A onetime Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist may attempt to reverse his guilty plea on sharing secret nuclear-weapons information, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
Physicist Leonardo Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, are accused of supplying an undercover federal agent posing as a Venezuelan operative with classified weapons information. The Mascheronis pleaded guilty in June to the federal charges against them.
However, the former lab scientist could withdraw his plea, according to a Nov. 27 court filing by his government-appointed attorney. Mascheroni is trying to secure a new public defender.
Mascheroni is back in prison after federal District Judge William Johnson in a Nov. 13 order canceled the 77-year-old’s conditions for release, the Albuquerque Journal reported. Johnson was concerned that Mascheroni could still have access to classified information while he was out on pre-trial release.
Mascheroni reportedly included some classified information in a letter that he wrote to Johnson as part of his attempt to obtain a new public defender. The judge said the 35-page letter might have been written on an unsecured computer.
WASHINGTON: India has expanded a secretive site that could be used to enrich more uranium for nuclear weapons, a US think tank said Wednesday, citing satellite imagery.
The Institute for Science and International Security, a private group opposed to nuclear proliferation, said that India appeared to be finishing a second gas centrifuge facility at its Rare Materials Plant near the southern city of Mysore.
“This new facility could significantly increase India’s ability to produce highly enriched uranium for military purposes, including more powerful nuclear weapons,” the institute said in a report that analyzed an image taken in April.
The institute said that India started building a second centrifuge plant near Mysore in 2010, but it was unclear whether it was a replacement for the first facility at the site or a supplement. If it is a new facility, “India could have more than doubled its enrichment capacity, if the original building continues to function as an enrichment plant,” it said. — AFP –
Although he knows that he will not be able to live in Futaba again, he and his wife continue with their monthly visits lasting only several hours each time to their former home in the town.
Onuma said he is dreaming of paying a pilgrimage to the graves of their ancestors with his two children one day.
“I want to tell my children and future generations about my hometown,” he said.
A huge banner hanging at the entrance of a shopping area in the evacuated town of Futaba, co-host to the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, still reads “Nuclear energy is the energy of a bright future.”
Yuji Onuma created this slogan while in elementary school and won the best prize at a contest organized by the town government in 1987.
Today, Onuma, 37, sees a bright future in a life built around solar power, 1,000 days after being forced to leave his home and his business following the nuclear accident that unfolded on March 11, 2011.
The conversion marks a sea change for Onuma, as nuclear power had dominated large parts of his life as the economic lifeline of Futaba.
The nuclear disaster came after he had long believed in a “bright future” with nuclear energy, just like everyone else in Futaba. But now his hometown may have been lost, perhaps forever, after a triple meltdown at the plant.
“I realized that I was wrong (about a future with nuclear energy) after the nuclear disaster took my hometown away,” said Onuma, who fled Futaba with his expectant wife, Serina, after the accident. “I will probably never be able to go home.”
Futaba, with a population of about 7,000 before the crisis, has been designated an area where residents will not be allowed to return to live until at least 2017 due to annual radiation exposure levels of 50 millisieverts or more.
He has started to rebuild his family’s life at its new home in neighboring Ibaraki Prefecture with the resolve never to return to a life relying on nuclear power. He’s also embarking on a solo campaign to drive home the dangers of atomic energy.
For the first time, scientists have measured the frictional heat produced by the fault slip during an earthquake. Their results, published December 5
Science, show that friction on the fault was remarkably low during the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan in March 2011 and triggered a devastating tsunami.
“The Tohoku fault is more slippery than anyone expected,” said Emily Brodsky, a geophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and coauthor of three papers on the Tohoku-Oki earthquake published together in Science. All three papers are based on results from the international Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project (JFAST), which Brodsky helped organize.
Because friction generates heat (like rubbing your hands together), taking the temperature of a fault after an earthquake can provide a measure of the fault’s frictional resistance to slip. But that hasn’t been easy to do. “It’s been difficult to get this measurement because the signal is weak and it dissipates over time, so we needed a big earthquake and a rapid response,” said Brodsky, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UCSC.
The JFAST expedition drilled across the Tohoku fault in 2012 and installed a temperature observatory in one of three boreholes nearly 7 kilometers below the ocean surface. The logistically and technically challenging operation successfully recovered temperature measurements and other data as well as core samples from across the fault.
The low resistance to slip on the fault may help explain the large amount of slip—an unprecedented 50 meters of displacement—that occurred during the earthquake, according to UC Santa Cruz researcher Patrick Fulton, who is first author of the paper focusing on the temperature measurements. An abundance of weak, slippery clay material in the fault zone—described in the two companion papers—may account for the low friction during the earthquake, he said.
The Tohoku-Oki earthquake occurred in a “subduction zone,” a boundary between two tectonic plates where one plate is diving beneath another—in this case, the Pacific plate dives beneath the Eurasian plate just east of Japan. Fulton explained that the epicenter, where the earthquake started, was much deeper than the shallow portion of the fault examined by JFAST. One of the surprising things about the earthquake, in addition to the 50 meters of slip, was that the fault ruptured all the way to the surface of the seafloor.
“The large slip at shallow depths contributed to the tsumani that caused so much damage in Japan. Usually, these earthquakes don’t rupture all the way to the surface,” Fulton said.
The strain that is released in a subduction zone earthquake is thought to build up in the deep portion of the fault where the two plates are “locked.” The shallow portion of the fault was not expected to accumulate a large amount of stress and was considered unlikely to produce a large amount of slip. The JFAST results show that the frictional stress on the shallow portion of the fault was very low during the earthquake, which means that either the stress was low to begin with or all of the stress was released during the earthquake.
“It’s probably a combination of both—the fault was pretty slippery to begin with, and whatever stress was on the fault at that shallow depth was all released during the earthquake,” Fulton said.
An earlier paper by JFAST researchers, published in Science in February 2013 (Lin et al.), also suggested a nearly total stress drop during the earthquake based on an analysis of geophysical data collected during drilling.
“We now have four lines of evidence that frictional stress was low during the earthquake,” Brodsky said. “The key measure is temperature, but those results are totally consistent with the other papers.”
One of the new papers (Ujiie et al.) presents the results of laboratory experiments on the material recovered from the fault zone. Tests showed very low shear stress (resistance to slip) attributable to the abundance of weak, slippery clay material. The other paper (Chester et al.) focuses on the geology and structure of the fault zone. In addition to the high clay content, the researchers found that the fault zone was surprisingly thin (less than 5 meters thick).
Russia is the only country still operating RBMK reactors, and all, apparently, could become subjects of Rosatom’s enthusiastic new refurbishment process.
Workers have repaired swelling and cracking of the graphite moderator at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant’s No 1 reactor – the world’s oldest Chernobyl-style RBMK reactor – and reconnected it to the power grid, Russian nuclear officials said Monday.
The news got two thumbs down from many environmentalists who had given the reactor up for dead when the malformations in the reactor’s moderator were discovered during maintenance in 2012. But ceaseless tinkering by the Russia’s nuclear industry resuscitated it to the point where it could be plugged back into the grid.
Whether or not this is safe, according to Alexander Nikitin, chairman of the Environment and Rights Center (ERC) Bellona, is at the moment unknown. It is, however, said Nikitin, the first time such a drastic overhaul of an RBMK reactor has been made public.
Nikitin on Tuesday said he was trying to arrange a detailed meeting between ERC nuclear specialists and engineers who were responsible for the restoration process at the Leningrad Plant’ No 1 reactor. So far, he said, he has been met with reluctance and bureaucracy.
He said that “issues of safety, from a technical point of view cannot be answered in a blanket fashion – we need to know more about what precisely was done before we can make any determinations about whether the reactor can operate safely.”
Nikitin asserted, however, that the unit’s reconnection is essential to heating the nuclear plant’s host town, Sosnovy Bor, some 70 kilometers west of St. Petersburg and its 5 million-strong population, during the cold winter months.
Nils Bøhmer, Bellona’s general director and nuclear physicist said: “We are disappointed and frightened that that this reactor has come back online.”
“All reactors of the Chernobyl-type RBMK model should long ago have been shut down,” said Bøhmer. “The Russian authorities should be paying more attention to alternative methods to supply heating and energy in the region.”
Vladimir Slivyak, co-chair of Russia’s Ecodefense environmental group likened putting the reactor back into operation to a situation where “the Russian nuclear industry is playing Russian roulette.”
Putting the reactor back online, he told Bellona in an email interview, “is extremely dangerous and could actually cause a large accident that will effect millions of people in St. Petersburg and the surrounding areas,” adding that, “This is a Chernobyl-type reactor and it is impossible to bring it up to modern safety standards.”
The RBMK revival: everything old is new again
But nuclear officials in Russia are greeting the fix-it job as a landmark revival of the RBMK reactor, the oldest kind of civilian reactor in its fleet.
Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant Director Vladimir Pereguda, hailed the efforts of his staff’s ability to get the reactor up and working again and described its reappearance on the grid as a “rebirth, ” according to remarks carried by World Nuclear News.
The agency also reported that Rosatom’s first deputy director, Alexander Lokshin, said the event marked a “significant milestone in the history of RBMK.”
The work undertaken at the Leningrad unit is now expected to extend to the other 10 RBMK reactors still in operation in Russia.
First public RMBK overhaul, says tarred ex nuclear chief
This did not come as unexpected news to Nikitin, who was told last spring that similar extensive rebuilds have taken place in the past.
He said that Yevgeny Adamov, the disgraced former head of Minatom, Rosatom’s precursor, had told him last May that enormous overhauls of RMBK-style reactors had been undertaken many times – only without mentioning it to the public.
Nikitin said Adamov would not specify which reactors had undergone such serious repairs, and Adamov could not be reached on Tuesday for further comment.
He also noted that some 500 million rubles had been paid in 2012 by industries producing pollutants that negatively effect the environment, which covers some 57.2 percent of the total emissions in the area.
Not surprisingly, he said that the Kola Mining and Metallurgy Company (KMMC) was the biggest fine-payer in the region by far. The company is a daughter enterprise of industrial giant Norilsk Nikel.
“The company paid around 30 million rubles of this [total] sum,” he told the conference.
MURMANSK – Serious questions about the Arctic environment and air quality degenerated into farce at a seminar in Murmansk devoted to the topic last week as officials juggle figures and a phony scientific NGO presented baked data.
Murmansk is a pilot region for a number of projects on protecting air quality.
But the talks about reducing the amount of pollution migrating into Norway from Russia’s Northern industrial towns was briefly run off the rails by an NGO calling itself Green Patrol, which has been trumpeting findings of pollution wafting its way from Norway and Finland and into Russia, rather than the other way around.
The group’s findings are so ludicrous that the representative it sent to the seminar went so far in an interview with Bellona to dismiss its own claims as insignificant, and debunk its own methodology as unscientific – but not until air quality scientists from Norway had a chance to rake the organization over the coals a bit.
According to Roman Pukalov, director of the nature conservancy program with Green Patrol, a group with suspicious – some say state-connected – roots, Scandinavian countries are blowing some 45 percent of all pollution into Russia.
The claim is an old one, and has never been substantiated by any actual scientific claims since the group first levied the charge in August. Again, while addressing the conference, Pukalov was unable to back his claim with any data on amounts of pollution even in the most general sense, such as by tonnage, dozens of tons or even by rubber balloons. Nonetheless, he was confident in asserting that Russia should drag the matter to European courts to demand satisfaction, citing the group’s science fiction as the foundation for the case.
Pseudo-science grates on delegates’ patience
The gnat of Green Patrol’s research has been dealt with by European scientific organizations before, and it was clearly wasted time for Tore Berlgen, the head scientist dealing with cross-border emissions for the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) to have to refute Green Patrol’s alchemy once again.
“With all due respect to those delivering reports today, I can say with certainty that from the scientific point of view, such research is pseudo-science,” Berglen, who has since august maintained a tone of diplomatic detachment, told the conference.
Reducing that foul smell
With the agenda back on serious footing, the Murmansk government addressed issues of malodorous industrial emissions that area residents have complained of for years.
“We are one of the first to analyze the ‘odor’ effect relative to the steaming out of oil-fired cisterns at thermal energy plants,” Sergei Skomorokhov, Murmansk Regional deputy governor, told the international seminar called Protection of the Arctic from Atmospheric Pollution. “We have prepared a normative legal act establishing a norms for odors.”
Alexei Smirnov, minister of natural resources and ecology for the Murmansk Region, said an automated system for monitoring complex and specific – or polluting – substances in the atmosphere of the Kola Peninsula’s industrial cities is under formulation.
Some 22 centers make up a system of monitoring nine industrial centers in the Murmansk Region. The system constantly updates a single informational database on air quality conditions in the Regional center.
As such, it has been established that Murmansk suffers from concentrations of sulfur oxide, nitrous oxides, carbon dioxides, methane, and traces of hydrocarbons and other factored particles. In the Kandalaksha, Kola and Kovdor districts, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and carbon oxides have been measured, and the industrial cities of Nikel, Monchegorsk, and Zapolyarny are primarily affected by sulfur dioxide.
An evaluation of pollution emissions in the Murmansk region with the aim of reducing human impact on the region’s environment is planned for the near future.
Paying for the pollution you put in the air
Mikhail Lesovoy, deputy head of the Murmansk’s Regional division of the Federal Agency for Oversight of Natural Resource Usage, or Rosprirodnadzor in its Russian abbreviation, the combined total of pollutants emitted from standard sources in the Murmansk region reached some 250,000 tons in 2012. Some 60 percent of all pollution came from processing centers and mineral mining.
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Abby Martin calls out the International Atomic Energy Agency for their endorsement of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s response to the nuclear disaster, despite the company’s gross mismanagement of disaster.
IAEA recommends discharging Fukushima radioactive water to the sea
December 05, 2013
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
A visiting team of IAEA experts said Japan should weigh the possibility of discharging part of the growing stockpile of contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant to the sea.
Its recommendation came with the caveat that radioactive levels would have to be below safety standards.
“It is necessary to find a sustainable solution to the problem of managing contaminated water at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station,” the International Atomic Energy Agency team said in its preliminary summary report released Dec. 4. “This would require considering all options, including the possible resumption of controlled discharges to the sea.”
At the Fukushima No. 1 plant, the stockpile of radioactive water is growing by 400 tons every day as groundwater flowing into reactor and turbine buildings keeps adding to and mixing with water used to cool melted nuclear fuel. TEPCO is using an Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), a purifier touted as capable of removing 62 types of radioactive substances, to treat the contaminated water.
But that does not help reduce the total amount of water that needs to be managed, because the ALPS cannot remove tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.
TEPCO said it was holding 390,000 tons of radioactive water in storage tanks as of Dec. 3, including 31,000 tons that have been treated with the ALPS.
Juan Carlos Lentijo, leader of the IAEA expert team, held a news conference in Tokyo on Dec. 4, where he said controlled discharges of contaminated water are a common practice around the world. He added that TEPCO should gather data on treated water for safety screenings by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, and release the water to the sea if it is found to have cleared regulation standards.
Lentijo, at the same time, emphasized the importance of gaining understanding from the general public and the parties involved, and said controlled discharges should be allowed to take place only after discussions are held with relevant stakeholders and their approval is obtained.
The 19-member team of IAEA experts was visiting Japan from Nov. 25 to review Japan’s effort to decommission the devastated Fukushima plant, including the removal of nuclear fuel from the No. 4 reactor’s spent fuel storage pool and the monitoring of seawater. The preliminary summary report praised Japan for achieving “good progress” in preparing for the decommissioning process.
The team is expected to submit a final report to the government of Japan by the end of January.
Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the NRA, reiterated his support for controlled discharges of treated radioactive water.
“I don’t believe the technology is available for easy removal of tritium,” Tanaka told a news conference Dec. 4. “The amount is not particularly mind-boggling from a global perspective. We can’t help discharging water once it has cleared safety levels.”
(This article was written by Akira Hatano and Ryuta Koike.)
The 14th Meeting of Japan Cold Fusion Research Society will be held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology on December 7-8 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and abstracts of the papers to be presented have been published.
There seems to be quite an active community of cold fusion researchers in Japan; there are many names of presenters that I am not familiar with, but one stood out to me. Among the published abstracts is an article titled “Transmutation of Palladium and Nickel Isotopes” by Norman D. Cook of the Department of Informatics, Kansai University, Osaka. The reason for this is that Norman Cook’s work has been highly praised by Andrea Rossi.
As it will turn out when the scientific principle of our effect will be made public, the E-Cat respects perfectly the well known Physics laws and most accredited theories. I mean: there is no need of any “new physics”, everything is well contained in the well known Physics: therefore of course, as I said, the E-Cat is a cousin of the Schroedinger cat! Read the last edition of the book of Norman D. Cook…
His book, which is Rossi’s favorite nuclear physics book, Models of the Atomic Nucleus is available for free download here.
Fortunately the abstracts for the conference are available in English, but I would expect the conference would be conducted in Japanese. I’m not sure if we have many Japanese readers of ECW, but if anyone is going to be at the conference and would like to write a report, I’d be happy to publish it here.
Nuclear Hotseat is the weekly international news magazine keeping you up to date on all things anti-nuclear. Produced and Hosted by Three Mile Island survivor Libbe HaLevy, each podcast contains the week’s international nuclear news, at least one expert interview, ways to protect physical health of yourself and your loved ones from the dangers of radiation exposure, and activist opportunities.
Among the nuclear experts interviewed by Nuclear Hotseat in its first two years:
Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer, head of Fairewinds Energy Education
Dr. Helen Caldicott, founding President, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Dr. Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano, authors of “An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There a Correlation?”
Karl Grossman, Journalist, host of “Enviro Close-Up”
Daniel Hirsch, Nuclear Policy Lecturer, UC Santa Cruz
INTERVIEW: KEVIN KAMPS is Radioactive Waste Watchdog for Beyond Nuclear. He specializes in high-level waste management and transportation; new and existing reactors; decommissioning; Congress watch; climate change; federal subsidies — in other words, all the complex issues at the top of the nuclear-industrial-governmental food chain.
NUMNUTZ OF THE WEEK: TEPCO, Fukushima Prefecture AND the Japan Football Association. They plan to turn a soccer training center located so close enough the nuclear accident that it was used as housing for Fukushima workers back into… a training center for elite athletes. Just in time for the 2020 Olympics! Elite athetes training in a radiation zone — woo hoo!
including Pax Christi International, sent a petition to the United Nations asking for assistance in resolving the crises that followed the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, in March
2011. The letter, addressed to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, stresses the importance of relegating the responsibility of the nuclear reactor to a better prepared engineering firm that is able to remove the contaminated water in a safer way with better security measures and better coverage for the Japanese people and the international community. Read the full
Mumbai: Tarik Choho, chief commercial executive officer of the French government-owned nuclear engineering company Areva SA, is also the lead negotiator in the company’s discussions with the Indian government-owned Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd (NPCIL) to construct the 9,900 MW nuclear power project at Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra. In an interview last week, Choho countered the claim of anti-nuclear power activists that the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) technology is unproven, arguing that it has received approval from regulators of countries such as France, the UK, China and Finland. Edited excerpts:
What is a current status of your negotiation with NPCIL? When do you hope to conclude negotiations?
We would like to conclude our negotiations as soon as possible. There are some gaps in expectations and we are trying to plug them as soon as possible but can give no time frame. However, if NPCIL wants to achieve its stated goal of operationalizing the plant by 2021, then we should conclude our talks by the end of this year or, at most, by early next year.
On Thursday, the secretary of department of atomic energy (DAE), R.K. Sinha, said in a public forum that when Jaitapur project becomes operational in 2020-21, the cost of the power produced should not exceed more than Rs.6.50 per unit. Is this achievable?
A number of factors are involved in the final cost of the output from Jaitapur project. Our component is going to be just 40% of the total scope of the project. When we agreed to provide technology to build the plant in 2010, the price of power generated from the Jaitapur power plant was expected to be around Rs.4 per unit. Now we are talking of something around Rs.6.50 per unit, which means a number of things have changed and we have to factor in all those changes in our negotiations.
We are also hearing of some numbers such as Rs.9 per unit from people in DAE and NPCIL, so we first need to understand where these numbers are coming from, what assumptions lie behind these numbers and then work out a mutually agreeable solution. I believe, though, the final number will be somewhere between Rs.9 per unit and Rs.6.5 per unit.
We are also trying to source a lot of work from Indian companies to reduce costs and build indigenous capacities to maintain the plant that has a life of around 60 years or more.
Is the Indian civil nuclear liability law the reason behind protracted negotiations?
It is one of the reasons but not the only one. Since the Fukushima accident, one has had to do rethink on how to maintain safety at nuclear power plants. Besides, one also has to consider the exchange rate between the euro and Indian rupee that has altered unfavourably.
Anti-nuclear activists say that not a single EPR is currently operational in the world; reactors in France and Finland are yet to be commissioned. France is trying to sell India unproven technology. What’s your take?
EPR belongs to G3, or third-generation, reactor and the technology which has gone into EPR has evolved from earlier generation reactors, so it is not a completely new product and Areva has built and is operating 98 nuclear reactors all over the world. Besides, this design of EPR has been approved by regulators in France, Finland, the UK and China and currently we are in process of getting safety clearance from the US regulator. All these regulators have approved the EPR design only after going threadbare into the issues related to safety.
Which are the other countries that have opted for EPR technology?
You might be aware that we recently concluded an agreement to build two EPRs in the UK. We will be building two more EPRs in China and we have also won a contract to build a nuclear power plant in Turkey and negotiations are on in the case of Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Brazil.
How much exposure will French financial institutions have in the Jaitapur project?
It is completely between NPCIL and financial institutions which have presence in France. We are just playing the role of a facilitator.
WASHINGTON–Countries that are set on generating nuclear power would be well advised to think first about how they intend to dispose of the nuclear waste.
So says Allison Macfarlane, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“I encourage countries that are just embarking on nuclear power to make sure that they have a plan for disposal, before they turn on the reactor,” Macfarlane said, noting that Japan has been grappling with this issue for many years.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Asahi Shimbun, she discussed the NRC’s continuing efforts to craft regulations to ensure the safety of the nuclear power industry in the United States.
Macfarlane also discussed changes in nuclear energy regulation since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, prospects for international cooperation on nuclear energy and the NRC’s ability to remain independent while maintaining a functional relationship with the industry.
Excerpts of the interview follow:
* * *
Question: In Japan, all nuclear reactors are offline now. And some politicians, like former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, say it is irresponsible to restart the nuclear power plants without having a plan for final disposal of nuclear waste. What do you think of that argument?
Answer: I encourage countries that are just embarking on nuclear power to make sure that they have a plan for disposal, before they turn on the reactor.
Because, I think if you look at the history and experience of countries that didn’t have that plan in place, which is most countries with nuclear power reactors, it hasn’t been an easy path to a solution.
Q: How about in the case of Japan?
A: I think Japan has been wrestling with this question for a long time.
Q: On the issue of final disposal, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future reviewed the policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle and recommended a new plan. It proposed that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) start a new initiative to explore the creation of one or more multinational spent fuel storage disposal facilities. As a member of the blue ribbon panel, could you comment on that?
A: I think the Blue Ribbon Commission did a good job. The idea of multinational repositories has been thought about for many, many years, and not succeeded. That’s not to say it can’t, but it’s not so easy. It’s not easy to get one, just in one’s own country.
Q: But you still believe it is an option that should be further explored?
A: I think all options should be on the table.
Q: As stated in the Blue Ribbon Commission report, this kind of attempt should be explored with active U.S. participation. Is that correct?
A: It depends. I think what will probably work better, just my own personal view, is a regional repository, not a global one.
Q: Like in Asia or other regions?
A: Some place. I’m not sure where. Perhaps several smaller countries that share a nuclear plant might get together.
Q: How about Northeast Asia?
A: Maybe. But, it might be difficult. I don’t know.
Q: With regard to plutonium, the Japanese government, as you know, maintains its policy of spent fuel reprocessing in spite of its excess plutonium stockpiles. What do you think of the continuity of this policy, from a global and regional nonproliferation perspective?
A: It’s up to Japan what to do. I just would remind people that reprocessing is a management choice in dealing with spent fuel. It’s not a solution to the waste problem because you still need a repository. France is the prime example. They are in the process, right now, of a national debate on the siting of a repository.
Q: How about from the view of nonproliferation?
A: You know, separated plutonium is certainly an issue, in terms of nonproliferation. It’s a concern. It’s a concern for state and non-state actors.
Q: Personally, I believe that Japan will never try to develop nuclear bombs. But is it still a concern?
A: One also always has to be concerned about non-state actors. Japan is a country that has experienced terrorist attacks by Aum Shinrikyo cult members. We aren’t immune to these kinds of situations.
Q: With regard to final disposal issues, what is your perspective on sites for final disposal of nuclear waste? Do you think a geological repository is the safest avenue?
A: I think that geologic repositories are the solution to the problem of high-level waste, yes.
Q: Why?
A: We don’t have a lot of good alternatives. This is an international consensus; this isn’t anything surprising. The alternatives that have been discussed–shoot it out into outer space? There’s a one-word response to that: “Challenger.”
The Challenger Space Shuttle experienced a catastrophic explosion on the way up. We don’t want that.
Put it in deep seabeds, international waters? There are international treaties against dumping radioactive material in international water, so that’s not going to happen.
So, what else are you going to do with it? This idea of transmutation, you still end up with radionuclides that have half-lives on the order of 30 years. That means you need hundreds of years of storage.
You can’t eliminate the material, so you need to remove it from the environment near humans. And the best way to do that is with some deep-mined geologic repository.
Let me tell you my personal view on this. We have a choice. It’s very simple. We either leave the stuff above ground for hundreds of years, or we put it below ground.
If we leave it above ground, we have absolutely no guarantees that somebody is going to be there and change it and take care of it for 10,000 years. So, there is a high likelihood that it will get into the environment at some point in time.
If we put it underground, we have reduced the uncertainty that that will happen. That’s our choice.
Q: OK. But, you can’t say that a geological repository is safe, can you?
A: You probably can’t say that anything is 100 percent safe. Drinking a bottle of water is not 100 percent safe. But, you can say it’s “safer” than leaving spent nuclear fuel above ground forever.
Fukushima Samurai – The Story of Identity is a powerful series by photographer Noriko Takasugi that captures portraits of Japanese men upholding a 1,000-year-old samurai tradition. Back in 2011, when the cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami hit Fukushima Prefecture, many people lost their homes and were forced to abandon their city, but as proven by these strong men, they did not lose their historical heritage or sense of culture.
Takasugi captures brave, patriotic men who have opted to head back into the contaminated areas only a few months after the devastating disaster to maintain their annual celebration of samurai culture at the Soma Nomaoi festival. Takasugi says, “Having spent a month with the local people between summer and autumn 2012, I believe Soma Nomaoi is not just an event but an embodiment of their identity and fight for survival. This unique sense of identity represents not only how, but why, they live.”
Published: December 4th, 2013 at 10:11 am ET
By ENENews
EXSKF, Nov. 28, 2013: The 33rd Ministry of Justice human rights essay contest for junior high school students has been won by a student in Miyagi Prefecture who wrote not buying Fukushima’s peaches because of radiation fear was the same as him being “discriminated” against by his classmate for being a Chinese national. Refusing the Fukushima produce because of radiation fear is tantamount to racial discrimination, according to the student and the Ministry of Justice who selected his essay as the best of the best this year. […] Not buying Fukushima produce, as the government tells you to? You’re racist […]
Japan Times, Dec. 3, 2013: With the contentious state secrets bill slated to clear the Upper House this week, citizens have been holding daily protests in front of the Diet building, denouncing the law as emblematic of the “rise of fascism.” […] Atsuko Ikegami, 45, also decried what she viewed as the state tightening its grip on citizen access to critical information, including about nuclear crises. […] “When those (anti-nuclear) rallies happened, I thought, ‘Well, the Japanese people finally learned to stand up and make their voice heard,’ ” Ikegami said. “But the bill could subject these activists to constant spying by the state […]”
Bloomberg’s William Pesek, Dec. 2, 2013: The entire process has echoes of George Orwell. […] if I grab a beer with a bureaucrat and ask the wrong question, could I end up in handcuffs? Ambiguity reigns. Last week, the No. 2 official in [Prime Minister Shinzo] Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, Shigeru Ishiba, issued a dark warning to anyone like me who might dare to question the bill. In a Nov. 29 blog post, the LDP secretary-general likened any such challenge to “an act of terrorism.” He’s since stood by his ominous statement. [Update: Read Ishiba’s apology here] […] “How can the government respond to growing demands for transparency from a public outraged by the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear accident if it enacts a law that gives it a free hand to classify any information considered too sensitive as a ‘state secret’?” Reporters Without Borders asked in a Nov. 27 statement. Essentially, the group argued, Japan “is making investigative journalism illegal […]
but not until air quality scientists from Norway had a chance to rake the organization over the coals a bit.
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