OAK HARBOR, Ohio — Inspectors working at FirstEnergy Corp.’s Davis-Besse power plant near Toledo have uncovered the same kind of cracking in critical reactor lid parts that were the cause of massive corrosion found at the plant eight years ago.

In a routine report filed early today with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company said inspectors using sophisticated ultrasonic instruments had found indications of cracking in 12 of the 69 metal tubes that carry control rods through the reactor lid.

Davis-Besse has been down since Feb. 28 for regular refueling and plant-wide inspections and maintenance. Workers late last week began instrument-assisted inspections of all 69 of the corrosion-resistant tubes, known as “nozzles” in the industry because they protrude from the reactor lid several feet and resemble nozzles.

Full Story: Cracks found in critical reactor parts at Davis-Besse power plant | cleveland.com.

Nuclear Projects Waiting on Financial Backing

Obtaining financing for nuclear reactors, a key portion of the Obama administration’s alternative energy policy, is proving to be extremely difficult despite billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees, according to The Washington Post.

According to The Post, obtaining private capital for nuclear projects has always been a major obstacle to increasing the usage of nuclear power in the U.S. Extremely costly to begin with, the construction of nuclear power plants have a tendency to run over schedule and over budget.

The government has guaranteed up to $18.5 billion in financing, however, that may cover just one construction project. A proposed project in Georgia, which would build two nuclear reactors if approved, is expected to cost $14 billion.

Full Story: Nuclear Projects Waiting on Financial Backing | Economy In Crisis.

Nuclear Power Renaissance Faces Serious Obstacles

The renaissance of nuclear power in the U.S. appears inevitable. It just may not happen as smoothly as the Obama administration and others hope.

The Vermont Senate’s vote Wednesday to block a license renewal for an Entergy plant shows that supporters of nuclear power still have big obstacles to overcome. Those include the growing costs for new plants, environmental worries and the age of the country’s existing nuclear fleet.

“I think if you said ‘ready, go’ today, any kind of meaningful addition would be 10 years down the road,” said Eric Melvin of Mobius Risk.

Full Story: Nuclear Power Renaissance Faces Serious Obstacles.

Nuclear subsidies put taxpayers at risk

Power companies call defaults unlikely

President Obama’s plan to kick-start the construction of nuclear power plants in the United States comes with a big catch: Because private banks won’t lend to an industry viewed as financially risky, taxpayers would be accountable for billions in government-guaranteed loans if plant developers default.

Full Story: Nuclear subsidies put taxpayers at risk – The Boston Globe.

U.S. Nuclear Reactors Could be Made in China

Many leaders in the manufacturing industry fear that China could take a leading role in producing many of the essential parts that will go into the reactors.

Groups representing some of America’s top manufacturers are registering complaints publicly and with the Obama administration over the proposed federal loan guarantee to build two nuclear reactors in Georgia, the manufacturing of which they say will be sourced overseas.

American manufacturers claim that jobs created by taxpayer-backed loan guarantees should be domestic jobs. They also claim that the nuclear reactor components should be American-made due to safety concerns.

The Obama administration last week announced $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for the creation of two new nuclear reactors to be built near Augusta, Georgia, saying the project will create hundreds of American jobs.

Full Story: U.S. Nuclear Reactors Could be Made in China | Economy In Crisis.

Vermont Senate Votes to Close Nuclear Plant

In an unusual state foray into nuclear regulation, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 Wednesday to block a license extension for the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, citing radioactive leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems.

Unless the chamber reverses itself, it would be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives decided to close a reactor.

The vote came barely over a week after President Obama declared a new era of rebirth for the nation’s nuclear industry, announcing federal loan guarantees of $8.3 billion to assure the construction of a twin-reactor plant near Augusta, Ga.

Vermont Yankee’s recent troubles are viewed by some as a challenge to arguments that reactors are clean, well run and worth the enormous investment involved in building and operating them.

Full Story: Vermont Senate Votes to Close Nuclear Plant – NYTimes.com.

$645 MILLION in Lipstick for a Dead Radioactive Pig

Harvey  Wasserman -

The mystery has been solved.

Where is this “new reactor renaissance” coming from?

There has been no deep, thoughtful re-making or re-evaluation of atomic technology. No solution to the nuke waste problem. No making reactors economically sound. No private insurance against radioactive disasters by terror or error. No grassroots citizens now desperate to live near fragile containment domes and outtake pipes spewing radioactive tritium at 27 US reactors.

No, nothing about atomic energy has really changed.

Except this: $645 MILLION for lobbying Congress and the White House over the past ten years.

As reported by Judy Pasternak and a team of reporters at American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop, filings with the Senate Office of Public Records show that members of the Nuclear Energy Institute and other reactor owner/operators admit spending that money on issues that “include legislation to promote construction of new nuclear power plants.”

Full Story: $645 MILLION in Lipstick for a Dead Radioactive Pig | BuzzFlash.org.

Obama’s nuclear vision suffers setback as Vermont plant faces shutdown

Vermont would be the first state to close a nuclear reactor after 38-year-old Yankee’s history of leaking cancer-causing tritium

Barack Obama’s new dream of a nuclear renaissance faces a major reality check tomorrow when the state of Vermont is expected to shut down an ageing nuclear reactor with a history of leaks.

It would be the first time a state has moved to shut down such a reactor, and follows Obama’s announcement last week of $8.3bn (£5.4bn) in loan guarantees for the construction of two new reactors in Georgia. White House officials said the money would help spur a burst of new construction – the first since the Three Mile Island meltdown.

The Vermont Yankee, one of America’s oldest reactors, has had several leaks of radioactive tritium dating back to 2005, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said yesterday.

Full Story: Obama’s nuclear vision suffers setback as Vermont plant faces shutdown | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Stop The Nukespeak: Tell Us The Truth About Nuclear Power!

Nearly twenty years ago I co-wrote Nukespeak, a cultural history of the selling of nuclear technology for both peaceful and military purposes.

My co-authors and I dedicated the book to George Orwell, whose literary creation of ‘newspeak’ in the classic novel 1984 illustrated the power to control reality through the adroit manipulation of language. The euphemisms, obfuscations and omissions employed by nuclear boosters throughout both industry and government – what one writer has called the “linguistic cosmetics” used “to avoid communicating uncomfortable or threatening thoughts so that the nuclear industry can control the images and perceptions of nuclear power” — were so clearly reminiscent of Orwellian thought control that the homage seemed, if anything, perhaps a little too obvious.

Thus, in Nukespeak, proponents speak of “health effects” when they really mean “cancer.” Accidents such as the infamous one at Three Mile Island are merely “anomalies,” “significant events” or “abnormal occurrences” — and when they recur, they are re-dubbed “normal abnormalities.” Radioactive substances such as Strontium-90 are measured in “sunshine units,” and when deadly plutonium somehow goes missing, it’s simply a “MUF – material unaccounted for.” “Boundless energy” to save us from “freezing in the dark” would be “too cheap to meter” – if we only went nuclear…

Full Story: Media Channel 2.0 — Blog — Stop The Nukespeak: Tell Us The Truth About Nuclear Power!.

OPS: How long before they bring back the term “Sunshine Dust”

Keep ‘Made in Asia’ label off the U.S. nuclear revival

Chinese parts in American Nuclear Reactors?

Set aside your views on the safety and efficacy of nuclear power for a minute and think about this: Is it desirable to trade America’s dependence on foreign oil for dependence on renewables and nuclear energy manufacturing abroad? Worse yet, should we allow our tax dollars to make this possible?

Sadly, that may be our reality. A made-in-China Texas wind farm project last year was slated for federal assistance. Fortunately, a public outcry and outrage from Congress will likely ensure that more of its wind energy components are manufactured in the U.S. But, a potentially bigger battle lies ahead.

With the Obama administration’s announcement of $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees for two proposed reactors in Burke, Ga., tax dollars may in fact be headed to Asia to support the manufacture of nuclear components. Already, Japan — home of recall-plagued Toyota — may approve financing for the nuclear project, an indication that some high-value components will be made there. And, given China’s keen interest in rapidly developing its own nuclear power generating and manufacturing capability, it is highly likely that Chinese manufacturers of steel and other nuclear components have some skin in the game, as well.

Full Story: Keep ‘Made in Asia’ label off the U.S. nuclear revival – TheHill.com.

Obama’s Nuclear Option

Amy Goodman -

President Barack Obama is going nuclear. He announced the initial $8 billion in loan guarantees for construction of the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in close to three decades. Obama is making good on a campaign pledge, like his promises to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to unilaterally attack in Pakistan. And like his “Af-Pak” war strategy, Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.

Opponents of the plan, which includes a tripling of existing nuclear plant construction-loan guarantees to $54.5 billion, span the ideological spectrum. On its most basic level, the economics of nuclear power generation simply doesn’t make sense. The cost to construct these behemoths is so huge, and the risks are so great, that no sensible investor, no banks, no hedge funds will invest in their construction.

No one will loan a power company the money to build a power plant, and the power companies refuse to spend their own money. Obama himself professes a passion for the free market, telling Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “We are fierce advocates for a thriving, dynamic free market.” Well, the free market long ago abandoned nuclear power. The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation remarked, “Expansive loan guarantee programs … are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment, and distort capital markets.”

Full Story Amy Goodman: Obama’s Nuclear Option – Truthdig.

Five Reasons NOT to Invest in Nuclear Power

Yesterday, President Obama announced that the Energy department will provide an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to the Southern Co. for its proposed nuclear power plant near Augusta, GA. “The loan guarantee program for new nuclear power plants not only will further the nation’s commitment to clean energy, Obama said, “but also will assist in creating jobs in American communities.” Unfortunately, nuclear energy isn’t safe or clean and it’s too costly for the nation.

News coverage has been mostly supportive and, in some cases, bordering on cheerleading. In his blog for the Atlantic magazine, Editor Daniel Indiviglio laid out “five reasons to cheer Obama’s ambition.” Let’s take a closer look at these “five reasons.”

Reason #1: “Nuclear power is a known quantity. The U.S. has been successfully using this energy source for a very long time.”

Nuclear power is certainly well known to Wall Street, which despite its recent debacles, has refused to fund power reactors for more than 30 years because of their financial risks. Reactor construction costs climbed as high as 380 percent above expectations during the boom period for nuclear in the 1970s. Nuclear investors eventually wrote off about $17 billion. Consider the 1979 Three Mile Island Accident, in which TMI investors lost about $2 billion in about an hour, when the reactor core started to melt. Nuclear energy has depended primarily on the financial burden being born by the tax payer and rate payer. This is hardly a success story.

Full Story Robert Alvarez: Five Reasons NOT to Invest in Nuclear Power.

217 possibly exposed to radiation at Ont. plant

Up to 217 workers may have been exposed to nuclear radiation at a Bruce nuclear power plant near Owen Sound, Ont., says the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in a document released Tuesday.

The nuclear safety watchdog first confirmed last month that workers who were upgrading the Bruce A Unit 1 reactor may have been exposed to radiation.

A routine airborne sample taken on the morning of Nov. 26 at the plant threw up some red flags, according to a preliminary report by Bruce Power. Further testing of samples uncovered the presence of alpha particles, which can damage human tissue and cause cancer.

Full Story CBC News – Toronto – 217 possibly exposed to radiation at Ont. plant.

Obama’s Atomic Blunder

by Harvey Wasserman  -

As Vermont seethes with radioactive contamination and the Democratic Party crumbles, Barack Obama has plunged into the atomic abyss.

In the face of fierce green opposition and withering scorn from both liberal and conservative budget hawks, Obama has done what George W. Bush could not—pledge billions of taxpayer dollars for a relapse of the 20th Century’s most expensive technological failure.

Obama has announced some $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors planned for Georgia. Their Westinghouse AP-1000 designs have been rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being unable to withstand natural cataclysms like hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

The Vogtle site was to originally host four reactors at a total cost of $600 million; it wound up with two at $9 billion.

Full Story Obama’s Atomic Blunder | BuzzFlash.org.

Energy Sec Unaware That Nuclear Loans Have 50 Percent Risk of Default

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a loan guarantee for the first new nuclear reactor to be built in the US in decades—part of a planned $54.5 billion program to kickstart a nuclear revival using government-backed loans. Yet Chu said he was not aware of a Congressional Budget Office study showing that the chances of default on these loans are “very high—well above 50 percent.”

“I don’t know of the CBO report,” Chu told reporters during a conference call on Tuesday. “We don’t believe the chance of default is 50 percent. We believe it’s far less than that.” The first loan guarantee, worth $8.33 billion, was awarded to two proposed reactors to be built by Southern Company at Plant Vogtle in Burke, Georgia.

As Mother Jones has reported, the proposal to encourage nuclear construction via massive federally backed loans represents a major risk for the US taxpayer. While the nuclear industry as recently as 2005 claimed the price tag for a reactor was $2 billion, independent estimates now put the cost as high as $12 billion.

Full Story Energy Sec Unaware That Nuclear Loans Have 50 Percent Risk of Default | Mother Jones.

Obama Nuclear Plant: President To Announce Loan Guarantee For More Than $8 Billion

President Barack Obama is highlighting a new investment in energy jobs with an announcement that the government will guarantee more than $8 billion in loans needed to build the first U.S. nuclear power plant in nearly three decades.

Obama was to make remarks Tuesday after touring a job training center at the headquarters of Local 26 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in nearby Lanham, Md. The union represents electrical and telecommunications workers, and it offers training useful for energy jobs, including the construction of nuclear power plants.

Obama was expected to announce a total of $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees to build and operate a pair of reactors in Burke County, Ga., by Southern Co., an administration official said Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of Obama’s announcement.

Full Story Obama Nuclear Plant: President To Announce Loan Guarantee For More Than $8 Billion.

Nuclear Does Not Make Economic Sense Say Studies

The enormous technical and financial risks involved in the construction and operation of new nuclear power plants make them prohibitive for private investors, rebutting the thesis of a renaissance in nuclear energy, say several independent European studies.

The risks include high construction costs, likely long delays in building, extended periods of depreciation of equipment inherent to the construction and operation of new power plants and the lack of guarantees for prices of electricity.

Adding to these is the global meltdown and the consequent cautious behaviour of investors as also fiscal and revenue difficulties of governments in the industrialised countries, say the studies.

In the most recent analysis on the feasibility of new nuclear power plants, the Citibank group concludes that some of “the risks faced by developers … are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially.”

The Citibank paper, titled ‘New Nuclear – The Economics Say No’, lists five major risks developers and operators of new nuclear power plants must confront. These risks are planning, construction, power price, operational, and decommissioning. According to the study, most governments in industrialised countries today have only “sought to limit the planning risk” for investors.

Full Story ENERGY: Nuclear Does Not Make Economic Sense Say Studies – IPS ipsnews.net.

No Nukes

Ralph Nader –
A generation of Americans has grown up without a single nuclear power plant being brought on line since before the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island structure in 1979. They have not been exposed to the enormous costs, risks and national security dangers associated with their operations and the large amount of radioactive wastes still without a safe, permanent storage place for tens of thousands of years.

All Americans better get informed soon, for a resurgent atomic power lobby wants the taxpayers to pick up the tab for relaunching this industry. Unless you get Congress to stop this insanely dirty and complex way to boil water to generate steam for electricity, you’ll be paying for the industry’s research, the industry’s loan guarantees and the estimated trillion dollars (inflation-adjusted) cost of just one meltdown, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plus vast immediate and long-range casualties.

The Russian roulette-playing nuclear industry claims a class nine meltdown will never happen. That none of the thousands of rail cars, trucks and barges with radioactive wastes will ever have a catastrophic accident. That terrorists will forgo striking a nuclear plant or hijacking deadly materials, and go for far less consequential disasters.

Full Story No Nukes | CommonDreams.org.

Tritium hot zone expands.

The Department of Health said late Monday there appears to be “a very large area” at the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor contaminated with radioactive tritium, and contamination levels continue to rise.

Because the area is so big, according to William Irwin, radiological health chief, there are many potential sources of radioactive water at this particularly high concentration of tritium.

“This is a very large area that encompasses many potential sources of water at this concentration of tritium, including the condensate storage tank and the systems and components of the advanced off-gas system,” Irwin said late Monday afternoon.

He said the area of contamination was roughly from the reactor building to the Connecticut River.

Full Story Tritium hot zone expands.: Rutland Herald Online.

The WaPo’s “Nuclear Power Regains Support” is a Big Lie

Harvey Wasserman –

Yet another “perfectly safe” release at Three Mile Island has irradiated yet another puff of hype about alleged “green” support for new reactors.

The two are inseparable.

In 1979, when TMI’s brand new Unit Two melted, stack monitors and other critical safeguards crashed in tandem. Nobody knows how much radiation escaped, where it went or who it harmed. Cancers, leukemia, stillbirths, malformations, asthma, sterility, skin lesions and other radiation-related diseases erupted throughout central Pennsylvania. Some 2400 families sued, but never got a full public hearing in federal court.

Unit Two had operated just three months when it melted. By a 3-1 margin, three central Pennsylvania counties then voted that TMI-One, which opened in 1974, stay shut. But Ronald Reagan tore down that wall.

This week TMI’s owners were forced to evacuate 150 workers when radioactive dust “unexpectedly blew out of a pipe being cut by workers.” Exelon was “trying to determine exactly how and why it happened.”

Full Story The WaPo’s “Nuclear Power Regains Support” is a Big Lie | CommonDreams.org.

Rhode Island’s Nuclear Fatality–Part I

It’s been almost thirty years since the Three Mile Island disaster put a halt to the expansion of nuclear power in the US. Public opinion was already turning against the industry. Once promising cheap, clean electricity, the power plants in fact required massive taxpayer subsidies to build and a special exemption from liability in case the worst happened.

The worst almost happened at Three Mile Island …

Although the TMI-2 plant suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, it did not produce the worst-case consequences that reactor experts had long feared. In a worst-case accident, the melting of nuclear fuel would lead to a breach of the walls of the containment building and release massive quantities of radiation to the environment. But this did not occur as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.

The worst-case accident occurred in 1986 at Chernobyl.

Today, a generation after the gas lines and bitter winters of the 1970’s, we’re again caught unprepared. We still depend on foreign oil and large, centralized power plants. Investment in alternative energy has been cut to a trickle since Ronald Reagan. The nuclear industry is portraying itself as a clean, green savior. Safety concerns are dismissed as a superstitious fear of radioactivity…

In more than 500 reactor years of service in the United States, there has never been a death or a serious injury to plant employees or to the public caused by a commercial reactor accident or radiation exposure. Says Philip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences: “Nuclear power is the safest major technology ever introduced into the United States.” link

Full Story Rhode Island’s Nuclear Fatality–Part I « Kmareka.com.

Nuclear Power’s Megafraud – Aris Candris and the Fraud of Nuclear Power

Pierre Tristam

Energy independence is the new creationism; nuclear power its deity. As the head glow for nuclear’s new dawn, you can’t do better than Aris Candris. He’s president and CEO of Westinghouse Electric, the company aiming to build 14 of 25 new nuclear reactors planned in the United States. Candris also sums up everything that’s wrong with the nuclear power industry’s orchestrated revival—the deceptions, the manipulated numbers, the false promises and the sheer swindle of taxpayer dollars for a technology with a lethal past and an unproven future. Candris’ Nov. 9 tribute to nuclear in The Wall Street Journal tells the tall tale.

Candris claims that, because electricity demand will grow 21 percent by 2030 from current levels, and “renewable energy sources produce only a small percentage” of total electricity output, it’s “doubtful that they can be scaled up to a degree that would make a significant impact on rising electricity demand over the short or intermediate term.” Actually, that’s more true of nuclear, far less so of renewable. Not a single nuclear power plant has been approved and built in the United States since the 1970s. The newest one, Watts Bar in Tennessee, began construction in 1973 and went online in 1996 — a 23-year span that multiplied its initial costs, to $7 billion. Candris gives the impression that a slew of plants are about to be built. Not so. A slew of plants applied for licenses, but only because the federal government is offering up to $1 billion in tax credits per new nuclear plant (once electricity production begins), as long as the application was in by the end of 2008.

Full Story Nuclear Power’s Megafraud – Aris Candris and the Fraud of Nuclear Power / Pierre Tristam [Candide's Notebooks].

Families face nuclear tax on power bills (UK)

Industry promised subsidy if market price fails to encourage new plants

Government officials have drawn up secret plans to tax electricity consumers to subsidise the construction of the UK’s first new nuclear reactors for more than 20 years, the Guardian has learned.

The planned levy on household bills would add £44 to an annual electricity bill of £500 and contradicts repeated promises by ministers that the nuclear industry would no longer benefit from public subsidies. There is mounting pressure on the power industry to show it can keep the lights on, with fears growing of an energy gap as ageing nuclear stations are retired and plans for new coal plants attract hostile protests

Full Story: Families face nuclear tax on power bills | Environment | The Guardian.

Rhode Island’s Nuclear Fatality–Part I

It’s been almost thirty years since the Three Mile Island disaster put a halt to the expansion of nuclear power in the US. Public opinion was already turning against the industry. Once promising cheap, clean electricity, the power plants in fact required massive taxpayer subsidies to build and a special exemption from liability in case the worst happened.

The worst almost happened at Three Mile Island …

Although the TMI-2 plant suffered a severe core meltdown, the most dangerous kind of nuclear power accident, it did not produce the worst-case consequences that reactor experts had long feared. In a worst-case accident, the melting of nuclear fuel would lead to a breach of the walls of the containment building and release massive quantities of radiation to the environment. But this did not occur as a result of the Three Mile Island accident.

The worst-case accident occurred in 1986 at Chernobyl.

Today, a generation after the gas lines and bitter winters of the 1970’s, we’re again caught unprepared. We still depend on foreign oil and large, centralized power plants. Investment in alternative energy has been cut to a trickle since Ronald Reagan. The nuclear industry is portraying itself as a clean, green savior. Safety concerns are dismissed as a superstitious fear of radioactivity…

Full Story: Rhode Island’s Nuclear Fatality–Part I « Kmareka.com.

Assembly line nuclear reactors

OPS: A dangerous step in the wrong direction

Assembly line nuclear reactors

Tom Sanders led the team at Sandia National Laboratories that developed this innovation.

The advantages are

1) Higher levels of safety and security,
2) An exportable nuclear power plant that is controllable and monitored by the exporter,
3) Minimized potential for use of nuclear material as weapons as the device is a breeder reactor,
4) 100 to 300 megawatt capacity,
5) Two year construction and installation period,
6) Higher efficiencies
7) Minimized waste,
Lifetime 50 years, and
9) Cost of 250 million dollars.

The idea is to mass produce and ship the device to parts of the world that have no means of producing electricity.

via Assembly line nuclear reactors.

TVA plan for Ala. nuclear plant drops to 1 reactor – washingtonpost.com

TVA plan for Ala. nuclear plant drops to 1 reactor

The Tennessee Valley Authority, faced with falling electric sales and rising costs from cleaning up a massive coal ash spill in Tennessee, on Friday trimmed plans for a potential four-unit nuclear plant in northeast Alabama to one reactor.

The nation’s largest public utility, which two years ago had positioned itself as a leader in this country’s so-called “nuclear renaissance,” said it would prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement to consider a single reactor for its unfinished Bellefonte site near Scottsboro, Ala.

That single unit might be one of the two advanced Westinghouse AP1000 reactors for which TVA has already applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a combined construction and operating license. Or it might be one of the two incomplete reactors that have been mothballed at the site since 1988.

via TVA plan for Ala. nuclear plant drops to 1 reactor – washingtonpost.com.

Ill. nuclear reactor shuts down

Ill. nuclear reactor shuts down   – chicagotribune.com

BRACEVILLE, Ill. – A Will County nuclear reactor has shut down after electrical power flowing into its station was interrupted.

Exelon Corp. says the Braidwood Generating Station Unit 2 in Braceville declared an “unusual event” when the reactor automatically shut down Thursday evening. The company says the plant “responded safely and without incident.”

It says the station made a loud noise as it shut down because of released steam, but there was no health or safety risk to workers or the public. Exelon says local, state, and federal government officials were notified.

The company says the station will be fueled by two backup diesel generators until offsite power is restored. The cause of the power loss is being investigated.

Braceville is about 50 miles southwest of Chicago.

via Ill. nuclear reactor shuts down — chicagotribune.com.

Why nuclear energy is not the answer to Climate Change

Why nuclear energy is not the answer to Climate Change

t’s funny. People really believe that nuclear power is emissions free. Powering cities with nuclear, they propound, is the panacea to climate change. And yet, if you really take a look at the fuel cycle, it is obvious nuclear energy is, in fact, emissions intensive.

First off the ore needs to be mined. This involves drilling, explosions, heavy equipment. Even at the EPA standard of 15 grams of carbon per break horsepower engine hour, this translates to a lot of carbon. Then the ore needs to be shipped to a processing facility, or mill.

Here, twenty-four hours a day, heavy equipment loads the ore into a hopper, the intake into the semi-autogenous grinding mill. This grinding mill uses electricity (coal) to turn an enormous steel drum filled with metal tumbling balls. Additionally, tons – yes tons – of concentrated sulfuric acid are needed to help leach the uranium from the ore, among quantities of other highly caustic chemicals, all of which must be prepared on industrial scales and shipped to the facility.

After a number of other mechanical operations, all of them energy intensive, the ore must be dried in an oven, where, twenty-four hours a day, countless kilo-watt hours are burned heating the rock to temperature.

via Why nuclear energy is not the answer to Climate Change.