Nuclear message in a plastic bottle
What do circuit boards at a nuclear power plant have to do with uric acid? First I thought those problems were caused by mice, but later an engineer secretly told me that it was because there was no restroom at the plants’ construction sites, so workers would go to the toilet wherever they could — often against the walls. Their urine then turned into uric acid which seeped into and corroded the circuit boards. The result was irregular signals or lost control of the signals.
By Jay Fang 方儉
Wed, Mar 06, 2013
Tapei Times
Imade source : http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/article.cfm?section=FrontPage&articleID=929&month=3&day=6&year=2007
If we want to learn about nuclear power safety here in Taiwan, we might find the answer in a simple plastic bottle.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) recently said that when it comes to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), it is important to listen to people’s opinions, conduct thorough research, communicate, make careful decisions and carry out plans effectively. However, considering that the plant’s construction site does not even have a restroom, it is not likely that nuclear safety will ever become a reality in Taiwan.
More than two decades ago when I was interviewing people about the first three nuclear power plants, which had only been up and running for a few years, I discovered that the plants were plagued by the reactors randomly tripping.
Analysis of these incidents showed that, apart from the inevitable problems caused by natural events like earthquakes and typhoons, their biggest cause were things like malfunctioning circuit board control cards and overheating in the reactor units. Further analysis of these causes showed that many of the situations that were put down to “unknown causes” were actually due to “uric acid.”
Explaining Hanford legislators get a briefing – Jane Hedges Department of Ecology explains-Video
Video of Legislator Briefing on this link (Recommend)
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/spincontrol/2013/mar/02/sunday-spin-helping-understand-hanford/
OLYMPIA – As most of official Olympia stared at their computers Thursday morning awaiting the state Supremes’ decision on tax supermajorities, a handful of legislators got a briefing on something with the potential for far more impact on the state.
Jane Hedges of the state Department of Ecology explained the intricacies of nuclear waste tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, doing her best to calm the uproar over recent news that six supposedly stable tanks are, in fact, leaking.
Trying to explain most Hanford things to laypersons can be a herculean task, once you get past the fact that there’s tons of really bad stuff down there from all the nukes we made for the Cold War but, thankfully, haven’t had to use. Hedges brought it down to a level that even legislators and reporters could understand.
First of all, the tanks are big, with the largest the size of a basketball court with a 75-foot wall around it. Inside the tanks are a “stew of different materials” forming radioactive sludge, from which the liquid was supposed to have been pumped out years ago.
The sludge is about the consistency of peanut butter, Hedges said, but sometimes the interstitial liquid rises to the top. The what? Think organic peanut butter, she said. When it sits too long, it gets that oil layer on the top.
Of the 177 tanks, 149 have only a single wall, or shell, and 67 of those were “suspected leakers,” but the rest were thought to be secure. With a container that big, a drop of even a fraction of an inch can represent many gallons.
Hedges explained there’s no easy way to get extremely accurate measurements because lowering cameras or instruments into the tanks isn’t practical. Instruments melt, rubber and plastic dissolve. The methods available showed some minor fluctuations that could have been anomalies until further testing showed six supposedly secure tanks are leaking as much as 1,000 gallons of radioactive liquid a year.
Getting the liquid out of the tanks is a problem. First, there’s no good place to put it right now, because the more secure double-shelled tanks are also pretty full. Second, there’s the danger of triggering evaporation, which would cause a tank to heat up and create a deflagration – “in common words, a boom,” Hedges said.
Hanford was responsible for making things that could create the world’s biggest booms, but a boom in a tank is to be avoided.
As chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, got to ask the question that many minds were forming: Is there a safety threat?
“There is no threat to anyone at this time,” Hedges said. The leaking tanks are between 200 and 300 feet above groundwater, at least five miles from the Columbia River. They’re leaking below ground, so there’s no immediate danger to workers or the nearby communities, and there’s a system to pump contaminated water out and clean it.
Long term, though, the state needs the feds to get the radioactive waste into a more permanent solution, she said.
Hugo Chavez supported renewables
Chavez considered “impressive to see how Portugal produces more than 60 percent of its electricity” from wind sources, solar and hydro.
http://viaenergetiki.wordpress.com/news/general-news/
- And last but not least our “beloved” Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, was in the north of Portugal for a formal visit and said some nice things about us. The news are in portuguese but me and my friend Google Translator worked together to provide you with this:
“Hugo Chavez praises the great contribution of Portugal for renewable energy”
“Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez today praised the “great contribution to the world’s development done by Portugal” in terms of renewable energies, considering “impressive” that they produce more than 60 percent of electricity nationwide.
“This type of energy is the future. Some day the oil will end on this planet – hopefully in 3500 – but some day will end. We must begin to prepare ourselves for post-oil era,” said on a visit to the wind tower factory Enercom in Viana do Castelo.
Hugo Chavez considered that the effort that Portugal has done in this area “is a breakthrough not only for the good of the country but around the world.”
Chavez considered “impressive to see how Portugal produces more than 60 percent of its electricity” from wind sources, solar and hydro.
The Portuguese Prime Minister explained to Hugo Chavez that Portugal is “in the group of countries in the world with more renewables.”
José Sócrates talked about the speed with which the wind energy production can be installed on the ground, remembering that just four years ago “none of this existed.”
“A revolution,” he said, noting that it covered not only the production of wind energy, as the manufacture of towers and generators needed.
Hugo Chavez recalled that the Caribbean has “the best sunset in the world all year,” but lamented that solar energy is still so expensive, expressing the hope that the technology becomes cheaper in the future.
Venezuela currently has, under its president, ongoing studies for the deployment of wind energy in four parts of the country.
At the entrance of the factory, the front plate of his inauguration, unveiled three years ago, Hugo Chavez questioned Socrates about where the pair will be within 20 years: “I do not know if you have plans for withdrawal from politics, though,” he said, laughing .
“Yes, I do,” said the Portuguese Prime Minister, also laughing.”
From this blog
- einer 350 Kilometer lange Aktions- und Menschenkette rings um das AKW Grohnde (Niedersachsen)
- Demos an den AKWs Gundremmingen (Bayern) und Neckarwestheim (Baden-Württemberg)
- sowie an der Uranfabrik Gronau (NRW).
UK/London protest march on 9th March – Details
Sunday, 3 March 2013
A coach is available to London for Remember Fukushima event
If you can’t make it to London, or feel like doing some more, there is a protest arranged in Gloucester at 12 noon on Monday 11th March. Organised by the newest anti Oldbury group, STAND. see, (and distribute) flyer attached.
A new petition has gone online written by a Cumbrian councillor asking Secretary of State, Ed Davey to Make Cumbria Safe. A good start would be to stop ALL transports of waste to Sellafield and to cease churning out ever more plutonium from the reprocessing of that waste.
Please support this petition and MAKE CUMBRIA SAFE
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/make-cumbria-safe
sign and share widely – Petitions are great but won’t work on their own, they need to be backed up by action. Direct action is most effective in raising this to public consciousness. Please join the protests or if that is not to your taste, send letters to Ed Davey urging him to halt all transports of nuclear waste to Sellafield, the site is already “an intolerable risk,” and to stop all reprocessing – a practise banned in every country apart from here and France, as the waste it produces is too hot to handle, for us and for future generations.
Demonstrations:
MAKE CUMBRIA SAFE/FUKUSHIMA SOLIDARITY DEMO
Saturday, March 9, 2013
a 3-fold event:
*A celebratory walk to acknowledge the County Cabinet’s NO vote.
* Highlighting of the need to secure existing waste in situ at sellafield and improve storage facilities/minimise radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment
* Meet in solidarity with the people of Fukushima and marking the anniversary of the disaster
Radiation from Sellafield affects the local environment and particles from the plant cause contamination of the the surrounding area.
Testing of the beaches around the plant have identified a record number of radioactive particles.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/04/radioactive-particles-beaches-sellafield
Unlike Dounreay, the authorities in Cumbria have decided against warning signs on the beach.
In partnership with 3 Weeks to Save the Lakes, we’ll be putting some notices up on the beach. Followed by a walk to the Sellafield gates with banners to show solidarity with the Fukushima demo in London.
Meet Seascale car park for departure at 10.30 am
https://www.facebook.com/events/454978501239988/
ALSO
Fukushima Demonstration in London – Saturday 9th and Monday 11th March
http://www.fukushima2013.com/
Sign the Petition here – Go on…its the least you can do!
http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/make-cumbria-safe
extract:
The Government must immediately commit the investment to make Sellafield safe. This is one item of expenditure that simply must not be cut back. The Government must also order the NDA to stop shipping waste into Sellafield..
March 9th human chain in Paris to remember Fukushima
March 9th human chain in Paris to remember Fukushima
Everyone to Paris, Saturday, March 9th! For those who can – and for the rest of us who’d like to – the French anti-nuclear network will be assembling in Paris in a human chain to remember Fukushima and call for an end to nuclear power.
Démesurément dangereux et coûteux, le nucléaire soumet les humains et tous les êtres vivants à des pollutions et à une menace inacceptables. Hiroshima, Tchernobyl, Fukushima : aucune autre technologie n’a créé en si peu de temps des catastrophes si « durables ». Avec 58 réacteurs, le parc nucléaire français représente un risque majeur, pour nous et nos voisins européens. Attendrons-nous que la centrale de Nogent-sur-Seine, à 95 km de Paris, devienne le Fukushima français ?
Immeasurably dangerous and expensive, nuclear energy submits humans and all other living things to contamination and an unacceptable threat. Hiroshima, Chernobyl, Fukushima: no other technology can, in such short time, create such “long-lasting” catastrophes. With 58 reactors, the French nuclear complex represents a major risk, for us and for our European neigbors. Are we going to wait for the Nogent-sur-Seine reactor, 95 kilometers from Paris, to become the French Fukushima?
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2013/3/5/march-9th-human-chain-in-paris-to-remember-fukushima.html
New Funding Group Calls for 100 More WikiLeaks to Offset Unprecedented Gov’t Secrecy
“…Well, with the Freedom of the Press Foundation, EFF is our legal counsel. And when we go back to how this organization first started, a bunch of us at EFF were talking about what we could do to solve this financial blockade problem, because we saw it as this, you know, real injustice where there was no real legal solution because these organizations like PayPal and Visa and MasterCard have terms of service where they can basically cut off organizations for anything they like. They’re written broadly so they can do that. And, of course, the pressure on these companies from the government officials was unofficial, so there was no real First Amendment lawsuit to bring. But what ended up coming out of that is we started talking to a lot of other people, and—like Glenn and like Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and filmmaker Laura Poitras and activist and actor and director John Cusack. And so, eventually we all got together, and we wanted to start this broader organization…..”
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/5/new_funding_group_calls_for_100
WikiLeaks is set to receive major new financial support this week from a new group that funds independent journalism organizations dedicated to transparency and accountability in government. This comes as MasterCard, Visa and PayPal continue to refuse to process payments for WikiLeaks, making it difficult to send donations. “We don’t need just one WikiLeaks; we need 10 WikiLeaks or a hundred. We have a situation in this country where government secrecy is at an all-time high,” says Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder and executive director Trevor Timm. We are also joined by Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, who is a member of the foundation’s board. [includes rush transcript]
Trevor Timm, Freedom of the Press Foundation, activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Glenn Greenwald, columnist and blogger for The Guardian, author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. He is giving the keynote address this morning at the Freedom to Connect conference.
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from the Freedom to Connect conference at AFI—that’s the American Film Institute—Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland. Our guest, Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer, blogger, journalist with The Guardian magazine—with The Guardian newspaper in Britain, has been talking and writing extensively about WikiLeaks as well as Bradley Manning, just gave a speech in Brooklyn yesterday and this morning is giving the keynote address here at the Freedom to Connect conference. We’re going to turn right now to our next guest. His name is Trevor Timm. He has just founded a new organization called the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Trevor. Talk about the foundation.
TREVOR TIMM: Thanks for having me.
Well, we started the Freedom of the Press Foundation about three months ago, and our goal here is to protect, support and defend organizations like WikiLeaks and a lot of other innovative journalism organizations that push for transparency and accountability in government. You know, a lot of times, as you’ve been talking about on the show, that we have seen an unprecedented attack on whistleblowers and a sort of criminalization of leaks, and yet leaks and whistleblowers and media organizations publishing classified information in the government interest is American as apple pie, and there has been decades and decades with which this type of—this type of activity has been protected by the First Amendment. And since we’ve seen this kind of war on whistleblowers, we wanted to start an organization that could really defend these organizations aggressively and make sure that we didn’t lose that avenue for government transparency.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about WikiLeaks. First I want to play a clip, 2011, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange receiving the award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at the 2011 Walkley Awards. This is a clip from his acceptance speech.
JULIAN ASSANGE: We journalists are at our best when we share with activists and lawyers the goal of exposing illegality and wrongdoing, when we help to hold others to account. This award is a sign of encouragement to our people and other people who labor under difficult conditions in this task.
Our lives have been threatened. Attempts have been made to censor us. Banks have attempted to shut off our financial lifeline. An unprecedented banking blockade has shown us that Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, the Bank of America and Western Union are mere instruments of Washington foreign policy. Censorship has, in this manner, been privatized.
Powerful enemies are testing the waters to see how much they can get away with, seeing how they can abuse the system that they are integrated with to prevent scrutiny. Well, the answer is, they can get away with too much. I expected the hate speech on Fox News, but not the calls by U.S. senators for the extrajudicial assassination of myself and my staff. Neither did I expect that the United States would aggressively undermine its own Constitution to persecute me and my organization. But I can understand the Washington elite’s reaction. Washington is waging a war against the truth. It was, after all, the truth about Washington and their friends that we revealed.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange accepting the award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism at the 2011 Walkley Awards in Brisbane, Australia. He sent a video. He was under house arrest in Britain. Assange currently remains holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, fighting extradition to Sweden, even as WikiLeaks continues to receive recognition for its work. In fact, this week it’s set to receive major new funding from the Freedom of Press Foundation, the group that funds independent journalism organizations dedicated to transparency and accountability in government. Trevor, talk about what is happening, what your organization, the Freedom of Press Foundation, is planning to do.
TREVOR TIMM: Sure. So, a major part of our mission is to crowdsource funding for organizations like WikiLeaks who are under attack, who may have gotten cut off from payment processors like Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. So, for two years now, they’ve barely been able to get any donations. And when we launched in December, we started taking donations in a tax-deductible way so U.S.—people in the U.S. could safely and relatively anonymously donate to WikiLeaks. But they can also donate to other journalism organizations that do similar work, so groups like the National Security Archives, which has the largest library of declassified material in the country, or new organizations like MuckRock, which do Freedom of Information Act work where they allow citizens to file their own requests. And so, we set this up to, you know, help organizations like WikiLeaks, but we also want to bring attention to other groups that are doing really innovative work in trying to bring transparency to government.
AMY GOODMAN: So, how are you going to get this money to WikiLeaks? Have you spoken, for example, to PayPal, Visa, MasterCard?
TREVOR TIMM: Well, you know, we’re fairly confident that they’re not going to cut us off at this point. I think the level of hysteria has died down from late 2010. And, you know, companies have had a chance to do legal research and realize that nothing that WikiLeaks is doing by publishing this information is against the law. Obviously, every day or every week newspapers around the country, like The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, publish classified information, a lot of times at a higher level of secrecy than WikiLeaks did. And, you know, if these companies were to cut us off, they wouldn’t just be cutting off WikiLeaks. It’s important to emphasize that we’re completely an independent organization from WikiLeaks, and we take donations to a variety of journalism organizations and do different types of freedom of information advocacy work. And so, they wouldn’t be cutting off WikiLeaks; they’d be cutting off the freedom of the press.
What happens if the A-bomb drops again – Norwegian Foreign Ministry conference seeks answers
“Atomic weapons are gene targeting weapons and induce leukemias and cancers throughout life,” said Dr. Tomonaga. “Nuclear weapons are absolutely anti humanitarian weapons.”
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2013/Mofa_abomb_conference
Charles Digges, 04/03-2013
Dropping an atomic bomb any city in the world would destroy the possibilities for humanitarian help, decimate infrastructure, wreck the environment, cause countless deaths and result in a crisis that would take decades to recover from, according to panelists at a symposium on nuclear weapons hosted by Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that began in Oslo today.
And the effects do not end there – as bourn out by conference participants who survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even survivors run long-term risks of lethal cancers, blood diseases and decades of birth defects.
Current unstable geopolitics, however, make just such a scenario all the more plausible. Conference panelists noted that two nuclear attacks have already taken place – setting precedence for more. Yet such international conferences may prove to be more important as time-honored methods between old Cold War foes begin to break down.
The research on the conference’s opening day – at which Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide spoke– constituted some of the most up-to-date information and modeling on the effects of a nuclear attack. Many of the panelists focused on the effects that one nuclear bomb would have on one city – but all agreed that a worldwide nuclear exchange would result in nearly total devastation of the human race.
The atomic bomb was called by one prominent Japanese physician, Dr. Masao Tomonaga of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Hospital, nothing less that a “gene targeting weapon.”
 |
| Dr. Masao Tomonaga |
| Nils Bøhmer/Bellona |
Nukes must ‘never be used again’ : Nagasaki survivor
Dr. Terumi Tanaka, who as a child survived the Nagasaki bombing by US forces to end World War II and represented the Japanese delegation, said in his impassioned appeal from the plenum that, “such a weapon must never be used again.”
Sir Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said, however, there was less of a guarantee in today’s push and pull world of extremism that a nuclear attack could be averted than “during the relative predictable circumstances of the Cold War.:
 |
| Dr Terumi Tanaka, Nagasaki survivor |
| Nils Bøhmer/Bellona |
Nuclear countries absent
Panelists and delegates from over 130 countries gathered for the conference Monday – entitled “Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons” – notably did not include ministerial or diplomatic level officials from the US, Russia, France or UK who have well developed nuclear weapons programs.
“States that have nuclear weapons arsenals are evidently keeping a low profile at this conference,” said Bellona General Director and nuclear physicist Nils Bøhmer. “We can learn much from the health effects, but the environment is also at risk from the current nuclear weapons industries, particularly in the US, the UK and Russia.”
Indeed recent radioactive leaks revealed at the US’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which produced the plutonium for the bomb the US dropped on Nagasaki, has recently reached even newer proportions.
Bøhmer pointed out that Russia’s Mayak facility and the UK’s Sellafield site have caused environmental hazards since thier inception in the race for the bomb.
“More pressure must be brought to bear on the nuclear weapons industry to prevent further ongoing environmental deterioriation,” he said.
A survivor’s tale
Tanaka, Secretary General of the Japan Confederation of A and H Bomb Sufferers Organization, was a child when the Nagasaki bomb was dropped.
“I was upstairs in my house, 3.2 kilometers from the hypocenter. Suddenly I saw a huge flash. I ran downstairs, and as soon as I laid on the floor, I became unconscious. When I woke up, I found myself under glass doors blown by the blast,” he told the more than 400 participants in the conference. “Three days later, I entered ground zero to find my relatives. Some had burned to death where their house used to be. Others survived but soon died with heavy burns or fever from radiation. Altogether, five of my family were killed.”
He emphasized that: “The number of A-bomb deaths, several hundreds of thousands, is not just a number –it is the deaths of many individual human beings, whose survival and dignity should have been secured.”
No state is safe if a nuclear weapon is used, even to protect a state’s survival,” he continued. “Nuclear deterrence, which allows the existence of nuclear weapons by assuming their possible use, runs totally counter to humanity.”
Missiles still hot in the silos
Nuclear agency: Aging fire protection system at West Texas plant poses safety threat
|
AMARILLO, Texas — A congressional nuclear watchdog agency has raised safety concerns about an aging fire protection system at Pantex, the country’s only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant.
The Amarillo Globe-News (http://bit.ly/WH5KL4 ) reported Tuesday the agency wants the National Nuclear Security Administration to prepare a response within 90 days.
The agency, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, requested the response in its Feb. 25 report that said failures in the fire protection system pose risks to workers and to public health.
The report also noted inadequate automatic sprinkler protection at the plant outside Amarillo.
Pantex says it has spent millions of dollars in improvements to the fire system by installing high-density polyethylene pipes.
But the report noted an “apparent lack of urgency” in correcting failures in the underground pipe system.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/87e1c04fe4ba41289466a5b87721db18/TX–Pantex-Safety-Concerns
UK politicians agree more benefits needed from nuclear – Hidden costs of nuclear.
“Sedgemoor has championed Community Benefit Contributions as an important mechanism to ensure the communities around Hinkley Point receive fair and reasonable benefits in recognition of the burden of hosting nationally beneficial energy infrastructure.”
A House of Commons committee agrees with Sedgemoor that community benefits will build trust between nuclear giants and neighbours.
A report published by MPs on the Energy and Climate Change Committee recommended that community benefits, through retention of business rates, should be extended to new nuclear power projects.
At present, Community Benefits are only available to renewable energy projects.
The committee also called on the Government to consider providing extra forms of community benefit during construction, given the time it takes to build power stations.
Chinese general who threatened nuclear strike on U.S. visits Washington this week
“Gen. Zhu’s propensity to threaten nuclear war against adversaries without regard for China’s supposed commitment to ‘no first use,’ his subsequent military promotions and his continued prolixity in China’s official communist party media should be a clear signal to American policy-makers that Chinese state policy is to use nuclear weapons as an instrument of intimidation,”
BY: Bill Gertz
March 4, 2013 7:00 pm
http://freebeacon.com/guess-whos-coming-to-dinner-3/
A Chinese general who once threatened to use nuclear weapons against hundreds of U.S. cities will visit the Pentagon this week as part of a U.S.-China military exchange program.
Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, who is head of China’s National Defense University, will take part in a “familiarization exchange,” Maj. Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told the Free Beacon.
“The delegation will visit Hawaii and D.C.,” she said. “A military delegation from the U.S. Pacific Command will visit China later this year for a reciprocal exchange.”
Zhu will lead a group of 10 senior colonels from all branches of the Chinese military, Wilkinson said. She declined to provide the names of the officers.
Zhu is best known for inflammatory comments made to two foreign news reporters in 2005 when he said China would use nuclear weapons against the United States in any conflict over Taiwan.
A State Department spokesman at the time called the comments “highly irresponsible.”
“If the Americans draw their missiles and position [sic]-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” Zhu told reporters for the Financial Times and the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal, according to their July 14, 2005, editions.
The comments raised questions within the Pentagon about the sincerity of China’s policy of not being the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.
Zhu’s comments also were the most explicit statement of Chinese strategic intent since 1995 when another general, Xiong Guangkai, implicitly threatened to use nuclear arms against Los Angeles if the United States defended Taiwan in a conflict.
Nuclear Power Debate: Lawmakers cite nine problems at plant
“Taiwan Power Co [Taipower] knows about the problems and is concealing them, the Atomic Energy Council [AEC] is neglecting its duty [to monitor nuclear safety] because it has identified some of the flaws and even asked [Taipower] to make improvements, but it did not enforce them,” he said.
NUMBERS GAME:A spokesman for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant acknowledged five of the problems, but said they have either been resolved or are being addressed
Listing nine major problems at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said the government should address safety issues before rushing into a referendum on the fate of the plant.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ho Hsin-chun holds an enlarged page from a nuclear accident emergency response booklet at the legislature in Taipei yesterday, asking why it gives the crisis area a circumference of just 5km.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said that the party has found at least nine safety flaws at the plant that could result in nuclear accidents if they are not resolved.
Three of the most serious flaws found are: poor welding on more than 50 percent of a reactor’s pressure vessel; the touch panel in the control room reflects light and may be touched off accidentally during emergencies; and a digital control system that integrates 13 separate systems and links more than 40,000 signals into one system.
Moreover, the signal lights in the plant’s control room use three colors — purple, blue and white — unlike the easier-to-read red and green lights at Japan’s nuclear plants, Lin said, adding that people tend to act on instinct during emergencies and the three-color signals are too complicated.
The other flaws are: seriously damaged emergency standby generators; temperatures could exceed the dry well’s capacity, causing a radiation leak; more than 1,400 substandard ground wires; walls containing penetration pipes are not thick enough and the aperture does not close properly, which may cause radiation to leak into the nearby water catchment area; and tests of the reactor’s internal pump so far have only reached 10 percent of the required testing time, Lin said.
Nuclear giant Areva faces negative public opinion in France – Video
Published on Mar 5, 2013
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The French nuclear giant Areva says in its annual report that it’s made immense technological progress. It has begun the delivery of special equipment to improve the safety conditions at the most dangerous nuclear reactor in Japan. But Since the Fukushima catastrophe, questions have been raised over the safety of nuclear energy. The company claims that nuclear reactors in France are safe.
Despite technological improvements and organizational changes, the French nuclear giant Areva is faced with another big challenge: adverse public opinion. According to a poll by the Ifop surveying agency, three months after the Fuskushima catastrophe, 77 percent of the French wanted to get rid of nuclear energy by 2040.
French public opinion is nearly the same as in neighboring countries, like in Germany where the government under public pressure decided to abandon nuclear energy. If the French government follows, the same trend remains to be seen.
Anustup Roy, Press TV, Paris
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Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
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