nuclear-news

Moving southwards, Taiwan’s First Nuclear Power Plant on the island’s northern coast, operating since 1979, has spent fuel rod storage pools that have leaked since December 2009.

How much?

According to the Taiwanese government’s watchdog, Control Yuan, the pools of the two reactors leaked 15,370 milliliters and 4,830 milliliters respectively, with the water containing radioactive materials including Caesium-137, Cobalt-60, Manganese-54, and Chromium-51. The most ominous aspect of the report notes that the NPP operator Taiwan Power Co had failed to find the causes and the leaks continue.

Closer to home, but still tied to Japan via its wartime production of plutonium, used in the “Fat Man” bomb that destroyed Nagasaki is the largely decommissioned Plutonium Finishing Plant in Hanford. From 1944 to 1989 Hanford produced 74,000 tons of weapons-grade plutonium-239, ultimately producing nearly two-thirds of all the plutonium in the U.S. military’s nuclear arsenal. (Related article: Chernobyl at Sea? Russia Building Floating Nuclear Power Plants)

And what is the site’s bigger enemy than Communism?

Again, water. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that since 1994 roughly 450 billion gallons of industrial and radiological contaminants were dumped directly into the soil, while some of it was stored. Hanford’s elderly complex of 177 underground tanks contain 53 million gallons of chemicals and radioactive liquids, and 67 of the tanks have together leaked more than a million gallons. The DOE recently identified six more tanks that have sprung leaks, further threatening water supplies for millions across the Northwest.

No doubt the pro-nuclear industry shills will protest this litany of nuclear industry errors, but two questions remain. If nuclear energy is so safe, why is the industry incapable of dealing with the relative simple plumbing issue of water leaks? Since they evidently cannot, then why would one believe that they have mastered the intricacies of nuclear reactor operation? Secondly, if the NPP by-products are so safe, why does every government in the world go to such strenuous efforts to contain them even while assuring their populaces that there’s no risk? http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0813/Fukushima-isn-t-the-only-nuclear-plant-leaking-radioactive-water