nuclear-news

The good ole nuclear industry remains optimistic

Security breaches, radiation leaks, disasters; Nothing worries the nuclear industry, Greenpeace,  by Justin McKeating – December 5, 2011  One of the many odd qualities of the nuclear industry is its seemingly boundless optimism: “everything’s going to be just fine, folks.”
Apparently, there’s no need to worry about terrorists attacking nuclear reactors. Which is why Greenpeace campaigners could peacefully walk into three French nuclear power plants  – Nogent-sur-Seine, Chinon and Blayais – this morning without being challenged by any
security measures whatsoever should be absolutely no cause for alarm, according to the authorities.

Our team that entered the Nogent-sur-Seine power plant, just 95 kilometres from Paris, were even able to scale the dome of one of the reactors and paint a pretty picture on it.
EDF, the operator of these three plants, happily announced that Greenpeace’s visit to Nogent-sur-Seine “had no impact on the safety of the plant, or the safety of employees at the site.” Of course not: Greenpeace aren’t terrorists.

Would EDF be so positive if terrorists had come calling today? With the nuclear industry able to see the good in everything, we can say: yes, probably. Everything’s going to be
just fine, folks.
Another example of boundless optimism in the nuclear industry is the recent stress tests conducted by European Union countries on their nuclear reactors in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.
Supposedly designed to identify safety concerns at the reactors, most operators felt there was no need to test the vulnerability of reactors to being struck by a large aircraft or to review evacuation plans in the event of an accident. And why would there be? It’s not as if
anybody has ever flown large aircraft into buildings or people have had to be evacuated from a nuclear disaster.
We’re seeing much the same attitude right now with the Fukushima nuclear disaster site in Japan. A report by Fukushima’s owner Tokyo
Electric Power (TEPCO) has found “no evidence of significant errors”
in the company’s response to the catastrophe of March 12. That’s
right: TEPCO judged its own performance as essentially error free.
Really – no significant errors? The lack of information given to the
Japanese government by TEPCO in the days after the disaster looks
pretty significant to us. The fact that many of workers battling at
the plant to bring it under control are poorly trained and
over-worked, with some lacking the proper protective clothing that led
to them being injured looks significant as well. Is “misplacing” 198
of those workers insignificant? How about misreading radiation levels?
The report also seems to neglect TEPCO’s significant errors before the
earthquake and tsunami. The most major one is that it knew in 2008
that the Fukushima plant was vulnerable to a tsunami of the magnitude
we saw this year and yet did absolutely nothing to improve safety
measures. The disaster was preventable. The sunny “everything’s going
to be just fine, folks” attitude strikes again.
It’s also a little early for TEPCO to give its response to the
Fukushima disaster a full clean bill of health. Nuclear accidents
happen in slow motion and there are many questions about what happened
after the tsunami struck still unanswered. This isn’t over by a long
way. TEPCO will be responding to the disaster for many years. There’s
still plenty of time for TEPCO to make big mistakes.
Meanwhile, 45 tonnes of highly radioactive water have leaked from the
stricken Fukushima over the weekend, some of which may have already
reached the ocean. This news came a day after TEPCO said it had made
no errors.
Still, with Greenpeace (or anyone else for that matter) able to walk
into nuclear power plants at will and TEPCO praising its own disaster
response, everything’s going to be just fine, folks. Really.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/security-breaches-radiation-leaks-disasters-n/blog/38227/

December 6, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | France, spinbuster