WASHINGTON — For the first time in decades, the United States got more electricity from renewable sources than nuclear power in March and April.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said Thursday that electricity production from utility-scale renewable sources exceeded nuclear generation in the most recent months for which data is available. That’s the first time renewable sources have outpaced nuclear since 1984.
The growth in renewables was fueled by scores of new wind turbines and solar farms, as well as recent increases in hydroelectric power as a result of heavy snow and rain in Western states last winter. More than 60 per cent of all utility-scale electricity generating capacity that came online last year was from wind and solar.
In contrast, the pace of construction of new nuclear reactors has slowed in recent decades amid soaring costs and growing public opposition. Nearly all nuclear plants now in use began operation between 1970 and 1990, with utilities starting to retire some of their older reactors.
Still, experts predict output from the nation’s nuclear plants will still outpace renewables for the full year, due to such seasonal variation as less water flowing through dams in the drier summer months. Also, nuclear plants tend to undergo maintenance during spring and fall months, when overall electricity demand is lower than in summer or winter.
Despite the growth in renewables, the U.S. still gets nearly two-thirds of its electricity from burning fossil fuels, primarily natural gas and coal. Nuclear and renewables account for roughly equal shares of the rest, each accounting for less than 20 per cent of total output.
FUKUSHIMA – Blanket radiation checks on rice produced in nuclear disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture have come under debate because no rice with radiation exceeding the safety limit has been found in recent years.
Some people, including producers, in the prefecture call for continuing the current system because there are consumers who still avoid Fukushima produce. But the blanket checks are costly and require a lot of manpower.
The prefectural government hopes to decide by year-end whether to change the radiation checks, starting with rice that will be harvested next year, officials said.
The blanket checks were introduced after many parts of the prefecture were contaminated with radioactive substances released because of the 2011 nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant.
Fukushima rice is put through radiation checks bag by bag before shipment. The safety limit is set at 100 becquerels per 1 kg of rice.
Rice that pass the checks have certification labels attached to the bags before being put through distribution channels.
According to Fukushima officials, the total amount of rice harvested last year and checked by the end of September this year reached 10.26 million bags.
To cover the expenses, the prefectural government collects ¥5 billion from Tepco each year. Some ¥500 million to ¥600 million in personnel expenses are covered with state subsidies.
The prefecture conducted radiation checks on a total of 53.13 million bags of rice harvested between 2012-2016. Total costs reached ¥30.5 billion.
The blanket check system began with the 2012 rice. At that time, 71 of the 867 bags checked exceeded the safety limit. But no such rice was detected at all for the 2014-2016 rice.
As of Oct. 25 this year, radiation levels stood below the minimum detectable level of 25 becquerels for 99.99 percent of the 2016 rice that underwent the checks.
The absence of above-limit rice has led some people to question the blanket check system. The continuance of the system may be making the unintended effect of fueling consumer concern about Fukushima rice, one critic said.
To discuss the fate of the blanket system, the prefecture set up a group with members of agricultural and consumer organizations in July this year.
The group will examine the issue based on opinions from more than 300 local farmers and seven wholesale companies in the Tokyo metropolitan area. It will also conduct an internet survey of 2,000 consumers nationwide.
Hisao Tomita, a farmer working in the city of Fukushima, called for the continuance of the current system even though it is burdensome also to producers.
As long as Fukushima rice is affected by negative rumors, radiation checks should be maintained even if they have to be scaled back, he said.
BY JAMES SPENCER AND GREG WETSONE / Published: November 5, 2017
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry recently proposed that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission intervene in state electricity markets to establish new rules that would force electricity consumers to subsidize uneconomical coal and nuclear power plants.
The proposal is theoretically intended to promote “resiliency” of the electrical grid, but it is a thinly disguised effort to help politically connected interests at the expense of electricity ratepayers.
In its proposal, the Department of Energy gave FERC only 60 days to decide whether to upend the nation’s electricity markets. If FERC decides to enact the government’s proposal, it would undermine 25 years of progress in the development of competitive electricity markets that save consumers money. As the federal government intervenes to pick winners and losers, it undermines the growth of two thriving industries that have been huge drivers for economic growth both in Pennsylvania and across America — renewable energy and natural gas.
The energy department’s recent study of the nation’s grid undermines the notion that we need this new government intervention to address concerns about resilience.
The study failed to document any way that either coal or nuclear power could help. In fact, in extreme circumstances where the grid has been tested, the on-site coal and nuclear fuel that the department now says is necessary has proved to be a vulnerability. During the 2014 polar vortex, coal piles froze. During Hurricane Harvey, coal units went down in the Houston, Texas, area due to flooding. Tsunami floods in 2011 led to the shutdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan and the release of dangerous radiation. Facilities that require continuous access to cooling water to avert catastrophic accidents are not resilient to stress.
There is no evidence that on-site fuel supply, as called for by the energy department, will reduce electricity outages. A recent study by the Rhodium Group, a New York economic analysis agency, concluded that less than .00007 percent of power outages are related to fuel supply issues. In those rare cases in which fuel supply has been an issue, it has been at coal plants.
The department’s proposal seeks to override state authority by imposing a guaranteed cost recovery mechanism for existing and potentially new coal and nuclear units. Every eligible unit would receive full cost recovery whether it is needed by the system operator or wanted by customers. That means consumers would be saddled with billions of dollars in unnecessary electricity charges.
Fortune 500 companies and small businesses choose the kind of electricity they want to meet requirements for energy, lower costs, critical functions and sustainability. If finalized, this rule would force businesses to pay more for power they don’t want.
The decision on whether to upend the current electricity marketplace with new subsidies for coal and nuclear power will ultimately rest with FERC, which has a majority of Trump administration appointees, none of whom in the past have supported this sort of interference in state and regional electricity markets.
A broad coalition stands together in support of a competitive electricity marketplace, including groups as diverse as the American Petroleum Institute and the American Council on Renewable Energy. It is our hope that the bipartisan commissioners at FERC will rule against this heavy-handed distortion of the electricity marketplace, and avoid new bureaucratic initiatives that increase prices.
Tilman A. Ruff, a long-time student of radiation effects on human health, demonstrates how these effects have been underestimated. He offers a detailed explanation of what exposure to different doses of radiation, such as from the Fukushima accident, means for cancer rates and effects on DNA. Timothy A. Mousseau and Anders P. Møller, who have undertaken field research for many years on the genetic effects of the Chernobyl accident, look at how nuclear plant accidents affect the health of humans and other species. Combined, these two chapters offer a potent, often overlooked, argument against the nuclear option.
The Fukushima nuclear disaster of March 2011 has raised serious questions about nuclear power.
In our work since Fukushima, we have tried to answer two questions: What is the current status of nuclear energy in Asia? Does nuclear power have a future in East Asia? By answering those questions, we hope to contribute to the global debate about nuclear energy. To be sure, questions of such magnitude can rarely be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Decisions on energy are made at the national level, on the basis of both objective factors such as cost-effectiveness and notions of the national interest, and less objective ones, such as influence peddled by power plant operators, corruption, and bureaucratic self-interest. Nevertheless, by closely examining the status and probable future of nuclear power plants in specific countries, the authors of this volume come up with answers, albeit mostly of a negative nature. At the start of 2017, 450 nuclear power reactors were operating in 30 countries, with 60 more under construction in 15 countries. Thirty-four reactors are under construction in Asia, including 21 in China. The “Fukushima effect” has clearly had an impact in Asia, however. In China, no new construction took place between 2011 and 2014, although since then there has been a slow increase of licenses. Nevertheless, the full story of China’s embrace of nuclear power, as told in this volume by M. V. Ramana and Amy King, is that the onset of a ‘new normal’ in economic growth objectives and structural changes in the economy have led to a declining demand for electricity and the likelihood of far less interest in nuclear power than had once been predicted. On the other hand, in South Korea, which relies on nuclear power for about 31 per cent of its electricity, Lauren Richardson’s chapter which is presented here, shows that the Fukushima disaster and strong civil society opposition have not deflected official support of nuclear power, not only for electricity but also for export.
Meanwhile, the 10 countries that comprise the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are divided about pursuing the nuclear-energy option, with Vietnam deciding to opt out in 2016, and Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines at various stages of evaluation. Even so, the chapter by Mely Caballero-Anthony and Julius Cesar I. Trajano shows that only about 1 per cent of ASEAN’s electricity will derive from nuclear power in 2035, whereas renewables will account for 22 per cent.
How viable nuclear power is finally judged to be will depend primarily on the decisions of governments, but increasingly also on civil society. ASEAN has established a normative framework that emphasises safety, waste disposal, and non-proliferation; and civil society everywhere is increasingly alert to the dangers and costs, above-board and hidden, of nuclear power plants. As Doug Koplow’s chapter shows, for example, the nuclear industry, like fossil fuels, benefits from many kinds of government subsidies that distort the energy market against renewable energy sources. Costs are politically as well as environmentally consequential: even if construction begins on a nuclear power plant, it will be cancelled and construction abandoned in 12 per cent of all cases. It is important to note that of the 754 reactors constructed since 1951, 90 have been abandoned and 143 plants permanently shut down. When construction does proceed, it takes between five to 10 years on average for completion (338 of 609), with some 15 per cent taking more than 10 years. And, in the end, old and abandoned reactors will have to be decommissioned, as Kalman A. Robertson discusses, with costs that may double over the next 15–20 years. As Robertson points out, the problem of safe disposal of radioactive waste and the health risk posed by radiation released during decommissioning should be factored into the total price that cleanup crews and taxpayers will eventually pay. On top of all that, there isn’t much experience worldwide in decommissioning. Then there is the issue of trust in those who make decisions. Tatsujiro Suzuki’s chapter shows that in Japan, the chief legacy of Fukushima is public loss of trust in Japanese decision-makers and in the nuclear industry itself. Several years after the accident, costs continue to mount, a fact that pro-nuclear advocates elsewhere in Asia might want to consider. They also need to consider the issue of transparency for, as Suzuki shows, the nuclear industry has consistently dodged the fairly obvious lessons of Fukushima with regard to costs, nuclear energy’s future, and communication with the public. Similarly, in Taiwan, as Gloria Kuang-Jung Hsu’s study shows, transparency about safety issues has been notoriously lacking, and a history of efforts to obfuscate nuclear weapon ambitions means that constant vigilance over nuclear regulators is necessary. Of course, if public opinion does not count in a country—say, in China and Vietnam—the issue of trust is muted. But we know that, even there, people are uneasy about having a nuclear power plant in their backyard. Issues of hidden cost and public trust are also embedded in the biological and health threat posed by nuclear energy. Tilman A. Ruff, a long-time student of radiation effects on human health, demonstrates how these effects have been underestimated. He offers a detailed explanation of what exposure to different doses of radiation, such as from the Fukushima accident, means for cancer rates and effects on DNA. Timothy A. Mousseau and Anders P. Møller, who have undertaken field research for many years on the genetic effects of the Chernobyl accident, look at how nuclear plant accidents affect the health of humans and other species. Combined, these two chapters offer a potent, often overlooked, argument against the nuclear option.
This introduction by Mel Gurtov and the following article by Lauren Richardson are adapted from Peter Van Ness and Mel Gurtov, eds., Learning From Fukushima. Nuclear Power in East Asia. Australian University Press.
***
Protesting Policy and Practice in South Korea’s Nuclear Energy Industry
by Lauren Richardson
Japan’s March 2011 (3/11) crisis spurred a revival in anti-nuclear activism around the globe. This was certainly the case in South Korea, Japan’s nearest neighbour, which was subject to some of the nuclear fallout from Fukushima. This chapter examines the puzzle of why the South Korean anti-nuclear movement was apparently powerless in the face of its government’s decision to ratchet up nuclear energy production post-3/11. It argues that its limitations stem from the highly insulated nature of energy policymaking in South Korea; the enmeshing of nuclear power in the government’s ‘Green Growth Strategy’; and certain tactical insufficiencies within the movement itself. Notwithstanding these limitations, the movement has successfully capitalised upon more recent domestic shocks to the nuclear power industry, resulting in a slight, yet significant, curtailing of the South Korean government’s nuclear energy capacity targets.
Introduction
The March 2011 (3/11) earthquake in northeastern Japan and ensuing nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had profound reverberations for the global nuclear industry. In the wake of the disaster, countries as far-reaching as Germany and Switzerland brought their nuclear energy programs to a complete halt. Closer to the source of the calamity, the Taipei government initiated a gradual phase-out of its nuclear reactors and suspended plans for the construction of a fourth nuclear plant. These policy shifts were precipitated by nationwide anti-nuclear demonstrations that erupted in response to the Fukushima crisis. Somewhat surprising, however, was that Japan’s nearest neighbour, South Korea, reacted to the complete contrary. Despite the fact that Korean territory was subject to some of the nuclear fallout from Fukushima (see Hong et al. 2012), the South Korean government proceeded to ratchet up its nuclear energy program post-3/11 and pushed ahead with plans to become a major exporter of nuclear technology. Indeed, within only months of Japan’s disaster, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak reiterated his administration’s goal of doubling the number of domestic reactors, and reaffirmed nuclear technology as a primary export focus.
This response was puzzling for a number of reasons. First, similarly to the cases of Germany, Switzerland, and Taiwan, the South Korean anti-nuclear movement expanded to unprecedented proportions in the aftermath of Fukushima, yet ostensibly to no avail. This expansion was driven by a marked decline in public trust in the safety of nuclear reactors, and witnessed activists mounting a formidable challenge to nuclear energy policy. Moreover, since overthrowing the nation’s long-standing authoritarian regime in the late 1980s, South Korean civil society has evolved to wield powerful influence across a variety of policy domains; activists, though, were apparently powerless in the face of their government’s decision to increase nuclear-generating capacity. This is somewhat perplexing given that, in the very same year of the Fukushima calamity, South Korean civic groups contributed to undercutting a proposed security accord between Seoul and Tokyo, and ‘comfort women’ victims compelled their foreign ministry to pursue compensation from Japan more vigorously on their behalf―to name but two realms of policy influence.
Why then was South Korea’s anti-nuclear movement unable to subvert the South Korean government’s nuclear energy policy?
In 2010, when some members of Congress expressed concerns about a Russian state-owned company taking control of 20 percent of the U.S. uranium-producing capacity, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission assured Congress that no uranium would leave the U.S. because the Russian company, Rosatom, did not have an export license for nuclear material.
Yet in 2012, the Obama administration approved the export of yellowcake uranium — the raw material needed to make nuclear weapons — from Russian-owned mines in Wyoming to Canada. According to a report in The Hill, 25 percent of the uranium was later shipped to Europe and Asia.
How did it happen? It was just this easy: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted an amendment to the existing export license of a Kentucky trucking firm, RSB Logistics Services. The now Russian-owned mining firm, Uranium One, was added to the trucking company’s list of clients whose uranium could be shipped to Canada.
The exports continued for two years.
Rosatom purchased a majority stake in Uranium One, then a Canadian mining firm, in 2010, and by 2013 had acquired 100 percent of the company. Both the purchase of the company and the exports were legal, approved by multiple agencies of the U.S. government.
But why?
The answer to that question is now the subject of investigations by at least three committees of Congress.
Some of the mysteries to be solved include:
Why didn’t the FBI tell anybody about evidence gathered in 2009 that Rosatom’s main U.S. executive was involved in a racketeering scheme — bribery, kickbacks, money laundering and extortion — and why did the Department of Justice require the FBI’s informant in the Russian nuclear industry to sign a non-disclosure agreement?
What role, if any, did $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation by investors in Uranium One play in the State Department’s decision to sign off on the deal while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State?
Why did a Kremlin-connected investment bank that was promoting Uranium One stock agree to pay former president Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech in Moscow?
Did political pressure or concealed information affect any federal department or agency’s decision to approve Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One or its later exports?
Why did the Commerce Department remove Rosatom from a list of companies that needed special approval to export nuclear or other sensitive technology or material in May, 2011?
Did bribery or racketeering compromise the negotiations or terms of the New Strategic Arms Reduction treaty between the U.S. and the Russian Federation, which went into force in February, 2011?
The Senate Judiciary, House Oversight and House Intelligence committees have just announced new investigations that may find the answers to some of these questions. The FBI’s confidential informant has been granted permission to testify about what he witnessed, including actions that his attorney, Victoria Toensing, described to Fox Business Network as “all these bribery payments.”
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has called for a special counsel to be appointed to investigate crimes that may have been committed in connection with Uranium One.
We don’t yet know whether the decisions to allow an unfriendly government to own, control and export U.S. uranium were made as part of an unsuccessful attempt to improve relations with Russia, or whether the decisions were improperly, or illegally, influenced by payments and politics.
But the American people deserve a full, public accounting of the actions of all the officials who were responsible for a breach of national security that may have made our country, and our allies, permanently less safe.
By SETH TUPPER – Associated Press – Saturday, November 4, 2017
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) – Bob Hicks was spending a cold December night in his barracks 53 years ago at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City when the phone rang.
It was the chief of his missile maintenance team, who dispatched Hicks to an incident at an underground silo.
“The warhead,” the team chief said, “is no longer on top of the missile.”
Hicks eventually learned that a screwdriver used by another airman caused a short circuit that resulted in an explosion. The blast popped off the missile’s cone -the part containing the thermonuclear warhead -and sent it on a 75-foot fall to the bottom of the 80-foot-deep silo.
The courageous actions Hicks took that night and over the next several days were not publicized. The accident was not disclosed to the public until years later, when a government report on accidents with nuclear weapons included seven sentences about it. The report listed the accident as the nation’s first involving a Minuteman missile.
Fifty-three years after he responded to a nuclear-missile accident near Vale, Bob Hicks returned to the site of the former accident and also visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site near Wall.
Further details were reported publicly for the first time, drawn from documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the Rapid City Journal and others, and from Hicks himself, who is now 73 years old and living in Cibolo, Texas.
When Hicks was sent to the accident on Dec. 5, 1964, he was only 20 years old, and the cryptic statement from his team chief was the only information he was given.
“That was enough to cause me to get dressed pretty quickly,” Hicks recalled.
The trouble began earlier that day when two other airmen were sent to a silo named Lima-02. It was 60 miles northwest of Ellsworth Air Force Base and 3 miles southeast of the tiny community of Vale, on the plains outside the Black Hills.
Lima-02 was one of 150 steel-and-concrete silos that had been planted underground and filled with Minuteman missiles during the previous several years in western South Dakota, where the missiles were scattered across 13,500 square miles. There were hundreds more silos in place or soon to be constructed in North Dakota, Missouri, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska, eventually bringing the nation’s Minuteman fleet to a peak of 1,000.
The original Minuteman missiles, called Minuteman I, were 56 feet tall and weighed 65,000 pounds when loaded with fuel. The missiles were capable of traveling at a top speed of 15,000 miles per hour and could reach the Cold War enemy of the United States, the Soviet Union, within 30 minutes.
Each missile was tipped with a thermonuclear warhead that was many times more powerful than either of the two atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Japan during World War II. One government agency reportedly estimated that the detonation of an early 1960s-era Minuteman warhead over Detroit would have caused 70 square miles of property destruction, 250,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries.
The two airmen who visited the Lima-02 silo on Dec. 5, 1964, were part of a young Air Force missile corps that was responsible for launching and maintaining the missiles. The two airmen’s names are redacted – as are many other names – from an Air Force report that was filed after the accident.
Where did you grow up? The answer to that question has been the most significant information in my (Patricia Hoover’s) medical history.
I spent my first 18 years downriver and downwind from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. In the mid-1940s, when Hanford’s eight nuclear reactors went on line, my family, neighbors and those around us found with growing alarm and confusion that our formerly healthy lives were deteriorating. My community was struck with high rates of thyroid cancers, miscarriages, birth defects and many other anomalous medical conditions.
It took more than 40 years to verify our suspicion that the federal government had contaminated the air, water and food chain throughout the Northwest. In 1986, thousands of activists were finally granted a Freedom of Information Act request. Despite repeated government denial, 19,000 pages of operating documents confirmed that hundreds of thousands of curies of radiation were released from Hanford over years of operation.
The revelation finally explained numerous medical events that took place early in my life. It answered why men in lab coats came to my junior high health class in Hermiston, Oregon, to palpate the throat of every student as if it were part of the curriculum. I understood why my thyroid gland had quit functioning at age 11 and developed a tumor the size of a grapefruit 18 years later. I no longer considered my mysteriously fractured ankle and my classmates’ numerous broken bones to be normal childhood mishaps.
If you lived anywhere near one of America’s eight nuclear facilities – Richland, Washington; Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Savannah River, South Carolina; Paducah, Kentucky; Denver; Idaho Falls, Idaho; or Amarillo, Texas – you may well have had similar experiences.
One of the few agencies that monitor and hold these nuclear sites accountable for rule-abiding operations is under attack internally. In a recently exposed letter, Sean Sullivan, the chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, urges the Trump administration to disband the board or drastically slash its budget.
This independent board has acted as an important watchdog over the nuclear weapons complex since Congress chartered it in 1988, and it is a transparent source of public information. It provides weekly reports, including contractors’ mistakes that may jeopardize the safety of 40,000 workers and nearby communities, and functions as an essential check and balance between the government and the nuclear industry. Sullivan’s action, undertaken without the knowledge of the four other board members, reflects the dangerous pattern of secrecy by which our nuclear weapons facilities have always operated.
Sullivan has himself stated that the board played a helpful role in protecting public health in its early years. He is, however, mistaken in calling the DNFSB an irrelevant “relic of the Cold War.” We live under a president who wants to see drastic growth in our nuclear stockpile. On top of his regular issuance of bombastic threats, the president has unilateral discretion over the arsenal’s use.
We are at the most critical moment in nuclear history since the Cuban missile crisis, and now is prime time to strengthen, rather than abolish, agencies like the DNFSB.
My downwinder medical history, and those of thousands of other Americans who grew up near nuclear plants, is evidence of the debilitating health effects of radiation. My experiences speak clearly to the absolute need to keep the DNFSB engaged in its significant role, regulating safe operations at all eight U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.
In recognition of this necessity, we encourage you to call your senators and your representatives. Urge them to speak up in Congress and oppose disbanding the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. This independent nuclear watchdog must continue its vital work.
Patricia Hoover, of Eugene, Oregon, is a Hanford Downwinder and member of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND). Susan Cundiff, of Eugene, serves on the national board of WAND and leads the Oregon chapter.
Across the region, half-finished projects stand as emblems of bungled industry efforts. At its core, this history has been defined by secrecy, miscalculations and decisions made by the few at the expense of ordinary people.
By Caroline Peyton And Special to The State’s editorial board
November 03, 2017 1:16 PM
Columbia, SC
The South has more nuclear reactors than any other region, and South Carolina is the nuclear epicenter. Home to the Savannah River Site and some of the first commercial reactors and deriving 50 percent of its electricity from nuclear power today, the Palmetto State has a devotion to the atom that few can match. The cancellation of the V.C. Summer expansion project testifies to innumerable missteps, but our collective amnesia has missed the bigger story: The South’s long, messy nuclear history is a catalog of modest successes and epic failures.
Sadly, the V.C. Summer project shutdown is nothing new for the South. It has happened at least 22 times since the 1970s. Some plants existed merely as blueprints, while others were canceled mid-construction. Across the region, half-finished projects stand as emblems of bungled industry efforts. At its core, this history has been defined by secrecy, miscalculations and decisions made by the few at the expense of ordinary people.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Southern politicians envisioned regional transformation through atomic energy; the South would become an “energy breadbasket.” A network of elected officials, utility companies and industry lobbyists sold these projects as job creators, an endless source of cheap energy and boons to the rural communities located near reactors.
This building spree resulted in more than 40 commercial nuclear reactors operating at 23 sites and earned the South industry admiration for its “nuclear friendly citizenry.” Yet those reactors represent only a fraction of what could have been; approximately 35 additional reactors were proposed for Southern states, including a half-dozen where construction had started and billions of dollars were spent on the nuclear road to nowhere.
So what happened to those ill-fated reactors? By the late 1970s, projections for energy demands declined, construction costs didn’t match initial projections, and the accident at Three Mile Island soured public opinion. Local concerns mattered too.
In South Carolina, the failed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Barnwell County, along with the staggering influx of radioactive waste, helped spawn the South’s largest anti-nuclear protest. Protestors flocked to Barnwell denouncing South Carolina’s role as the nation’s trash can.
In Mississippi, infuriated ratepayers gathered outside the Grand Gulf nuclear plant and burned their utility bills. Other plants were plagued with serious safety issues and community opposition, like the now-operating Waterford 3 reactor in Louisiana.
The most notorious episode occurred with the Tennessee Valley Authority, where a corporation fought landowners in Hartsville, Tenn., to build the “world’s largest nuclear plant” — only to pull the plug. What remains in this bucolic setting are half-finished remnants and a lone cooling tower, fittingly called a “used beer can” by residents. TVA ultimately canceled 10 reactors after spending billions, which tarnished its legacy, permanently marred local landscapes and exacerbated a climate of distrust.
The broad outlines of the V.C. Summer fiasco could have been ripped from any headline in the late 1970s.
Today, the cavernous structures attract photographers seeking dystopian backdrops. Mostly though, they continue to rust away, a symbol of a beleaguered industry that has never resolved fundamental problems — namely projects mired in secrecy and unrealistic cost estimates.
Despite industry reforms since the 1970s, V.C. Summer’s collapse sounds familiar to those well-acquainted with the region’s nuclear past. Bad legislation, the Base Load Review Act of 2007, placed the cost burden upon the ratepayers and limited SCE&G and SCANA’s accountability. A secret report, along with internal emails between SCE&G and state-owned Santee Cooper, reveal a troubling array of warning signs and uncorrected problems.
While it’s true that there were new problems here, such as the Westinghouse bankruptcy, the broad outlines of the V.C. Summer fiasco could have been ripped from any headline in the late 1970s. In the case of those canceled projects, no genuine attempt at restitution was made. Those abandoned plants offer guidance for today.
Legislators and public service commissions must prioritize ratepayers first, better understand the risks involved in large-scale reactor projects and let history inform their decisions as well. If the industry wants to retain the South’s “nuclear-friendly citizenry,” it, too, must confront the nuclear ghosts of its past, and reject the hubris, secrecy and overblown projections that have doomed so many plans and, in some cases, left Southerners with little more than nuclear ruins.
Dr. Peyton wrote her dissertation at USC on the South’s nuclear history
In a recent Japanese television publication (Our Planet TV), a presentation of the effects in Chernobyl was made in Japanese and Belorussian with an English Power Point presentation. The presentation was from Victor Kondradovich from the Minsk Municipal Onocological Centre in Belarus.
The findings of this presentation shows the manipulation of the nuclear industry when it comes to reporting health issues after nuclear accidents. As many nuclear reactor and processing countries are trying to ease the allowable amounts of radioactivity we are allowed whilst playing down reported health effects.
In Japan we see the nuclear industry fight back concerning claims of thyroid cancers using all the tools in their armories. Meanwhile, dedicated health professionals, activist groups and even a Nobel prize winner Professor Masukawa has challenged the Japanese Governments version of events and consequences.
For further investigation of other health and mortality effects see this presentation from an NGO from Ukraine about the high mortality of the evacuated people from near the Chernobyl nuclear plant (Pypriat) who evacuated to Kiev;
On Sunday the 27 April 2013 in a little room somewhere off Grays Inn road London, a meeting took place. In this meeting was Ms Tamara Krasitskava of the Ukrainian NGO “Zemlyaki”.
In this meeting she quoted that only 40 percent of the evacuees that moved to Kiev after the disaster are alive today! And lets leave the statistics out of it for a moment and we find out of 44,000 evacuated to Kiev only 19,000 are left alive. None made it much passed 40 years old
…..3.2 million with health effects and this includes 1 million children…
T .Kraisitskava
“….I was told to not talk of the results from Belarus as the UK public were not allowed to know the results we were finding!….”
Dr. Lam’s disclosure seems to throw into serious question the validity of the design basis of all planned and existing nuclear waste storage systems in California and elsewhere within the USA.
European design casks that are more proven and can that be checked for defects were deemed to not be a solution by the NRA because of the time and expense of licensing and infrastructure requirements.
This is number four of four excerpts, posted as a public service by EON, from the Slo-Span.org video coverage of the Oct. 19, 2017 meeting of the Diablo Canyon Independent Safety Committee.
Seoul — North Korea’s state media on Thursday dismissed as “misinformation” a recent media report that the North’s sixth nuclear test killed many people.
Japanese broadcaster TV Asahi reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the issue, that North Korea’s nuclear test site collapsed after Pyongyang’s sixth atomic test in September, possibly killing more than 200 people.
The North’s official KCNA said it was a “false report” intended to slander the country and its advances in nuclear development.
PARIS (Reuters) – France will detail at the end of 2018 how many nuclear reactors will close to meet a target on reducing atomic energy, Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot told French daily Le Monde on Saturday.
France aims to cut the share of atomic energy in power generation to 50 percent by 2025 from 75 percent now.
Nuclear plant closures represent a touchy topic, as the sector employs thousands of people and renewable energy alternatives struggle to grow fast enough to ensure energy needs are fulfilled.
According to France’s National Council of Industry, the nuclear sector supports about 220,000 jobs, directly and indirectly.
Hulot will lay out his so-called “green deal” on energy transition in the first half of 2018, he told Le Monde in an interview.
“In order to reduce to 50 percent the share of nuclear power, we will have to close a number of reactors,” he said, adding that he would detail the exact figure under a multi-year plan to be presented at end of 2018.
Hulot said in July that as many as 17 of France’s 58 reactors may need to close to meet the target, but he did not stick to that forecast in later comments on the subject.
The minister said he would take into account the need to avoid any electricity shortage during that transition, given the country’s dependence on nuclear power.
France briefly faced the prospect of power cuts last winter, as power supply had then been hit by the closure of a third of country’s ageing nuclear reactors for security checks.
Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Stephen Powell
The announcement this month that 31 Hanford workers were contaminated from a June 8 incident is raising more questions about how government agencies alert the public about the test results of leaks from one of the world’s most polluted sites.
The Department of Energy, which oversees the multibillion-dollar contracts paid to private companies tasked with cleaning up Hanford, alerted the public on June 8 of a plutonium release. Then on Oct. 18, it announced that some 31 workers were contaminated with low levels of radiation following the incident that triggered the “take cover” alarm on June 8 at the 580-square-mile site just outside of Richland.
Initial testing of contractors, who were working with heavy equipment to dismantle part of the line that produced much of this nation’s plutonium, found no contamination in their protective clothing or skin. However, 305 of the employees were later tested. Of those, 31 were found to have low levels of radiation in their systems.
Tom Carpenter, the executive director of watchdog group Hanford Challenge, said the four-month delay in government officials explaining the results of the exposure and testing has become the new norm.
“It’s been a trend at the Hanford site for many years,” Carpenter said. “If news does get released about something that’s not good, it’s often half the story. In many cases, the news is actually released by active workers.”
Carpenter questioned whether DOE officials required the testing of employees or made it voluntary. He also wanted to know why officials only tested workers’ fecal matter rather than doing a full-body count to test for contaminated particles that could have lodged in their lungs.
DOE spokesman Geoff Tyree confirmed the tests were only for those employees who asked for them. Officials did follow up and used the full-body scans, or lung counts, for four employees who requested them.
As part of a follow-up to the fecal scans, known as bioassay tests, officials conducted chest counts on 114 employees and took urine samples from 97 workers. All of those scans, including those of the four who requested lung counts, came back as negative, Tyree said.
“Employee safety remains our No. 1 goal as we encounter and overcome challenges inherent with demolishing what was once one of the most hazardous buildings in the DOE complex,” Tyree said, reading from a prepared statement. “We believe we have taken positive steps to further reduce the possibility of contamination during the remaining demolition work.”
He noted that of the 31 exposed employees, 18 had levels of 0.5 millirems over 50 years. The other 13 had higher doses, some 10 millirems over 50 years. For comparison, the average resident receives about 300 millirems a year from natural background radiation.
The workers’ scans came in “well below the administrative limit of 2,000 millirems per year for contract employees,” Tyree said.
“There was no kind of concern expressed. Initially, they said no worker was exposed,” he said. “That turned out to be not right, but they didn’t change their tune. Their characterization was, ‘This was such a small amount.’ That’s the wrong response. Nobody should have been exposed to plutonium.”
Carpenter said he believes the safety protocols at Hanford have slipped.
“Twenty years ago if this happened at Hanford, the site would have been shut down. Outside inquiries would have opened up. People would have asked, ‘What went wrong? Why and how can we avoid it in the future?’ Now they shut down a couple of days and they go back to work.”
Tyree said employees of CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. began taking down the outer portion of the Plutonium Reclamation facility in November 2016. The building was used to extract plutonium out of waste from previous processes.
Following the June 8 contamination release, CH2M Hill shut down work on the reclamation facility and has not yet restarted. The company plans to take down a portion of the main plutonium processing facility next to the reclamation plant to prevent a wind-tunnel effect between the two buildings that could have contributed to the spread of the radiation.
Tyree said crews previously set up air monitors around the construction site that are designed to pick up contamination levels far below those that would put workers at risk. If they are set off, work stops to determine what’s going on, he said.
But Carpenter noted that the Washington Department of Health tests showed plutonium and americium particles in low levels at the Rattlesnake security barricade, which is 3 miles from the plant where the workers apparently caused the contamination release.
“How did it drift all the way to the highway?” he said.
Carpenter also questioned why the contractors didn’t deploy large tents to contain the dust from the demolition.
“That would have kept any radioactive clouds from coming out,” Carpenter said. “I understand they want to save money. But there are some risks that you don’t trade off.”
Tyree said contractors have responded to the incident by moving employees farther away from the demolition; adding exhausters, which draw contaminated air into the site, where it is filtered; and using dust suppression from ground-based foggers during the work.
Tyree said employee safety remains DOE’s top priority.
Workers produced plutonium for the nation’s top-secret Manhattan Project during World War II. Following the war, Hanford workers produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal during the decadeslong Cold War.
The Hanford Site was decommissioned in 1988 for federal cleanup.
Editors Note: The first two paragraphs were clarified on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2017 to reflect that the Department of Energy did alert the public on June 8 about a plutonium release.
GENEVA (Reuters) – Greenhouse gas emissions are on course to be about 30 percent above the 2030 global target, but there are signs of a move away from fossil fuels that not even U.S. President Donald Trump can stop, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
Trump has announced he will pull out of the Paris climate agreement under which 195 countries pledged to try to keep global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.
An annual U.N. audit of progress toward that goal showed emissions are likely to be 53.0-55.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year by 2030, far above the 42 billion ton threshold for averting the 2 degree rise.
But U.N. Environment chief Erik Solheim hailed signs of progress, with an apparent three-year plateau in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, cement production and other industrial processes, largely due to slower growth in coal use in China and the United States.
“We all know the bad news. In my view however we are at a turning point where the good news is taking precedence from the bad news,” he told an event to launch the report in Geneva.
“We are at a watershed moment where we have stopped the rise in CO2 emissions, there is every reason to believe we can bring them down, and we see great news coming from all over the world every day,” Solheim said by video link from Nairobi.
He said the question he was asked wherever he went was: “What about Donald Trump?”, to which he answered that the momentum was now with private sector efforts to combat climate change which Trump would not be able to stop.
”In all likelihood the United States of America will live up to its commitments not because of the White House but because of the private sector,” he said. “The train is on the right track, but our duty is to speed it up.”
The U.N. says greater efforts will be needed because temperatures are set to rise by 3.0-3.2 degrees Celsius this century. Ministers will work on guidelines for the Paris agreement in Bonn next month.
Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, said climate-fueled hurricanes, floods and drought would rapidly worsen unless ministers committed to keep fossil fuels in the ground.
“Paris was just the starting point,” she said.
”Faster, bolder action is needed. Leaders must emerge in Bonn and use the platform to take stronger action and hold others to account if they fail to live up to their obligations. We can still achieve 1.5 degrees Celsius if we all work together.”
The WHOI research team also compared the radioactive contamination at the Marshall Islands to the contamination found today near Fukushima in Japan in the aftermath of the Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. “In contrast to Fukushima, where cesium is the most abundant radionuclide of concern, in these atolls, the focus should be on plutonium, given its significantly high levels,”
Scientists have found lingering radioactivity in the lagoons of remote Marshall Island atolls in the Pacific Ocean where the United States conducted 66 nuclear weapons tests in the 1940s and 1950s.
Radioactivity levels at Bikini and Enewetak Atolls were extensively studied in the decades after the testing ended, but there has been relatively little work conducted there recently. A team of scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) reported that levels of radioactive cesium and plutonium have decreased since the 1970s, but these elements continue to be released into the Pacific Ocean from seafloor sediments and lagoon waters.
The levels of plutonium are 100 or more times higher in lagoon waters compared to the surrounding Pacific Ocean and about two times higher for a radioactive form of cesium. Despite these enrichments, they do not exceed U.S. and international water quality standards set to protect human health, the scientists reported Oct. 30, 2017, in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
To determine the source of these radionuclides in lagoon waters, the WHOI scientists measured the amounts and flow of radioactive material entering the ocean from groundwater seeping from the islands. They found that groundwater was a relatively low source of radioactivity.
In particular, they found that radioactive groundwater was not leaking much from beneath one suspected potential source: the Runit Dome on the island of Runit—a massive 350-foot-wide concrete lid that covers 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil and debris that were bulldozed into a bomb crater and sealed over. It was constructed in the late 1970s by the U.S. government to contain contaminated waste from the nuclear tests. The bottom of the Runit Dome is not lined and below sea level, so scientists and others have been concerned that tidal action could move water through the buried radioactive material and bring it out to sea.
“The foundations of these island atolls are ancient coral reefs that have the porosity of Swiss cheese, so groundwater and any mobilized radioactive elements can percolate through them quite easily,” said WHOI geochemist Matt Charette. Though that does not seem to be happening now, the scientists advise that the Runit Dome area should be continuously monitored as sea level rises and the dome deteriorates.
Using isotopes of plutonium that act like a fingerprint to pinpoint sources, the WHOI scientists found that the seafloor sediments around Runit Island seem to be contributing about half of the plutonium to the lagoon. “Additional studies examining how radioactive plutonium moves through the environment would help elucidate why this small area is such a large source of radioactivity,” Buesseler said.
The WHOI scientists who conducted the study and wrote the report included Ken Buesseler, Matthew Charette, Steven Pike, Paul Henderson, and Lauren Kipp. They sailed to the islands aboard the research vessel Alucia on an expedition funded by the Dalio Explore Fund.
The team collected sediments from the lagoon with poster tube-sized collectors that were inserted by divers into the seafloor’s sediments, filled with mud, capped. Back in WHOI laboratories, the cores were sliced into layers and analyzed to reveal a buried record of local fallout from the nuclear tests. The scientists also collected and analyzed samples of lagoon waters .
On the islands, they collected groundwater samples from cisterns, wells, beaches, and other sites. They analyzed these samples for the levels of radioactive cesium and plutonium from weapons tests. For the first time on these islands, the scientists also measured isotopes of radium, a naturally occurring radioactive “tracer” that give scientists key information to determine how much and how fast groundwater flows from land into the ocean.
The WHOI research team also compared the radioactive contamination at the Marshall Islands to the contamination found today near Fukushima in Japan in the aftermath of the Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster. “In contrast to Fukushima, where cesium is the most abundant radionuclide of concern, in these atolls, the focus should be on plutonium, given its significantly high levels,” said WHOI radiochemist Ken Buesseler.
The U.S. conducted 66 nuclear weapons tests between 1946 and 1958 at Bikini and Enewetak Atolls, each a ring of low-lying reef islands that surrounds a larger lagoon. Bikini has 26 islands; Enewetak had 42 islands, but three were bombed out of existence. They became known as the western part of the “U.S. Pacific Proving Grounds.”
Bikini and Enewetak are among 29 atolls that make up the Republic of the Marshall Islands, located in the equatorial Pacific, about 2,500 miles west of Hawaii. The collective land area of the thousands of small islands is equivalent to the area of Washington, D.C. but they are spread across an ocean area that exceeds the size of Alaska.
The work holds particular significance to the atolls’ indigenous populations which were evacuated before the tests and thus far have only been allowed to return to one small island in the Enewtak Atoll.
This research was funded by the Dalio Foundation and the Dalio Explore Fund.
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