The Chinese Embassy in Japan on Sunday issued an alert to its nationals who have plans to travel in Japan, reminding them of the high-level radiation inside a damaged reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the facility’s operator, announced last week that the radiation levels detected inside the plant’s No. 2 reactor had reached 650 Sieverts per hour, even higher than the previous record of 530 Sieverts per hour in January.
Even with a 30 percent margin of error, the reading is described by many experts as “unimaginable.” It is much higher than the 73 Sieverts an hour, which was detected in 2012, one year after the nuclear plant’s collapse. Under such exposure, a person would only be able to survive a few minutes at most.
The TEPCO on Thursday sent a remotely controlled robot into the reactor, equipped with a camera that is designed to withstand up to 1,000 Sieverts of cumulative exposure. The robot was pulled out after it broke down only two hours into the probe.
The company is planning to send better robots to conduct more detailed probes. However, it insists that radiation has not leaked outside the reactor.
Last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China has issued safety alerts to its nationals over the high-level radiation. He added that China hopes that the Japanese government could clarify how they are going to thoroughly eliminate the impact caused by the nuclear accident.
Six years have now passed after three reactors at Fukushima’s nuclear power plant were damaged by a devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011. After the accident, the local government ordered residents living within 30-kilometer radius around the Fukushima nuclear plant to evacuate.
Dr Helen Caldicott, explains recent robot photos taken of Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear reactors: radiation levels have not peaked, but have continued to spill toxic waste into the Pacific Ocean — but it’s only now the damage has been photographed.
RECENT reporting of a huge radiation measurement at Unit 2 in the Fukushima Daichi reactor complex does not signify that there is a peak in radiation in the reactor building.
All that it indicates is that, for the first time, the Japanese have been able to measure the intense radiation given off by the molten fuel, as each previous attempt has led to failure because the radiation is so intense the robotic parts were functionally destroyed.
The radiation measurement was 530 sieverts, or 53,000 rems (Roentgen Equivalent for Man). The dose at which half an exposed population would die is 250 to 500 rems, so this is a massive measurement. It is quite likely had the robot been able to penetrate deeper into the inner cavern containing the molten corium, the measurement would have been much greater.
These facts illustrate why it will be almost impossible to “decommission” units 1, 2 and 3 as no human could ever be exposed to such extreme radiation. This fact means that Fukushima Daichi will remain a diabolical blot upon Japan and the world for the rest of time, sitting as it does on active earthquake zones.
What the photos taken by the robot did reveal was that some of the structural supports of Unit 2 have been damaged. It is also true that all four buildings were structurally damaged by the original earthquake some five years ago and by the subsequent hydrogen explosions so, should there be an earthquake greater than seven on the Richter scale, it is very possible that one or more of these structures could collapse, leading to a massive release of radiation as the building fell on the molten core beneath. But units 1, 2 and 3 also contain cooling pools with very radioactive fuel rods — numbering 392 in Unit 1, 615 in Unit 2, and 566 in Unit 3; if an earthquake were to breach a pool, the gamma rays would be so intense that the site would have to be permanently evacuated. The fuel from Unit 4 and its cooling pool has been removed.
But there is more to fear.
The reactor complex was built adjacent to a mountain range and millions of gallons of water emanate from the mountains daily beneath the reactor complex, causing some of the earth below the reactor buildings to partially liquefy. As the water flows beneath the damaged reactors, it immerses the three molten cores and becomes extremely radioactive as it continues its journey into the adjacent Pacific Ocean.
Every day since the accident began, 300 to 400 tons of water has poured into the Pacific where numerous isotopes – including cesium 137, 134, strontium 90, tritium, plutonium, americium and up to 100 more – enter the ocean and bio-concentrate by orders of magnitude at each step of the food chain — algae, crustaceans, little fish, big fish then us.
Fish swim thousands of miles and tuna, salmon and other species found on the American west coast now contain some of these radioactive elements, which are tasteless, odourless and invisible. Entering the human body by ingestion they concentrate in various organs, irradiating adjacent cells for many years. The cancer cycle is initiated by a single mutation in a single regulatory gene in a single cell and the incubation time for cancer is any time from 2 to 90 years. And no cancer defines its origin.
We could be catching radioactive fish in Australia or the fish that are imported could contain radioactive isotopes, but unless they are consistently tested we will never know.
As well as the mountain water reaching the Pacific Ocean, since the accident, TEPCO has daily pumped over 300 tons of sea water into the damaged reactors to keep them cool. It becomes intensely radioactive and is pumped out again and stored in over 1,200 huge storage tanks scattered over the Daichi site. These tanks could not withstand a large earthquake and could rupture releasing their contents into the ocean.
But even if that does not happen, TEPCO is rapidly running out of storage space and is trying to convince the local fishermen that it would be okay to empty the tanks into the sea. The Bremsstrahlung radiation like x-rays given off by these tanks is quite high – measuring 10 milirems – presenting a danger to the workers. There are over 4,000 workers on site each day, many recruited by the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia) and include men who are homeless, drug addicts and those who are mentally unstable.
There’s another problem. Because the molten cores are continuously generating hydrogen, which is explosive, TEPCO has been pumping nitrogen into the reactors to dilute the hydrogen dangers.
As previously explained, these radioactive elements concentrate in the food chain. The Fukushima Prefecture has always been a food bowl for Japan and, although much of the rice, vegetables and fruit now grown here is radioactive, there is a big push to sell this food both in the Japanese market and overseas. Taiwan has banned the sale of Japanese food, but Australia and the U.S. have not.
Prime Minister Abe recently passed a law that any reporter who told the truth about the situation could be gaoled for ten years. In addition, doctors who tell their patients their disease could be radiation related will not be paid, so there is an immense cover-up in Japan as well as the global media.
The Prefectural Oversite Committee for Fukushima Health is only looking at thyroid cancer among the population and by June 2016, 172 people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the accident have developed, or have suspected, thyroid cancer; the normal incidence in this population is 1 to 2 per million.
However, other cancers and leukemia that are caused by radiation are not being routinely documented, nor are congenital malformations, which were, and are, still rife among the exposed Chernobyl population.
Bottom line, these reactors will never be cleaned up nor decommissioned because such a task is not humanly possible. Hence, they will continue to pour water into the Pacific for the rest of time and threaten Japan and the northern hemisphere with massive releases of radiation should there be another large earthquake.
The government-backed Riken research institute is set to launch experiments on converting radioactive substances contained in high-level nuclear waste generated at atomic power stations into precious metals starting fiscal 2018, it has been learned.
The method, which is dubbed “modern alchemy,” is said to be theoretically viable but hasn’t been put into practical use. If realized, the formula is expected to contribute to trimming nuclear waste and even making effective use of it.
The experiment will be part of the Cabinet Office’s program to promote innovative research and development, called “Impulsing Paradigm Change through Disruptive Technologies (ImPACT)” program. In the initial stage of the demonstration experiment, palladium-107, a radioactive material contained in nuclear waste and whose half-life is 6.5 million years, will be turned into nontoxic palladium-106, which is commonly used in dental therapy, jewelry goods and exhaust gas purification catalysts.
Using an accelerator at the Riken Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, the scientists will attempt to convert palladium-107 into palladium-106 by irradiating the former with deuteron beams, in what is called the “nuclear transformation” process. The experiment is set to be the world’s first of its kind on nuclear transformation of palladium, according to Riken officials.
The researchers will compile the outcome of the experiment as early as the fall of 2018 after confirming the ratio of palladium successfully transformed and other results.
As nuclear waste is highly radioactive, the government is currently looking into methods to isolate such waste deep into the ground after sealing it in specially designed containers. If the nuclear transformation process proves viable, it could contribute to reducing nuclear waste and making efficient use of it.
It remains to be seen whether nuclear transformation will prove successful just as in theory and if the process can be turned into practical use at a low cost. In the past, a nuclear transformation experiment was carried out on minor actinides, or “heavy” nuclear waste, at the Joyo experimental fast reactor in Oarai, Ibaraki Prefecture, but the upcoming experiment will be the country’s first using fission products, or “light” nuclear waste.
ImPACT program manager Reiko Fujita said, “We are still at the basic research stage and are far from putting it into practical use. We will, however, move a step forward if we manage to obtain data through our experiment.”
Cleaner Robot Pulled From Fukushima Reactor Due to Immense Radiation
The camera on the bot was compromised by the high levels of radiation.
A remote-controlled cleaning robot sent into a damaged reactor at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant had to be removed Thursday before it completed its work because of camera problems most likely caused by high radiation levels.
It was the first time a robot has entered the chamber inside the Unit 2 reactor since a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami critically damaged the Fukushima Da-ichi nuclear plant.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it was trying to inspect and clean a passage before another robot does a fuller examination to assess damage to the structure and its fuel. The second robot, known as the “scorpion,” will also measure radiation and temperatures.
Thursday’s problem underscores the challenges in decommissioning the wrecked nuclear plant. Inadequate cleaning, high radiation and structural damage could limit subsequent probes, and may require more radiation-resistant cameras and other equipment, TEPCO spokesman Takahiro Kimoto said.
“We will further study (Thursday’s) outcome before deciding on the deployment of the scorpion,” he said.
TEPCO needs to know the melted fuel’s exact location and condition and other structural damage in each of the three wrecked reactors to figure out the best and safest ways to remove the fuel. It is part of the decommissioning work, which is expected to take decades.
During Thursday’s cleaning mission, the robot went only part way into a space under the core that TEPCO wants to inspect closely. It crawled down the passage while peeling debris with a scraper and using water spray to blow some debris away. The dark brown deposits grew thicker and harder to remove as the robot went further.
After about two hours, the two cameras on the robot suddenly developed a lot of noise and their images quickly darkened — a sign of a problem caused by high radiation. Operators of the robot pulled it out of the chamber before completely losing control of it.
The outcome means the second robot will encounter more obstacles and have less time than expected for examination on its mission, currently planned for later this month, though Thursday’s results may cause a delay.
Both of the robots are designed to withstand up to 1,000 Sieverts of radiation. The cleaner’s two-hour endurance roughly matches an estimated radiation of 650 Sieverts per hour based on noise analysis of the images transmitted by the robot-mounted cameras. That’s less than one-tenth of the radiation levels inside a running reactor, but still would kill a person almost instantly.
Kimoto said the noise-based radiation analysis of the Unit 2’s condition showed a spike in radioactivity along a connecting bridge used to slide control rods in and out, a sign of a nearby source of high radioactivity, while levels were much lower in areas underneath the core, the opposite of what would normally be the case. He said the results are puzzling and require further analysis.
TEPCO officials said that despite the dangerously high figures, radiation is not leaking outside of the reactor.
Images recently captured from inside the chamber showed damage and structures coated with molten material, possibly mixed with melted nuclear fuel, and part of a disc platform hanging below the core that had been melted through.
Extremely high radiation breaks down Fukushima clean-up robot at damaged nuclear reactor
A clean-up mission using a remotely operated robot at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has had to be aborted, as officials feared they could completely lose control of the probe affected by unexpectedly high levels of radiation.
The robot equipped with a high-pressure water pump and a camera designed to withstand up to 1,000 Sieverts of cumulative exposure had been pulled off the inactive Reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex earlier this week, The Japan Times reported Friday, citing the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). The device reportedly broke down just two hour into the probe.
The failure led experts to rethink estimated levels of radiation inside the damaged reactor.
While last week TEPCO said it might stand at 530 Sieverts per hour – a dose that can almost instantly kill a human being, following the latest aborted mission a company official has said a reading of up to 600 Sieverts should be “basically correct.”
Even despite the considerable 30-percent margin of error for the revised estimate, the latest probe left no doubt that radiation levels are at record highs within the reactor. Even though it cannot be measured directly with a Geiger counter or dosimeter, the dose is calculated by its effect on the equipment.
Last month, a hole of no less than one square meter in size was discovered beneath the same reactor’s pressure vessel. The apparent opening in the metal grating is believed to have been caused by melted nuclear fuel, TEPCO then said.
The recent mission has demonstrated that the melted fuel is close to the studied area.
While extreme radiation levels have been registered within the reactor, officials insist that no leaks or increases outside have been detected.
The failure might force Japan to rethink the robot-based strategy it has adopted for locating melted fuel at Fukushima, according to The Japan Times.
The robot affected by radiation was supposed to wash off thick layers of dirt and other wreckage, clearing ways for another remotely controlled probe to enter the area, tasked with carrying out a more proper investigation to assess the state of the damaged nuclear reactor. Previously, even specially-made robots designed to probe the underwater depths beneath the power plant have crumbled and shut down affected by the radioactive substance inside the reactor.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered a blackout and subsequent failure of its cooling systems in March 2011, when it was hit by an earthquake and tsunami. Three of the plant’s six reactors were hit by meltdowns, making the Fukushima nuclear disaster the worst since the Chernobyl catastrophe in Ukraine in 1986. TEPCO is so far in the early stages of assessing the damage, with the decommissioning of the nuclear facility expected to take decades.
The explosion that ripped through an EDF plant at Flamanville last week, injuring five workers, was in a “non-nuclear area”. Thank goodness for that. But the damage it has inflicted on the reputation of France’s nuclear industry is radioactive enough and it could not have come at a more sensitive time. Across the Channel, an army of engineers is starting work on EDF’s new £18 billion nuclear station at Hinkley Point.
Questions persist over the enormous cost of the Hinkley scheme. EDF, the world’s biggest nuclear generator, has brushed aside criticism of the cost and subsidies lavished on the project by pointing to its engineering prowess and record of building and operating nuclear plants. That reputation appears to be unravelling amid a catalogue of problems…….
Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear. Almost 6 years after a massive meltdown – radiation levels at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan are as dangerously high as ever. So is nuclear power ever worth the risk?
….A number of commentators, Arnie Gundersen at Fairwinds, Kendra Ulrich at Greenpeace International, Nancy Foust at Simply Info, have pointed out that the levels of radioactivity that are being talked about by Tokyo Electric (TEPCO), 53,000 rem per hour levels that were documented just a week ago have probably been there this whole time since March 2011 since the meltdown happened because what they are doing is they are getting closer where the melted core is at, they still don’t know where they ‘re at but what they are doing they are getting closer to that dangerous place and so sure enough it stands to reason that they would find these levels….
A flaw in Russia’s flagship nuclear reactor line, which was originally hushed up by officials, could affect three plants Russian state corporation Rosatom is building at home and in Europe
A generator much like the one that burned out tat the AES-2006 at the Novovoronzezh plant. (Photo: power-m.ru)
A flaw in Russia’s flagship nuclear reactor line, which was originally hushed up by officials, could affect three plants Russian state corporation Rosatom is building at home and in Europe.
The flaw originally caused a short circuit in a generator at the AES-2006 reactor at the Novovoronezh plant, which took the reactor off the grid for two and a half months while the plant worked to repair it.
Rosenergoatom, Russia’s nuclear utility, originally kept the flaw under wraps until anonymous sources fed dire reports to a local newspaper, prompting the utility to go public on its website with the cause of the malfunction.
Even that cover up involved a cover up: The short circuit scrammed the reactor on November 10, but Rosenergoatom didn’t come clean about it until November 16.
The utility later backdated that report to make it look like it was published on the day of the incident apparently to stem media speculation that a serious accident had taken place.
A view of the Novovoronezh reactor AES=2006 reactor’s machine hall. (Credit: novnpp.rosenergoatom.ru)
The muddy shell game of hushing the defect then obfuscating when the problem was identified makes one thing clear: The reactor is a key offering on Russia’s markets abroad and a valuable foreign policy tool to boot.
The AES-2006 reactor, also known as the VVER-1200, is under construction at the Belarus Nuclear Power Plant and the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant II. Further afield, Finland is building one. Turkey has ordered four and Bangladesh and Hungary are in line to build two each.
The problem at the AES-2006 at Novovoronezh turned out to be a defect in the so-called stator winding mechanism, which plays a role in cooling the reactor. Initially presented by a Rosenergoatom spokesman as a relatively minor fix, it was serious enough for technicians to altogether replace the part in the plant’s second AES-2006 reactor.
The company that makes the generator, St. Petersburg’s Power Machines, said it had done the repairs at the Novovoronezh AES-2006 reactors, and further added it would undertake “modernization” of the same generator line installed in the AES-2006 reactors at the Belarus Nuclear Power Plant, as well as at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Station II.
The rush to get the AES-2006 out the door – and gag any screw-ups along the way – was predictable. With fluctuating oil and gas prices, nuclear energy, specifically the new reactor, is another foothold for Moscow in the European energy market.
Lateral moves between president Vladimir Putin’s administration and Rosatom brass make clear the role nuclear energy plays in state policy.
In October, Sergei Kiriyenko moved from Rosatom to the become deputy head of Putin’s administration. He was replaced by Aleskei Likhachev, an economics minster. Likhachev has since made it his business to promote the AES -2006 reactor.
Earlier this month, Putin himself went to Hungary to push Rosatom’s controversial deal to build two AES-2006 reactors at the country’s €12 billion PAKS II Nuclear Power Plant. The European Union, thanks to lobbying by France and the United Kingdom, seems ready to green light the reactor construction, nudging the door to Europe’s nuclear market open for Rosatom.
Russia has a habit of conducting foreign policy by choking, then reviving, natural gas supplies to the EU. Disputes between Russia and Ukraine, which remain bitter, led to cuts in Europe’s gas supply from Russia in 2006 and 2009. This drove Europe to diversify just whom it was depending on for its winter heat.
But locking into Russia’s start-to-finish nuclear deals, beginning with Finland and with Hungary, is a big step back toward dependence on Moscow.
To build its two AES-2006s Hungary would take a loan from Russia to finance 80 percent of the project and putting it in hock to Moscow for decades. Rosatom would also effectively operate the plant for 50 years, supplying it with all of its fuel and much of its technical know-how.
Such dependence has had scary side effects when a country finds itself on Moscow’s bad side.
In 2014, at the height of EU-Russia tensions over Moscow’s annexation of Crimea, Kremlin officials threatened to cut nuclear fuel supplies to Ukraine’s Soviet built reactors, raising the specter of Moscow forcing a calamitous nuclear accident.
Kiriyenko eventually walked that back, but the lurid message in Moscow’s head-fake at a second Chernobyl was clear: Russian-built reactors are a useful form of post-Cold War nuclear blackmail.
It is, of course, unlikely that the Kremlin wants a meltdown so close to its own borders. It’s dealt with such hassles before.
But the EU might want to think about how much it wants to depend on Moscow to keep it safe. The AES-2006 has only been in commercial operation for a year and the generator short circuit might be only the first of its problems.
If the EU finds itself in another tense argument with Moscow over Crimea – or anything else – it could find the AES-2006 repair hotline temporarily disconnected.
Taipei, Feb. 13 (CNA) Nuclear-free advocates around Taiwan have organized three parades through the online “Nuclear Go Zero” action platform, in a national protest action set for March 11 in Taipei, Kaohsiung and Taitung simultaneously.
The parades will take place on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei, the Labor Park in Kaohsiung, and the Tiehua Pedestrian Zone in Taitung, with the theme of “Zero Nuclear, Low Carbon, Sustainable Energy,” the organizers said Monday.
The government will be urged to accelerate efforts to realize its campaign promise to replace existing energy sources with green ones, to decommission three operating nuclear power plants as scheduled, and to find the best solution for the disposal of nuclear waste, the organizers said.
This year, they will also demand that the government resolve problems relating to carbon emissions and air pollution. “The government should accelerate its steps, and come up with concrete plans and schedules for the implementation of its nuclear-free policy,” the organizers said.
Transforming Taiwan into a nuclear-free country was one of the major political platforms presented by Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in her race for the presidency in 2016.
Tsai won the presidential election on Jan. 16 last year, the same day that her party, the DPP, defeated the then-ruling Kuomintang in the legislative elections, giving it a legislative majority.
As soon as it was inaugurated, the Tsai administration announced that it will make the country nuclear-free by 2025.
The “Nuclear Go Zero Action” action platform was established by more than 100 civil anti-nuclear groups around Taiwan in 2013, after some 220,000 people took to the streets on March 9 that year to take part in protest marches in northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan, demanding that the fourth nuclear power plant project should be scrapped.
In April 2014, then-Premier Jiang Yi-hua (江宜樺) announced that the nearly completed power plant, located in New Taipei, was to be mothballed. The plant entered mothball status in July of the following year.
Sometime today, Japan’s Toshiba, owner of Pennsylvania-based nuclear power icon Westinghouse Electric, will reveal an impairment charge to Westinghouse, Kallanish Energy learns.
More than a month ago, Toshiba told shareholders to expect a multi-billion-dollar writedown charged to Westinghouse – expected to be roughly $6 billion – due to the nuclear company’s purchase of Chicago Bridge & Iron’s (CB&I’s) Stone & Webster nuclear construction company two years ago.
Last month, Toshiba CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa told reporters Toshiba is likely to exit the nuclear construction business outside of Japan, which would make Westinghouse a technology designer and service provider – not a nuclear plant builder.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s head of nuclear research, Chris Gadomski, said he thinks the company might be better off with a narrowed business philosophy, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper reported.
“There’s a big difference between building equipment for nuclear power plants and managing the process,” Gadomski said. “If Westinghouse says, ‘Hey, we’re just going to build components’ — that’s fine. Actually, that simplifies the process completely.”
But the uncertainty over the company’s future is rattling markets and customers. On a recent visit to South Carolina, where Westinghouse is building two AP1000 nuclear reactors for the utility South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. — multi-billion-dollar projects — Gadomski said the anxiety was palpable.
“They were kind of really scared and concerned what the implications of this whole unraveling is going to be,” he said.
The South Carolina project and a similar project in Georgia are currently under construction.
Westinghouse employees are similarly uncertain of what awaits them. The company employs 12,000 worldwide.
More than 70 years after the detonation of the first atomic bomb, residents of Southern New Mexico who were unwittingly exposed to the fallout, as well as their descendants and advocates, have released a new report that details the decades of illnesses and deaths they believe were caused by the Trinity Site test, and other detrimental effects to their communities.
The health impact assessment, titled “Unwilling, Unknowing and Uncompensated,” focuses on four main ways that families have been affected by the Manhattan Project blast in 1945: generations of illnesses and deaths, lack of access to health care, economic struggles and fears of severe health problems for future generations.
The document was commissioned by the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium, an organization that for years has been advocating for these residents. It was paid for with a $35,000 grant from the Santa Fe Community Foundation, with help from the Kellogg Foundation. The overriding purpose of the assessment, said consortium co-founder Tina Cordova, is to present a case for why the downwinders should be included in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a law that provides benefits to many people exposed to nuclear fallout during bomb testing but excludes those living near Trinity.
The downwinders report examines the results of 800 health surveys conducted in Otero, Socorro, Lincoln and Sierra counties, and the comments of people who participated in several community forums. It offers personal accounts of their experiences.
One 16-year-old girl quoted in the report said she is afraid to have children in the future because she fears passing on radiation-mutated genes, leading to more sickness and death. The girl’s mother said her daughter had been robbed of her childhood because she is terrified of not if but when “she or her other family members will develop cancer.”
Emphasizing the personal experiences of the Tularosa Basin residents “creates a significantly different story than the historical narrative of a deserted and uninhabited region surrounding the bombsite,” the report says.
One man who grew up in Tularosa spoke of the many illnesses that his family members suffered: breast cancer, gout, blood disorders, prostate cancer, thyroid disease, throat cancer, stomach problems and kidney disease. The man said he has three siblings living on one kidney each.
The report includes information from a 10-year study of historical records by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which calls for further investigation of health and environmental issues in the areas surrounding Trinity Site, as well as areas near Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was built.
The CDC says residents were never warned before or after the Trinity blast and never advised to avoid ingesting radiation-contaminated water and food, or to avoid exposure to the fallout.
The downwinders health assessment, largely written by Myrriah Gómez of Pojoaque, an assistant professor in The University of New Mexico’s Honors College, will be rolled out in public gatherings in Tularosa and Socorro this weekend and in Albuquerque on Wednesday.
The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, passed by Congress in 1990, provides up to $150,000 in payouts and other health benefits to military personnel and scientists present at the Trinity test in July 1945, as well as those living downwind from the 1950s nuclear tests in Nevada and the Pacific islands. The measure also allows payouts to surviving loved ones of those who have died from illnesses related to the blasts.
But the law doesn’t provide compensation for the people who were living on Southern New Mexico ranches, in villages and in the Mescalero Apache community not far from Trinity Site — some within 15 miles of the detonation — and it doesn’t include their descendants.
New Mexico’s Democratic U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich recently introduced legislation that would include the Trinity downwinders in the law.
Similar measures have been offered up over the past few years by New Mexico’s congressional delegates and other lawmakers, but they have all gone nowhere. There has never been a hearing on any of the proposals.
Cordova said the new report shows that federal compensation would improve the health of Southern New Mexico residents, many who travel long distances for medical care. It is demeaning and tragic, she said, for families to have to hold bake sales to buy painkillers for their sick and dying parents, spouses and children.
The U.S. also owes an apology to the downwinders for what some consider a surprise nuclear attack on their neighborhoods, Cordova said.
“After the Trinity bomb detonated,” the report says of one family, “their chickens died. The family dog died. The … mother hung bed sheets on the windows and wet them to keep the dust out of the house.”
Descendants of people living downwind and downstream of the Trinity blast can trace the health problems of later generations back to the cultural practices and agrarian lifestyle of the 1940s, the report says. As farmers, ranchers, fishermen and hunters, the downwinders relied on the environment for their survival.
One woman spoke at a community forum about how, as a child, she and her siblings “drank the milk from the cows and skimmed the fat (cream) off the milk,” the report says. “They played in the acequias (ditches). They butchered cows and hunted deer.
“Now,” the woman said, “families who engaged in those practices and were contaminated by radiation are ‘wiped out.’
Uranium market conditions in 2016 were the toughest that Cameco Corp. CEO Tim Gitzel has seen in his 30 years in the business, but he says he remains cautiously optimistic about the long-term picture.
“We’ve been saying for some time that uranium prices are neither rational nor sustainable,” Gitzel told investors during a conference call Friday to discuss its dismal 2016 earnings. “Current prices are failing to incent the investment decisions required to ensure reliable supply is available to meet growing demand out into the future.”
Cameco reported a fourth-quarter net loss attributable to shareholders of $144 million, or 36 cents per share, which was more than 10 times larger than the loss of $10 million, or three cents per share, reported in the year-earlier period. The fourth quarter of 2016 included an impairment charge of $238 million. The company booked a $210 million impairment charge in the 2015 quarter.
Revenues fell nine per cent to $887 million during the quarter. The company’s full-year loss was $62 million.
Still, Cameco said it is encouraged by Kazakhstan’s announcement that it will cut 2017 production by 10 per cent, bolstering optimism about long-term fundamentals of uranium. Spot prices have increased by 40 per cent and term prices are up about eight per cent since a low in December.
“But let me be clear, our optimism is best described as cautious optimism — we are far from a true incentive price for sustainable production” and further cuts might be needed, unless term contracts return in meaningful quantities, Gitzel said.
“Optimistic because it appears that the pain of low uranium prices is driving meaningful supply discipline and this discipline is provoking a strengthening uranium price. Cautious because market challenges continue, challenges that might frustrate recent increases in the uranium price.”
The entire nuclear industry is still feeling the aftershock of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, with prices in the doldrums and customers re-evaluating contracts as they eye prices much lower than those in deals previously struck with Cameco.
Cameco said earlier this month it has rejected Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s attempt to cancel its contract — a move that would mean $1.3 billion in lost revenue — as the Saskatoon-based uranium giant works to protect deals signed with customers before the market tanked. Cameco said it is pursuing legal action.
This is the second article on Nara Visa residents’ concerns over a nuclear waste research project taking place in their backyards. The first article can be found here.
Strong public opposition to Atlanta based ENERCON and DOSECC Exploration Services’ efforts to drill a three mile deep borehole in Nara Visa to research nuclear waste storage continues, as the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority (“CRMWA”) has expressed strong concerns. In a letter obtained by the New Mexico Politico, dated February 10, 2017, the CRMWA addressed Quay County Commissioners, stating in part:
The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority supplies over ½ million people with water that comes from the Canadian River. Needless to say, we are VERY concerned about the prospect of high level nuclear waste being disposed of in our water shed…. [a]lso, the Canadian River is a tributary to the Arkansas River, then the Mississippi, and finally the Gulf of Mexico. The magnitude of this issue is obvious.
Not only is our water shed and the Canadian River a concern for us, but the Ogallala Aquifer is as well. It is the dominate aquifer in this area. The wrong combination of events could conceivably contaminate it also.
DOE, by its own admission, has billions of dollars of infrastructure maintenance backlogs because of the lack of planning and funding for life cycle costs. Many government agencies, such as the DOE, are not adequately funded. This means corners must and will be cut and with a project like this, a cut corner could be catastrophic for a long, long, time.
The CRMWA closed their letter by giving their recommendation to Commission:
We believe this project should go back to Yucca Mountain where the science has been completed and is on government owned and controlled land. In closing, the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority strongly opposes this project and would be happy to supply a more in depth response on this issue if needed.”
Quay County residents are also disputing the over-all economic and educational benefits touted by Peter Mast, President of Enercon Federal Services. According to the recorded minutes of an October 2016 Quay County Commission meeting, Mast anticipated “the project to require 20 employees off and on with the possibility of 6-12 permanent positions.” ENERCON representatives have also mentioned the overall benefits of bringing a 40 million dollar contract to the area.
During last week’s Nara Visa informational meeting hosted by ENERCON, Quay county resident Bart Wyatt voiced his skepticism, stating in a letter handed out to attendees:
“Virtually no materials or equipment is going to come from Quay County so no tax revenue from sales. Income tax from any jobs will go to the state, not county. Gross receipts taxes, after giving the state their cut, would give the county a tax income of $100,000 per year over 5 years. Worth a nuclear dump?”
Regarding Mast’s jobs claims, Wyatt offered the following observation:
“These contractors have all the management position filled by out of state professionals taking their wealth with them when they go.”
After reviewing Wyatt’s claims, I reviewed ENERCON’s website regarding its construction of nuclear site characterization and the work appears to be highly specialized, meaning local job creation is unlikely.
Ranch owner Patty Hughs also offered a major concern shared by the agricultural community:
“How is trading Quay county’s base economy of farming, ranching, and real estate for a polluting economy going to benefit this community long term?”
Patty Hughs’ concerns are worth noting when looking at agriculture statistics from the USDA and New Mexico Department of Agriculture. In 2012, the market value of agricultural products sold out of Quay County topped $36,700,000.
In 2015, the total value of cattle in the county was estimated at $56,615,000.
The total value of farms, land, buildings, and overall agricultural land use was a staggering $508,402,000.
To be sure, many legitimate questions arise on what would happen to farm and ranch land values, and to the agricultural community’s ability to protect their way of lives if nuclear waste storage becomes a reality.
Would banks change lending practices to farmers and ranchers because of the attendant risks of nuclear waste storage? Would real estate values be decimated? Would insurance companies even cover agricultural operations where radiation exposure would render the land unusable for a thousand years?
In the short term, its conceivable that restaurants and other local businesses could see a small bump in revenue from out-of-state drillers. But long term? They may stand to lose the base economy that has kept their doors open for years.
One thing is for certain, an all important meeting for residents will take place with the Quay County Commission in Tucumcari February 13th, 2017 at 9 a.m. to potentially decide the fate of ENERCON’s drilling operation. The majority of residents that have spoken with the New Mexico Politico are hoping and praying the Commission will rescind Resolution No. 27.
The New Mexico Politico will report on the Commission’s decision tomorrow.
Disclosure: My wife is related to the owners and operators of the Hat T Ranch in Nara Visa. The white church image used in the story is courtesy of Connie Payne.
NEW DELHI: Downplaying Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ‘s adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz’s comments where he held India responsible for the ‘nuclearisation’ of the Indian Ocean, Defence experts have opined that Islamabad is perturbed because New Delhi is getting equipped.
Asserting that Pakistan had no issue with ‘nuclearisation’ until India was not active, Defence expert P.K Sehgal said, “Pakistan never got intimidated when China got equipped but now they are raising this issue because India also possesses nuclear power. And we will increase in our nuclear power.”
Treading the same path, another defence expert Qamar Agha said that India has always been committed in maintaining tranquility in the Indian Ocean and that Aziz’s comments were unwarranted. “Pakistan and China are responsible for ‘nuclearisation’ in Indian ocean. They are increasing their presence there.
Whatever India is doing in this regard is for defence. We got nuclear weapons because China and Pakistan were developing in the same path. Indian Ocean is India’s part and India maintains peace and decorum in its boundaries and is still doing it. Sartaz Aziz’s comments are totally wrong,” said Agha.
Pakistan would go all out to contain grave threats to peace and security in the Indian Ocean primarily due to nuclearisation started by India, said Aziz, while speaking at the International Maritime Conference in Karachi.
Aziz asserted that ‘nuclearisation’ of the Indian Ocean had adversely affected the stability in the region and that the threats were likely to intensify in future.
13 February 2017, 00:03 GMT 13 Updated February 2017, 00:40 GMT
If you want to understand why Toshiba Corp. is about to report a multi-billion dollar write-down on its nuclear reactor business, the story begins and ends with a one-time pipe manufacturer with roots in the swamp country of Louisiana.
The Shaw Group Inc., based in Baton Rouge, looms large in the complex tale of blown deadlines and budgets at four nuclear reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina overseen by Westinghouse Electric Co., a Toshiba subsidiary.
On Tuesday, Toshiba is expected to announce a massive write-down, perhaps as big as $6.1 billion, to cover cost overruns at Westinghouse, which now owns most of Shaw’s assets. The loss may actually eclipse the $5.4 billion that Toshiba paid for Westinghouse in 2006 and has forced the Japanese industrial conglomerate to put up for sale a significant stake in its prized flash-memory business. Toshiba had to sell off other assets last year following a 2015 accounting scandal.
Toshiba made a big bet on a nuclear renaissance that never materialized, in part because it couldn’t build reactors within the timelines and budgets it had promised. The company had anticipated that Westinghouse’s next-generation AP1000 modular reactor design would be easier and faster to execute — just the opposite of what happened. Now the Japanese company may exit the nuclear reactor construction business altogether and focus exclusively on design and maintenance.
“There’s billions and billions of dollars at stake here,” says Gregory Jaczko, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). “This could take down Toshiba and it certainly means the end of new nuclear construction in the U.S.”
Toshiba confirmed it will unveil a “huge loss” on Tuesday; a spokeswoman declined further comment. In January, Satoshi Tsunakawa, Toshiba’s president, said the company may sell shareholdings, real estate or other assets if needed to strengthen its balance sheet. “We will keep considering all options as needed and promptly, and take all necessary steps,” he said at a briefing in Tokyo.
New Start
When Toshiba bought Westinghouse a decade ago, the U.S. Congress had just started dangling loan guarantees and other incentives aimed at restarting a dormant nuclear industry. In 2008, Westinghouse signed deals to build four new reactors for utilities Southern Co. and Scana Corp., the first U.S. nuclear plants since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island to be approved for construction by regulators.
In a 2015 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Southern Chief Executive Officer Thomas Fanning said his utility’s two reactor projects at Plant Vogtle in Georgia were “going to be one of the most successful mega-projects in modern American industrial history.”
To build that mega-project, Westinghouse turned to Shaw, a newcomer to nuclear work. Shaw was founded in 1987 by James Bernhard Jr., who distinguished himself through his deal-making acumen. He got his start paying $50,000 for the assets of a bankrupt pipe fabricator, and grew via one acquisition after another. In 2000, Bernhard swooped in at a bankruptcy auction and, during an 18-hour bidding war, bought Stone & Webster Inc., a once-venerable engineering firm that had already agreed to a deal with a much bigger rival.
Stone & Webster had built the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s campus and many of the country’s nuclear plants from the 1950s to the 1970s, but it was a shell of its old self when Bernhard bought it. Still, the name gave Shaw new credibility in the nuclear field, which it capitalized on to win all of Westinghouse’s contracts. “They weren’t necessarily qualified, but they had the heart and the go-get-them to take it on,’’ says Jeffrey Keller, a retired construction project controller who worked for Shaw at its nuclear sites.
Bernhard declined to comment for this story.
Building nuclear reactors is a tall order, given the regulatory complexity and consortium of contractors required to get the job done. And in fairness to Westinghouse and Shaw, plenty of other companies have missed deadlines. “Nuclear construction on-time and on-budget? It’s essentially never happened,’’ said Andrew J. Wittmann, an analyst who covers the industry for Robert W. Baird & Co.
Modular Design
It’s easy to see why Shaw wanted Toshiba’s business, but harder to understand why Toshiba chose Shaw. More established contractors simply may not have wanted the work, but Bernhard also used his deal-making skills to sweeten the agreement by taking on a chunk of Toshiba’s debts temporarily. “If you want to have a business, you have to get plants up and running, so they went forward even if it wasn’t a perfect match– that was the calculation for Toshiba,” says David Silver, an analyst at Morningstar in Chicago.
Westinghouse executives hoped its AP1000 reactors’ main components, or modules, could be built efficiently at specialized work yards, then shipped to a plant site and snapped together like enormous steel-and-concrete Legos.
On top of that, the U.S. government in 2005 gave nuclear developers a package of tax credits, cost-overrun backstops, and federal loan guarantees. In the next few years, U.S. utilities filed dozens of applications to build new reactors.
After Westinghouse hired Shaw to handle construction in 2008, it wasn’t long before the company’s work came under scrutiny. By early 2012, NRC inspectors found steel in the foundation of one reactor had been installed improperly. A 300-ton reactor vessel nearly fell off a rail car. The wrong welds were used on nuclear modules and had to be redone. Shaw “clearly lacked experience in the nuclear power industry and was not prepared for the rigor and attention to detail required,’’ Bill Jacobs, who had been selected as the state’s monitor for the project, told the Georgia Public Service Commission in late 2012.
The troubles were only starting. At Southern’s two new reactors in Georgia — a massive construction site on the edge of the Savannah River– thousands of workers have logged more than 25 million man-hours, yet the project is years behind schedule.
0riginally planned to open in 2016 and 2017, they’re now slated for 2019 and 2020–and that may be a stretch. To hit the new targets, Westinghouse would have to accelerate the pace of work to “over three times the amount that has ever been achieved to date,” Jacobs, the state’s project monitor, told the utility commission last year.
In November, Westinghouse said 33.4 percent of the construction was complete, but a utility supervisor with Southern who asked not to be identified said he’s skeptical. The hardest part of the project – the reactor’s center – has just started, he said.
Shaw Acquisition
Just as problems began to surface, in July 2012 Shaw agreed to sell itself for $3.3 billion to Chicago Bridge & Iron Co., a much larger engineering firm that wanted in on the envisioned nuclear renaissance. But three years later, with little progress to show for itself, CB&I decided to cut its losses. It sold the bulk of Shaw’s assets to Toshiba for $229 million, accepting the significantly lowered price in exchange for shedding liabilities related to the projects.
But in April 2016, four months after the deal closed, Toshiba concluded it had miscalculated and accused CB&I of inflating Shaw’s assets by $2.2 billion, and asked to renegotiate. CB&I balked and sued Toshiba for breach of contract last July. A preliminary decision in December ruled in favor of Toshiba’s request to renegotiate. CB&I has appealed that ruling. “We remain confident this issue will come to a resolution favorable to CB&I,” said Gentry Brann, a spokeswoman for the company. CB&I has argued that at least some of the reactor problems have been because of Westinghouse and its AP1000 designs.
Westinghouse has turned to another construction contractor, Fluor Corp., to help get its projects back on track, but it’s too early to say how much progress they’re making. Meanwhile, the NRC continues to press Westinghouse about problems with its AP1000 design after a neutron shield block, which contains radiation, failed during testing. Regulators will hold a hearing this week at which Westinghouse is expected to explain its work on the issue; Toshiba meanwhile declined to comment.
Those troubled projects in the American South are now threatening the Japanese icon’s foundations. The value of Toshiba shares has been cut in half over the last six weeks, wiping out more than $7 billion in market value.
And what of the U.S. nuclear renaissance? Westinghouse’s projects for Southern in Georgia and Scana in South Carolina had once been viewed as part of a rebirth of the U.S. atomic power industry. However, stumbles with those projects, the nuclear disaster in Fukushima and a flood of cheap natural gas that lowered U.S. power prices made new reactors increasingly expensive and risky. Of the 30-odd applications for new reactors that started in the mid-2000s, only the four Westinghouse units have gone forward.
One figure who seems to have come out of the Westinghouse mess pretty much unscathed is Shaw founder Bernhard. He completed the sale of his firm to CB&I in 2013, pulling in $3.3 billion for himself and other shareholders. Bernhard, whose stake was worth about $50 million at the time of the sale, now runs a private equity firm in Baton Rouge.
“They got out whole and then some,” said Silver, the analyst with Morningstar. “It was a good deal for them but only because they were able to unload the hot potato.”
“It is difficult to see how any safety case presented from now on that relies in any way upon the UKVPF, whether on the roads, the railways or in the nuclear industry, such as the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, could stand up to test in court. More modern and accurate methods exist, but the regulators are not using them.”
Published 13 February 2017
New research has shown that the benchmark used by the U.K. Office for Nuclear Regulation for judging how much should be spent on nuclear safety has no basis in evidence and places insufficient value on human life. The review suggests it may need to be ten times higher — between £16 million and £22 million per life saved.
New research has shown that the benchmark used by the U.K. Office for Nuclear Regulation for judging how much should be spent on nuclear safety has no basis in evidence and places insufficient value on human life. The review suggests it may need to be ten times higher — between £16 million and £22 million per life saved.
The research review led by Professor Philip Thomas from the University of Bristol and Dr. Ian Waddington and published in the journal Nuclear Future, examined the evidence for the “value of a prevented fatality” (VPF) currently used as a safety guideline by the Office of Nuclear Regulation, the Health and Safety Executive and numerous government departments.
Bristol U says that the VPF figure of £1.83 million (published in July 2016) emerged from a 20-year-old small-scale opinion survey of 167 people and its interpretation method has recently been shown to be too flawed to be credible.
The VPF study team came up with the current U.K. figure after setting aside the results of their first opinion survey, but a recent re-analysis has shown that the discarded valuations were actually entirely rational and understandable and the VPF study team rejected the wrong survey. An up-to-date interpretation of the first opinion survey would suggest that the VPF should be set about ten times higher than at present, at between £16 million and £22 million per life saved.
The Judgement- or J-value, a new method pioneered by Professor Thomas that assesses how much should be spent to protect human life and the environment that has recently been validated against pan-national data, would value life about four times higher, closer to the value used by the US Department of Transportation ($9.1 million in 2012).
Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management in the Department of Civil Engineering, said: “The Office of Nuclear Regulation and other national bodies clearly have a problem with how they should assess the right level of expenditure to protect people from nuclear and other accidents.
“It is difficult to see how any safety case presented from now on that relies in any way upon the UKVPF, whether on the roads, the railways or in the nuclear industry, such as the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, could stand up to test in court. More modern and accurate methods exist, but the regulators are not using them.”
Bristol U notes that in the past, the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) asked some members of the VPF team to investigate how much people wanted to spend to counter railway accidents with multiple fatalities. The team reported their opinion surveys as showing no appetite for extra expenditure to guard against rail accidents causing many deaths. However, the methods used by the RSSB study team were recently proved to be systematically biased against anyone wanting more to be spent against deaths in large accidents, and so they should not have been used. Consequently RSSB’s recommendation to cut expenditure against big rail accidents by 66 per cent has not been justified.
— Read more in Philip Thomas and Ian Waddington, “What is the value of life? A review of the value of a prevented fatality used by regulators and others in the U.K.,” Nuclear Future (forthcoming)
A generator much like the one that burned out tat the AES-2006 at the Novovoronzezh plant. (Photo: power-m.ru) 
A view of the Novovoronezh reactor AES=2006 reactor’s machine hall. (Credit: novnpp.rosenergoatom.ru) 
