Waterford Nuclear Power Station: Fire Watch Logs Falsified; One Watchman Slept; Supervisor Failed to Take Action
Workers at Entergy’s Waterford Nuclear Power Station in Louisiana didn’t do their fire watches and pretended that they did. One was sleeping. Will the workers be sleeping when the flood waters of the Mighty Mississippi River roll down that way?
The 10 page letter NRC access no. is ML15350A197 and can be found here: http://adams.nrc.gov/wba/ This was originally sniffed out by the New Orleans Times Picayune: “Nuclear plant contractors faked 10 months of inspection records” By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune December 27 2015, and picked up at https://nuclear-news.net/2015/12/28/inspection-records-were-faked-at-usa-nuclear-power-station/. The Times Picayune uploaded the document here, as well: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2655155-Waterford-Fire-Watch-Inspection-Letter-to-Entergy.html#document/p1
A laundry list of other Waterford crimes for 3rd Quarter 2015:
http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/WAT3/wat3_pim.html
Killona Louisiana is apparently from the Irish meaning of church or chapel, but Entergy has changed the meaning and significance to English Kill. It is 97.8% African American: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=CF. Killona and Waterford were plantations: http://www.stcharlesparish-la.gov/departments/economic-development-and-tourism/parish-history/town-histories/killona-town-history
December 31 Energy News
World:
¶ The new energy policy of Chile targets 70% of power to come from renewable sources by 2050. The new national plan Energy 2050 is aimed at reducing energy blackouts. It will allow Chileans access to electricity and ensure that 70% of Chile’s energy supply comes from renewable sources by 2050. [Greentech Lead]
Solar, wind, sheep
¶ A fully renewable energy system is achievable and economically viable in Russia and Central Asia in 2030. Researchers from Lappeenranta University of Technology modelled a renewable energy system for Russia and Central Asia. Results show that renewable energy is the cheapest local option. [Eurasia Review]
¶ Nova Scotia Power is stabilizing electricity prices at the same time it performs the most rapid transition to renewable energy in Canada. It has gone from generating nine per cent of electricity from renewable sources in 2007 to more than 25% in…
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Even South Australia’s pro nuclear Royal Commission admits the terrorism risk to towns near nuke waste dumps
Nuclear a terrorist risk, Whyalla News Dec. 28, 2015, Local towns such as Whyalla could be made terror targets if South Australia does become part of the nuclear fuel cycle.
This risk was outlined as part of a Nuclear Royal Commission public session held at the Whyalla public library in front of a small group of locals earlier this month.
Regional engagement officer Jon Bok said that an increased threat of terrorism was one of the several risks the commission were taking into account.
“At the moment we are looking into several issues, with terrorism being one of them,” Mr Bok said.
Mr Bok declined to comment on what counter-measures could be taken to prevent a terrorist attack…… http://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/story/3617682/nuclear-a-terrorist-risk/
Trouble ahead? Australian government doing nuclear deal with unstable Ukraine
Ukraine to sign agreement on nuclear energy with Australia in 2016http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/314722.html 29 Dec 15 Ukraine plans in 2016 to sign an agreement with Australia on cooperation in the field of using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, Director of the Department of Strategic Planning and European Integration at the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry of Ukraine Mykhailo Bno-Airiian has said.
“One of the main tasks for 2016 is the signing of an agreement between the government of Ukraine and Australia on cooperation in the field of using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” he said at a briefing in Kyiv.
According to the department, the agreement has been agreed with the Australian government and is currently undergoing national procedures for its signature and ratification.
December 30 Energy News
Opinion:
¶ Should we solar panel the Sahara desert? • Could one solution to climate change be to harvest the power of sunlight where it shines brightest on the planet? Should we solar panel the Sahara desert? Four experts with four points of view discuss the radical proposal with the BBC World Service Inquiry program. [BBC News]
Rows of curved mirrors capture solar energy at the Ouarzazate plant in Morocco
¶ Martin Luther King III: How the polluter-backed National Black Chamber misleads minorities • The National Black Chamber of Commerce has been warning communities of color that the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan will cause job losses and generate higher energy bills. Neither is true. [Washington Post]
World:
¶ Wind will be the energy source for two of Volkswagen’s factories in Mexico. That is, if all goes through as planned. Spanish turbine maker Gamesa agreed last…
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Tihange 1 Nuclear Reactor, Belgium, Thermal Stresses in Piping Connected to Reactor Coolant Systems
“Bulletin 88-08: Supplement 1, Thermal Stresses in Piping Connected to Reactor Coolant Systems
OMB No.: 3150-0011
NRCB 88-08, Supplement 1
UNITED STATES
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
OFFICE OF NUCLEAR REACTOR REGULATION
WASHINGTON, D. C. 20555
June 24, 1988
NRC BULLETIN NO. 88-08, SUPPLEMENT 1: THERMAL STRESSES IN PIPING CONNECTED
TO REACTOR COOLANT SYSTEMS
Addressees:
All holders of operating licenses or construction permits for
light-water-cooled nuclear power reactors.
Purpose:
The purpose of this supplement is to 1) provide preliminary information to
addressees about an event at Tihange 1 that appears to be similar to the
Farley 2 event and 2) emphasize the need for sufficient examinations of unisolable piping connected to the reactor coolant system (RCS) to assure that there are no rejectable crack or flaw indications. No new requirements
are included in this supplement.
Description of Circumstances:
Tihange 1 is an 870 MWe, Westinghouse-type, 3-loop, pressurized-water reactor
located at Tihange…
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US NRC Fraudulent Parts-Nonconforming to ASME Standards Certified OK Anyway in Typical US NRC Style
From the US NRC:
“The purpose of this bulletin [NRC Bulletin 88-05] is to require that licensees submit information regarding materials supplied by Piping Supplies, Incorporated (PSI) at Folsom,
New Jersey and West Jersey Manufacturing Company (WJM) at Williamstown, New Jersey and to request that licensees 1) take actions to assure that materials comply with ASME Code and design specification requirements or are suitable for their intended service, or 2) replace such materials.”
But guess what happened? First: “Based on the reported measurement and analytical results to date, the NRC has concluded that for full power licensees it is appropriate to suspend, temporarily, the field measurements, testing, records review, and the preparation of justifications for continued operations (JCOs) that were requested by Bulletin 88-05 and Supplement 1 until further notice.”
This appears a long-standing US NRC rule of thumb: don’t look so you don’t find. Jesus…
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Scientists used X ray images to prove the ecosystem damage from ionising radiation
The X-Ray Images That Showed Midcentury Scientists How Radiation Affects an Ecosystem http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/12/28/how_midcentury_ecologists_used_x_ray_radioautographs_to_see_how_radiation.html By Laura J. Martin In June 1947, biologists from the University of Washington collected a wrasse from the waters around Bikini Atoll, squished it against a photographic plate, and took an x-ray. The resulting image shocked them. Almost an entire year had passed since the United States had detonated “Able” and “Baker,” two fission bombs, at the atoll. The scientists involved in the Bikini Scientific Resurvey were certain that the expansive Pacific Ocean would have quickly diluted and dispersed any radioactive products from the 1946 detonations.
And yet here, in dazzling white, was radiation revealed. Bikini Atoll’s biota had absorbed the products of the explosions. More curious, still: the radioactivity was not distributed evenly across a fish’s body. It seemed to be concentrated in the digestive system.
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was the main funder of ecological research in the United States from World War II until the 1970s. Between 1946 and 1962, the United States exploded 105 atomic and nuclear weapons in these inhabited Pacific atolls, changing their ecology, as well as the science of ecology itself. During this time the Commission continued to contract ecologists from the University of Washington and other institutions to return to the proving grounds.
The first studies done by the University of Washington Radiation Ecology laboratory—assembled by the Manhattan Project under strict confidentiality in 1943—had reflected the Manhattan Project’s belief that the major hazard of atomic technology was prolonged exposure to external sources of highly penetrative gamma radiation. The biologists burned specimens to ash and then passed those ashes through a Geiger counter. But during the Bikini Scientific Resurvey, they decided to employ a relatively new and more efficient method, “radioautography,” based on the assumption that a radioactive sample placed against photographic film would produce a brighter or darker image, depending on how much radiation reacted with the film.
Over the next two decades, such radioautographs led to the emergence of the idea that radiation is “biomagnified” as it moves up the food chain. This concept wouldprove essential to convincing legislators to ban DDT and restrict other pollutants. Interconnections among species—the objects of abstract flow charts in the 1930s —became brilliantly visible.
A number of other photos from the Pacific Surveys can be viewed at the University of Washington’s Digital Collection at this link.
Laura J. Martin is an environmental historian. She is a Ziff Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment and a postdoc in the Department of the History of Science. Visit her website or find her on Twitter.
Are Britain’s nuclear stations at risk from flooding?
I’m just asking this question. I note that earlier this month, there were all sorts of jolly headlines about a Cumbria Food Festival going ahead, despite flooding. And the nuclear industry sure was looking good – they donated £500,000 of immediate funding to help Cumbria’s flood recovery effort.
Nary a mention in the mainstream media that Cumbria’s flooding might be a worry for Sellafield, and the rest of Cumbria’s toxic nuclear industry plans.
Danger of moving plutonium from Dounreay to Sellafield after major flooding in Cumbria
Concerns over moving of Dounreay material by rail after flooding 14 December 2015 by David Kerr A campaign group has raised new concerns about the movement of waste materials from Dounreay by rail after major flooding in Cumbria.
Spent “exotic fuels” are being moved from the Caithness site to Sellafield in the north of England by rail, as part of the decommissioning process.
The first of a series of loads of unirradiated plutonium fuel from Dounreay’s Prototype Fast Reactor arrived at Sellafield last Monday.
Around 13 tonnes is due to be moved between the north of Scotland and Sellafield over the next few years……
Core spokesman Martin Forwood said: “It beggars belief that the decision to risk the plutonium fuel transport was taken despite the widely-trailed storm evidence and rail warnings.
“We condemn the perverse decision as being dangerously irresponsible and as a blatant breach of the stringent safety and security rules required for such transports.
“Those responsible have shown a level of incompetence that verges on criminal and should be weeded out, so that public and rail safety is not similarly endangered again.
“If any public confidence at all in such transports is to be salvaged, answers on the decisionmaking process must be given and lessons learned.”
The unirradiated plutonium is the latest fuel to be removed from Dounreay as part of a decommisioning program which started in 2001 when the site was closed. ………..https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands/778884/concerns-raised-by-campaigners-over-moving-dounreay-material-by-rail-after-flooding/
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USA: Your town’s radiation levels this week
Fukushima Update: “Your Radiation This Week, BEFORE IT’S NEWS, Dec 19 to Dec 26, 2015″ By Bob Nichols
Normal Radiation is 5 to 20 CPM. 50 CPM is an alert level.
RADIATION CPM* • TIMES NORMAL BACKGROUND LEVEL • CITY, STATE • TYPE (
Baby Pulse Spikes Rad Monitors in US: ..……
The facts: Fukushima today
The herculean cleanup of Fukushima Prefecture involves 105 cities, towns, and villages. Unlike Chernobyl where authorities declared a 1,000 square mile no-habitation zone and resettlement of 350,000 people, thus allowing radiation to dissipate over decades-to-centuries, Japan is attempting to remake Fukushima back into its old self. But, radioactive material collected in millions of black bags is a vexing problem for the ages.
Adding to the lingering problem of transporting and storing radioactive waste, over time, the bags will likely deteriorate and need to be replaced with fresh bags. It is an endless cycle.
Handling radioactive waste in Japan may become generational employment, similar to how second and third generation workers eventually completed the grand cathedrals of Europe, like Notre Dame de Paris with a cornerstone laid in 1163 resulting in major construction completed circa 1250.
Fukushima Today, Dissident Voice by Robert Hunziker / December 29th, 2015 Throughout the world, the name Fukushima has become synonymous with nuclear disaster and running for the hills. Yet, Fukushima may be one of the least understood disasters in modern times, as nobody knows how to fix either the problem nor the true dimension of the damage. Thus, Fukushima is in uncharted territory, a total nuclear meltdown that dances to its own rhythm. Similar to an overly concerned parent, TEPCO merely monitors but makes big mistakes along the way.
Over time, bits and pieces of information about Fukushima Prefecture come to surface. For example, Arkadiusz Podniesinski, the noted documentary photographer of Chernobyl, recently visited Fukushima. His photos and commentary depict a scenario of ruination and anxiety, a sense of hopelessness for the future.
Ominously, the broken down Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant looms in the background of everybody’s life, like the seemingly indestructible iconic image of destruction itself, Godzilla with its signature “atomic breath.”
Podniesinski’s commentary clearly identifies the blame for the nuclear accident, namely:………
Within Fukushima, Orange Zones are designated as less contaminated but still uninhabitable because radiation levels run 20-50 mSv/y, but decontamination work is underway. Residents are allowed to visit homes for short duration only during the daytime. However, as it happens, very few people are seen. Most of the former residents do not want to go back and the wooden houses in many of the towns and villages are severely dilapidated.
The lowest radiation areas are designated the Green Zone (< 20 mSv/y), where decontamination work is complete and evacuation orders are to be lifted.
Enormous black sealed bags filled with radioactive soil and all kinds of sizzling waste are stacked across the countryside, as approximately 20,000 workers thoroughly cleanse soil, rooftops, streets, and gutters. House-by-house, workers scrub rooftops and walls by hand.
The radioactive-contained black bags are trucked outside of towns to the far outskirts where thousands upon thousands upon thousands of big black bags are stacked. An aerial view of these temporary storage sites appears like gigantic quilts of rectangular shapes neatly, geometrically spread across the landscape for as far as the eye can see. The government claims the radioactive-contained black bags will be gone from the countryside within 30 years, but where to?………
The herculean cleanup of Fukushima Prefecture involves 105 cities, towns, and villages. Unlike Chernobyl where authorities declared a 1,000 square mile no-habitation zone and resettlement of 350,000 people, thus allowing radiation to dissipate over decades-to-centuries, Japan is attempting to remake Fukushima back into its old self. But, radioactive material collected in millions of black bags is a vexing problem for the ages.
In that regard, Japanese authorities have commissioned construction of a massive landfill just outside of the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, expected to contain 16-to-22 million bags of debris, enough to fill 15 baseball stadiums. Unfortunately, bags filled with radioactivity are more than a mere headache; they are more like a severe migraine. A truck can carry 6-8 of the huge bags at a time, and with so many, it could take decades to move the material. Adding to the lingering problem of transporting and storing radioactive waste, over time, the bags will likely deteriorate and need to be replaced with fresh bags. It is an endless cycle.
Handling radioactive waste in Japan may become generational employment, similar to how second and third generation workers eventually completed the grand cathedrals of Europe, like Notre Dame de Paris with a cornerstone laid in 1163 resulting in major construction completed circa 1250. http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/12/fukushima-today/
Thousands of USA’s Oak Ridge nuclear workers sick and dying from cancers and other radiation-caused illnesses
Of the 33,480, the government has specifically acknowledged that exposure to radiation or other toxins on the job likely caused or contributed to the deaths of 15,809 workers. And this tally almost certainly underestimates the total dead among the 600,000 who worked in the weapons program at its peak.
The women who worked at the plant were told to keep their mouths shut, and those
who talked about their jobs were quickly let go.
Nuclear workers: Projects’ results were worth illnesses, deaths Amarillo.com December 28, 2015 Tribune News Service Editor’s note: This is the third story in a series examining the health problems that afflict the U.S. nuclear workforce as the government launches a $1 trillion plan to modernize the arsenal.
In 1944, when the feds wanted young women to help out with a top-secret project in the hills of Tennessee, they found 19-year-old Evelyn Babb.
She grew up on four acres in Appalachia, where her family had one milk cow and a couple dozen chickens. She jumped at the chance to make 70 cents an hour at the new Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., twisting knobs on dials, with no clue what she was doing. Bosses advised her to tell friends she was making highchairs for infants.
When President Harry Truman dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, Babb learned the truth: She had helped produce the atomic hell that killed thousands of Japanese as one of the climactic acts of World War II.
In many cases, the money went to survivors. Of the 33,480, the government has specifically acknowledged that exposure to radiation or other toxins on the job likely caused or contributed to the deaths of 15,809 workers. And this tally almost certainly underestimates the total dead among the 600,000 who worked in the weapons program at its peak.
The plants with the highest number of deaths are the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, with 3,741, and the Hanford Site in Washington state, with 3,461. They’re the sites that provided the plutonium and uranium for the bombs, nicknamed Fat Man and Little Boy, that Truman used to wipe out Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of the nation’s top-secret Manhattan Project.
“The death numbers tell you something, but they are just a slice of the story,” said Ralph Hutchison, a former Presbyterian pastor who’s coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, a group that has held peace vigils outside the Y-12 plant every Sunday for the last 16 years. “What’s the quality of life for people who have debilitating chronic illnesses?”
The number of dead is sure to grow much higher.
Seventy years after the atomic bombings, thousands of former workers at Department of Energy nuclear sites are sick from cancers and other diseases after being exposed to radiation, a long list of toxins and a brew of other dangerous substances.
Yet more than half of the 107,394 workers who have sought help since 2001 — 51.1 percent — have been denied, TNS’ investigation found.
And many workers have endured years of guilt after they unknowingly helped produce weapons of mass destruction.
“I felt proud until I started realizing that I had a part in killing all those people, and that’s something I didn’t believe in,” said Ruth Huddleston, 90, of Oliver Springs, Tenn., who went to work at Y-12 at age 18. “I had helped kill thousands of people.”……….http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2015-12-28/nuclear-workers-projects-results-were-worth-illnesses-deaths#.VoMfhne5dh0.twitter
USA planned extensive nuclear bombing of populations – declassified documents reveal
Stranger than Strangelove: how the US planned for nuclear war in the 1950s, The Conversation, Paul Lashmar, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Sussex December 28, 2015 Those who have written about the nuclear Cold War remain grateful to Stanley Kubrick for giving us the satirical 1964 film Dr Strangelove which captures the madness that swept the world for 40 years. The name Strangelove may be overused but the United States has now released a secret file that really does justify the sobriquet: “Stranger than Strangelove”. Almost anodyne in title, Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959 is a truly shocking document, revealing the scale of the holocaust that would have been unleashed in a nuclear war.Radioactive groundwater accumulating at Fukushima Daiichi No 1 nuclear power station
FUKUSHIMA NIGHTMARE CONTINUES UNABATED: TEPCO confronts new problem of radioactive water at Fukushima plant http://sgtreport.com/2015/12/fukushima-nightmare-continues-unabated-tepco-confronts-new-problem-of-radioactive-water-at-fukushima-plant/ by Hiromi Kumagai, The Asahi Shimbun: Tokyo Electric Power Co. has unexpectedly been forced to deal with an increasingly large amount radioactive water accumulating at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant after seaside walls to block the flow of groundwater were constructed in October.
TEPCO completed the walls on Oct. 26 to block contaminated groundwater from flowing into sea. The utility began pumping up groundwater from five wells dug between the walls and the plant’s reactor buildings. The plan called for releasing the less contaminated water into the sea after a purification process, but TEPCO discovered that the water had larger amounts of radiation than it had expected.
TEPCO officials said the situation has left the utility with no option but to transfer 200 to 300 tons of groundwater each day into highly contaminated reactor buildings since November, a move that could further contaminate the water.
Comprised of numerous cylindrical steel pipes measuring 30 meters tall, the seaside walls were installed on the coastal side of the No. 1 to No. 4 reactor buildings to block contaminated groundwater flowing out of the highly contaminated buildings from reaching the ocean.
To control groundwater levels, TEPCO planned to release the less contaminated groundwater from the five wells into sea after a purification process.
However, the water from four of the wells was discovered to have high levels of tritium–a radioactive substance that is hard to remove–at levels higher than 1,500 becquerels per liter, which means the water cannot be released into sea.
To compound the problem, the seaside walls have also significantly raised groundwater levels, forcing the utility to pump a lot more groundwater than it originally planned. Read More @ ajw.asahi.com
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