UN thanks Russia for keeping nuclear team safe
https://www.rt.com/russia/562010-un-thanks-russia-nuclear-safety/ 1 Sept 22, Russia “did what it needed to do” to get inspectors to front-line facility
The UN is appreciates Russia’s efforts to safeguard the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team that came to inspect the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, on Thursday.
That’s according to the secretary-general’s chief spokesman, who was speaking after the Russian Defense Ministry said it was “bewildered” at the lack of reaction to an alleged Ukrainian attempt to seize the facility by force.
“We are glad that the Russian Federation did what it needed to do to keep our inspectors safe,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters at a briefing in New York, when asked about Moscow’s comments.
“As with any UN mission, it is the responsibility of those who control a certain area to keep the UN staff safe,” he added, also thanking the “security people” and “drivers” for the “tremendous job” of getting the IAEA team safely in and out of the Zaporozhye NPP.
The mission, led by IAEA director Rafael Grossi, was delayed at a Ukrainian checkpoint on Thursday morning. It eventually made its way to Russian-controlled Energodar and toured the facility for several hours, before heading back to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Right before their visit, however, Ukrainian artillery targeted the city of Energodar and the Zaporozhye NPP itself, while a group of commandos crossed the Kakhovka Reservoir by boat and attempted to storm the facility, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Both the initial assault group and the reinforcements that followed were wiped out by the National Guard and combat helicopters, the Russian military said. Their goal, according to Moscow, was to seize the Russian-held power plant and use the IAEA staff as “human shields” to maintain control over the facility.
Energodar and the Zaporozhye NPP have been under Russian control since early March. In August, the nuclear site was targeted by regular artillery and drone attacks, which Moscow and Kiev blamed on each other. Ukrainian officials also claimed that the Russian military was using the plant as a military base, stationing heavy weapons there. Moscow denied the accusations, saying that it only had lightly armed guards defending the facility.
Moscow has called for an IAEA visit to Zaporozhye, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, since June – but Ukraine’s insistence that the mission must travel through Kiev to uphold Ukrainian sovereignty contributed to delaying the mission until this week.
Nuclear power: the accumulating problems
With the present British government intent on a fleet of new nuclear power stations, Dr Paul Dorfman, Sussex University, looks at the major obstacles
and argues for alternatives.
Although the current UK government plans some
sort of nuclear renaissance, in this article I’ll show that new nuclear
power can do nothing for our current energy crisis and may well endanger
our response to the climate crisis.
But the coming months will tell – and
it will be a very long time in politics. This winter – with millions
struggling under the cost-of-living crisis, plunged into unmanageable debt
through energy price ramps, and choosing between eating and heating –
putting huge sums of public money into the deep pockets of French
state-owned EDF via its long-term nuclear power construction programme may
look much less palatable to the public, press and policy-makers.
Especially when cheaper, faster, more efficient renewable power and storage
technologies are available here and now. Coupled with large-scale home
insulation programmes, these are what would really make a difference to
consumers.
Responsible Science 31st Aug 2022
https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/nuclear-power-accumulating-problems
GDF Community Partnership promotes “feel good” books to children, making nuclear waste dump ‘cute and safe’.
In 2003 The Advertising Standards Authority ruled that BNFL – now the
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority could not “make an absolute claim”
about the future of nuclear waste at Sellafield and the advert showing a
butterfly flying away from a hand, with the headline “The future of the
environment is in safe hands” was ordered to be removed.
Now in 2022,
Nuclear Waste Services, a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority has formed partnerships of Nuclear Waste Services and “the
local community” called GDF Community Partnerships (three in Cumbria and
one in Lincolnshire).
GDF Partnership literature has been produced to
promote support in communities for a Geological Disposal Facility for heat
generating nuclear wastes. All advertising literature published under the
tagline “Working in Partnership” states: “Doing the right thing for
future generations. Geological disposal is one of the UK’s largest ever
environmental protection projects, which will provide a safe and secure
long-term solution for the disposal of higher activity radioactive waste.
This programme will create investment and jobs over many generations.”
This flies in the face of the 2003 ASA ruling that no absolute claims can
be made for the future safety of nuclear waste. “GDF’s Heroes”
Advertorial Literature Targeted at Children. While all the GDF Partnership
advertising aimed at adults makes absolute claims which as the ASA
previously ruled cannot be backed up (unless the GDF Partnership have a
fail safe crystal ball), our primary complaint is the literature aimed at
children.
In particular a promotional colouring book aimed at children
called “GDF’s Heroes”. Colourful Nuclear Dump “feel good” books are
targeted at children to advertise Geological Disposal.
Radiation Free Lakeland 1st Sept 2022
Ukraine nuclear plant: what happens if it releases a radioactive plume?
An atmospheric scientist describes how researchers would track a toxic cloud in the case of an accident at the occupied Zaporizhzhia power station.
- Nature, Davide Castelvecchi, 2 Sept 22,
“…………………………………….. Nature spoke with Kusmierczyk-Michulec about how her work could help the world to cope with a possible accident at Zaporizhzhia.
What does the CTBTO’s nuclear-monitoring network do?…………………
How did the CTBTO help to track the plume from the Fukushima Daiichi accident?…………………….
How would we find out if there is a detection of radioactivity released from the Zaporizhzhia plant? Does your network have stations nearby?……………………………..
Are there prevailing weather patterns around southern Ukraine that would determine how the plume would probably move?
The answer is not so straightforward. Air masses can travel a long way, for a long time. After a few days, they may reach quite a far distance, depending on the weather conditions, wind directions and wind speeds. Prevailing weather patterns are not a sufficient indicator, especially in that region with quite variable wind direction……………………. more https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02811-8
Radioactive Waste ‘Everywhere’ at Ohio Oilfield Facility, Says Former Worker
Community groups present health and environmental justice concerns to the EPA, alleging workers at Austin Master Services are coated in dangerous levels of radioactive waste.
DeSmog, By Justin Nobel, Aug 31, 2022 ,
As Bill Torbett and his colleagues went about their work, handling the sloppy radioactive detritus of oilfields in a cavernous building in eastern Ohio, their skin and clothing often became smothered in sludge. Waste was splattered on the floor and walls, even around the electrical panels. At the end of their shifts, they typically left their uniforms in the company washing machine, which didn’t always work, and left their sludge-caked boots and hard hats in the company locker room. But when the men arrived home after a long day, the job came with them too.
“We were literally ankle-deep in sludge and a lot of times knee-deep in different spots. All that shit is dripping down on you,” says Torbett, a 51-year-old former employee of Austin Master Services, a radioactive oilfield waste facility in Martins Ferry, Ohio. “You’re saturated in it, your hands are covered in it, the denim of your uniform would hold it, and the moisture would soak right through your under-clothes and into your skin.”
“How wet?” Torbett says. “Like if you got caught outside in the rain without an umbrella. Soaking wet.”
In fact, so alarming are the conditions at Austin Master and so lax is the oversight that workers have taken things into their own hands. In one case, a second former worker has covertly passed along their dirty boots, hard hat, and headlamp for independent radiological analysis. The levels of the radioactive element radium found in the sludge on this worker’s boots was about 15 times federal cleanup limits for the nation’s worst toxic waste sites.
And yet, Austin Master appeared to keep workers in the dark about what they were handling. “They really didn’t tell me the gist of the material, I just knew it came from frack sites,” according to Torbett, who worked at the facility from November 2021 to February 2022. “There was no discussion of the material and its radioactivity.”
In April, DeSmog revealed that Concerned Ohio River Residents, a local advocacy group, had documented elevated levels of radium outside the main entrance to the Austin Master facility, that state inspection reports showed a lengthy history of concerning operating practices, and that rail cars leaving the facility for a radioactive waste disposal site in the Utah desert had arrived leaking on five occasions.
The situation at the Ohio facility appears so severe that top officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 5, which covers much of the Midwest, joined local organizers in a conference call in July and made an in-person visit to the area earlier this month.
The state of Ohio has authorized Austin Master Services to receive 120 million pounds of radioactive oilfield waste at its Martins Ferry location each year.
Austin Master has not replied to questions regarding the reported radioactivity levels on worker clothing. “There is nothing unusual or harmful about AMS’s process,” Chris Martin, a company spokesperson, told DeSmog in response to questions sent in March regarding work practices at the facility. “Austin Master Services takes a responsible approach to providing valuable waste remediation services and jobs in the Martins Ferry community.” Martin maintained that “there are no known complaints from AMS employees concerning work conditions.”
On July 1, American Energy Partners, a Pennsylvania-based energy and infrastructure services company, acquired Austin Master Services. In a press release, American Energy Partners describes Austin Master as “a full-service, comprehensive environmental services firm specializing in radiological waste management solutions” that provides “professional safety, industrial hygiene and health physics services.” The company has not replied to questions.
The conditions documented by state inspection reports and the contamination revealed by advocacy groups raise questions about the risks to first responders and the community should the Martins Ferry facility have an accident……………………………………
Welcome to the Messy World of Radioactive Oilfield Waste
The Austin Master facility is located in a former steel mill on the Ohio River, not far from the city of Martins Ferry’s drinking water wells and the football stadium of the local high school team, the Purple Riders. Austin Master receives truckloads of drill cuttings bored out of the Marcellus and Utica shale and of radioactive sludge that forms at the bottom of tanks and trucks that hold toxic liquids brought to the surface of fracked oil and gas wells. Right now, more than a third of America’s natural gas supply comes from wells in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Some of it is converted to liquefied natural gas, or LNG, and shipped overseas to customers in Europe and elsewhere.
Processing radioactive oilfield waste has proven enormously problematic for the oil and gas industry and its regulators, and given rise to a booming service sector of facilities like those run by Austin Master that collect, treat, and process the waste. Part of the problem is that a significant amount of oilfield waste is too radioactive to be shipped directly to traditional landfills. Instead, it must be “down-blended,” or mixed with material like lime or a corn cob base to lower the radioactive signature. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) does regulate the state’s roughly two dozen oilfield waste processing facilities, but in a limited way. In 2014, Austin Master received an ODNR order, known as a Chief’s Order, giving the company temporary approval to “process, recycle, and treat brine” and other oilfield waste.
At Austin Master’s Martins Ferry facility, Torbett says, trucks regularly dumped the more sludge-like or solid radioactive oilfield waste directly onto the floor of the former steel mill, and workers used common heavy construction equipment like Bobcats to maneuver it into various bins or pits. Waste that was more liquid-like was often dumped into metal containers called half-rounds, says Torbett. In one state inspection photo from August 2018, a worker with bare arms and no face protection or respirator holds a push broom……………………………….
It is work like this that has Massachusetts-based nuclear forensics scientist Dr. Marco Kaltofen deeply concerned about worker health risks. He said any time oilfield waste is moved around in piles at a processing facility such as Austin Master, dust is inevitably created and is likely to contain the radioactive element radium, which is commonly found in oilfield waste..
In addition to dust and wet spatter from the facility’s waste processing practices, Kaltofen voiced worries about the risk of radioactivity exposure to the people interacting with employees outside of work. “Workers’ skin can also become coated with this radioactive material, and either absorb it, or contaminate their families,” he added.
Earlier this year, a second former employee of Austin Master, who prefers to remain anonymous because they still work in the region, provided the boots, hard hat, and headlamp they used while working at the Martins Ferry facility to the organization Concerned Ohio River Residents, members of which have been previously instructed by Kaltofen in how to safely handle such items. The group then sent the worker items along to Kaltofen, who sent sludge from the boots to Eberline Analytical, a radiological analysis lab in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The lab returned the results in May, and they were startling, according to Kaltofen. They showed levels of radium-226 at 76.3 picocuries per gram, and levels of another form of radium common in oilfield waste, radium-228, at 8.66 picocuries per gram. This placed the radioactivity values at roughly 15 times EPA cleanup limits for topsoil at uranium mills and Superfund sites. ………………………………….
“Radium is commonly referred to as a bone seeker,” states a report of the National Research Council Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiations. If accidentally inhaled or ingested, the radioactive element tends to accumulate in the bones, where it continues emitting radiation and can lead to cancer…………………………..
“These results are alarming and it signifies the need for appropriate radiation protection measures in the oil and gas workplace,” adds Bemnet Alemayehu, a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) staff scientist with a PhD in radiation health physics and co-author of a 2021 report on this issue. DeSmog provided NRDC with Eberline Analytical’s analysis of the worker’s clothing. “Based on the data provided,” says Alemayehu, “it appears the radioactivity levels are high enough to cause” exposure risks to the oil and gas workers…………………………….
Raising Red Flags
Concerned Ohio River Residents, which received the clothing items from the former worker and sampled the soil on the public road outside the facility, has long been worried about the risks the Austin Master facility posed to workers and the community at large and is in touch with a number of former workers. In mid-August, members of the group toured officials with EPA Region 5 around the area, including a drive-by of the Austin Master facility in Martins Ferry.
Despite the dangers this type of oil and gas waste poses, a 1980 provision enacted by Congress has deemed it non-hazardous and therefore exempt from federal rules that would otherwise apply to hazardous waste. ………………………………
Meanwhile Ohio regulatory agencies appear to be equally hamstrung in their ability to manage or even systematically assess the situation. ………………………………
Industry workers and residents across the Marcellus and Utica shale tell DeSmog it is this general tone of dismissal and inaction from regulators that has them feeling aggravated when it comes to oilfield radioactivity and its harms………………………
DeSmog presented the Health Physics Society with information and documents concerning the situation at Austin Master, but the group has not replied to questions.
…………………………………. fixing this issue in the United States goes beyond just personal protective equipment and straight to lawmakers, says Amy Mall, a senior advocate at NRDC. “We need Congress to act to end the dangerous oil and gas loopholes in our federal laws, including the gap for naturally occurring radioactive materials,” says Mall. “In addition, we urge the EPA to investigate this situation and other oil and gas waste sites around the country, and to revise its rules to reflect current knowledge about the risks to human health and the environment.”…………………………
While Waiting for Governments to Act, Citizens Are Stepping in
In July, Concerned Ohio River Residents and other Ohio advocacy groups sent a letter about Austin Master to EPA Administrator Michael Regan.
“We have identified environmental justice and human rights abuse under President Biden’s Executive Order 13985,” the letter stated. “Understanding your values and heavy emphasis on pushing for environmental justice, we call upon the United States Environmental Protection Agency to address disproportionately high and adverse health and environmental impacts on low-income populations here in Appalachia…We call upon your Office to investigate these issues because no other governmental or regulatory agency is stepping up.”……………………………. https://www.desmog.com/2022/08/31/worker-radioactive-waste-austin-master-services-ohio/
Future threat to Europe’s water supplies as Switzerland’s glaciers are rapidly thawing
Switzerland’s glaciers have lost more than half their volume in less than a
hundred years, and the long hot summer this year has accelerated the thaw,
a new study shows. The glaciers support ski resorts and attract climbers
and hikers in summer, but are also essential to Europe’s water supply. Now,
communities across the Alps are worrying about their future.
BBC 1st Sept 2022
A concerted push now for renewable energy would save Britons billions of pounds
The UK would be paying “billions” of pounds less for its energy, if it had
stuck with plans to reduce fossil fuel use, an energy boss has said. Greg
Jackson, chief executive of Octopus energy, told the BBC there should be a
concerted push now. The same “sense of urgency” should be applied to the
switch to green energy, as there was for finding a Covid vaccine, he said.
The government said it had delivered a 500% increase in renewables since
2010. “Without the clean energy we have deployed over the past decade,
bills would be even higher today,” a spokesperson for the Department for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said. There were already
plans to invest further in renewables, BEIS said.
In 2013, the coalition
government led by David Cameron made a series of changes, including cutting
back support for energy efficiency and later ended subsidies for onshore
wind. “If we hadn’t done that, energy bills this year would be billions of
pounds lower than they are,” Mr Jackson told the Big Green Money Show on
BBC Radio 5. “It’s short term behaviour that has left us even more exposed
than we need to be.”
Octopus Energy generates electricity from renewable
sources, including wind and solar and supplies energy to three million UK
customers. A report earlier this year by energy analysis site Carbon Brief
said bills in the UK were nearly £2.5bn higher than they would have been if
climate policies had not been scrapped over the past decade.
BBC 2nd Sept 2022
Boris Johnson’s legacy of the nuclear fantasy
In response to the Prime Minister pledging £700 million of public money to
build a nuclear power station at Sizewell, Dr Doug Parr, Chief Scientist
for Greenpeace UK, said – “This money could insulate huge numbers of
draughty homes, and cut next year’s bills, instead of being thrown onto the
slow-burning financial bonfire that is EDF, to increase our bills for
decades.
Construction of this reactor type has gone massively over budget
and over schedule whenever they try to build it in Europe, and isn’t
operating as advertised anywhere. The funding model adopted to pay for it
was tried in the USA, and North Carolina households are still paying for a
nuclear reactor that was never built as the company went bust.
The contrast between these lumbering white elephants and the dynamic, cost cutting,
innovative technologies in the renewables sector could barely be more
striking. While this down payment on failure shows the government hasn’t
noticed, the market has, and investors have fled the nuclear sector.
To get Sizewell done, the government would have to step in and add the enormous
costs of building reactors to the enormous costs consumers are already
paying for their electricity. While Boris Island and the Boris Bridge
remain in the land of fantasy where they belong, Johnson will have his
legacy, the Boris Bill, and it will be very real for a very long time.”
Greenpeace 1st Sept 2022 https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/press-centre/
Stop Sizewell C urges Boris Johnson’s successor to totally review this costly nuclear project
Stop Sizewell C condemns Boris Johnson’s visit and support for Sizewell C,
speculating that the blessings of an outgoing Prime Minister may be the
kiss of death. Stop Sizewell said: “Like multiple vanity projects such as
the Bridge to Northern Ireland and “Boris Island” airport, Sizewell C
is another Boris Johnson infrastructure blowout that his successor should
consign to the bin.
When every penny matters, it’s totally wrong to shackle
the next Prime Minister and billions in taxpayers’ money to this damaging
project, whose ballooning cost, lengthy construction, failure-prone
technology and long term water supply are so uncertain.”
“Sizewell C would not be British, nor secure. It would be developed by an arm of a
foreign government, probably with considerable foreign ownership and be
reliant on overseas uranium.” Stop Sizewell C urges Boris Johnson’s
successor to totally review the Sizewell C project. Candidate Liz Truss has
said she plans to cancel green levies on bills, but if she were to continue
to support Sizewell C, it can only be financed if a nuclear levy is added
to household bills.
Stop Sizewell C 1st Sept 2022
WHAT HAPPENED AT CAMP LEJEUNE
I grew up drinking and bathing in the toxic waters around a military base in North Carolina. Thirty years later, I went back to investigate.
BY LORI LOU FRESHWATER, AUG 21, 2018
In the autumn of 1980, a contractor showed up to grade a parking lot. He had no idea he was about to start digging up the radioactive bodies of dead beagles. But the forked bucket on his bulldozer started pulling up more than soil, and it turned out he was digging in a pit of strontium-90 and dog carcasses that had been buried in an ash-gray tomb: a nest of dead dogs and laboratory waste labeled “Radioactive Poison.”
The new parking lot was on the site of the former Naval Research Laboratory dump and its associated incinerator in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina—and it was just one of many areas contaminated by an assortment of hazardous waste and chemicals on the base.
About half a mile away from the dump, soon to be known as Site 19, my friends and I were living in our neighborhood, called Paradise Point. We spent our time putting other girls’ bras into freezers at slumber parties, playing the Telephone Game, riding our bikes all over the place: to the golf course to steal a cart, to swim at the pool, to play soccer on Saturdays.
During the same autumn the dead beagles were found, I was sitting in front of a fake backdrop of rusty colored leaves, a slight 11-year-old girl with spaces between my teeth and freckles spritzed across my nose and cheeks, to take my school photo.
Under normal circumstances, this entirely unremarkable fifth-grade photo, in a plaid shirt and fragile gold necklace, would have likely ended up where most school photos do, in an old album or a drawer or simply lost to time. Instead, the photo would become a marker in the medical history of my family and my community, a reminder of the crime that was being committed on the day the photo was taken—and also for decades before, and for years after.
The place was Camp Lejeune, a United States Marine Corps base wrapped around the New River in Onslow County that served as an amphibious training base where Marines learned to be “the world’s best war fighters,” picking up skills that would allow them (for example) to make surprise landings on the shores of far away countries. From the 1950s until at least 1985, the drinking water was contaminated with toxic chemicals at levels 240 to 3400 times higher than what is permitted by safety standards.
There may never be a true accounting of the suffering caused at Lejeune. As with many other hometown environmental disasters, the Marines and family members poisoned on this military base were not born here, nor did they settle here to make a permanent life and raise their children. Instead, they were often here just for a short time, literally stationed at Lejeune for weeks, months, or, at most, a few years. From the 1950s through at least 1985, an undetermined number of of residents, including infants, children, and civilian workers and personnel, were exposed to trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene (PCE), vinyl chloride, and other contaminants in the drinking water at the Camp Lejeune. These exposures likely increased their risk of cancers, including renal cancer, multiple myeloma, leukemias, and more. It also likely increased their risk of adverse birth outcomes, along with other negative health effects. Now the sick and the dying are all over the world, and an untold number will never be notified about what happened. Instead, we are left to rely on scientific models and data trickling out of public-health agencies and the slow process of adding one story at a time, person-by-person, to the cold data representing an environmental and public-health disaster.
In 1989, the Environmental Protection Agency placed 236 square miles of North Carolina’s coastal soil and water on the list of toxic areas known as Superfund sites. The agency cited “contaminated groundwater, sediment, soil and surface water resulting from base operations and waste handling practices” as reasons for including it on the National Priorities List.
Camp Lejeune remains a sprawling Superfund site, and it is also the place where my mom and I spent years drinking a terrible mix of chemicals from our faucet. In the book A Trust Betrayed: The Untold Story of Camp Lejeune, author Mike Magner gives special attention to my mother’s story: “A woman with the ironic name of Mary Freshwater may have had the most ghastly experiences at Camp Lejeune.”
Of course, I share her ironic name, which can still seem like more of a curse. Nearly my entire childhood was consumed by tragedy. The chemical contamination can be linked to the deaths of my two baby brothers, Rusty and Charlie, and to my mom’s own difficult final years, when she was dying from two types of acute leukemia. My mother also suffered from mental illness, which was intensified—understandably—by our family’s brutal losses. Sometimes it seems that, behind me, there is nothing but inescapable grief. …………………..more https://psmag.com/.amp/environment/what-happened-at-camp-lejeune
Fighting at Ukraine nuclear plant brings chances of a meltdown to a ‘coin toss’, expert says
“If you lose both the offsite power and the backup diesel generators, there are other emergency measures that could be employed, but you only have a few hours to be able to set those up before the core might start to melt,”
By Samantha Hawley and Flint Duxfield for ABC News Daily, 2 Aug 22,
As calls continue for an end to military activity around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant, experts are warning there is significant risk of a nuclear accident.
Key points:
- Nuclear experts are becoming increasingly concerned of a nuclear disaster at Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine
- A team from the UN’s nuclear watchdog arrived at the facility overnight
- Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant has been shelled repeatedly in recent weeks, and Ukrainian staff are reportedly working under threat
This week the Russian military, which has controlled the facility since March, agreed to a safety inspection by experts from the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who arrived overnight.
Despite this, the director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Edwin Lyman, said there was a significant possibility the situation could end badly.
“It’s probably a coin toss at this point,” he said.
While the fate of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks, Dr Lyman told ABC News Daily he became concerned the minute Russia set its sights on the facility in early March.
“When Russia started lobbing artillery shells at the plant and when a fire broke out, it was of extreme concern because one thing the nuclear power plant doesn’t handle too well is a large fire,” he said.
The fire was quickly contained, but as Russian forces took control of the plant, safety concerns only continued to grow.
Since then, there have been reports around 9,000 of the plant’s staff have been forced to continue working at gunpoint, and that some have been beaten and tortured.
“There is evidence that the Russians were intimidating the staff, not allowing them to report safety issues, accusing them of being spies or saboteurs and of physical abuse,” Dr Lyman said.
“These are obviously very poor conditions for the staff to work in.”
Plant under attack
In the past fortnight there have been further reports of shelling of the plant, with both sides claiming the other was at fault.
Ukraine has accused Russia of using the plant as a military base to launch attacks against Ukrainian positions.
Meanwhile, Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said this week that nine shells fired by the Ukrainian artillery in two separate attacks had landed in the nuclear plant’s grounds.
While Dr Lyman doesn’t believe these kinds of attacks are likely to cause a major problem for the reactors themselves, he said there is still a risk they could damage other vital parts of the plant or make it difficult to maintain the reactors.
“The most dangerous parts of the plant, like the nuclear fuel in the reactors, is contained and under a fairly strong reinforced concrete containment building,” he said.
“Even if you had direct artillery fire on the containment, unless it was a sustained shelling, deliberately trying to destroy it, then it probably wouldn’t cause that much damage.”
However, Dr Lyman warned other parts of the plant were more susceptible to artillery fire.
“The turbine that’s used to convert the hot water or the steam that’s generated by the nuclear reactor into electricity are in less-protected buildings,” he said.
A power plant in need of power
A greater concern than artillery fire, experts believe, is the potential for the plant to lose its offsite power connection, something that has already happened twice in the past few weeks.
While it might seem strange that a power plant’s most vital input is electricity, external power is crucial in cooling the reactors to prevent them from overheating.
To reduce risk of meltdown, four of the plant’s six reactors have already been put into cold shutdown since the outbreak of the war.
But because the plant is responsible for around 20 per cent of Ukraine’s energy supply, shutting the remaining reactors would be a significant loss for the country.
The plant does have three external electricity supply lines, but these have all lost connection in recent weeks due to the conflict.
Last week, the company responsible for the plant, Energoatom, said fires at a nearby thermal power station had caused the nuclear plant’s last remaining electricity power line to be disconnected twice.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the plant’s 20 backup diesel generators had to be “immediately activated” to avert a “radiation disaster”.
“If the diesel generators hadn’t turned on, if the automation and our staff of the plant had not reacted after the blackout, then we would already be forced to overcome the consequences of the radiation accident,” Mr Zelenskyy said in his nightly briefing.
Dr Lyman said the fact that the site has already lost offsite power showed how precarious the situation was.
“If you lose both the offsite power and the backup diesel generators, there are other emergency measures that could be employed, but you only have a few hours to be able to set those up before the core might start to melt,” he said.
Meltdown could happen in hours
One simulation of the reactors losing power showed they would have just over an hour before the cooling systems stopped working.
It predicted that the reactor would heat up so quickly that it would take less than five hours for it to break through the reactor vessel.
Even if that occurs, experts say a strong protective casing around the reactors means a Chernobyl-style disaster isn’t likely………………………
Ukraine prepares for radiation leaks
The Ukrainian government has begun preparations for the possibility of a radiation leak.
In recent weeks it has run emergency drills in nearby towns and distributed iodine tablets to residents.
Iodine helps prevent radiation from amassing in the thyroid, leading to thyroid cancer; a phenomena witnessed after the Chernobyl meltdown in hundreds of Ukrainian children.
While Dr Lyman believes it is a sensible precaution, he warned it would not be enough to protect people in the case of a leak.
“In nuclear reactors, you have a sea of a soup of hundreds of different types of radioactive isotopes, all of which interact in different ways of the body,” he said.
“So you can’t do much about that except to either evacuate to avoid exposure or to shelter for a long time in a structure that’s shielded against radiation.
“That’s why the best thing is to prevent any release in the first place.”
Overnight inspectors from the IAEA travelled to the city of Zaporizhzhia.
Experts from the team will remain on site to provide an impartial, neutral and technically sound assessment of the situation.
“I worried, I worry and I will continue to be worried about the plant until we have a situation which is more stable, which is more predictable,” IAEA head Rafael Grossi, who personally led the mission, told reporters after returning to Ukrainian-held territory…………………
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-02/fears-nuclear-disaster-zaporizhzhia/101394618
Ukraine accused of targeting possible route of nuclear inspectors
Zelensky cannot risk experts assessing the damage and announcing the cause?
Rt.com, 30 Aug 22, Kiev’s forces have hit the Zaporozhye plant’s resort house where the delegation could stay, a local council member has claimed.
Ukrainian forces are shelling a route that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection mission could take to reach the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant this week, local authorities claimed on Tuesday.
Zaporozhye Region council member Vladimir Rogov told RIA Novosti that “Ukrainian nationalists are targeting locations that could be visited by the IAEA mission in Energodar,” where the plant is located. He added that “[Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s regime also started a military operation in the south of the country,” which raises concerns for the safety of the IAEA mission.
……………………On Monday, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi announced that an expert group would visit the NPP this week to assess the damage sustained by the plant and check the safety and security systems. Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant has been under Russian control since March.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukrainian forces of attacking the plant, while warning that the shelling could trigger a disaster that would eclipse the Chernobyl incident. Kiev insists, however, that Russian forces are shelling the site while stationing military hardware there.
On Sunday night, Ukrainian forces shelled Energodar, the city where the plant is located, local officials said. They claimed that the attack, which injured nine people and deliberately hit a number of residential houses, was meant to torpedo the upcoming IAEA mission. “This provocation by Kiev-controlled militants is aimed at derailing the visit of the IAEA chief to the Zaporozhye NPP,” they said at the time………. https://www.rt.com/russia/561775-ukraine-shelling-un-iaea-zaporozhye-nuclear/
Pentagon admits ‘likelihood’ of Ukrainian shelling near nuclear plant
the biggest danger is not a reactor meltdown, but Ukrainian artillery striking the open-air spent fuel storage, which would result in a radioactive release
US officials responded to questions about Kiev’s forces targeting Zaporozhye,
https://www.rt.com/russia/561769-pentagon-ukraine-nuclear-shelling 30 Aug 22,
A senior US military official admitted on Monday that Ukrainian forces may have struck the area around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, but insisted that this was only in response to Russian fire allegedly coming from the area. Earlier in the day, the Russian authorities said a Ukrainian artillery shell damaged the roof of the building storing reactor fuel.
“What I know for sure is that the Russians are firing from around the plant,” the unnamed official told reporters during a background briefing at the Pentagon. “I also know that there are rounds that have impacted near the plant.”
The official said it was “hard to explain, I guess” how the US was monitoring the situation around the nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest.
“And I don’t want to say that the Ukrainians haven’t fired in that vicinity either because I think there’s probably a likelihood that they have, but in good – in a number of cases, it’s returning fire of the Russians who are firing from those locations,” he said.
Russian forces established control of the Zaporozhye NPP in early March. National guard and nuclear protection specialists secured the site while the Ukrainian staff continued to operate without hindrance. The government in Kiev claims that Russian forces turned the plant into a military base from which they were attacking Ukrainian targets, but also that Russian troops were shelling themselves in a false-flag ploy to make Ukraine look bad.
The US official claimed “the Ukrainians are very aware of the potential impacts of striking the nuclear power plant and they’re going out of their way not to do that.”
Moscow has provided evidence to the UN of repeated Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye NPP and the nearby town of Energodar since July, using kamikaze drones and even US-supplied artillery. The latest attack came on Monday, when a round breached the roof of a building where fresh reactor fuel was being stored, a member of the local administration said.
On Sunday, a drone was shot down over the plant, while Ukrainian artillery strikes on Energodar injured nine civilian residents.
Kiev has demanded that Russia hand the Zaporozhye NPP back over to Ukrainian control, or at least demilitarize a 30-kilometer area around it. On Monday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also urged demilitarization, as well as a shutdown of the reactors. The US has previously echoed Kiev’s accusations that Moscow wants to “steal Ukraine’s electricity” by shutting down the plant or disconnecting it from the Ukrainian grid.
According to Russian nuclear experts, the biggest danger is not a reactor meltdown, but Ukrainian artillery striking the open-air spent fuel storage, which would result in a radioactive release.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi is personally leading the mission that is supposed to visit the plant this week.
Boris Johnson locking the next Prime Minister into unsustainable nuclear debt
So long and thanks for all the nukes: Boris Johnson is marking his last week in No 10 by signing a £30 billion cheque that makes some allies of Liz Truss feel distinctly queasy.
With just five days until his successor takes office, this morning’s Times reveals that the prime minister is pressing ahead with plans to approve the Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk.
It’s a decision some Truss allies would rather he had left to the next inhabitant of No 10. Earlier this month Simon Clarke, the chief secretary to the Treasury set for a senior role in the next cabinet, warned in a leaked letter that the costs of the project were “sufficient to materially affect spending and fiscal choices for an incoming government,
especially in the context of wider pressures on the public finances”. But Johnson looks set to bind the next PM’s hands anyway.
Times 31st Aug 2022
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nuclear-option-spells-fallout-for-johnsons-successor-b68c9gh5w
Boris Johnson’s parting gift – a £30 billion nuclear debt.
Boris Johnson is poised to give approval this week for a nuclear power station costing up to £30 billion as ministers close in on a deal to reopen Britain’s biggest gas storage facility. The prime minister is preparing to announce an in-principle agreement to offer funding to the Sizewell C reactor in Suffolk before he leaves office, despite concerns about creating a multibillion-pound spending commitment for Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed him.
Johnson acknowledged yesterday that “it is going to be tough through to next year” because of the rising energy bills but said his successor would “provide a further package of support for helping people with the cost of energy”.
Johnson is thought to have privately decided to go ahead with Sizewell C earlier in the summer, but said yesterday that a public announcement was imminent. “We are going to have a long-term British energy security strategy, and we are putting in more nuclear — you’re going to be hearing more about that later this week,” he said on a visit to Dorset.
Johnson also promised “absolutely shedloads of wind
power” as he sought to pin the blame for high gas prices on Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. “Be in absolutely no doubt that the gas price is
being driven by what Putin did in Ukraine,” he said. “I’m not going to
shrink from this — it is going to be tough in the months to come, it’s
going to be tough through to next year, and that’s because of Putin’s war
in Ukraine. But we’re going to get through it.” Kwarteng is also said to
be in the final stages of agreeing a deal with Centrica to reopen the Rough
gas storage facility under the North Sea, in an about-turn that could leave
taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of pounds if the company
does not make as much as expected.
Times 31st Aug 2022
1 This Month
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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