¶ “All The King’s Men Cannot Put King Coal Together Again” Even before the new administration took over, it had been widely argued that coal plants would continue shutting down irrespective of whether the Clean Power Plan was implemented. Old coal plants are retiring, and new ones are not being installed. [Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide]
Declining capacities of new coal plants were going to zero before the Clean Power Plan
¶ “‘America First’ Energy Plan Challenges Free Market Realities” During President Barack Obama’s term in office, much of the focus was on addressing climate change and renewable energy. Trump is focused on coal, oil, and gas and putting the people who extract them to work. But experts say coal is simply too costly to be competitive. [KUNC]
World:
¶ Renewable energy made up nearly nine-tenths of new power added to Europe’s electricity grids last year…
¶ “Trump’s Despotically Dispensed ‘Truth’ Doomed by Reality” EPA staff and scientists are being muzzled, federal funds frozen, and ludicrous extractive industry speaking points are now official government policy. But ultimately, Trump’s triumphant hubris will be answerable, like that of all would-be despots before him, to reality. [TheTyee.ca]
One era ends – another begins. (Photo: Peter Thoeny, Creative Commons)
World:
¶ Rooftop and large-scale solar contributed to an estimated 1% reduction in Australian power consumption in 2016, prompting 1.3% fall in greenhouse gas emissions. Analysis by Green Energy Markets has highlighted the growing impact solar power is having on the nation’s electricity consumption rates and patterns. [pv magazine]
¶ Australian Federal government agencies are investing $71.4 million in seven solar farms and a wind farm in Queensland. They are set to deliver a total of 2,218 jobs, analysis by 350.org shows. Australia’s largest coal mine…
Almost continuous warm, moist air invasions of the Arctic during fall and winter of 2016 and 2017 have resulted in the lowest sea ice refreeze rates on record. As a result, the amount of ice covering sections of the Northern Hemisphere ocean is now remarkably lower than during past comparable periods. In other words, we’ve […]
US NRC Photo: Control Room Panels (unknown nuclear power station), Nov-2007; black and white photo of Quad Cities Control Rm at Blog Post Bottom
At Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station: “On February 1, 2017, at 1929 hours [CST], a fire was discovered on the Unit 2 Main Control Room panel 902-3 in the 3E ERV/ADS [Electromatic Relief Valve-Automatic Depressurization System ] valve switch… No automatic isolations/actuations occurred. The fire was extinguished at 1932 and the reactor remained at 100% power. “An Alert was declared at 1938 [CST].”The initiation of the event was attempting to change a light bulb. The cause of the event is under investigation. ” https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2017/20170202en.html The control room is just that – it is to control the nuclear reactors. This is not good. Hitachi centers around the Mizuho group, in trouble a few years ago for lending to the Japanese mob (yakuza): http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/11/09/business/hitachis-consumer-credit-unit-caught-up-in-mizuho-yakuza-loan-scandal
I find it strange to see al the bloster from the corporate media claiming that nuclear is good and MAYBE we should build more nuclear plants. What everyone (including the main stream media doesn’t know, is that the executive orders from Herr Trump have already been signed. Nuclear is coming to a town near you soon (IF YOU LIVE IN THE USA) and both the Tax payer and energy customer will have to pay for it (technically twice if you live near one of these upcoming new builds). Its way worse than getting the Mexican tax payer to pay for the wall. Regards Arclight2011
Law360, New York (January 23, 2017, 6:13 PM EST) — The House of Representatives on Monday pushed through a series of changes to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in bills meant to change how courts treat FERC decisions and give more flexibility to new nuclear plants.
The two bills, passed by a voice vote, are meant to help consumers in the existing power industry and to help the development of new nuclear reactor technologies. The Fair Rates Act would expand the reviewability of FERC rate change decisions and the Advanced Nuclear Technology Development Act of 2017 would direct the U.S. Department and of Energy and the NRC to come up with a plan to allow for regulatory approvals of more advanced technology in nuclear reactors.
Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., the prime sponsor of the Fair Rates Act, said that the legislation would avoid the situation that power consumers in the Northeast faced. Following a rate auction, FERC deadlocked on approving the results, and they went into place automatically but consumers could not challenge them without a final FERC decision.
“With no official decision from the agency, there was no decision to appeal, leaving my constituents completely voiceless,” Kennedy said.
The bill would prevent situations in which consumers are forced to pay higher rates without the opportunity to appeal the decision either through the agency or through the courts, Kennedy said.
“Although this situation may sound completely isolated to New England, there’s not a corner of this country that’s immune from the unpredictability of the American energy market and the resulting burden they are forced to bear as a result,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy’s bill alters Section 205 of the Federal Power Act, designating that if a rate approval becomes final through action of law, it should be treated as a final agency action for purposes of agency and court appeals.
The court case that spurred the passage of the law came from Public Citizen and the state of Connecticut, which argued to overturn the approval of regional grid operator ISO New England Inc.’s 2014 auction — through which power generators offered their resource capacity for future power needs — by default.
However, in October, the D.C. Circuit ruled that it cannot review the approval of the auction without a final decision by the agency; the 2-2 deadlock kept the state and public consumers out of the courtroom.
Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., said that one of the other bills the House passed on Monday, the Advanced Nuclear Technology Development Act of 2017, would help bring more advanced nuclear reactor designs to market more quickly. The language mandates that the Energy Department and the NRC enter into a memorandum of agreement to “knock down those walls to innovation and provide an opportunity to develop advanced nuclear reactor designs.”
The bill specifically includes advances on existing light-water reactor technologies that are intended to be more efficient and generate less waste as well as nuclear fusion reactors — which have not yet been built on an economically feasible scale. According to press reports, research institutions in both the United States and abroad have continued work on scaling up the power and sustainability of such reactors.
The bill would require a uniform, predictable plan for approval of more advanced reactors, which is meant to be based on mathematical models of their behavior.
Rep. Diane Degette, D-Colo., said that the changes to the NRC would be “a commonsense way for the federal government to safely advance the goals of the advanced nuclear power industry” and pave the way for lowering America’s overall carbon emissions.
It would appear that the accident today was due to some work that was ongoing on the Flamaville nuclear site over at least a couple of days.
I noticed that on the 7th February 2017 between approx 22.00hrs GMT and 24.00 hrs GMT that there is some missing data from the local radiation monitors;
And this one;
These releases were seen as a low rise on the Jersey monitor about an hour later here;
Whilst these levels in Jersey are not excessive I just thought I would show how quickly a plume from the Flamaville site could reach the Channel Islands. A report by UK “Experts” said that there would be no risk to the Channel Islands even if there was a serious accident. These are the same claims that are made about ireland concerning the Sellafield nuclear disaster site in the west coast of the UK and they come with pretty graphs and lots of complicated equations.
I, for one, do not believe the UK experts reassurances. Thats why I sent in a petition to the Irish EPA calling for a re-justification of the Euratom Treaty concerning Sellafield.. The Irish EPA is currently about 4 weeks late in officially responding to this (hoping for an Irish version of Brexit perhaps). More on this later.
Aside from that, once again we can see that the official releases from French reactors are being played down as is the official take on the health effects of these normal working releases. The nuclear industry and EDF need to become more transparent but in recent years they have become even less so.
If any Europeans wish to apply for a re-justification on the Euratom treaty based on new evidence of the real risk of health effects please follow this link where you can contact them for help and support to fill in the form.
Yesterday we tried to post a list of demonstrations around the world and it caused nuclear-news.net to corrupt the home page. It also stopped us informing #NODAPL supporters of the water defenders where these demonstrations were. I eventually worked out what was happening and had to delete the post to correct the blog but too late to give you all the information. This video last 1 hour, it starts slow but then we get to hear how some of these water defenders feel and what their perception is of the the situation, I recommend watching it Regards Shaun McGee aka arclight2011
This video is relating to this article concerning todays explosion at Flamaville nuclear power plant and EDF hiding radiation data from the public. The winds are heading to the Channel Islands; The full censored article can be seen here;
The US Army Corps of Engineers Tuesday decided to grant a final permit for the controversial Dakota Access pipeline after an order from the Trump administration to expedite its permit.
The US Army Corps of Engineers Tuesday decided to grant a final permit for the controversial Dakota Access pipeline after an order from the Trump administration to expedite its permit.
A court filing submitted by the Army represents the first concrete challenge to American commitments to mitigating climate change, and the pipeline could begin operation as soon as June.
The Army corps had previously backed off the project in December after thousands had joined protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, who say the pipeline will tread across ancestral lands and threaten their water supply.
The so-called easement to resume building the 1,885 kilometer pipeline, which will run from shale fields in North Dakota to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico, is the first of two pipeline projects enjoying reinvigoration by Trump, threatening serious damage to US climate commitments reached in the Paris Agreement of 2015.
The second is the Keystone XL pipeline, which Trump has also raised from the grave and green lighted. That pipeline, which would run from the carbon intensive tar sands oil projects in Alberta, Canada, and again to the Gulf of Mexico, was halted by the Obama Administration over the climate damage that would result of bringing the tar sands to market.
Pipes for Keystone XL construction. (Photo: Wikipedia)
It’s been jokingly suggested that the Dakota Access pipeline posed less of a threat to the global climate than the Keystone XL, but that can’t really be determined yet because the Army Corps hasn’t performed an environmental impact study. In any event, the oil it will bring to market cause the same damage as would 30 coal burning plants.
It also represents a stark break with the Obama administration’s policy of moving cautiously where questions of impact to the climate are concerned. Slated to move 470,000 barrels of oil a day, the pipeline contributes to maintaining a carbon intensive economy when smarter markets are moving toward renewables.
It likewise offers an insulting rejoinder to Native American tribes who have been protesting it. Running the pipeline under the Missouri River, as planned, endangers the tribes’ drinking water in the event of a rupture, and poses a danger of downstream contamination. The pipeline also opens social wounds afresh: It’s hard not to regard the pipeline as later-day federal land grab from indigenous populations.
By nudging the project along, the Trump White House highlights its blunt disregard for ethics as well: Trump reportedly holds or held up to $1 million in shares in Energy Transfer Partners, but since he refuses to release his federal tax returns, there’s now way to objectively establish that.
Even if he has dumped the stock, the pipeline project is still pure patronage – Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, was a major contributor to Trump’s campaign.
The Dakota Access project bulldozes the way for the resurrected Keystone XL pipeline, but its fate is less certain. Trump’s order to complete that project came with a promise to “renegotiate” the terms of the 1,897 kilometer pipeline with Canada so that only American steel is used for its construction.
TransCanada, the company responsible for building it, has yet to indicate whether it will accept those terms. The company had originally planned to build 45 percent of the pipeline with Canadian steel.
But the Keystone XL’s threat to the climate is obvious. Analysis suggests that, once the pipeline is complete, it will move enough climate-volatile tar sands oil to pump 181 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere each year, or the pollution equivalent to that put out by 37.7 million new cars on the road each year.
More generally, the Trump administration is aligning to assail Obama’s signature Clean Power Plan limiting emissions from power plants, which has long been tied up in court proceedings, but which also draws its force from a long established law called the Clean Air Act of 1970. That law imparts to the Environmental Protection Agency the right to say greenhouse gases are, in fact, harmful and subject to regulation.
Any challenges to the Clean Power Plan will certainly end up in the US court system, a system to which Trump is already openly hostile. A review of his Twitter insults toward the judges reviewing his precipitous Muslim ban is sufficient to illustrate his tendency toward judicial intimidation.
Trump’s reanimation of two damaging pipeline projects will have baleful consequences for the world climate. But the method he used to do it – executive orders – are easy ways for him to jeer and bear his teeth at the environmental movement and the pipeline protestors who have already taken to the streets.
Dismantling matters of law, like the Clean Air Act, would take a willing judicial branch. The more he mocks judges over his Muslim ban – and he shows no signs of running out of taunts – the less likely other judges will be to cooperate in his project.
Image; Flamaville radiation monitoring stations and the Channel Islands
Posted to nuclear-news.net
By Shaun McGee
Date 9 February 2017 12.50 hrs GMT
Even though many media sources had claimed that there was no threat of radiation releases I checked the radiation monitoring network of Europe called EURDEP at 12.18 hrs GMT to see if the incident at Flamaville had triggered any spikes showing a radiation release.
Obviously, after the Chernobyl, Budapest Medical Isotope Institute and Fukushima incidents etc there is little trust in the nuclear industry reports of such incidents. I noticed that although the incident happened just after 10.00 hrs GMT that the French monitoring system had stopped its hourly reading at around 10.30 hrs GMT;
I then checked the UK based monitoring system at Alderney in the Channel Islands that is located east of the nuclear power plant and that monitoring system was still doing up to date reports;
The next thing i checked was the wind directions to assess the movement of any likely plumes and there is a slow wind that is moving to the east (Towards the Channel Islands) at 12.50 hrs GMT;
Obviously the reactor, where the incident took place, has been reported to have been shut down and presuming that there is no release or radiation plume happening at the moment I thought it would be a good idea to work out where the Off Gassing from the shut down reactor (A normal operation in the event of a reactor shut down to enable works to be done in and around the reactor) might head towards so I checked the wind map projection for 21.00 hrs GMT this evening. The wind will be heading east for the rest of the day and possibly the night as well;
Summary;
Presuming that EDF are telling the truth, it is likely that they will be Off Gassing the reactor radioactive gases and that those will be heading towards the Channel Islands. The Off gassing will possibly not register locally in france as the Chimney stack and increasing wind speed will take it over the local radiation monitors (picture at top of the page). The fact that EDF have switched of the EURDEP monitoring map that is for the emergency services is worrying but we see this happening all the time and it has been reported as an issue because it skews the yearly reportable total radiation output from Europes nuclear reactors and so plays down the calculations of health effects caused by these “normal” releases.
We will keep you posted if we get any further news on this breaking situation but, as we see, the nuclear industry is already trying to mitigate any bad news and cover up any resulting spikes for their paid for epidemiologists calculations. We can thank the IAEA for this practice as we have seen in the past.
An explosion has erupted at EDF’s Flamanville nuclear power plant in northern France. At least five people suffered light injuries in the blast.
EDF has confirmed that one reactor has been taken offline adding there is no nuclear risk.
“It is a significant technical event, but it’s not a nuclear accident,” a representative of the local prefecture said, adding that the accident occurred outside of the ‘nuclear zone’.
According to Ouest France newspaper, firefighters were alerted to a fire and an explosion in the engine room around 10am local time and emergency services were sent to the location.
The plant lies 105km from the UK mainland and between 40-50km from Guernsey and Jersey in the Channel.
an hour ago
Explosion at EDF’s nuclear power plant
An explosion has been reported at an EDF nuclear reactor at its Flamanville facility. The incident was reported by Ouest France newspaper on its website.
According to first indications, there may be injuries but there is no risk of a nuclear leak.
Stay tuned here for updates as this story develops.
7 minutes ago
On Jan. 18, ASN Chairman Pierre-Franck Chevet gave his New Year’s best wishes — but he issued a warning. The nuclear situation in France is worrying.
“A year ago,the situation with regard to nuclear installations was worrying in the medium term. If I had to summarize my thoughts today, I would say that the situation is worrying. I omit “in the medium term“
28 minutes ago
EDF confirms the incident at Flamanville. Specifies:
A fire near to reactor 1 led to an explosion at 09h40 in an engineering sector of the facility. Fire crews immediately responded and extinguished the blaze. Firefighters responded to the incident and have confirmed the absence of fire.
Reactor 1 has been taken offline following the blast. There are no reports of injuries and no environmental risks.
The 2016 Report includes the results of an assessment of the levels of radiation exposure due to different methods of electricity generation (Annex B) using an updated methodology (Annex A). The last such study was published by UNSCEAR in 1993. The Report, which has four scientific annexes (Annex A, B, C, and D) was published today and is available for free download at http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2016.html
People also want to compare exposures from generating the same amount of electricity. Thus, the Committee also evaluated radiation exposure per unit of electricity generated, using 2010 as a reference year for comparison. It concluded that the values for the two main electricity generation technologies (coal and nuclear) are about the same in the short term. “Over longer times, such as hundreds of years, an accumulation of very small doses from long-lived radionuclides result in larger collective doses from the nuclear fuel cycle,” said Vanmarcke.
The Committee for the first time also assessed the occupational exposure during the plant construction phase for the various electricity generating technologies. Although this component is smaller than those incurred by miners for coal and uranium as fuel, the highest occupational exposure associated with plant construction for the same amount of installed power is for construction of solar energy plants, followed by wind energy plants. This is because these technologies require larger quantities of rare earth metals and the extraction of the very low-grade minerals needed exposes workers to radiation during the extensive mining operations.
The Committee also recalled the exposures from radiation accidents. “It is difficult to directly compare exposure from accidents (such as those that occurred at Chernobyl, and more recently at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station) to those resulting from routine discharges,” said Vanmarcke, “Nevertheless, the Committee reconfirmed that the collective dose to the global population from serious accidents was many orders of magnitude higher than one year’s normal operation of the nuclear cycle.”
While the 2016 Report examines the level of radiation exposure caused by various electricity-generating technologies, its findings cannot alone indicate that any one technology is preferable to another. Countries choose an appropriate mix of technologies based upon a number of factors, which may include radiation exposure.
The 2016 Report (Annexes C and D) also assesses the biological effects of radiation from two internal emitters – tritium and isotopes of uranium, respectively. Internal emitters can be described as radionuclides that have been deposited in body organs and tissues, either via inhalation or by eating. Once in the body, they continue to deliver doses of radiation internally. Doses to organs from these emitters are generally estimated using models that use either environmental or human measurements.
Tritium is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that occurs both naturally and artificially. It is found mainly as tritiated water in either liquid or vapour form. Exposure of workers results mainly from nuclear reactor operations and other industrial installations. Uranium is a naturally occurring radioactive element that the general public is exposed to due to its widespread presence. Workers are exposed to uranium mainly from mining and from its use as a nuclear fuel. Another area of concern has been the exposure resulting from the use of depleted uranium in munitions.
The 2016 Report concludes that the accumulation of tritium in the organic component of foodstuffs warrants further investigation. It also states that no firm conclusions may be drawn with regard to the carcinogenic effects of tritium. Occupational exposure to various physical and chemical forms of tritium since the middle of the last century varied, from very low to lethal doses. This is why clarification of doses and biological effects of tritium remains topical, especially in the face of the potential dawn of a fusion era. Vanmarcke said: “Tritium exposure in the environment is generally very low, and any effect of such exposure against the background radiation is very small.”
With regard to uranium exposure, the 2016 Report concluded that uranium effects on the kidneys observed in animals and humans are clearly related to the chemical properties of uranium itself. There is no clear demonstration of a causal association between cancer risks and radiological exposure to uranium. It also states that at the present time, no observed health effects in humans can be linked with radiological exposure to depleted uranium.
There is a campaign in Japan to expand the thyroid tests on downwind victims from the Fukushima nuclear disaster of march 2011. At the same time there is another campaign on behalf of the pro nuclear lobby to reduce the existing tests The background to this situation is described in detail on these links;
You will notice that on the corruption link a post at the bottom of the article from NHK [Fund to help young people with thyroid cancer NHK Japan; 27 Dec 2016] which states that at least one childs thyroid cancer had spread to the lungs because the thyroid cancer had not been dealt with quickly enough. This article has now been taken down (the link is on the corruption post for you to try) in a bid (I claim) to play down the possible risks of reducing the thyroid cancer checks.
Then I noticed a new paper being submitted and accepted by the Endocrine Journal by Dr. Takano from the Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine in Feb 2017 that might support the pro nuclear lobbies reduction in thyroid testing claims.
After reading the paper I was shocked as I was aware that at least one child had got secondary cancer because of the present testing regime. The NHK article doesn’t confirm if the child was living within the Fukushima Prefecture or in one of the nearby prefectures. But there has been a spate of thyroid cancer from nearby prefectures and if you follow the above links you will see that many people have signed a petition (including a Nobel Laurette) to keep the testing in place and, in fact, extend the testing to nearby prefectures.
I will now move onto my further investigation on the “new” Endrocrine Journal paper. I contacted Prof T Tsude, Prof C Busby and Prof J Mangano for their comments on this paper to find out what, if any, problems there might be with these findings that will be used by main stream media and scientists as a source to refute the campaign to expand the thyroid tests and in turn support the nuclear lobbies aims at mitigating costs for the Fukushima nuclear plant owner TEPCO. I asked a simple question;
Dr. Takano does not notice several important issues of evidence.
1. In the second round screening in Fukushima, more than ten times (to a maximum of forty times) increase of thyroid cancer was observed. Most of them (80%) were detected with any nodule in the first round.
2. In the second round as well as the first, there was variability among areas and/or district within Fukushima Prefecture.
3. In low and non contaminated areas around Chernobyl, direct estimation from ultrasound screening data among 47,203 examinees in the unexposed or relatively low contaminated areas in Belarus no cancer cases were detected (95% confidence interval: 0–78 per million examinees) (Ito 1995, Shibata 2001, Domidchik 2007). In the studies by Ito et al. and Shibata et al., the same manner was employed as that in Fukushima, which was only more the 5.1 mm nodules were secondary examined, which could not be explained by resolution increase of ultrasound image. The other paper may be conducted by same manner because overlap co-author.
The evidence completely refutes assumption of Dr. Takano’s hypothesis.
Ito M, Yamashita S, Ashizawa K, et al. Childhood thyroid diseases around Chernobyl evaluated by ultrasound examination and fine needle aspiration cytology. Thyroid. 1995;5:365–368.
Shibata Y, Yamashita S, Masyakin VB, Panasyuk GD, Nagataki S. 15 years after Chernobyl: new evidence of thyroid cancer. Lancet. 2001;358:1965–1966.
Demidchik YE, Saenko VA, Yamashita S. Childhood thyroid cancer in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine after Chernobyl and at present. Arq Bras Endocrinol Metabol. 2007;51:748–762.`
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Prof. Chris Busby
————————————————————————
OK. I have read this. It is an a dishonest attempt to avoid the clear effect after Fukushima. It was published the day after it was submitted Jan 19th-Jan 20th in a Japanese Endocrine Society journal. It contains various dishonest spins.
(1) The Korea studies were near nuclear sites
(2)There was an increase in adult thyroid cancer after Chernobyl-it was not constrained to children
(3) Thyroid surgeries don’t alter the prognosis: this depends on surgery numbers in children and prognosis numbers in adults also as the man says, there are secondaries in the lymphatic system which surgery does nor remove
(4) there was an increase in thyroid cancer after radioiodine, in fact if the author he quotes had been honest, the increase would have been double, Holm took out all the cases that occurred inside 5 years.
The existence of occult tumours that have not progressed is well known and not something he has discovered “for the first time”. Their lack of progression is a consequences of signaling control by the local cell community and the immune system. A scam.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Prof. Joe Mangano
————————————————————————
I take exception in the abstract, describing some thyroid cancers as “cancers that are malignant, but do not prove to be lethal” as if they were not a concern themselves, or a marker for other diseases in people. The explosion of child thyroid cancer near Fukushima has driven the health establishment to produce “papers” that assert that the enormous radiation exposure throughout Japan and the world does not affect children and adults health. The same thing occurred after Chernobyl – another example of damage control using dishonest science.
A wide area of northeastern Japan, the Tohoku and Kantou regions, was contaminated by the radioactive material emitted from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (FDNPS) of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), as manifested by various environmental investigations (Nakajima et al. 2014). The accident was caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake, which struck at 14:46 Japan Standard Time (JST; Coordinated Universal Time, UTC+ 9 h) on 11 March 2011.
Takemura et al. (2011) show that the negative anomaly of a 500-hPa height over the Okhotsk Sea area along 145° E made the westerly jet stronger than the climatological mean during mid-March; consequently, 70 to 80% of the radioactive material from the FDNPS was driven to the Pacific Ocean and the rest of the globe (Takemura et al. 2011; Stohl et al. 2012; Mészáros et al. 2016). The remaining material spread over and deposited onto the land area of Japan, producing characteristic hot spot patterns (Yasunari et al. 2011; JAEA 2012; SCJ 2014). The total emission of 137Cs into the atmosphere until the end of April was estimated to be 14.6 ± 3.5 PBq (SCJ 2014). The ratio of the total deposition over the Japanese land area to the total atmospheric emission was estimated as 20 ± 6%, according to the airborne monitoring conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Japan (MEXT 2011), whereas the ratio was calculated as 27 ± 10% based on the multi-model intercomparison by the Science Council of Japan (SCJ 2014). To date, this inconsistency has not been fully understood, owing to the lack of observation data, which is attributable to instrumental damage and electric outages as well as modeling uncertainties. In addition, there is still great uncertainty in the emission time series of the radioactive material, as shown in Fig. 1. Yumimoto et al. (2016) conducted an inverse analysis to optimally estimate the emission rate using the time series of the deposition map, but the result is very different from that of Katata et al. (2015).
Time series of the 137Cs emission rate from the FDNPS, as estimated by Terada et al. (2012), Katata et al. (2015), and Yumimoto et al. (2016)
Recently, Tsuruta et al. (2014) developed a method to directly measure the hourly time series of the atmospheric 137Cs concentration at surface level, from the aerosol sampling tapes of the national suspended particulate matter (SPM) network. The SPM network monitors air pollution by employing beta-ray attenuation counters. Four laboratories, namely, those of Tokyo Metropolitan University, the Nuclear Professional School of the University of Tokyo, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, and the Japan Chemical Analysis Center, retrieved the atmospheric loading from the hourly aerosol spots on the SPM tape. This method offers the potential for studying the atmospheric transport of 137Cs, although the data is from surface level, during the entire post-accident period; the SPM dataset has high temporal and spatial sampling, with observations every hour at 90 out of 400 sites (Fig. 2). In Fig. 2, it can be seen that the Nakadori region is a channel basin area between the Ou and Abukuma mountains, while the Hamadori region is a coastal region to the east of the Abukuma mountains. The FDNPS is located in the northern part of the Hamadori region. In this report, we compare the ensemble results of two aerosol transport models with SPM data. An important purpose of the comparison is to investigate the validity of the combined use of SPM data and multi-model simulations to depict the transportation of atmospheric 137Cs over the Japan land area. Once validated, further analysis can be performed on a larger volume of SPM data, such as the most recent data from 99 SPM sites, which has recently been made available to the public (Oura et al. 2015). In addition, the results could be a useful input for our second model intercomparison, which is intended as a follow-up to the first comparison, which was made by the SCJ (SCJ 2014), and this can contribute to future discussions of the use of models in emergency protocols.
Names of key regions and locations of SPM sites at the time of accident for the present study. The Tohoku region is the northeastern part of the Japanese islands and includes the Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures; the Kantou region is the area that includes the Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, and Ibaraki prefectures. The FDNPS is located in the northern part of the Hamadori region, a coastal area to the east of the Abukuma Mountains. The Nakadori region is a channel basin area between the Ou and the Abukuma mountains. Open circles are SPM monitoring sites managed and maintained by local governments in eastern Japan before the accident. The base map was modified by using the original map in Fig. 1 of Tsuruta et al. (2014)
Tsuruta et al. (2014) identified nine plumes, as listed in Fig. 3, that transported particulates to the land area of Japan and in which the maximum atmospheric 137Cs concentration exceeded 10 Bq m−3, based on a synoptic analysis using a time series of the SPM data and the wind vector field. For purposes of comparison, we selected plumes P2 to P9 in the period 14–24 March 2011. In this period, there were two migrations of low pressure systems over Japan; these occurred on 15 and 20 March, according to the weather maps shown in Fig. 4.
Plumes identified by Tsuruta et al. (2014). Horizontal bars show the period with high 137Cs concentrations (>10 Bq m−3). Closed and open circles indicate areas in the Hamadori, Nakadori, and Kantou regions where the concentrations were larger or smaller, respectively, than 100 Bq m−2
a–f Weather maps based on JMA analysis at 9:00 JST in the analysis period
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has killed a study aimed at finding out whether nuclear reactors pose cancer risks to nearby residents. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, the decision was made due to the high cost of the probe and doubts that it would prove effective. The project in question, which is worth eight million dollars, would have examined seven nuclear facilities all across the country. The new investigation was supposed to have reassured Americans that it was not dangerous healthwise to reside near a nuclear power plant. A similar study, coming to the same conclusion, was last conducted almost 30 years ago. Several recent European tests revealed rather disturbing links between cancer and minors living close to nuclear facilities. Radio Sputnik discussed the issue with Christopher Busby, British scientist known for his theories about the negative health effects of very low-dose ionising radiation. Mr. Busby is a director of Green Audit Limited and scientific advisor to the Low Level Radiation Campaign.
Keystone Pipeline construction. (Photo: Transcanada.com) 
Pipes for Keystone XL construction. (Photo: Wikipedia) 
nuclear-news 