Third finding of radiation in shipment to Egypt, from Japan
Egypt authorities find another case of radiation in Japanese shipment, Almasyry Alyoum, 9 Aug 11, — Egypt’s General Authority for Export and Import Control recently discovered radioactive cargo in two containers shipped from Japan to Ain Sokhna port, the Red Sea Ports Authority said.
This is the third radioactive shipment Egypt has discovered over the past month.
The radioactive material was found aboard ships carrying electric and mechanical instruments. A letter from Egypt’s atomic energy authorities confirmed the cargo had above-regulation radiation levels….http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/485146
Parents bring lawsuit to challenge Japan’s handling of nuclear radiation crisis
Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril, NYT, Norimitsu Onishi reported from Fukushima, and Martin Fackler from Tokyo. Ken Belson and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting from Tokyo. 9 Aug 11, FUKUSHIMA, Japan —”……..In Koriyama, a city about 40 miles west of the nuclear plant, a group of parents said they had stopped believing in government reassurances and recently did something unthinkable in a conservative, rural area: they sued. Though their suit seeks to force Koriyama to relocate their children to a safer area, their real aim is to challenge the nation’s handling of evacuations and the public health crisis.
After the nuclear disaster, the government raised the legal exposure limit to radiation from one to 20 millisieverts a year for people, including children — effectively allowing them to continue living in communities from which they would have been barred under the old standard. The limit was later scaled back to one millisievert per year, but applied only to children while they were inside school buildings.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Toshio Yanagihara, said the authorities were withholding information to deflect attention from the nuclear accident’s health consequences, which will become clear only years later.
“Because the effects don’t emerge immediately, they can claim later on that cigarettes or coffee caused the cancer,” he said…..http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/world/asia/09japan.html?_r=1&hp
USA’s radioactive nuclear waste piles up, with no plan in sight
dispose of the waste, which remains radioactive for hundreds if not thousands of years. But legal fights, transportation concerns and a prevailing not-in-my-backyard mentality have blocked solutions.In fact, no federal money is available anyway. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that since the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, Congress and successive administrations have funneled a $25 billion disposal fund into the government’s general coffers.
Because Washington failed to start taking spent fuel as promised beginning in 1998, utilities are suing it to cover their additional storage costs, the Journal reported. Legal fees are $16.2 billion and counting.
After spending billions to dig a dry-cask storage facility in the Nevada desert, Washington has, for now, scrapped that plan. Last month, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future declared that the U.S. nuclear-waste disposal program has “all but broken down.” …
Something hidden in USA – India nuclear technology deal
Government must clear mist about nuclear deal The New Indian Express, 11 Aug 11, “.…..S M Krishna’s latest statement in Parliament ….. His claim that new guidelines issued by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), banning transfer of nuclear enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) technologies to countries that do not sign Nuclear Proliferation Treaty do not negate NSG’s 2008 ‘clean waiver’ shows that the government continues to remain in a state of self-delusion. ……
As the gap between the prime minister’s assurances to Parliament before inking the nuclear deal and the reality keeps widening, it is clear that India was misled at the time of signing the deal. A bland, vague and simplistic statement from Krishna is not enough to dispel genuine concerns voiced by the Opposition as well as security experts that there was something hidden in the India-US civil nuclear deal. The government must now come out with a white paper on the subject and explain its position to Parliament and the people…http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/editorials/government-must-clear-mist-about-nuclear-deal/303299.html
19 legal challenges against relicensing of nuclear reactors
The contentions filed with the NRC address reactors at nuclear facilities nationwide, including 11 plants in the South: the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar plant in Rhea County, Tenn. and its Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala.; SCE&G’s Summer plant near Jenkinsville, S.C.; NRG’s South Texas plant near Bay City; Luminant’s Comanche Peak plant southwest of Dallas; Southern Co./Georgia Power’s Vogtle plant in Burke County, Ga.; FP&L’s Turkey Point plant south of Miami; Progress Energy’s Levy County plant in Florida and its Shearon Harris plant in Wake County, N.C.; Dominion’s North Anna plant in Louisa County, Va.; and Duke Energy’s Lee plant in Cherokee County, S.C
Concerns grow over risk of U.S. nuclear projects post-Fukushima, Facing South, By Sue Sturgis on August 11, 2011 The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan is still unfolding five months later, with multiple meltdowns and significant radiation releases contaminating communities and farms downwind from the facility. Some nuclear experts are calling it “the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind.”
The Fukushima accident is also raising questions about the U.S. nuclear industry’s current plans to build new reactors and re-license old ones.
Today, environmental and public-interest advocacy groups filed 19 legal challenges that ask the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to put the brakes on reactor licensing until it fully incorporates into its regulatory process the lessons learned from Fukushima. Continue reading
Nagasaki joins Hiroshima’s call to end nuclear energy
Nagasaki mayor calls for denuclearization, Asahi.com by Kenichi Ezaki and Yuji Endo. 10 Aug 11, NAGASAKI–The mayor of Nagasaki called for Japan to move away from nuclear power generation at a ceremony on Aug. 9 to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Continue reading
Japanese citizens exposed to radiation, as govt withheld information
In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster — in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry. As the nuclear plant continues to release radiation, some of which has slipped into the nation’s food supply, public anger is growing at what many here see as an official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks.
Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril, NYT, Norimitsu Onishi reported from Fukushima, and Martin Fackler from Tokyo. Ken Belson and Kantaro Suzuki contributed reporting from Tokyo. 9 Aug 11, FUKUSHIMA, Japan — The day after a giant tsunami set off the continuing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, thousands of residents at the nearby town of Namie gathered to evacuate.
Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice.
The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima — and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that. Continue reading
U.S. taxpayers to pay nuclear build costs, and nuclear waste costs
Nuclear Power Boosts Bills and Piles On Radioactive Waste, Florida PSC to consider more rate hikes for nuke projects at FPL and Progress Energy, Kenric Ward, Sunshine State News, August 10, 2011 For an energy source once touted as too cheap to meter, nuclear power bills sure are piling up. U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for a growing, multibillion-dollar tab to dispose of tons of radioactive waste and Florida’s two biggest utilities are seeking another round of rate increases to help pay for new reactors. Continue reading
TEPCO, Japan’s largest utility, likely to go broke
The March disaster at the Fukushima complex in northeast Japan spawned the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl and has put the existence of Asia’s largest utility, known as TEPCO, in doubt.
Tepco said it has earmarked $5.1bn to compensate the victims of the crisis, who include about 80,000 people
evacuated from areas surrounding the Fukushima plant, 240km north of Tokyo.
Even before the pay-out began, Tepco posted a $15 billion net loss for the year to March 31, Japan’s biggest non-financial loss, according to Reuters news agency…..
Soothing propaganda promotes uranium mining in Virginia
Uranium Safe to Eat With a Spoon!, OpEd News.com by David Swanson, 11 Aug 11, Carefully ignoring Fukushima, Los Alamos, Vermont, and Nebraska, a comforting new announcement informs us that “nuclear energy is safe.” A series of soothing television ads and videostells us that mining uranium in Virginia would produce jobs and protect us from scary foreigners.
Virginia newspapers carried an article from theAssociated Press this week that did not pretend to be anything but one-sided, reporting on the agenda of corporations that would profit from mining uranium while including no other views or any verified facts. The Washington Post did the very same thing. These articles are essentially press releases that have been tweaked. The online versions even include the videos.
We can expect even less actual news reporting than that (yes, less than nothing) to come through our televisions. But these ads hyping uranium mining as a job solution will be aired. And the television networks will consequently view the mining corporations as customers not to be needlessly offended or inconvenienced……
Thousands of years of danger, to provide what the uranium mining companies claim might be 65 years of uranium use. That seems like the kind of deal only a U.S. president could consider a bargain. Let’s hope Virginia still has more life left in it than Washington. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Uranium-Safe-to-Eat-With-a-by-David-Swanson-110809-895.html
USA Dept of Energy grants money to spin Nuclear as climate change solution
The goal is for the United States to use the nuclear industry to cut carbon emissions and create new green energy jobs……
DOE awards $1.09M grant to CSU nuclear energy project, coloradoan.com 10 Aug 11, A Colorado State University statistics professor’s nuclear energy modeling project has been awarded a $1.09 million federal grant, part of a program aimed at developing nuclear energy technology at universities across the country. Continue reading
Safecast monitors Japan’s radiation levels, and sees it as a global issue
Despite the alarm inside Japan and abroad, specific information about radiation levels and its range are still mostly unavailable. This lack of information is what Safecast is trying to overcome…..
Global debate The Japanese government does not consider non-government readings to be authentic, and has urged the public to only rely on government data on radiation.
Bonner said: “Getting into this has showed us there is a lack of data everywhere.
“We’re going to start getting devices to people around the US and Europe. We’re going to set up fixed sensors and we’re making a device that we’ll sell to the public.
“We’re hoping to continue to get lots of data from lots of sources.”
Bonner’s ambitions appear timely against the backdrop of a revitalised global debate on the dangers of nuclear energy, especially in Japan.
“………..In the months since the catastrophe, the Japanese government, its nuclear watchdogs and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), have provided differing, confusing, and at times contradictory, information on critical health issues.
Fed up with indefinite data, a group of 50 volunteers decided to take matters, and Geiger counters, into their own hands.
In April, an independent network of like-minded individuals in the Japan and United States banded together to formSafecast and began an ongoing crusade to record and publish accurate radiation levels around Japan. Continue reading
Fukushima city cleanup begins, with no long term solution in sight
Nor has Tokyo offered any long-term solution for the radioactive waste that is quickly accumulating around the prefecture
In Fukushima City, Decontamination Begins. But What to Do with the Radioactive Waste?, TIME, With reporting by Terrence Terashima, by Krista Mahr , August 9, 2011“…..Nearly five months after March 11, the physical process of cleaning up the world’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl has begun. Untold numbers of buildings, sidewalks, trees, gardens, parks, streets, school yards and gutters were dusted in radioactive particles after the earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. Though a circle within a 20-km radius of the plant and some other high-radiation spots remain evacuated, a much larger area is still home to tens of thousands of people who want those particles out of their lives as soon as possible. Continue reading
USA govt report – renewable energy outstrips nuclear
Renewable Energy Consumption Passes Nuclear, Earth Techling, by Steve Duda, August 9th, 2011 Renewable energy consumption in the United States recently exceeded current and historical consumption levels for nuclear energy, a government study reports.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, during the first quarter of this year a combination of nuclear outages related to plants shutting down for refueling and the start of the high water season for hydropower generation caused the shift in consumption. Seasonal variations in renewable energy, said the EIA, ”are dominated by the annual cycle of water availability for hydroelectric power production. Hydropower constitutes a significant yet highly variable portion of total renewable energy consumption, accounting for 31% of renewable energyconsumption in 2010.”
Joining this is a multi-year upward trend in renewable consumption driven by increasing consumption of biofuels and wind capacity additions. In the context of this study, renewable energy consumption is defined beyond electric power generation from hydro, wind, solar, and geothermalsources. Sources including biofuels for transportation (such as ethanol and biodiesel) and biomass (such as wood and wood wastes) for space heating and industrial steam production as well as for electric power generation are counted as renewable resources……http://www.earthtechling.com/2011/08/renewable-energy-consumption-passes-nuclear/
Musicians passionate for a non-nuclear future
The Winter of Nucler Energy, CleanTech blog , 11 Aug 11 On Sunday, August 7, a group of the world’s greatest musicians performed an inspiring benefit concert to support disaster relief in Japan. Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Jason Mraz, The Doobie Brothers, Tom Morello, John Hall, Kitaro, Jonathan Wilson, and Sweet Honey in the Rock sang on behalf of Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE). Music video links and breaking news are available at NukeFree.Org….
1 This Month
10 June – Assessing Canada’s Investments in Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – https://zoom.us/meeting/register/IiqHA5feRhaEBycOLNTJlA#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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