environment « nuclear-news

Debate over nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Ontario

Nuclear power debated: Darlington plant’s critics line up at hearing, Macleans,
by Nick Taylor-Vaisey , December 3, 2012 Hope Fellowship Church. It sits on Bloor Street in Courtice, Ont., a small town east of Oshawa, and it’ll be packed with people for the next few days. That’s because the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is holding hearings about the future of the nuclear power plant five kilometres away, nestled against the shores of Lake Ontario. Many don’t much care for the nuclear plant, and they hope to throw a wrench into proposals to keep that plant chugging for years to come. Some are even suggesting Parliament should investigate various elements of nuclear safety. Others support the plant, and intend to tell the commission as much.

What’s on the table, specifically? Ontario Power Generation, the crown corporation that manages the province’s nuclear plants, wants to refurbish the plant, extend its licence until the end of 2014, and renew its waste management facility’s licence, too. The CNSC hearings are part of that application process. The commission received an abnormally high number of interventions, many of which were submitted by individuals, and it was forced delay hearings by several weeks. (By the way, you can request a copy of interventions at the CNSC website. Why they’re not available for download is puzzling.)

Who is opposed? Continue reading →

December 4, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment | Leave a comment

Church rock uranium radiation disaster – never ending tragedy

The Curse of the Yellow Powder, Bacon’s Rebellion, by Rose Jenkins December 2, 2012 Is it possible to restore a landscape damaged by uranium? Ask the Navajo in New Mexico.
This fall, near Teddy Nez’s house on the Navajo reservation near Gallup, N.M., men in earth-moving equipment were scraping away the topsoil, up to three feet deep, which had been contaminated by radioactivity from abandoned uranium mines. In earlier phases of this project, starting in 2007, crews had torn out 100-year-old junipers and piñon pines and had clawed earth away from the remainingtrees, which weakened them, even after replacement soil was trucked in. The machines had flayed hillsides, whose cover of flowering shrubs and fragrant herbs has yet to grow back. “It looks like a B-52 hit it,” Nez told me, recalling an image from his service in Vietnam.
On our way to his house, Nez pointed out a notch in a bank of yellow grassland at the head of an arroyo. That’s where the Church Rock uranium mill tailings dam broke in 1979, releasing over 1,000 tons of radioactive wastes and millions of gallons of highly acidic water into the Puerco River, an intermittent stream that flows toward the Colorado River. The Church Rock dam failure was the largest radioactive release in U.S. history, by volume — larger than the Three Mile Island disaster the same year.
Nez’s house was upstream of the breached dam but the ground around it was contaminated by dust drifting off of the mountainous piles of waste rock from two nearby uranium mines, which have been out of production for almost 30 years. Nez believes that the continuous exposure has made him and his family sick. His whole family suffers from respiratory problems, he says — himself, his five children, and his seven grandchildren.

For years, he and his neighbors fought for a clean-up, he says, but nothing happened. Finally, in 2007, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) informed them that their situation was an emergency. Radiation levels at Nez’s home measured up to ten times higher than normal background levels for the area……
what I saw in Navajo country made me wonder how much you can really clean up after uranium, if contaminants get into the soil, the water, the air, the plants, the animals……http://www.baconsrebellion.com/2012/12/the-curse-of-the-yellow-powder.html

December 3, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Radioactive material below Louisiana’s giant sinkhole

Newspaper: Officials concerned about radioactive material below giant Louisiana sinkhole http://enenews.com/newspaper-controversy-over-radioactive-material-stored-below-giant-louisiana-sinkhole November 27th, 2012

Update Here: People need to know if radioactive waste is coming up from the ground in area of giant sinkhole -Legal Expert

Title: Radioactive material handling probed

Author: DAVID J. MITCHELL
Date: November 27, 2012

State officials are investigating how Texas Brine Co. LLC handled naturally occurring radioactive material [NORM] in Assumption Parish — where a large sinkhole was found Aug. 3 — and whether it was illegally disposed of inside the Napoleonville Dome in the mid-1990s. […]

Texas Brine officials, in a statement last week, said they did not put NORM in the caverns […]

The statement contradicts detailed comments from company officials on Aug. 10 that a small amount of NORM was disposed of in the Napoleonville Dome […]

Sonny Cranch, spokesman for Texas Brine, said last week that officials “misspoke” then in their attempt to respond to questions about NORM and that it was never put in the cavern.

Statements by Texas Brine VP Bruce Martin

“We submitted a request to DNR to place this material, this normally occurring radioactive material, that was actually about a little bit less than a cubic yard, to place it back in the well […] We did that work. That material was solid dirt, dirt with some NORM in it, and it was placed in the bottom of the well, and it would be my guess and firm belief that that’s where it sits today.”
The dirt had a radioactivity of 20 to 40 micro-rems per hour

Watch an expert discuss radioactivity around the sinkhole here

November 28, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Need to remember that coal ash, too, contains radioactive dust

NIRPC committee wants radiation study in The Pines Duneland Community.com November 24, 2012 Lauri Harvey Keagle A Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission Environmental committee wants the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate radiation levels in The Pines after hearing concerns from residents
over coal ash from a facility in their community. Continue reading →

November 26, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Highest ever radiation in wild boar in Iwaki, japan

33,000 Bq/Kg from wild boar in Iwaki city, “The highest measurement ever” http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/11/33000-bqkg-from-wild-boar-in-iwaki-city-the-highest-measurement-ever/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FukushimaDiary+%28Fukushima+Diary%29
by Mochizuki November 21st, 2012 · On 11/20/2012, Fukushima prefecture announced they measured 33,000 Bq/kg of cesium from wild boar in Iwaki city. It was the highest
measurement ever.

Prefectural government commented they are not sure about the reason.

They measured higher than 100 Bq/Kg from 5 among 16 samples, which were wild boar (Sus scrofa), spot‐billed duck (Anas poecilorhyncha), mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos) and Japanese deer (Cervus nippon).

November 23, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan | Leave a comment

Role of Fukushima insects in spreading radiation?

Are radioactive insects spreading Fukushima contamination from lake bottoms across the land? Scientist: They grow underwater then fly out & die everywhere http://enenews.com/are-radioactive-insects-spreading-cesium-from-lake-bottoms-out-across-the-land-scientist-they-grow-underwater-then-fly-out-and-die-everywhere
November 21st, 2012
Title: Fukushima Update: Radioactive Fish, Conflicts of Interest, and Filtered Vents
Source: ScienceBlogs (A National Geographic partner)
Author: Greg Laden
Date: Nov. 21, 2012
Highly Radioactive Fish Have Been Found…
I have a hypothesis that explains many of these observations. Fish like trout, salmon, and char eat, among other things, insects on the surface, gorging on hatches. A hatch is a large number of insects flying around and spending time over water, or often, just falling into the water, after emerging from a body of water where they spent an aquatic phase. I’ve written before about the role that insects such as dragonflies and lake flies serve the role of moving nutrients from their “final” resting place at the bottom of ponds and lakes, out across the landscape. These animals start off as an egg, and then turn into their adult form underwater, accumulating nutrients …. and cesium? …. as they grow. Then they fly out of the water and die everywhere. Or, are eaten by selected species of fish. From clay-rich lake bottom, where radioactive cesium can accumulate in sufficient density to disqualify bottom feeders from human consumption, to the mouths of trout, salmon and char. I don’t know if the Japanese researchers are thinking about it this way, but I hope it is given some thought.

Close to Tokyo, an increasingly radioactive lake

Japan Times: Time bomb in Tokyo metropolitan area — Experts warn of accumulating Fukushima contamination http://enenews.com/japan-times-time-bomb-tokyo-metropolitan-area-experts-warn-accumulating-fukushima-contamination
Title: The muddy issue of cesium in a lake
Source: Japan Times
Author: By TOMOKO OTAKE
Date: Nov 18, 2012
Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture is facing an environmental threat that has essentially turned it into a time bomb ticking away 60 km northeast of Tokyo.

Experts warn that Japan’s second largest lake with a surface area of 220 sq. km is quietly but steadfastly accumulating radioactive cesium […]

[It] is not only rich with fishery resources but whose water is used for irrigation, industrial purposes, and even for consumption as drinking water for 960,000 people in Ibaraki Prefecture. Furthermore, no one knows how and by how much the problem has worsened over the months, except for one obvious thing: it hasn’t gone away. […]

[Atsunobu Hamada, former director of the government-affiliated Ibaraki Freshwater Fisheries Research Institute maintains] that the inevitable solution would be to release Kasumigaura’s cesium into the Pacific Ocean via the Tone River […]

“We have a potential disaster waiting to happen,” [Hiroshi Iijima, director general of the nonprofit organization Asaza Fund in Ushiku, Ibaraki Prefecture] said. “This is a lake in the Tokyo metropolitan area and the second-largest lake in Japan, and we are sitting idly by, letting it get contaminated.”

Katsuhiko Sato, official at the Environment Ministry’s water environment section: The current levels of contamination pose no health risk for the area’s residents, because radiation in the lake and the rivers is shielded by water – (Shielding? See above: “Water is used for irrigation, industrial purposes, and even for consumption as drinking water for 960,000 people in Ibaraki Prefecture”)
Asahi Source: Locations in Chiba came under heavy nuclear fallout; Borders Tokyo — Contamination has potential to affect ecosystems

November 22, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan | Leave a comment

Cesium levels in mushrooms have risen in several Japanese prefectures

[Asahi] Cesium levels in mushroom have also risen in various areas compared with last year http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/11/asahi-cesium-levels-in-mushroom-have-also-risen-in-various-areas-compared-with-last-year/
by Mochizuki on November 21st, 2012 ·
<Quote> [Asahi]
・・・

As of Nov. 16, officials said 93 municipalities in 10 prefectures, including Fukushima, had a shipment restriction in place. For five prefectures–Aomori, Saitama, Yamanashi, Nagano and Shizuoka–wild mushrooms constitute the only produce for which a shipment ban is in effect.

Cesium levels have also risen in various areas compared with last year.
According to tests requested by the central government, the highest levels recorded this year were 120 becquerels in Aomori Prefecture, up from only 60 becquerels last year; 2,100 becquerels in Nagano Prefecture (1,320 becquerels last year); and 3,000 becquerels in Tochigi Prefecture (134 becquerels last year).

Yasuyuki Muramatsu, a chemistry professor at Gakushuin University who specializes in radiation effects on ecology, said, “While the detailed mechanism is still unclear, mushrooms can more easily absorb cesium in comparison to plants because they are fungi.” As for why cesium levels are higher this autumn, Muramatsu said, “There is the possibility that radioactive materials that were attached to the trunks and leaves of trees last year were washed away by the rain and entered the soil into which mushrooms extend their fungal filament.”

Muramatsu cautioned that some types of wild mushroom may have high cesium levels next year as well, which will require continued testing.

November 22, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan | Leave a comment

High radiation levels on orchid island, Taiwan

Japanese professors detect high radiation on island in Taiwan Japan Times, Kyodo TAIPEI, 20 Nov 12, — Two Japanese scholars say they have detected high levels of radiation on Orchid Island, a temporary underground storage site of low-level radioactive nuclear waste off Taiwan’s southeastern coast.TAIPEI — Continue reading →

November 22, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Taiwan | Leave a comment

Ocean food chain irreparably damaged by Fukushima radiation

The ocean, food chain, and Japan’s fishing industry have all been irreparably damaged by the Fukushima crisis, and that damage is still ongoing. The Japanese government and TEPCO’s excuses are only wasting time that should be put towards finding a solution.

TEPCO, Japanese government denying Fukushima radiation reaching ocean
fish http://japandailypress.com/tepco-japanese-government-denying-fukushima-radiation-reaching-ocean-fish-2018691 By Adam Westlake / November 20, 2012 In what must the most dumbfounding state of denial seen in modern times, both the Japanese government and utility Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) are disputing the recent study that showed radiation from the Fukushima nuclear plant is leaking into the ocean.

18 months after the March 2011 nuclear disaster, the U.S.’s Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a respected research group, reported that 40% of the fish caught off the
coast of Fukushima were still testing positive for radioactive contamination above the government’s safety own limits. Continue reading →

November 21, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, oceans, spinbuster | 1 Comment

Call for INDEPENDENT radiation monitoring in Lanyu (Orchid Island)

Thirty years after the storage facility was built without prior consultation and communication with Lanyu residents, the government has yet to conduct a complete investigation of nuclear radiation on the island

The council was accused of malpractice concerning nuclear waste repackaging in Lanyu last month.

Groups urge Lanyu radioactivity checks, Taipei Times, 20 Nov 12, DODGY TESTS:The Atomic Energy Council said that the devices used in previous radioactivity checks by Japanese experts had been affected by electromagnetic waves By Chris Wang and Lee I-chia Staff reporters Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers and several academics yesterday told a press conference that the nuclear radiation level in Lanyu (蘭嶼), also known as Orchid Island, was a serious concern and demanded a complete investigation into potential radiation threats on the island. Continue reading →

November 21, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Taiwan | Leave a comment

Podcast: Tokyo’s highly radioactive soil

Podcast Gundersen: Tokyo soil so hot it should be sent to nuclear waste dump — Really severe releases hit city http://enenews.com/gundersen-tokyo-soil-hot-be-shipped-radioactive-dump http://www.fairewinds.com/content/fairewinds-podcast
November 19th, 2012
Fairewinds Podcast, Nov. 18, 2012:
Nuclear Expert Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education: : Our readers may remember when I came back from Tokyo back in February, I had 5 samples of dirt that I had taken just randomly around the city. They were all over 7,000 disintegrations per second in a two pound bag (Bq/kg). What that told me was that the releases from the accident were really severe even as far away as Tokyo. And I said then that if this were contaminated ground at a nuclear power plant it would have to be considered as nuclear waste. Well, we took a lot flack for that on the Fairewinds site, but we were right on the mark.

What happened just last week was that in a suburb of Tokyo another sample was taken by citizens and they brought it to the attention of the government that then sampled it. But basically they had a hot spot that was in excess of 10,000 disintegrations per second per kilogram of their sample. So here we are 9 months after I took my samples and citizens are still finding hot spots all over the Tokyo area. I think it speaks to one, the magnitude of the initial release. This was a serious release, not just for Fukushima Prefecture but for Tokyo and its suburbs as well. […]

So if Tokyo could be highly contaminated to the point where its soil should be shipped to a nuclear waste dump […] if Tokyo can have soil so hot that it should be shipped to a radioactive dump, what might happen to our nation’s capitol, the biggest city in the United States, or to L.A. in the event of a nuclear accident? We’re really not prepared. Our policy makers at the NRC have not even envisioned that as a possibility.

November 21, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Japan, Resources -audiovicual | Leave a comment

Chinese serious radiation problem, uranium ash from coal mining

The environmental hazards caused by radioactive ash has been kept quiet.

Coal mines near uranium deposits spoiling value of nuclear fuel. Experts say many coal and uranium deposits are co-located and that extraction of the fossil fuel first is ruining the value of the nuclear fuel South China Morning Post, 18 November, 2012, Stephen Chen “…… And as China’s nuclear and coal sectors battle over the sites where the radioactive heavy metal lies buried, experts say the uranium is accidentally ending up in coal-fired power stations
– creating radioactive ash that is falling on surrounding cities.

One Canadian firm that declined to be interviewed has built a plant near one coal-fired power station in Yunnan to collect the uranium from the ash….. Continue reading →

November 19, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, environment | Leave a comment

Japan Experts: Contamination from Fukushima “is almost irreversible” in coastal sediments http://enenews.com/japan-experts-contamination-is-almost-irreversible-in-coastal-sediments November 17th, 2012
Title: Sedimentation and remobilization of radiocesium in the coastal area of Ibaraki, 70 km south of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant
Authors: Shigeyoshi Otosaka and Takuya Kobayashi, Research Group for Environmental Science, Japan Atomic Energy Agency
Date: 13 November 2012

[…] it can be inferred that dissolved radiocesium advected southward from the region adjacent to the 1FNPP and was deposited to the sediment of the study area in the early stage after the accident. The incorporation of radiocesium into sediments was almost irreversible, and higher concentrations of 137Cs were obtained from the finer-grained fraction of sediments. […]

137Cs levels in sediment decreased considerably between June and August, and then remained at the same level until January 2012. This trend indicates that the initial deposition of 137Cs to the sediment had almost ceased by August, and that the incorporation of 137Cs into sediments was almost irreversible. […]

In conclusion […] it can also be inferred that the remarkable decrease in 137Cs level between June and August 2011 (Table 3) was not caused by dissolution of labile 137Cs but by a physical transport (export) of irreversibly bound 137Cs.

[…] Most of radiocesium in the coastal sediments is incorporated into lithogenic fractions, and this incorporation is almost irreversible. Accordingly, the biological availability of sedimentary radiocesium is relatively low, but continuous monitoring of radiocesium inmarine biota is highly recommended because significant amounts of radiocesium have been accumulated in the sediment.

November 19, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima 2012, oceans | Leave a comment

Highly radioactive trout caught in Fukushima river

Kyodo: Radioactive trout over 100 times gov’t limit caught in Fukushima river http://enenews.com/kyodo-radioactive-trout-over-100-times-govt-limit-caught-in-fukushima-river November 16th, 2012
(Subscription Only) Title: Fukushima trout log radioactivity level over 100 times gov’t limit
Source: Kyodo
Date: Nov. 17, 2010

A mountain trout caught in a Fukushima Prefecture river [Niida River in Minamisoma city] returned a radioactive cesium reading of 11,400 becquerels per kilogram, more than 100 times the government-set limit for food items, a survey by the Environment Ministry said Friday. […]

The survey conducted in June and July also found 4,400 becquerels of radioactive cesium in a smallmouth bass and 3,000 becquerels in a catfish in Mano Dam in Iitate village, another municipality heavily affected by the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant run by Tokyo Electric Power Co. […]
See also: Asahi: Gov’t worried about highly radioactive fish — Why are radiation readings still 100s of times over official safe

November 17, 2012 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Fukushima 2012, Japan | Leave a comment

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