A non-profit group in the US state of Arkansas is planning to mark the anniversary of the largest hydrogen bomb ever tested by the US military.
Bikini’s largest nuclear test to be commemorated in Arkansas (Credit: ABC)
Organisers say it’s the first event of its kind and will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the devastating Bravo nuclear detonation at Bikini Atoll on the first of March,1954.
Arkansas has the largest number of Marshall Islander victims outside of the Marshall Islands.
They had voluntarily halted production after radioactive cesium exceeding government standards was detected in some of the dried fruit products.
But this year, testing showed that radiation levels in persimmons from some areas have fallen. So the Fukushima prefectural government and producers’ groups decided to restart shipping dried persimmons that have passed safety tests.
A ceremony was held in Date city on Monday to mark the resumption of shipments from the area.
Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato said the revival of agricultural and fishery production is a prerequisite to the restoration of Fukushima. He said the return to market of dried persimmons will contribute significantly to this goal.
Before being accepted for shipment, the dried persimmons must pass radiation tests. Those confirmed to have radiation levels below national limits will have seals that certify product safety attached to their boxes.
The head of the producers’ group said their 2 years of perseverance has finally been rewarded. He added that he hopes shipments of dried persimmons will soon be resumed from other areas as well.
Workers can only spend a few hours at the reactor site before they reach the maximum radioactive exposure limit, and work is thus progressing at a snail’s pace
Despite the incredible lengths required to build the structure, it’s still only a band-aid
This Massive Steel Structure Will Entomb Chernobyl’s Reactor 4 (GREAT PHOTOS) http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/11/this-massive-steel-arch-will-entomb-chernobyls-reactor-4/KELSEY CAMPBELL-DOLLAGHAN 30 NOVEMBER 2013 When an unexpected power surge sparked the world’s worst nuclear accident in Chernobyl, nearly a quarter of a million construction workers risked their lives to build an ad hoc “sarcophagus” of concrete around the stricken reactor. It was a stop-gap measure — and now, almost 30 years later, one of the biggest engineering projects in history is underway to protect it.
The BBC reports on the $US2 billion project to protect the decaying metal sarcophagus, using an even larger metal shield called the New Safe Confinement, or NSC. In simple terms, the NSC is a massive steel archway that is designed to protect the surrounding region if the 27-year-old sarcophagus eventually collapses. Continue reading →
serious questions were raised last year after Walter Tamosaitis, one of the scientific chiefs of the project, disclosed that the innovative technology for mixing the waste in processing tanks could cause dangerous buildups of explosive hydrogen gas and might allow plutonium clumps to form.
Doubts grow about plan to dispose of Hanford’s radioactive waste, LA Times 28 Nov 13 Experts raise concerns about the complex technology intended to turn 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge at the former Hanford nuclear facility into glass and prepare it for safe burial. By Ralph Vartabedian November 29, 2013, RICHLAND, Wash. — On a wind-swept plateau, underground steel tanks that hold the nation’s most deadly radioactive waste are slowly rotting. The soil deep under the desert brush is being fouled with plutonium, cesium and other material so toxic that it could deliver a lethal dose of radiation to a nearby person in minutes.
The aging tanks at the former Hanford nuclear weapons complex contain 56 million gallons of sludge, the byproduct of several decades of nuclear weapons production, and they represent one of the nation’s most treacherous environmental threats.
Energy Department officials have repeatedly assured the public that they have the advanced technology needed to safely dispose of the waste. An industrial city has been under development here for 24 years, designed to transform the sludge into solid glass and prepare it for permanent burial.
But with $13 billion already spent, there are serious doubts that the highly complex technology will even work or that the current plan can clean up all the waste. Alarmed at warnings raised by outside experts and some of the project’s own engineers, Department of Energy officials last year ordered a halt to construction on the most important parts of the waste treatment plant.
“They are missing one important target after another,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “It feels like we are going around in circles.”……….
Many of the problems stem from the decision to launch construction of the plant even before engineers had completed the design. The job of turning waste as thick as peanut butter into glass is at the leading edge of nuclear chemistry, a job made difficult by the complex mixture of wastes that were fed into the underground tanks by some of the nation’s largest industrial corporations under a cloak of government secrecy.
The basic plan is to pump the waste into a pre-treatment plant, a factory larger than a football field and 12 stories tall, that would filter and chemically separate the waste into two streams of high- and low-level radioactivity. Then, two other plants would “vitrify,” or glassify, the waste. One would produce highly radioactive glass destined for a future geological repository, and the other a lower radioactive glass that could be buried at Hanford.
But serious questions were raised last year after Walter Tamosaitis, one of the scientific chiefs of the project, disclosed that the innovative technology for mixing the waste in processing tanks could cause dangerous buildups of explosive hydrogen gas and might allow plutonium clumps to form……. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-nuclear-risks-20131130,0,5013027.story#axzz2m8Dynzbj
Canada wants relaxation in India’s nuclear liabilities rulesTHE HINDU, 1 Dec 13 Unless the provisions regarding a plant operators’ liabilities in case of nuclear damages are relaxed, foreign companies will not come in a big way, a senior Canadian government official has said.
“The way the liability has been framed in the Civil Nuclear Liability Act deviates from the global standards and it is our view if it is not modified, it is hard to see any foreign supplier coming in a big way to India,” Canadian consulate general Richard Bale told PTI on the sidelines of the nuclear summit here over the weekend.
As per the Act, an operator of a nuclear plant (so far only NPCIL) will be liable for damages worth up to Rs. 1,500 crore. However, there is a provision for the right of recourse for the operator. If written into the contract, the operator can claim the liabilities from the manufacturer and supplier. Most of the suppliers, domestic as well as international, are concerned over whether they will have to bear over Rs. 1,500 crore towards in the event of nuclear disaster.
Hydrochloric acid, used to neutralise the alkaline water being decontaminated, was found seeping from a pipe joint, the Tokyo Electric Power Co said.
The joint was wrapped in a vinyl bag to contain the leakage, TEPCO said, and the company was investigating the cause. About a litre of hydrochloric acid had been contained in the bag. The leak was found at one of three Advanced Liquid Processing System units designed to remove radioactivity from contaminated water at the plant, where a massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 sent the nuclear reactors into meltdown.
The systems are expected to play a crucial role in treating the huge amounts of toxic water accumulating at the plant. The troubled system was one of two units that had been in trial operation and were due to go into full operation yesterday.
In late September, plastic padding clogged up a drain in the same system, causing it to shut down. In October, it was halted due to a programming mistake.
Thousands of tonnes of water, used since the meltdown to cool reactors or polluted by other radioactive material, are being stored in huge tanks at the site on Japan’s northeast coast.
“This is catastrophic for the safetay and security of the American nation, what this very narcissitic young man has done,” Hayden told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”Multiple reports allege Snowden has created a “doomsday cache” of government secrets that would release to the public should he be incarcerated or harmed.
Hayden said he has “no reason to doubt” those reports, but added that the looming threat of future disclosures should not dissaude American agencies from pursuing Snowden. The retired general said abandoning the effort to bring Snowden to justice would be like “negotiating with terrorists.”
Snowden has been in Moscow since June. In August, Russia granted him asylum for one year. He is wanted in the United States on espionage charges.
NUCLEAR INDUSTRY BUSINESSMAN WITHDRAWS LIBEL SUIT AGAINST FREELANCER HTTPS://EN.RSF.ORG/JAPAN-NUCLEAR-INDUSTRY-BUSINESSMAN-16-08-2013,45056.HTML 16 AUGUST 2013. Reporters Without Borders welcomes the decision by Shiro Shirakawa, the head of the nuclear security systems company New Tech, to withdraw a libel suit against freelance journalist Minoru Tanaka. A Tokyo court has accepted the withdrawal, announced on 12 August.
“This libel suit was an attempt by an influential member of Japan’s nuclear industrial complex, known as the ‘nuclear village,’ to harass and intimidate Tanaka into silence and self-censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We are pleased that it did not work but we continue to be concerned for other journalists who try to cover the sensitive issue of Japan’s nuclear industry. There are still too many cases of reporters being pressured or censored when they try to provide information about the Fukushima disaster and its aftermath.
“The damages award Tanaka was facing if found guilty of libelling Shirakawa was clearly out of all proportion. We urge the courts to reject such ‘gag suits’ or ‘SLAPPs’ if they continue to be filed, and to propose proportionate alternatives such as the publication of a response.”
Shirakawa sued Tanaka, 52, over a December 2011 article for the weekly Shukan Kinyobiheadlined “The last big fixer, Shiro Shirakawa, gets his share of the TEPCO nuclear cake” – TEPCO being the owner of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant that suffered meltdowns after a tsunami in March 2011.
Using information in the public domain, the article accused Shirakawa of making a lot of money by acting as an intermediary between TEPCO, construction companies, politicians such as the leading parliamentarian Kamei Shizuka, and even clandestine organizations.
Ever since the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, freelance journalists who cover the nuclear industry have had their access to information restricted and have, for example, been prevented from covering anti-nuclear demonstrations. Reporters Without Borders issued several press releases condemning the judicial harassment of Tanaka, who was sued for 67 million yen (600,000 euros) in damages.
“We’ve got 80 MPs backing our call for recognition and had an amazing response from the public. They have to hear us sooner or later.”
In recent weeks Veterans’ Minister Anna Soubry has insisted there is ‘nothing unique’ about the atomic survivors, and said there were no plans to issue any formal thanks to them.
A court case suing the Ministry of Defence for negligence has been granted the go-ahead but is stalled by a lack of funding.
Surviving nuclear test veterans and families march on Downing Street to demand justice – again http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/surviving-nuclear-test-veterans-families-28732321 Dec 2013 Every other nuclear power on Earth – America, Australia, New Zealand, France, Russia and even China – recognises and compensates their atomic veterans Twenty two years ago Marilyn Hall went to Downing Street seeking justice.
Now she’s been back – older, wiser, and twice as angry about the toxic legacy of Britain’s nuclear experiments. ‘My husband died because he served his country,’ she said. ‘We will not go away. We can’t – they have poisoned our families for generations to come.’
Her husband John was one of 22,000 men ordered to witness atomic bomb tests between 1952 and 1967, wearing nothing but cotton shirts and shorts as radioactive fallout showered down upon them. Fewer than 3,000 are still alive, suffering a catalogue of cancers, rare illnesses, and 10 times the normal rate of birth defects in their children.
This week 200 veterans and relatives marched on Parliament to demand an end to 60 years of injustice. They included a two-year-old in his pushchair, a wheelchair-bound mum-of-two born with twisted limbs, and Marilyn and her two sons. Continue reading →
The nuclear test survivors are the closest they have ever been to winning recognition.
In 10 years of covering their campaign I have never seen them nearer to finally getting the official salute they deserve.
They have 80 MPs, lawyers, and charity experts fighting to get them where they ought to be – front and centre in the national consciousness, just for a moment.
For 60 years Ministry of Defence bureaucrats have denied the obvious: that nuclear bombs could cause any harm to thousands of men stood below in nothing but cotton shorts.
They’ve never answered the question why, if it was so safe, they didn’t explode them over Surrey.
At test sites in Australia, America and the South Pacific men lived, slept, and ate for up to a year at a time in areas heavily contaminated by radiation.
We’d never do that now. We shouldn’t have done it then.
I have met men whose health problems deserve their own hospital wing. One whose eyelashes are growing into his eyeballs, another with 200 different skin cancers, a third with pouches of fatty tissue the size of tennis balls all over his body.
There is no science that definitively proves they all came from one cause. Radiation causes random genetic changes, and is hard to pin down.
But anyone can see what happened to these men – and to their wives, children and grandchildren – was most likely the result of atomic tests.
And from speaking to them and fighting for them I can tell you they don’t want much. They want a thank you, they want to know their sick children will have care, they want medical research.
They need, and deserve, a salute from Her Majesty’s Government and the final order: to stand at ease.
Scanner measures radiation in babies http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/00008345071 Dec 13, The Yomiuri ShimbunUniversity of Tokyo researchers and radiation measurement equipment maker Canberra Japan have jointly developed a device to measure internal exposure to radiation in babies, following the outbreak of the crisis at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March 2011.
Hirata Central Hospital in Hirata, Fukushima Prefecture, will start to offer free tests using the equipment, dubbed “Baby Scan,” on Monday.
Developers of the device included Ryugo Hayano, 61, a University of Tokyo professor specializing in particle and nuclear physics. The equipment allows babies to be tested for radiation in a lying position, making it the first of its kind in the nation.
Until now, infants’ internal exposure has been measured with equipment for adults, leading to some errors. In addition, as such equipment requires the subject to remain standing for about two minutes, babies in principle cannot take the test.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission employees surf porn while on the job, December 01, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes (NaturalNews) It’s something that Homer Simpson would most likely do, but he’s a cartoon character and isn’t even real. Still, it is an apt comparison given Simpson’s cartoon job status as an employee at a nuclear power plant.
As reported by The Washington Times, employees at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency that oversees the operations of the nation’s nuclear power plants, recently managed to bypass government firewalls and access porn online with their work computers.
From the paper: It’s become tougher to surf porn on government computers after scandals, but some workers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission managed to find ways to bypass detection software and firewalls to get the illicit content, records show.
One contract employee watched, in his words, two “porn type” Netflix movies during “downtime” on his 12-hour shift at the commission’s office of information services, according to case records reviewed by The Washington Times. Problem has not gone away
Another employee, the paper said, had repeatedly used photo-sharing website Flickr to search for porn while in the office.
And for years, a resident inspector at the nuclear agency scanned eBay looking for images of porn. http://www.naturalnews.com/043082_internet_surfing_government_employees_Nuclear_Regulatory_Commission.html#ixzz2mLPwliKZ
Arnie discussses his early whistleblowing life, his thoughts on the Daichi unit 3 explosion and his concerns about the use and abuse of Depleted Uranium.
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