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World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is already billions of dollars over budget and decades behind schedule. Not even its leaders can say how much more money and time it will take to complete

Scientific American  Charles Seife on June 15, 2023

“……………………………….. ITER is on the verge of a record-setting disaster as accumulated schedule slips and budget overruns threaten to make it the most delayed—and most cost-inflated—science project in history.

………………. Since the 1950s fusion machines have grown bigger and more powerful, but none has ever gotten anywhere near what would be needed to put this panacea energy source on the electric grid. ITER is the biggest, most powerful fusion device ever devised, and its designers have intended it to be the machine that will finally show that fusion power plants can really be built.

The ITER project formally began in 2006, when its international partners agreed to fund an estimated €5 billion (then $6.3 billion), 10-year plan that would have seen ITER come online in 2016. The most recent official cost estimate stands at more than €20 billion ($22 billion), with ITER nominally turning on scarcely two years from now.

Documents recently obtained via a lawsuit, however, imply that these figures are woefully outdated: ITER is not just facing several years’ worth of additional delays but also a growing internal recognition that the project’s remaining technical challenges are poised to send budgets spiraling even further out of control and successful operation ever further into the future.

The documents, drafted a year ago for a private meeting of the ITER Council, ITER’s governing body, show that at the time, the project was bracing for a three-year delay—a doubling of internal estimates prepared just six months earlier. And in the year since those documents were written, the already grim news out of ITER has unfortunately only gotten worse.

Yet no one within the ITER Organization has been able to provide estimates of the additional delays, much less the extra expenses expected to result from them. Nor has anyone at the U.S. Department of Energy, which is in charge of the nation’s contributions to ITER, been able to do so. When contacted for this story, DOE officials did not respond to any questions by the time of publication.

The problems leading to these latest projected delays were several years in the making. The ITER Organization was extremely slow to let on that anything was wrong, however. As late as early July 2022, ITER’s website announced that the machine was expected to turn on as scheduled in December 2025. Afterward that date bore an asterisk clarifying that it would be revised. Now the date has disappeared from the website altogether.

ITER leaders seldom let slip that anything was awry either…………………………………………………………….

In response to this stonewalling, earlier this year I initiated a lawsuit under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act seeking to reveal the extent of ITER’s expected schedule and cost troubles. So far, the lawsuit has been partially successful. It has extracted partially redacted documents revealing that in November 2021 ITER’s internal estimates showed the project already facing about 17 months of delays. By the time of the June 2022 ITER Council meeting, the number had doubled to roughly 35 months of delays—enough to easily add billions of dollars to ITER’s already bloated budget. But this timeline didn’t reflect other events bound to introduce even more delays……………………………………………….

With each passing decade, this record-breaking monument to big international science looks less and less like a cathedral—and more like a mausoleum.  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-fusion-project-is-in-big-trouble-new-documents-reveal/

July 4, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, technology | Leave a comment

Fukushima, the Hidden Side of the Story

BY KARL GROSSMAN

“The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story,” is a just-released film documentary, a powerful, moving, information-full film that is superbly made. Directed and edited by Philippe Carillo, it is among the strongest ever made on the deadly dangers of nuclear technology.

It begins with the words in 1961 of U.S. President John F. Kennedy: “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by an accident, or miscalculation or by madness.”

It then goes to the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plants in Japan after they were struck by a tsunami. Their back-up diesel generators were kicked in but “did not run for long,” notes the documentary. That led to three of the six plants exploding—and there’s video of this—“releasing an unpreceded amount of nuclear radiation into the air.”


“Fukushima is the world’s largest ever industrial catastrophe,” says Professor John Keane of the University of Sydney in Australia. He says there was no emergency plan and, as to the owner of Fukushima, Tokyo Electric Power Company, with the accident its CEO “for five nights and days…locked himself inside his office.”

Meanwhile, from TEPCO, there was “only good news” with two Japanese government agencies also “involved in the cover-up”—the Nuclear Industry Safety Agency and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

“Japanese media was ordered to censor information. The Japanese government failed to protect its people,” the documentary relates.

Yumi Kikuchi of Fukushima, since a leader of the Fukushima Kids Project, recalls: “On TV, they said that ‘it’s under control’ and they kept saying that for two months. The nuclear power plant had already melted and even exploded but they never admitted the meltdown until May. So, people in Fukushima during that time were severely exposed to radiation.”

Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and now a principal of Fairewinds Energy Education in Burlington, Vermont, speaks of being told by Naoto Kan, the prime minister of Japan at the time of the accident, that “our existence as a sovereign nation was at stake because of the disaster at Fukushima Daichi.”

Kan then appears in documentary and speaks of “manmade” links to the disaster.

The documentary tells how Kan, following the accident, became “an advocate against nuclear power….ordered all nuclear power plants in Japan to shut down for safety” and for the nation “to move into renewable energy.”

But, subsequently, “a nuclear advocate,” Shinzo Abe, became Japan’s prime minister.

Yoichi Shimatsu, a former Japan Times journalist, appears in the film and speaks of “the cruelty, the cynicism of this government.” He speaks of how in the accident’s aftermath, “nearly every member of Parliament and leaders of the major political parties” along with corporate executives, “moved their relatives out of Japan”

He says “Shanghai is the largest Japanese community outside Japan now…while these same people” had been “telling the people of Fukushima go home, 10 kilometers from Fukushima, go home it’s safe, while their families are overseas in Los Angeles, in Paris, in London and in Shanghai.”

“If it’s safe, why they left?” asks Kikuchi. “They tell us it’s safe to live in Fukushima, and to eat Fukushima food to support Fukushima people. There’s a campaign by Japanese government…and people believe it.”

Gundersen says: “At Fukushima Daichi, the world is already seeing deaths from cancer related to the disaster…There’ll be many more over time.” He adds that there’s been a “huge increase in thyroid cancer in the surrounding population.”

“Unfortunately,” he goes on, “the Japanese government is not telling us al the evidence. There’s a lot of pressure on the scientists and the medical community to distort the evidence so there’s no blowback against nuclear power.”

There is a section in the documentary on the impacts of radioactivity which includes Dr. Helen Caldicott, former president of Physician for Social Responsibility, discussing the impacts of radiation on the body and how it causes cancer. She states: “There is no safe level of radiation. I repeat, there is no safe level of radiation. Each dose of radiation is cumulative and adds to your risk of getting cancer and that’s absolutely documented in the medical literature.”

“The nuclear industry says, well,” Dr. Caldiott, continues, “there are ‘safe doses’ of radiation and even says a little bit of radiation is good for you and that is called the theory of hormesis. They lie and they lie and they lie.”

Maggie Gundersen, who was a reporter and then a public relations representative for the nuclear industry and, like her husband Arnie became an opponent of nuclear power, speaks of how nuclear power derives from the World War II Manhattan Project program to develop atomic weapons and post-war so-called “Atoms for Peace” push.

Gundersen says in becoming a nuclear industry spokesperson, “the things I was taught weren’t true.” The notion, for example, that what is called a containment at a nuclear plant is untrue because radioactivity “escapes every day as a nuclear power plant operates” and in a “calamity” is released massively.

As to economics, she cited the claim decades ago that nuclear power would be “too cheap to meter.” The president of Fairewinds Energy Education, she says: “Atomic power is now the most expensive power there is on the planet. It is not feasible. It never has been.” Regarding the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power, she says “there is literally no technology to do that…It does not exist.”

As to international oversight, the documentary presents the final version of a “Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation” issued in 2014 which finds that the radiation doses from Fukushima “to the general public during the first year and estimated for their lifetimes are generally low or very low….The most important effect is on mental and social well-being.”

Shimatsu says it is not only in Japan but on an international level that the consequences of radioactive exposure have been completely minimized or denied. “We are all seeing a global political agreement centered in the UN organizations, tie IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], the World Health Organization…All the international agencies are whitewashing what is happening in Fukushima. We take dosimeters and Geiger counters in there, we see a much different story,” he says.

In Germany, says Maggie Gunderson, “the politicians chose” to do a study to “substantiate” that no health impacts “happened around nuclear power plants….But what they found was the radiation releases cause significant numbers of childhood leukemia.” A summary of that 2008 study comes on the screen. The U.S. followed up on that research, she says, but recently “the [U.S.] Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was not going to do that study,” that “it doesn’t have enough funding; it had to shut it down.” She said the real reason was that it was producing “data they don’t want to make public.”

Beyond the airborne releases of radiation after the Fukushima accident, now, says the documentary, there is the growing threat of radioactivity through water that has and still is leaking from the plants as well as more than a million tons of radioactive water stored in a thousand tanks built at the plant site. After the accident, TEPCO released 300,000 tons of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean. Now there is no land for more tanks, so the Japanese government, the documentary relates, has decided that starting this year to dump massive amounts of radioactive water over a 30-year period into the Pacific.

Arnie Gundersen speaks of the cliché that “the solution to pollution is dilution,” but with the radiation from Fukushima being sent into the Pacific, there will be “bio-accumulation”—with vegetation absorbing radiation, little fish eating that vegetation and intensifying it and bigger fish eating the smaller fish and further bio-accumulating the radioactivity. Already, tuna off California have been found with radiation traced to Fukushima. With this planned further, and yet greater dispersal, thousands of people “in the Pacific basin will die from radiation,” he says.

Andrew Napuat, a member of the Parliament of the nation of Vanuatu, an 83 island archipelago in the Pacific, says in the documentary: “We have the right to say no to the Japan solution. We can’t let them jeopardize our sustenance and livelihood.” Vanuatu along with 13 other countries has signed and ratified the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.

As the documentary nears its end, Arnie Gundersen says that considering the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986, and now the three Fukushima meltdowns in 2011, there has been “a meltdown every seven years roughly.” He says: “Essentially, once every decade the world needs to know that there might be an atomic meltdown somewhere.” And, he adds, the “nuclear industry is saying they want would like to build as many as 5,000 new nuclear power plants.” (There are 440 in the world today.)

Meanwhile, he says, “renewable power is no longer alternative power. It’s on our doorstep. It’s here now and it works and it’s cheaper than nuclear.” The cost of producing energy from wind, he says, is three cents a kilowatt hour, for solar five cents, and for new nuclear power plants 15 cents. Nuclear “makes no nuclear economic sense.”

Maggie Gundersen says, with tears in her eyes: “I’m a woman and I feel it’s inherent for us as women to protect our children our grandchildren, and it’s our job now to raise our voices and have this madness stop.”

Philippe Carillo, from France, who worked for 14 years in Hollywood and who since 2017 has lived in Vanuatu, has worked on several major TV documentary projects for the BBC, 20th Century Fox and French National TV as well as doing independent productions. He says he made “The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story” to “expose the nuclear industry and its lies.” His previous award-winning documentary, “Inside the Garbage of the World,” has made changes regarding the use of plastic.

“The Fukushima Disaster, The Hidden Side of the Story” can be viewed at Amazon, Apple TV, iTunes, Google Play and Vimeo on demand. Links are: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-fukushima-disaster/id1672643918?ls=1 Apple TV: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-fukushima-disaster/umc.cmc.3rfome5kj2hfpo2q9fwx5u0y0 Amazon UK: www.amazon.co.uk/placeholder_title/dp/B0B8TLPZ9K/ref=sr_1_1Amazon USA: https://www.amazon.com/Fukushima-Disaster-Yoichi-Shimatsu/dp/B0B8TLSRN4/ref=sr_1_1 Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details?id=vehqb5ex-L8.P&sticky_source_country=US&gl=US&hl=en&pli=1 Video on demand: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thefukushimadisaster

Also, extra footage and interviews not in the film are at www.exposurefilmstrust.com

July 4, 2023 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, Resources -audiovicual | Leave a comment

‘Exploring Tritium’s Dangers’: a book review

By Robert Alvarez | June 26, 2023  https://thebulletin.org/2023/06/exploring-tritiums-danger-a-book-review/

Over the past 40 years, Arjun Makhijani has provided clear, concise, and important scientific insights that have enriched our understanding of the nuclear age. In doing so, Makhijani—now president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research—has built a solid reputation as a scientist working in the public interest. His most recent contribution to public discourse, Exploring Tritium’s Dangers, adds to this fine tradition.

A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium is one the most expensive, rare, and potentially harmful elements in the world. Its rarity is underscored by its price—$30,000 per gram—which is projected to rise from $100,000 to $200,000 per gram by mid-century.

Although its rarity and usefulness in some applications gives it a high monetary value, tritium is also a radioactive contaminant that has been released widely to the air and water from nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. Makhijani points out that “one teaspoon of tritiated water (as HTO) would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the US drinking water limit; that is enough to supply about 1 million homes with water for a year.”

Where tritium comes from. Since Earth began to form, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen known as tritium (H-3) has been created by interactions between cosmic rays and Earth’s atmosphere; through this natural process, the isotope continues to blanket the planet in tiny amounts. With a radioactive half-life of 12.3 years, tritium falls from the sky and decays, creating a steady-state global equilibrium that comes to about three to seven kilograms of tritium.

Tritium initially became a widespread man-made contaminant when it was spread across the globe by open-air nuclear weapons explosions conducted between 1945 and 1963. Rainfall in 1963 was found in the Northern Hemisphere to contain 1,000 times more tritium than background levels. Open-air nuclear weapons explosions released about 600 kilograms (6 billion curies) into the atmosphere. In the decades since above-ground nuclear testing ended, nuclear power plants have added even more to the planet’s inventory of tritium. For several years, US power reactors have been contaminating ground water via large, unexpected tritium leaks from degraded subsurface piping and spent nuclear fuel storage pool infrastructures.

Since the 1990s, about 70 percent of the nuclear power sites in the United States (43 out of 61 sites) have had significant tritium leaks that contaminated groundwater in excess of federal drinking water limits.

The most recent leak occurred in November 2022, involving 400,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated water from the Monticello nuclear station in Minnesota. The leak was kept from the public for several months. In late March of this year, after the operator could not stop the leak, it was forced to shut down the reactor to fix and replace piping. By this time, tritium reached the groundwater that enters the Mississippi River. A good place to start limiting the negative effects of tritium contamination, Makhijani recommends, is to significantly tighten drinking water standards.

Routine releases of airborne tritium are also not trivial. As part of his well-researched monograph, Makhijani underscores this point by including a detailed atmospheric dispersion study that he commissioned, indicating that tritium (HTO) from the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant in Illinois has been literally raining down from gaseous releases – as it incorporates with precipitation to form tritium oxide (HTO)—something that occurs at water cooled reactors. Spent fuel storage pools are considered the largest source of gaseous tritium releases.

The largely unacknowledged health effects. Makhijani makes it clear that the impacts of tritium on human health, especially when it is taken inside the body, warrant much more attention and control than they have received until now. This is not an easy problem to contend with, given the scattered and fragmented efforts that are in place to address this hazard. Thirty-nine states, and nine federal agencies  (the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Agriculture are all responsible for regulating tritium.

This highly scattered regulatory regime has been ineffective at limiting tritium contamination, much less reducing it. For example, state and  federal regulators haven’t a clue as to how many of some two million exit signs purchased in the United States—and made luminous without electric power by tritium—have been illegally dumped.  For decades, tritium signs, each initially containing about 25 curies (or 25,000,000,000,000 pCi) of radioactivity, have found their way into landfills that often contaminate drinking water. One broken sign is enough to contaminate an entire community landfill. There are no standards for tritium in the liquid that leaches from landfills, despite measurements taken in 2009 indicating levels at Pennsylvania landfills thousands of times above background.

Adding to this regulatory mess, is the fact that federal standards limiting tritium in drinking water only apply to public supplies, and not to private wells.

In past decades, regulators have papered over the tritium-contamination problem by asserting, when tritium leakage becomes a matter of public concern, that the tritium doses humans might receive are too small to be of concern. Despite growing evidence that tritium is harmful in ways that fall outside the basic framework for radiation protection, agencies such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission remain frozen in time when it comes to tritium regulation.

The NRC and other regulating agencies are sticking to an outdated premise that tritium is a “mild” radioactive contaminant that emits “weak” beta particles that cannot penetrate the outer layers of skin. When tritium is taken inside the body (by, for example, drinking tritiated water), half is quickly excreted within 10 days, the agencies point out, and the radiation doses are tiny. Overall, the NRC implies its risk of tritium ingestion causing cancer is small.

But evidence of harm to workers handling tritium is also growing. Epidemiologists from the University of North Carolina reported in 2013, that the risk of dying from leukemia among workers at the Savannah River Plant following exposure to tritium is more than eight times greater (RBE-8.6) than from exposure to gamma radiation (RBE-1).  Over the past several years, studies of workers exposed to tritium consistently show significant excess levels of chromosome damage.[1]

The contention that tritium is “mildly radioactive” does not hold when it is taken in the body as tritiated water—the dominant means for exposure. The Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—which advises the US Energy Department about safety at the nation’s defense nuclear sites—informed the secretary of energy in June 2019 that “[t]ritiated water vapor represents a significant risk to those exposed to it, as its dose consequence to an exposed individual is 15,000 to 20,000 times higher than that for an equivalent amount of tritium gas.”

As it decays, tritium emits nearly 400 trillion energetic disintegrations per second. William H. McBride, a professor of radiation oncology at the UCLA Medical School, describes these disintegrations as “explosive packages of energy” that are “highly efficient at forming complex, potentially lethal DNA double strand breaks.” McBride, underscored this concern at an event sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, where he stated that “damage to DNA can occur within minutes to hours.” [2]

“No matter how it is taken into the body,” a fact sheet from the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory says, “tritium is uniformly distributed through all biological fluids within one to two hours.” During that short time, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board points out that “the combination of a rapid intake and a short biological half-life means a large fraction of the radiological dose is acutely delivered within hours to days…”

A new approach to tritium regulation. Makhijani pulls together impressive evidence clearly pointing to the need for an innovative approach that addresses, in addition to cancer, a range of outcomes that can follow tritium exposure, including prenatal and various forms of genomic damage. In particular, he raises a key point about how physics has dominated radiation protection regulation at the expense of the biological sciences.

It all boils down to estimation of a dose as measured in human urine based on mathematical models. For tritium, dose estimation can be extraordinarily complex (at best) when it is taken inside the body as water or as organically bound, tritide forms. So the mathematical models that can simplify this challenge depend on “constant values” that provide the basis for radiation protection.

In this regard, the principal “constant value” holding dose reconstruction and regulatory compliance together is the reliance on the “reference man.” He is a healthy Caucasian male between the age of 20 to 30 years, who exists only in the abstract world.

Use of the reference man standard gives rise to obvious (and major) questions: What radiation dose limit is necessary to protect the “reference man” from serious genomic damage? And what about protection of more vulnerable forms of human life?

According to the 2006 study by the National Research Council, healthy Caucasian men between the age of 20 and 30 are about one-tenth as likely to contract a radiation-induced cancer as a child exposed to the same external dose of gamma radiation while in the womb.

In his monograph, Makhijani underscores the need to protect the fetus and embryo from internal exposures to tritium—a need largely being side-stepped by radiation protection authorities. “Tritium replaces non-radioactive hydrogen in water, the principal source of tritium exposure,” Makhijani writes, pointing to unassailable evidence that tritium “easily can cross the placenta and irradiate developing fetuses in utero, thereby raising the risk of birth defects, miscarriages, and other problems.”

He is not alone in such an assessment. According a 2022 medical expert consensus report on radiation protection for health care professionals in Europe, “The greatest risk of pregnancy loss from radiation exposure is during the first 2 weeks of pregnancy, while between 2-8 weeks after conception, the embryo is most susceptible to the development of congenital malformations because this is the period of organogenesis.”

In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s efforts to reduce exposure limits and protect pregnant women and their fetuses is best described as foot-dragging. By comparison, the required limit for a pregnant worker in Europe to be reassigned from further exposure is one-fifth the US standard—and was adopted nearly 20 years ago.

Long-term environmental retention. A 2019 study put forward the first ever empirical evidence of very long-term environmental retention of organically bound tritium (OBT) in an entire river system, deposited by fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons explosions.

When released into the environment, tritium atoms can replace hydrogen atoms in organic molecules to form organically bound tritium, which is found soil, and river sediments, vegetation, and a wide variety of foods. It’s been more than a half century since the ratification of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and tritium released through nuclear weapons testing has undergone significant decay. Yet because of the long retention of organically bound tritium, in greater than expected concentrations, it still remains a contaminant of concern.

For instance, despite its 12.3-year half-life, a much larger amount of organically bound tritium from nuclear tests than previously assumed is locked in Arctic permafrost, raising concerns about widespread contamination as global warming melts the Arctic. Organically bound tritium can reside in the body far longer than tritiated water, to consequently greater negative effect.[3]

Nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and tritium. The tritium problem has several dimensions that relate directly to the world’s current and future efforts vis a vis nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

Now that nuclear power reactors are closing down, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident, the disposal of large volumes of tritium-contaminated water into lakes, rivers, and oceans is becoming a source of growing concern around the world. The Japanese government has approved the dumping of about 230 million gallons of radioactive water, stored in some 1,300 large tanks sitting near the Fukushima nuclear ruins, into the Pacific Ocean. Once it incorporates into water, tritium is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to remove.

Protests in Japan by a wide segment of the public and in several other nations—including Russia, the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, China, South Korea and North Korea—object to the disposal of this large volume of contaminated water into near-shore waters.

Then there’s the matter of boosting the efficiency and destructive power of nuclear weapons with tritium gas—a use that has dominated demand for this isotope. Because five percent of the tritium in thermonuclear warheads decays each year, it has to be periodically replenished. Over the past 70 years, an estimated 225 kilograms of tritium were produced in US government reactors, principally at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina. Those reactors were shuttered in 1988. Since 2003, tritium supplies for US nuclear warheads are provided by two Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power reactors. The irradiation of lithium target elements in the reactors has fallen short of meeting demand because of excess tritium leakage into the reactor coolant.

The hazards of tritium production for weapons are far from trivial.

For instance, since June of 2019, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board has taken the Energy Department to task for its failure to address the risk of a severe fire involving tritium processing and storage facilities at the Savannah River Site. According to the Board, such a fire may have a 40 percent chance of occurring during 50 years of operation and could result in potentially lethal worker doses greater than 6,000 rems—1,200 times the annual occupational exposure limit. Doses to the public would not be inconsequential. Meanwhile, the Energy Department is under pressure from the nuclear weapons establishment to step up demand for tritium. Unless there is “a marked increase in the planned production of tritium in the next few years,” the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review concluded “our nuclear capabilities will inevitably atrophy and degrade below requirements.”

The Energy Department estimates it will take 15-20 years to achieve a major multibillion overhaul of its tritium production infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the quest for fusion energy highlights a startling fact: The amount of tritium required to fuel a single fusion reactor (should an economic, fusion-based power plant ever be created) will likely be far greater than the amount produced by all fission reactors and open-air bomb tests since the 1940s. A full-scale (3,000 megawatt-electric) fusion reactor is estimated to “burn” about 150 kilograms of tritium  a year.[4]

The cost for a one-year batch of tritium fuel for a fusion reactor, based on the current market price, would be $4.5 billion. An annual loss to the environment from a single fusion reactor could dwarf the release of tritium from all nuclear facilities that currently dot the global landscape.

The tritium overview. Evidence is mounting not just in regard to increased health risks from tritium-contaminated water and from organically bound tritium, but also as relates to the harm tritium can visit on the unborn. At the same time, it has become clear that regulation of tritium in the United States is grossly insufficient to the current risk from tritium contamination, not to mention future risks that could arise if tritium production, use, and associated leakage rise. Arjun Makhijani provides a useful roadmap for sparing workers and the public from the dangers this pernicious contaminant will pose in the future, absent more effective regulation that includes lower limits for human tritium exposure.

Notes

[1] See: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004200050272; https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6304/10/2/94; https://www.jstor.org/stable/3579658; http://www.rbc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/db/Literature/THO-Occupational.html; and https://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2016/UNSCEAR_2016_Annex-C.pdf

[2] William MacBride, UCLA School of Medicine Vice Chair for Research in Radiation, Principal Investigator of UCLA’s Center for Medical Countermeasures Against Radiation — National Institutes of Health, Jan 27, 2014. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEH72v-yN9A

[3] See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47821-1

[4] Advocates assume that only the initial loading of 150 kg will be needed, as the reactor will “breed” the remaining amount of tritium to run the plant after a year of operation.

July 4, 2023 Posted by | radiation, Reference, Resources -audiovicual | Leave a comment

Cover up? Did atom bosses collude to ‘manage message’ of Japanese plan to poison Pacific?

Cover up? Did atom bosses collude to ‘manage message’ of Japanese plan to poison Pacific?

Disturbing documentary evidence has been seen by the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities which appears to suggest collusion between the Japanese nuclear industry, government ministries and the UN International Atomic Energy Authority to ‘manage the message’ over the ocean dumping of 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water held over from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The purported IAEA-letterheaded document titled ‘IAEA REVISION PROPOSAL FOR THE FINAL REPORT OF HANDLING ALPS TREATED WATER AT TEPCO’S FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER STATION’ may not sound very exciting, but, if genuine, amounts to a clear admission that the international agency has been keen to collaborate at the highest level with the Japanese nuclear industry and ministry officials to downplay the dangers associated with discharging millions of barrels of water which remain contaminated with highly toxic tritium.

The document, seemingly issued by the Department of Nuclear Safety at the IAEA, was posted to the website/blogsite dunrenard[i] by an anonymous whistle-blower on 28 June 2023 and then forwarded to renowned marine radiation expert and campaigner Tim Deere-Jones, who brought it to the NFLA’s attention. In response to the release of the document, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi has condemned it as a ‘forgery’. This document can be found at the end of this media release.

Operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the Fukushima Plant was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami on 11 March 2011.  A disaster unfolded with three nuclear meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions and a release of radiation from three reactors, and Government authorities were forced to evacuate 154,000 people from the surrounding area over a 20-mile radius.

Since the disaster, seawater water used to cool the destroyed reactors, along with rain- and groundwater that has leached into the damaged plant, has accumulated on site with over 1.3 million tons now being stored in barrels. Last year, the Japanese government confirmed its intention to build an underwater pipe 1km out to sea to discharge the radioactive water there, and now this work has been completed the dumping is scheduled to begin imminently, despite massive domestic and international opposition.

Opponents are fearful that although the contaminated water is treated by a process known as ALPS (the Advanced Liquid Processing System) this cannot remove deadly tritium, a beta-emitting radioactive isotope of hydrogen, and other radioactive materials, which if ingested can trigger cancers and appeals to stop this process citing the health risks and environmental damage that will result have been expressed by the local fishing and farming community, civic leaders, the Pacific Islands Council, regional governments, and anti-nuclear activists everywhere.

The NFLA has itself objected in letters to Japanese Ministers, TEPCO officials and the United Nations on two occasions and recently signed a partnership agreement with its Japanese equivalent, Mayors for a Nuclear Power Free Japan, in part to collaborate in opposing the plan.

In the released document, the IAEA supports the discharge of the radioactive water ‘even though the activity concentrations of some radionuclides above the [permitted] discharge limits are reported’ and agrees not to conduct a full radioactive analysisof every batch of the waterheld‘due to the concerns of [operator] TEPCO and relevant authorities [the Japanese Government]’.

More worryingly, the report clearly advises that ‘data and results that could be viewed negatively by the public should be removed from the final report’ and thatIAEA Director General Raphael Grossi has instructed that ‘positive conclusions supporting ALPS treated water discharging shall be included in the executive summary of the Final Report’.

The NFLA’s source was Mr Tim Deere-Jones, a graduate in Marine Studies from Cardiff University. Tim, an independent marine pollution researcher and consultant since 1983, is highly regarded by the many international organisations who have engaged him in their campaigns against the damage caused to our oceans and inland waterways by radioactive and other contaminants. Amongst his recent notable achievements, Mr Deere-Jones provided an invaluable professional advice to the successful Greenlandic campaign to ban the mining of Uranium and Rare Earths at Kuannersuit, which led to his report being translated into Kalaallisut, the official Inuit based language of Greenland.

Here Tim gives his analysis of the alleged IAEA document:

‘Documentary evidence of deep collusion between the IAEA, Japanese Government Ministries and TEPCO intended to suppress, “fudge” and spin evidence related to the scientific data related to the treatment, monitoring and sea-discharge of ALPS treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster site.

Preliminary analysis:

Language of origin of the document is uncertain, the extent English language copy appears to have been either translated from the original or compiled by someone with English as a second language.

The document reports that the original draft “Notional Plan for Source and Environmental Monitoring associated with IAEA LPS Safety Review” was presented to the Japanese government in March 2023, and that the original Notional Plan proposed that environmental monitoring of the ALPS treated water should be based on “rapid analysis” of all batches of treated water and “full analysis” of selected batches of treated water.

While it appears to be clear that the proposed “rapid analysis” would not have been as thorough or detailed as the proposed “full analysis”, in the event the Document has confirmed that the Final Report has recommended the “rapid analysis” but that the “full analysis” of selected batches will not be recommended in the Final Report “due to the concerns of TEPCO and relevant authorities” (presumably the ministries of the Government of Japan).

The document confirms that, in May 2023, the IAEAs Director and Co-ordinator of Nuclear Safety & Security Department and the head of the IAEAs task force on the Fukushima releases, shared the IAEAs Draft Report on the releases with the GoJ (Government of Japan) and TEPCO officials.

The IAEA document notes that it’s Draft Report on the handling of ALPS treated water concludes with the finding in favour of the proposed discharge of the treated water to sea “even though the activity concentrations of some radionuclides above the discharge limits are reported”

The document comments on “The public’s captiousness on radioactivity issues”. (“Captiousness” is defined in dictionaries as “the disposition to find and point out trivial issues or faults”)

In the context of the above the document recommends that “data and results that could be viewed negatively by the public should be removed from the final report ……. Issued in later June.”

The document reports that, following negotiations with the GoJ, IAEA Director General Grossi, instructed that “positive conclusions supporting ALPS treated water discharging shall be included in the executive summary of the Final Report”

And that “the Final Report will highlight that TEPCO’s discharge plan is in accord with international safety standards to address public concerns and doubts. The IAEA will conduct discussions with all task force experts, but their recommendations will not be reflected in the Report”

The document confirms that the IAEA has agreed to make revisions to the Report on the basis of feedback from the Japanese Ministries of Economy/Trade and Industry, Foreign Affairs, Environment and TEPCO because TEPCO and the Ministries had “expressed concerns regarding the potential public opposition to some data and results. The IAEA fully understands these concerns and would make revisions”

The document reports that the GoJ “requested to fudge” responses to the Pacific Island Forum’s demand for a full analysis of ALPS treated water, and questions raised by neighbouring countries about Organically Bound Tritium (OBT). In that context the document reports that, presumably in response to the request, “the concerns were not included in the ALPS safety review”

My submissions on behalf of the Pacific Islands Forum

Despite the evidence reported above, the document confirms that the GoJ “recommended to stress the fact that Japanese Authorities never interfered with IAEAs safety review” and that “the independence of the Report is guarantee as no political elements involved”’

Commenting on the shocking revelations, Mr Deere-Jones said: 

“Since the original Fukushima disaster, I have made multiple submissions to, and on behalf of, the Pacific Islands Forum, Japanese Citizens Groups, Environmental NGOs, and Commercial Fishermen’s Associations. My submissions have repeatedly called for full analysis of the ALPS treated water and the sludges at the bottom of the ALPS treated water holding tanks, and referenced the peer reviewed scientific evidence demonstrating that marine Organically Bound Tritium posed a greater health risk through multiple dose delivery pathways than was recognised by the nuclear establishment (Japanese Govt ministries and agencies, TEPCO and the IAEA)”.

In response to the release of this alleged document, Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi was quick to condemn it as a forgery and to refute any suggestion of Japanese government collusion, issuing the following statement to Associated Press:

“The IAEA is aware of the existence of the forged documents. The IAEA’s comprehensive final report is a document prepared under the responsibility of the IAEA, and the Japanese government is not in a position to manipulate its contents. “I would like to stress that we are firmly opposed to any attempt to undermine the independence and neutrality of the IAEA with false information.”[ii]

Tim Deere-Jones retorted: “Such a response is exactly what we would expect from the IAEA when such information is leaked to the public.  To suggest that the document is fraudulent is clearly intended to imply that concerned scientists, campaigners, marine stakeholders, and communities are implicated.

“However, the matters disclosed in the leaked document are very much in accord with the experience of scientists and campaigners who have been raising these concerns since the Fukushima disaster and its subsequent botched response first occurred.

“Since that time, we have submitted numerous fully scientifically referenced documents highlighting the issue of Organically Bound Tritium, the multiple other radionuclides not removed from the ALPS treated water, the failure to discuss the radioactive solids that have settled on the bottom of the holding tanks, the behaviour and fate of these multiple radioactive materials once discharged to sea and their impact on marine ecologies and the health of coastal communities.

“The submission of such information has been consistently met by the IAEA and nuclear industry with hostility, contempt, dismissal, and a refusal to engage with the issues raised.

“The leaked document is on IAEA headed paper and typeface, bears the imprint of the relevant department, is couched in language characteristic of the IAEA, and refers to the ‘The public’s captiousness on radioactivity issues’; captiousness being defined in dictionaries as “the disposition to find and point out trivial issues or faults”. Such language is a precise reflection of our long-term experience and understanding of the IAEA and nuclear industry attitude and response to our concerns.

“I would remind readers that the IAEAs Founding Statutes state that its principal objective is as follows ‘The Agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy’.”

In conclusion, NFLA Chairman, Councillor Lawrence O’Neill said:

“The contents of this report, if true, are deeply disturbing and suggest a plan in which, at the highest level, officials from the international agency responsible for nuclear safety, the Japanese nuclear industry and the Japanese government have colluded to underplay the dangers posed to Pacific marine life and the world community by the expedient, but irresponsible, discharge of tritium-contaminated water.

“Most bitterly disappointing is that this document suggests that such a plan has the tacit endorsement of IAEA Director-General Grossi; for Mr Grossi is the man in which the world community has placed its faith to put safety before political considerations to prevent a nuclear disaster at the imperilled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.”

Ends://…

July 4, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

American, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians gather in Vienna to call for peace

By Medea Benjamin, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/07/02/coming-together-for-peace/

During the weekend of June 10-11 in Vienna, Austria, over 300 people representing peace organizations from 32 countries came together for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine to demand an end to the fighting. In a formal conference declaration, participants declared, “We are a broad and politically diverse coalition that represents peace movements and civil society. We are firmly united in our belief that war is a crime against humanity and there is no military solution to the current crisis.”

To amplify their call for a ceasefire, Summit participants committed themselves to organizing Global Weeks of Action—protests, street vigils and political lobbying—during the days of September 30-October 8.

Summit organizers chose Austria as the location of the peace conference because Austria is one of only a few neutral non-NATO states left in Europe. Ireland, Switzerland and Malta are a mere handful of neutral European states, now that previously neutral states Finland has joined NATO and Sweden is next in line. Austria’s capital, Vienna, is known as “UN City,” and is also home to the Secretariat of the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), which monitored the ceasefire in the Donbas from the signing of the Minsk II agreement in 2015 until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Surprisingly, neutral Austria turned out to be quite hostile to the Peace Summit. The union federation caved in to pressure from the Ukrainian Ambassador to Austria and other detractors, who smeared the events as a fifth column for the Russian invaders. The ambassador had objected to some of the speakers, including world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs and European Union Parliament member Clare Daly.

Even the press club, where the final press conference was scheduled, was canceled at the last minute. The Austrian liberal/left newspaper Der Standard piled on, panning the conference both beforehand, during and afterwards, alleging that the speakers were too pro-Russian. Undaunted, local organizers quickly found other locations. The conference took place in a lovely concert center, and the press conference in a local cafe. 

The most moving panel of the conference was the one with representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, who risked their lives to participate in the Summit. Yuri Sheliazhenko, secretary-treasurer of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, is unable to leave the country and therefore spoke to attendees from Kyiv via Zoom. 

“Like many Ukrainians, I am a victim of aggression of Russian army, which bombs my city, and a victim of human rights violations by the Ukrainian army, which tries to drag me to the meat grinder, denying my right to refuse to kill, to leave the country for my studies in University of Münster … Think about it: all men from 18 to 60 are prohibited from leaving the country, they are hunted on the streets and forcibly abducted to the army’s serfdom.” 

Sheliazhenko told the Summit that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had tried to deny conscientious objector status to Ukrainian war resisters, but relented when international pressure demanded that the Ukrainian military recognize rights secured under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Several groups at the Summit pledged to provide support for conscientious objectors from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, and also took up a collection for Ukrainian families lacking access to clean water following the recent destruction of the Kakhovka dam. 

Highlights of the Summit also included remarks by representatives from the Global South, who came from China, Cameroon, Ghana, Mexico and Bolivia. Bolivia’s Vice President David Choquehuanca inspired the crowd as he spoke of the need to heed the wisdom of Indigenous cultures and their mediation practices. 

Many speakers said the real impetus to end this war will come from the Global South, where politicians can see the widespread hunger and inflation that this conflict is causing, and are taking leading roles in offering their services as mediators.

Almost all of Europe was represented, including dozens from Italy, the country mobilizing the continent’s largest peace demonstrations, with over 100,000 protesters. Unlike in the United States, where the demonstrations have been small, Italian organizers have successfully built coalitions that include trade unions and the religious community, as well as traditional peace groups. Their advice to others was to narrow and simplify their demands in order to broaden their appeal and build a mass anti-war movement.

The eight-person U.S. delegation included representatives from CODEPINK, Peace in Ukraine, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Veterans for Peace. U.S. retired colonel and diplomat Ann Wright was a featured speaker, along with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who joined remotely.

Despite the uniform bottom line of the participants, which was a call for peace talks, there were plenty of disagreements, especially in the workshops. Some people believed that we should continue to send weapons while pushing for talks; others called for an immediate end to weapons transfers. Some insisted on calling for the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops, while others believed that should be the result of negotiations, not a pre-condition. Some put more blame on the role of NATO expansion and the interference of the U.S. in Ukraine’s internal affairs, while others said the blame belongs exclusively at the doorstep of the Russian invaders. 

Some of these differences were reflected in discussions surrounding the final declaration, where there was plenty of back and forth about what should and should not be mentioned. There were strong calls to condemn NATO provocations and the role of the U.S./UK in sabotaging early attempts at mediation. These sentiments, along with others condemning the West, were left out of the final document, which some criticized as too bland. References to NATO provocations that led to the Russian invasion were deleted and replaced with the following language:

“The institutions established to ensure peace and security in Europe fell short, and the failure of diplomacy led to war. Now diplomacy is urgently needed to end the war before it destroys Ukraine and endangers humanity.”

But the most important segment of the final document and the gathering itself was the call for further actions.

“This weekend should be seen as just the start,” said organizer Reiner Braun. “We need more days of action, more gatherings, more outreach to students and environmentalists, more educational events. But this was a great beginning of global coordination.”

July 4, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Especially in USA, nuclear reactors are getting very old – past their use-by dates

When will the world wake up to the unaffordable cost of this industry?

They’re keeping creaky old nuclear reactors going, so that our grandchildren will cop the astronomic costs of getting rid of the radioactive dead reactors.

So the current nuclear power industry people can get out of this problem!

 Notably, 88 of the 92 reactors in the U.S. have received approvals to operate for up to 60 years, and some have applied for additional 20-year extensions to operate for up to 80 years

How Old Are the World’s Nuclear Reactors?, Elements, June 27, 2023, By Govind Bhutada

“………………………………………………… The Age Distribution of the Global Reactor Fleet

Nuclear power saw a building boom in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s as countries expanded their energy portfolios and sought to capitalize on the advancements in nuclear technology. As a result, the majority of the world’s nuclear reactors began operating during this period.

Of the total of 422 reactors, 262 reactors have been in operation for 31 to 50 years. In other words, about 62% of all current nuclear reactors were connected to the grid between 1973 and 1992.

Nuclear power’s growth slowed down at the turn of the 21st century, with decreasing public support and increasing concern over nuclear safety. As a result, only a small number of reactors fall into the 11-to-20-year-old age group.

The oldest operating reactors (five of them) are 54 years old and entered commercial service in 1969. Two of these are located in the United States, two in India, and one in Switzerland.

How Long Can Nuclear Reactors Last?

Although specific lifespans can vary, nuclear reactors are typically designed to last for 20 to 40 years.

However, reactors can operate beyond their initially licensed periods with lifetime extensions. Extending reactor lives requires rigorous assessments, safety evaluations, and refurbishments.

Some countries have granted license renewals for aging reactors. Notably, 88 of the 92 reactors in the U.S. have received approvals to operate for up to 60 years, and some have applied for additional 20-year extensions to operate for up to 80 years…… https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-old-are-the-worlds-nuclear-reactors/

July 4, 2023 Posted by | safety | Leave a comment

“The Doomsday Machine”: Confessions of Daniel Ellsberg, Former Nuclear War Planner

Democracy Now, JULY 03, 2023

As we remember Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who died in June, we look at how he was also a lifelong anti-nuclear activist, stemming from his time working as a nuclear planner for the U.S. government. In December 2017, he joined us to discuss his memoir, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. “This was an actual war plan for how we would use the existing weapons,” he noted, “many of which I had seen already that time.”

“……………………………………… I was given the job of improving the Eisenhower plans, which was not a very high bar, actually, at that time, because they were, on their face, the worst plans in the history of warfare. A number of people who saw them, but very few civilians ever got a look at them. In fact, the joint chiefs couldn’t really get the targets out of General LeMay at the Strategic Air Command.

And there was a good reason for that: They were insane. They called for first-strike plans, which was by order of President Eisenhower. He didn’t want any plan for limited war of any kind with the Soviet Union, under any circumstances,……………………………….. however it got started, Eisenhower’s directed plan was for all-out war, in a first initiation of nuclear war, assuming the Soviets had not used nuclear weapons.

And that plan called, in our first strike, for hitting every city — actually, every town over 25,000 — in the USSR and every city in China. A war with Russia would inevitably involve immediate attacks on every city in China. In the course of doing this — pardon me — there were no reserves. Everything was to be thrown as soon as it was available — it was a vast trucking operation of thermonuclear weapons — over to the USSR, but not only the USSR. The captive nations, the East Europe satellites in the Warsaw Pact, were to be hit in their air defenses, which were all near cities, their transport points, their communications of any kind. So they were to be annihilated, as well.

…………………………………………………..  If we were defending West Europe — Germany, for example — we were planning to destroy the continent in order to save it.

Six hundred million, that was a hundred Holocausts. And when I held the piece of paper in my hand that had that figure, that they had sent out unembarrassedly, you know, proudly, to the president — “Here’s what we will do” — I thought, “This is the most evil plan that has ever existed. It’s insane.”

………………………………. To start with, even if it were only the president, no one man — really, no one nation — should have the ability — the ability even — to threaten or to carry out a hundred Holocausts at his will. That machinery should never have existed. And it does exist right now, and every president has had that power, and this president does have that power.

But the recent discussions of that, which emphasize his sole authority to do that, don’t take account of the fact that he has authority to delegate. And he has delegated. Every president has delegated. I don’t know the details of what President Trump has done or since the Cold War. Every president in the Cold War, right through Carter and Reagan, had delegated, in fact, to theater commanders in case communications were cut off. That means that the idea that the president is the only one with sole power to issue an order that will be recognized as an authentic authorized order is totally false.

How many fingers are on buttons? Probably no president has ever really known the details of that. I knew, in ’61, for example, that Admiral Harry D. Felt in CINCPAC, commander-in-chief of Pacific, for whom I worked as a researcher, had delegated that to 7th Fleet, down to various commanders, and they, in turn, had delegated down to people. So when you say, “How many altogether feel authorized?” if their communications are cut off — and that happened part of every day in the Pacific when I was there — communications got better, but the delegations never changed. There’s — we’ve never allowed it to be possible that an enemy could paralyze our retaliation by hitting our president or our command and control.

And neither did the Russians. When President Carter and then President Reagan advertised the fact that their plans emphasized decapitation, hitting Moscow, above all, which the French and British always planned to do, by the way, with their smaller forces — and when that became clear, the Russians instituted what they called a dead hand, a perimeter system, in Russian, which assured that if Moscow was destroyed, other commanders would have the power and would be told to launch their strikes…………………………….

AMY GOODMAN: Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, speaking on Democracy Now! in December 2017 about his book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/7/3/the_doomsday_machine_confessions_of_daniel

July 4, 2023 Posted by | Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment