Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People
By Chris Mooney
n the past few years, the science of Internet trollology has made some strides. Last year, for instance, we learned that by hurling insults and inciting discord in online comment sections, so-called Internet trolls (who are frequently anonymous) have a polarizing effect on audiences, leading to politicization, rather than deeper understanding of scientific topics.
That’s bad, but it’s nothing compared with what a new psychology paper has to say about the personalities of trolls themselves. The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).
It is hard to underplay the results: The study found correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet.
In the study, trolls were identified in a variety of ways. One was by simply asking survey participants what they “enjoyed doing most” when on online comment sites, offering five options: “debating issues that are important to you,” “chatting with others,” “making new friends,” “trolling others,” and “other.” Here’s how different responses about these Internet commenting preferences matched up with responses to questions designed to identify Dark Tetrad traits:
E.E. Buckels et al, “Trolls just want to have fun,” Personality and Individual Differences, 2014.
To be sure, only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed “trolling.” By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were “non-commenters,” meaning they didn’t like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users.
Japan’s nuclear re-start bogged down in safety checks and paperwork
“There’s a growing consensus from a purely economic perspective that Japan needs to re-start as many reactors as it can in order to build out the diversification of its power sources and reduce fuel prices,” said Tom O’Sullivan, founder of independent energy consultancy Mathyos Japan.
Forecasts that the first nuclear reactor would be back in operation by the middle of this year are misplaced, said Tetsuo Yuhara, a director at The Canon Institute of Global Studies, who previously spent 30 years at Mitsubishi Heavy.
“I have no forecast for re-starts. It’s the same situation as a year ago, as two years ago. Nothing has changed.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101401535
Published: Sunday, 9 Feb 2014
Hundreds of technicians and engineers are camped out in Tokyo hotels trying to revive Japan’s nuclear industry, shut down in the wake of the Fukushima disaster almost three years ago.
It’s proving a hard slog. A new, more independent regulator is in place, asking difficult questions and seeking to impose tougher safety rules on powerful utilities that were largely their own masters for the past 50 years.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) was created in 2012 and set new safety guidelines in July last year. It now has four teams vetting reactors at nine nuclear power stations on a list of those seeking to re-start. A deadline to complete the checks has been missed as the NRA is still asking for reams of information. No one is able to predict when the first of 48 reactors will be turned back on.
The delays are biting the utilities which are having to spend billions of dollars to import fossil fuels to keep the power on, pushing Japan into a record trade deficit and risking undermining Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s polices to end years of stagnant growth.
“All the utilities are in a similar situation and, unless outstanding issues are resolved, we can’t judge that they are in compliance with the standards,” Tomoya Ichimura, an NRA director, told Reuters.
SLOW PROGRESS
The regulator and staff from the utilities and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, a leading supplier of nuclear plant equipment, are ploughing through mountains of paperwork on the technical specifications of reactors and their vulnerability to natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi station in March 2011.
All lack experience in carrying out such detailed safety checks because of the lax regime that existed before Fukushima.
“Only the framework of the safety criteria was decided, not the details, so the dialogue between the NRA and power companies to work out the specifics is taking time,” said Seiichi Nakata, Project Leader, Department of Policy, Communication and International Affairs at the Japan Atomic Industry Forum.
And once the checks are done, reactors must undergo planned inspections, which took as long as two months under the previous regime, as well as get the go-ahead from local authorities before they can be turned back on. The plants are being treated as if they have just been built and are seeking certification to start operating for the first time.
Interviews with utility and nuclear industry staff, regulators and government officials reveal a climate of uncertainty, frustration and long hours.
University of Bristol received £1.3m from secretive British organisation The Atomic Weapons Establishment
….Dr David McCoy, chairman of Medact, said: “Many aspects of scientific research work funded by the Atomic Weapons Establishment are conducted in sensitive and controversial areas, raising complex ethical and legal issues.”
AWE funds six professorships, named after its first director, Sir William Penney, at five universities. Two are at Cranfield, one at Cambridge, one at Bristol, one at Heriot-Watt and one at the University of Edinburgh…..
Researchers at the University of Bristol have received been paid £1.3 million from a secretive British nuclear weapons organisation.
A Freedom of Information Act request has revealed The Atomic Weapons Establishment has forked out £8 million to 50 universities in the UK but just five, with one of them including Bristol, have been the main beneficiaries.
The “Technical Outreach” programme between AWE and universities mainly supports scientific research in the physics, materials science, high performance computing, modelling, and manufacturing disciplines.
Although much of this work qualifies as “blue skies” research, which is not aimed at any particular application, some of it is considered to have “dual use” potential – the capability to be used for both benign, peaceful purposes and military purposes contributing to the development of weapons of mass destruction.
A Bristol University spokesperson said: “The university is one of five universities with which the AWE has strategic alliances. The relationship has been in place since 2009. Alongside the research projects (some of which are PhD studentships), the relationship seeks to encourage a range of activities which includes AWE involvement in giving seminars, contributing to teaching and joint workshops.
“Research we undertake with AWE is work the university proposes to AWE, work we are keen to pursue, which contributes towards areas such as safe operations, risk and cost reduction in storage of nuclear materials, and decommissioning of nuclear facilities.”
The report exposing the links has been published by two groups campaigning for nuclear disarmament, Nuclear Information Service and Medact, an NGO made up of health professionals.
Pete Wilkinson, director of Nuclear Information Service, said: “Many scientists frown on research which contributes to the development of weapons of mass destruction, however indirectly, and our study found that AWE values its academic outreach programme as much for the acceptance it buys for AWE’s own scientists in reputable academic circles as for its scientific findings. Universities and individual researchers are responsible for ensuring that their work meets accepted ethical standards, and our report aims to warn them of the risks from being seduced into murky waters by the lure of AWE’s cash.”
Dr David McCoy, chairman of Medact, said: “Many aspects of scientific research work funded by the Atomic Weapons Establishment are conducted in sensitive and controversial areas, raising complex ethical and legal issues.”
AWE funds six professorships, named after its first director, Sir William Penney, at five universities. Two are at Cranfield, one at Cambridge, one at Bristol, one at Heriot-Watt and one at the University of Edinburgh.
Japan Physician: Parents should evacuate children from Tokyo; Danger from Fukushima radiation — “The threat has seemed to be spreading” — “I’ve seen a lot of patients badly affected”
Published: February 14th, 2014 at 6:33 pm ET
By ENENews
Excerpts from an interview with Tokyo-based physician Shigeru Mita, Nelson Groom for Vice.com, Feb. 14, 2014 (h/t anonymous tip):
The Threat
- I’ve done examinations on more than 1,500 patients. […] I run blood work and conduct thyroid ultrasound examinations. […] I’ve mostly tested patients living in Tokyo, and I’ve found a lot of harmful symptoms in children, especially in kindergarten students or elementary school […] serious effects in the elderly. There have been abnormalities in their differential white-blood-cell count […] decline in the neutrophil […] I conducted the first tests in December 2011 […] the threat has seemed to be spreading into Tokyo since then.
The ‘Cure’
- There was a baby with a serious illness. […] she had no neutrophils. […] Thankfully, she recovered after moving to the Kyushu area. […] there aren’t any medicines to help […] I’ve seen a lot of patients from Tokyo who are badly affected, but when they move […] they get better. After they come back to Tokyo, it gets worse again.
The Cover-up
- I believe [TEPCO’s reporting on the radiation] must be false. That said, discussing this is a waste of time. We need to use this time to help patients rather than discussing the validity of these statements. That’s the most pressing concern.
The Food
- In Japan, commercial distribution is prosperous, so some of the contaminated food is definitely coming to Tokyo. […] we should be testing everything thoroughly, and that at least children should be spared […]
The Media
- They are definitely not focusing on this particular concern. I believe the Japanese media have taken side with a small number of powerful people.
The Public
- People living in eastern Japan […] are trying to look away from the dangers of radioactivity. Hence they avoid taking the matter seriously.
The Future
- I worry about the children, their parents, and the children who will be born in the future. I want the patients to move to the safer place [and] strongly recommend that anyone living in the area head to a safer place one or two months out of the year. I encourage everyone living in Tokyo to take blood tests as frequently as possible. […]
More from Dr. Mita here: I hope adults will leave Tokyo, not just children — Strange things happening — Medications don’t seem to work — Rare diseases increasing dramatically
EU-funded Study: Over 20,000 square miles of Japan potentially contaminated from Fukushima releases — Home to 43 million people
Published: February 13th, 2014 at 9:28 am ET
By ENENews
European Commission, Science for Environment Policy News Alert (pdf) (emphasis added): […] The EU-funded study modelled the global spread of radionuclides of caesium and iodine from Fukushima […] between March and May 2011 […] It focused on radionuclides that were emitted as gases […] The International Atomic Energy Agency defines ’contamination’ as the presence of a radioactive substance in quantities more than 40 kilobecquerels per m². […] land area affected by radioactivity from both types of radionuclides above this threshold is approximately 34,000 km² of Japan, inhabited by around 9.4 million people. However, the estimate used for the iodine radionuclide emissions from the incident is considered to be an underestimate. A separate calculation which assumed source emissions that were five times greater, suggested that a relatively large and densely populated part of Japan – 56,000 km² [21,622 square miles] – would be classified as contaminated. […] It should be emphasised that this refers to two radionuclides only, whereas additional ones are unaccounted for due to a lack of measurements. […]
Modelling the global atmospheric transport and deposition of radionuclides from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident (pdf), 2013 (emphasis added): Chino et al. (2011) estimate a total [131I] release of 150 PBq […] results are considered by [the] authors to be lower estimates and to have an error of at least a factor of five. Winiarek et al. (2012) estimate the lower bound of the total activity of 131I released into the atmosphere […] between 190 and 700 PBq […] We estimate that the land area affected by the deposition of radioactivity in excess of 40 kBqm² is approximately 34,000 km². […] this part of Japan is inhabited by 9.4 million people. The surface area that received a total deposition greater than 10 kBqm² encompasses parts of the Tokyo metropolitan area, and approximately covers 60,000 km2, being inhabited by 46 million people. We emphasize that this is based on the emission of 150 PBq 131I estimated by Chino et al. (2011), which might actually be a factor of five too low.
Chubu Electric seeks to restart Hamaoka nuclear plant
TOKYO, Feb. 14 — (Kyodo) _ Chubu Electric Power Co. applied Friday for a state safety assessment of one of its reactors at the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in central Japan that was forced to shut down in 2011 as the previous government viewed operation of the complex as too risky.
With the move, the total number of reactors for which applications for safety checks have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulation Authority rose to 17.
The NRA is expected to employ the same procedure to check the Hamaoka No. 4 unit as for the other reactors, effectively ignoring the unusual government request issued in May 2011 for operation of the plant to be suspended because of doubts about its preparedness for tsunami.
Located on the Pacific coast, about 190 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, the Hamaoka complex is known to be located on an assumed epicentral area for a massive earthquake. Two of the five reactors at the plant were retired in 2009.
Chubu Electric has been working to install huge seawalls and implement other measures to protect the plant, which are expected to be completed by September 2015.
Japan has revamped its regulatory setup by launching the NRA and also introduced a set of new safety requirements that reflect the lessons learned from the disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, sparked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
The country’s 48 commercial reactors have to satisfy the new nuclear regulations before they can be restarted.
The NRA has not finished any of the safety checks so far, and Japan is currently without nuclear power generation.
(c) 2014 Kyodo News International, Inc.
First Edward Snowden interview & analysis
Published on 8 Feb 2014
Tony Gosling with former Amnesty, NEF, & CAFOD’s ‘Old Labour’ Oxford economist Martin Summers
Analysis starts here http://youtu.be/7pgNEsSz54I?t=29m49s
IBMs Nazi database of the German population, then of occupied Europe, made the Holocaust possible…
Only after Jews were identified — a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately — could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labour, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed. But IBM’s Hollerith punch card technology did exist.
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com
German Television does first Edward Snowden Interview (ENGLISH)
German Television Channel NDR does an exclusive interview with Edward Snowden.
Uploaded on LiveLeak cause German Television thinks the rest of the world isn’t intereseted in Edward Snowden.
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f93_13…
Whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the documents about US mass surveillance. He spoke about his disclosures and his life to NDR journalist Hubert Seipel in Moscow.
“The Five Eyes alliance is sort of an artifact of the post World War II era where the Anglophone countries are the major powers banded together to sort of co-operate and share the costs of intelligence gathering infrastructure.
So we have the UK’s GCHQ, we have the US NSA, we have Canada’s C-Sec, we have the Australian Signals Intelligence Directorate and we have New Zealand’s DSD. What the result of this was over decades and decades what sort of a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn’t answer to the laws of its own countries.”
“If you ask the governments about this directly they would deny it and point to policy agreements between the members of the Five Eyes saying that they won’t spy on each other’s citizens but there are a couple of key points there. One is that the way they define spying is not the collection of data. The GCHQ is collecting an incredible amount of data on British Citizens just as the National Security Agency is gathering enormous amounts of data on US citizens. What they are saying is that they will not then target people within that data. They won’t look for UK citizens or British citizens. In addition the policy agreements between them that say British won’t target US citizens, US won’t target British citizens are not legally binding. The actual memorandums of agreement state specifically on that that they are not intended to put legal restriction on any government. They are policy agreements that can be deviated from or broken at any time. So if they want to on a British citizen they can spy on a British citizen and then they can even share that data with the British government that is itself forbidden from spying on UK citizens. So there is a sort of a trading dynamic there but it’s not, it’s not open, it’s more of a nudge and wink and beyond that the key is to remember the surveillance and the abuse doesn’t occur when people look at the data it occurs when people gather the data in the first place.”
“That’s a very difficult question to answer. In general, I would say it highlights the dangers of privatising government functions. I worked previously as an actual staff officer, a government employee for the Central Intelligence Agency but I’ve also served much more frequently as a contractor in a private capacity. What that means is you have private for profit companies doing inherently governmental work like targeted espionage, surveillance, compromising foreign systems and anyone who has the skills who can convince a private company that they have the qualifications to do so will be empowered by the government to do that and there’s very little oversight, there’s very little review.”
“The contracting culture of the national security community in the United States is a complex topic. It’s driven by a number of interests between primarily limiting the number of direct government employees at the same time as keeping lobbying groups in Congress typically from very well funded businesses such as Booze Allen Hamilton. The problem there is you end up in a situation where government policies are being influenced by private corporations who have interests that are completely divorced from the public good in mind. The result of that is what we saw at Booze Allen Hamilton where you have private individuals who have access to what the government alleges were millions and millions of records that they could walk out the door with at any time with no accountability, no oversight, no auditing, the government didn’t even know they were gone.”
http://www.ndr.de/ratgeber/netzwelt/s…
Fukushima Nuclear Migrants; In Their Own Words
http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=12341
February 14th, 2014
A high school student from Ibaraki explains her family’s journey to evacuated from the regions around the Fukushima disaster. This is the reality people deal with every day. Something as simple as changing schools can take a year. Her experiences have been translated into English here.
The author that published the high school girl’s story has published in Japanese a series of volumes documenting the stories of the many nuclear migrants who have left various regions impacted by the disaster. He fled Tokyo after his research led him to determine it was unsafe to live there with his children. He found no publisher interested in publishing his book even though he had worked in that industry for years. He explains his journey and effort to publish people’s stories here. The first chapter of his book has been translated into English and is available here.
This mother from Fukushima tells how hard it was to evacuate. She had limited financial resources to use to leave and was unsure if she would be compensated for evacuation by the government. This follows what we heard in 2011, those with the resources left on their own. Those with limited resources but wanted to leave could not. The school was unhelpful. She had a very hard time obtaining information she could use to make her own decisions about the environment and the health of her children. With the help of a private group she was able to move to Yamanashi. After moving her health and her children’s health improved. They all now have thyroid damage and will have to deal with the long term health problems and risks that will bring. Her entire testimony can be found here.
Koriyama was the fall back location for many people who had to evacuate the towns closer to Daiichi. This mother describes how contaminated soil has been handled in her neighborhood. The radioactive soil was buried in a park field behind her home. She witnessed the contaminated soil being buried. Now children play sports on this field every day. There is no word if there is a plan to ever remove the radioactive soil to a proper disposal site or if it will live in this busy park surrounded by homes forever.
Some may want to pick apart these people’s personal experiences but these experiences echo what we have heard over and over again from people in the region. Imagine if you had to suddenly pick up and move. Could you find a new job quickly? Do you have the savings to fund a sometimes very expensive move? Could you sell your home? Could you leave family behind? This doesn’t even address the multi-generational ties many people have to the places they called home.
This article would not be possible without the extensive efforts of the SimplyInfo research team
METI to revoke approval for solar power projects
http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140214_38.html
Feb. 14, 2014 – Updated 12:52 UTC
Japan’s industry ministry is expected to retract its approval for about 670 solar power generation projects.
The ministry says these projects are unlikely to start operation in the near future. It approved them as power generators under a new power trading system that started in 2012.
Power utilities are, according to the new trading system, required to procure electricity generated from approved renewable energy sources at fixed prices.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry says it had given the thumbs up to about 196,000 solar power projects by the end of last October, but that only about 40 percent of them are in service.
It surveyed 6,045 projects it certified in the business year ending in March 2013. These projects were supposed to generate at least 400 kilowatts of electricity or more. It found that 4,699, or more than three-quarters, were not generating power.
Of these, 672 did not have the necessary land or equipment, or did not respond to the survey.
The ministry has decided to revoke approval of these projects next month after interviewing their operators.
The ministry suspects that to raise profits some operators have been delaying the set up of solar panels until prices fall further.
The ministry will also consider reviewing the current system as it didn’t set time limits for starting power generation after getting approval from the government.
Nukes over wind turbines? UK Research & Development policies are warped
10:50 10 February 2014 by Stuart Parkinson
http://actionawe.org/nukes-over-wind-turbines-uk-rd-policies-are-warped/
Weapons of mass destruction get five times as much public research cash in the UK as renewable energy. Time for a rethink, says Stuart Parkinson
The scale of a nation’s public spending on different areas of research and development can be very revealing. For example, what sort of a nation would spend five times as much on developing weapons of mass destruction – including delivery systems – than on the R&D for renewable energy that is so central to tackling climate change? Figures just published reveal one such nation to be the UK.
Using data from freedom of information requests, campaign group Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), of which I am executive director, has pieced together recent R&D spending by the UK government on a series of major weapons systems and compared them with public R&D spending on measures to tackle major drivers of armed conflict, such as resource depletion, social and economic injustice, and climate change. This is the first time such an analysis has been carried out – for the UK or indeed anywhere else. What we have uncovered is deeply disturbing……
More here
Record cesium found in Fukushima water and beta ray-emitting substances including strontium-90.
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001032633
1:21 pm, February 14, 2014
Jiji Press FUKUSHIMA (Jiji Press)—Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday that 130,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per liter were detected in groundwater sampled the same day from an observation well at its stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The level was the highest for radioactive cesium found in well water at the plant, which was heavily damaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, according to the power supplier.
The sampled water contained 37,000 becquerels of cesium-134 and 93,000 becquerels of cesium-137, TEPCO said.
The water also contained 260,000 becquerels of beta ray-emitting substances including strontium-90.
The level of cesium-134 and cesium-137 stood at 22,000 becquerels and 54,000 becquerels, respectively, in groundwater collected from the same well on Wednesday.
Near the observation well is a cable trench linked to the turbine building for the No. 2 reactor.
High-level radioactive water that has accumulated in the trench may be leaking, TEPCO officials said.
The scintillator which covered with a condom (For safe gamma radiation measurement)
Published on 13 Feb 2014
no description available 🙂
Gundersen: New Report Shows 50 tons Of Rubble Fell In Unit 3 Pool, “Removal of Fuel Cannot Exist”
Published on 13 Feb 2014
TEPCO released a report entitled, TEPCO’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Roadmap, that contained some astounding information regarding Unit 3. Follow Fairewinds Energy’s Arnie Gundersen as he shows you the 35-ton refueling bridge that fell in the Unit 3 spent fuel pool during the Unit 3 detonation explosion. Do the math. The bottom line here is that TEPCO has just acknowledged that at least 50-tons of rubble has fallen on top of and into the spent fuel pool in Unit 3. What does this 50-ton pile of debris mean to the Unit 3 spent fuel pool and its cleanup?
http://fairewinds.org/media/fairewind…
China suggests nuclear co-operation
http://www.politics.hu/20140213/china-suggests-nuclear-co-operation/
February 13th, 2014
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang and his visiting Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán both declared their willingness to implement a planned upgrade of the Budapest-Belgrade railway line during Wednesday’s talks in Beijing.
Li also proposed that the two sides discuss the possibilities for co-operation in nuclear energy, possibly by involving a third party. He said China is ready to continue co-operation in infrastructure investment projects and agriculture, and hopes that Hungary can advance regional trade links.
Orbán said Hungary will play a positive role in co-operation between China and Europe and that the country is ready to implement large infrastructure projects. Declaring that the EU has practically stopped funding infrastructure projects in Central Europe, he said this presents an opportunity for China to take part in developing such projects.
Stating that political stability has been a “huge advantage” for China, he said “there is a good chance that Hungarian people will vote for political stability” on April 6.
Roxanne Palmer – Could Another Fukushima-Like Accident Happen In The US? Nuclear Expert Explains How
….In fact, a U.S. plant came close to a fire-related meltdown in 1975. A worker at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama had accidentally caused a fire while using a candle to check for air leaks in a room directly below the control room for two reactors. The fire burned for almost seven hours, and damaged the electrical cables in the room such that all of the emergency cooling systems for one reactor shut down, along with most of the emergency systems for the other reactor.
“Only heroic operator actions prevented two meltdowns that day,” Lochbaum says.
The NRC adopted fire protection regulations to prevent another Browns Ferry incident in 1980, and updated them in 2004.
But “today, about half of the reactors operating in the US do not comply with either the 1980 or the 2004 regulations,”….
http://prn.fm/roxanne-palmer-another-fukushima-like-accident-happen-us-nuclear-expert-explains/
on February 12 2014
Could a nuclear accident like the 2011 meltdown that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan happen here?
David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer, director of the Nuclear Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists and one of the authors of the new book-length account “Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster,” thinks it’s more than possible. The safety preparations at the plant before the accident, he says, weren’t that different from the precautions taken at U.S. plants.
“It’s not that Japan was behind the standards of the rest of the world, or that the Japanese regulators or [Fukushima Daiichi operator] TEPCO was especially inept,” Lochbaum says. “They’re on par with everyone else.”
U.S. regulators have already been warning operators about the possibility of Fukushima-type disasters happening in the U.S. for years.
One of the most likely scenarios that could cause a meltdown is a flood. Nuclear reactors require a lot of water to carry away their waste heat, so they’re generally built next to oceans, lakes or rivers. Plants near lakes and rivers are often located downstream of a dam. In that case, if a dam bursts, the plant could be flooded and lose power, similarly to what happened at the Fukushima plant when the tsunami hit. In 2009, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff identified about 35 reactors in the U.S. (out of the 100 currently operating) that were vulnerable to dam failures, according to Lochbaum.
In June 2010, about nine months before Fukushima’s three reactors melted down, the NRC issued a letter to Duke Energy, the owner and operator of the Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca, South Carolina (view the letter here on Scribd). The letter – initially not released to the public, but unearthed by a reporter from The Cascadia Times in Oregon, through a Freedom of Information Act Request — lists various actions Duke Energy is supposed to take to mitigate the risk of flood damage.
This letter came after NRC risk analysts concluded that the failure of the Jocassee Dam had a 100 percent chance of causing Oconee’s three reactors to melt down, according to Lochbaum. (Duke’s own reports disagree.) The main reason for concern? The plant’s flood wall was five feet high; the flood waters caused by a dam breakage were estimated to rise about 14 feet. Fukushima’s seawall was also easily breached by a 50-foot tsunami wave.
“In other words, both Oconee and Fukushima were protected by flood walls that worked just fine, unless there was a flood,” Lochbaum says.
Another risk to U.S. nuclear plants is fire. Like floods, flames can disable safety systems and their backups.
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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