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 2019 Seattle radiation leak a ‘near miss’ to disaster, federal report finds
In May 2019, radiation leaked from a device at Harborview Research and Training. At first called a “minor” breach, investigators warn it could have been much worse. K5
Chris Ingalls May 23, 2020, SEATTLE — A March report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) says a radiation leak at the Harborview Research and Training Building one year ago was “preventable” and “a near miss to a significant event” that could have devastated the Seattle area.
“It is a wake-up call for all of us,” said Dr. Jacob Kamen, a radiation expert at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, who reviewed the 175-page report at KING 5’s request.
When radiation leaked from a medical device that a contractor was decommissioning on May 2, 2019 it was called a “minor” breach at the time.
But the DOE investigation revealed a stunning lack of oversight by federal regulators and a federally licensed contractor who pushed “…mission completion over safe conduct.”
Greg Wolf, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which led the investigation, said the report was meant to be blunt so the same safety breakdowns would not happen again.
“In this joint investigation NNSA took an unflinching look at the incident and concluded that it was preventable. It was largely a result of weak and partially implemented oversight processes,” Wolf said…….
Video released by the DOE at KING 5’s request shows a serious mistake as the contractor uses an electric hand saw to cut into an aluminum tube that holds the cesium capsule. …….
the Seattle incident shows how much damage even a small amount of radioactive material can cause.
“So just imagine if a tiny fraction can do such contamination in a building for a year – what would it do if it’s used by someone with malicious purposes in downtown Seattle? Just imagine how bad it would be,” Kamen said.
Kamen says cesium could be used as a “weapon of mass disruption.” It would not necessarily result in a large body count, but it could contaminate city blocks and shut down the economic engine – much like coronavirus is doing now.
Kamen is one of the leading voices calling for the disposal of medical devices – like irradiators – from low security facilities across America……
The Harborview Research and Training Building remains closed during a cleanup that is nearing $9 million. Research projects that could be salvaged and medical training have been transferred to other locations…… https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/harborview-training-research-radiation-leak/281-d91e61fe-4e3e-4d4d-b6a1-9993be5e93c5
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May 26, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, USA |
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Finland’s new nuclear reactor hit by valve leak, SwissInfo Ch MAY 25, 2020 HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland’s long-delayed Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor was hit by another setback after the nation’s safety watchdog reported valve problems in a component involved in the cooling process.
The reactor in western Finland was built by a consortium of France’s Areva and Germany’s Siemens and had been due to start producing electricity in November this year.
“A leak was observed in the mechanical control valve of one of the pressuriser safety valves,” nuclear watchdog STUK said in a statement on Monday, adding that a full investigation is required before it can issue a nuclear fuel loading permit.
“This is very serious,” STUK’s head of inspection, Iiro Paajanen, told Reuters, adding that the leak was in part of the reactor’s primary circuit and involved in its cooling.
However, Areva said the issue is unlikely to cause further delay for the reactor, which was originally due to be completed in 2009. …..
Although Finland’s government issued an operating permit for the 1.6 gigawatt reactor in March 2019, OL3 needs final approval from STUK to load fuel and start production.
“At present, the plant unit still has several outstanding issues before a loading permit can be issued,” STUK wrote in its January-April safety report.
Reporting by Anne Kauranen and Tarmo Virki; Editing by Alexander Smith and David Goodman) https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/finland-s-new-nuclear-reactor-hit-by-valve-leak/45783642
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May 26, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Finland, incidents |
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Georgia Nuclear: Vogtle Unit 3 Is Sinking! [BREDL Petition] https://www.fairewinds.org/demystify/georgia-nuclear-vogtle-unit-3-is-sinking-bredl-petition 18 May 2020, You can find the Fairewinds Associates expert report and BREDL’s legal filing here and under the reports section of this Fairewinds site. You also may read BREDL’s legal filing and the other documents filed on BREDL’s home site, where you will also see the breadth and depth of the environmental work conducted by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and its associated chapters in many states. What Does the Leaning Tower of Pisa Have In Common with the Vogtle Nuclear Reactor?
By The Fairewinds Crew
The famous tower in Pisa, Italy was designed to stand straight up, and like Vogtle, it began to lean during construction. During the ensuing years after construction, the Pisa tower continued to sink into the ground due to the inability of the failing foundation to sustain the tower’s heavy weight. It became known as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Similarly, the Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear power plant was designed to be straight on its firm ‘basemat foundation’, which is designed with extra rebar and mathematical calculations to assure that the foundation can support an atomic reactor as heavy as the unique design of the AP1000 with 8-million-pounds of emergency cooling water sitting on top of the containment.
Last month, Vogtle’s owner, Sothern Nuclear Operating Company (SNC), tried to amend its operating license with information that had been kept secret from the public. When that now leaning wall was first built five years ago, SNC established a program to monitor the lack of stability in the foundation.
Honestly, truth is stranger than fiction – you can’t make this stuff up! Now we learn that the Vogtle Unit 3 atomic power reactor is sinking into the red Georgia clay causing an inner wall to tilt! Yes, this is the same Vogtle Unit 3 that is already billions of dollars over budget and at least 5-years behind schedule.
On Tuesday, May 12, 2020, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League [BREDL] announced that part of the Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear power plant currently under construction in Waynesboro, Georgia, is sinking. According to BREDL’s press release, “In a legal action filed Monday with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the group called on regulators to revoke the plant’s license for false statements made by its owners, Southern Nuclear Operating Company. On May 11, BREDL filed a nineteen-page legal petition requesting a hearing before the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on a License Amendment for Plant Vogtle’s Unit 3. The petition is supported by detailed, specific expert opinion. Under rules of procedure, Southern Company has 25 days to respond.”
Fairewinds Associates, Inc Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen wrote an expert witness report submitted by BREDL to the NRC in which he said that Southern Nuclear Operating Company (SNC) chose not to disclose that the Vogtle Unit 3 foundation was sinking faster in the middle than at the edges, in the shape of a dish, causing internal walls to lean. From our point of view, leaning walls may have created a tourist destination for the Tower in Pisa, however, a leaning tower and failing foundation at a nuke plant is a meltdown waiting to happen.
BREDL has informed the NRC that there must be an entire reevaluation of the seismic/structural integrity of the entire nuclear plant. This means that a completely new licensing review and full analysis of all new stress conditions placed on other components that are no longer level needs to be conducted and receive an independent engineering review as well, since SCE has not publicized this fact to the people of Georgia.
Vogtle Units 3 & 4 are notoriously over budget, and their construction has been delayed for years. Now with the Covid-19 Pandemic, and these newly uncovered flaws, the construction will slow further as a complete safety review must be conducted to ascertain whether the ‘basemat foundation’ meets the foundation integrity demanded for a nuclear island (NI). The Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear island underlies the strange heavy design of the AP1000 with its donut-shaped 8-million-pound water tank at the apex of the entire containment system that is meant to protect us from a meltdown.
Let’s look more closely at the history of Vogtle and the so-called nuclear renaissance that never happened. Complicit in this financial boondoggle is the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) whose members have greenlighted all these cost overruns in return for campaign contributions from the nuclear industry. That’s why we wrote The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia. At Vogtle, all the extensive cost overruns have been shifted to Georgia taxpayers and ratepayers, and originally these plants were built with federal loan guarantees – that is our money folks, and a story for another time in the Vogtle saga.
During the past decade Fairewinds joined with other nuclear risk and environmental advocacy groups to raise awareness about the numerous safety flaws and operational issues associated with the AP1000 reactor design. You can read more about those problems and issues here.
In its legal brief, based on this Fairewinds Associates report, BREDL asked for a formal investigation of the Southern Nuclear Operating Company for making “materially false statements” to the NRC by claiming that the leaning walls were caused by construction tolerance measurements when the real reason the walls have moved is that the ‘basemat foundation’ of the Vogtle nuclear island (NI) is sinking.
May 18, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, incidents, USA |
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Germany: Radiation leak detected at research reactor, DW, 17 May 20,
A research reactor near Munich has emitted excess C-14 radiation, says the Bavarian city’s technical university. The “slight” leak late March had shown up Thursday when monthly readings were collated.
Munich’s technical university (TUM) said Saturday a neutron reactor located at Garchingjust north of the metropole was found to have leaked nuclides into the atmosphere “slightly” above the level permitted annually in its license.
Neither human beings nor the surrounding environment had been endangered, said the TUM and Bavaria’s environmental ministry — responsible for oversight.
Monthly figures collated on Thursday had shown an excess in C-14 particles 15% above the permitted yearly level, with the potential to cause “theoretically” a load for the public of 3 Mikrosieverts at the maximum…….
The facility was put on hold on March 17 because of the current pandemic, leaving many scientists unable to glean results for industry and medicine, said Görg.
The FRMII reactor, inaugurated in 2005, remains controversial among organizations like Germany’s branch of Friends of the Earth (BUND) and opposition Greens in Bavaria’s state assembly……. https://www.dw.com/en/germany-radiation-leak-detected-at-research-reactor/a-53467330
May 17, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Germany, incidents |
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Radioactive muck found in pond; liner may be leaking at SC nuclear fuel plant, The State BY SAMMY FRETWELL, MAY 13, 2020 Nearly 40 years ago, the operators of a nuclear fuel plant near Columbia installed a liner in a treatment lagoon, hoping to trap radioactive and chemical waste before it could trickle into groundwater beneath the pond.
Now, the lagoon liner is wearing out. And that’s a concern.
Recent research suggests radioactive pollution has seeped through the synthetic barrier that was supposed to protect soil and groundwater in the Congaree River flood plain. Soil below the liner is suspected of being polluted with waste from the east lagoon, according to a new report for the plant’s operator, Westinghouse Nuclear.
’“It is expected that some contamination will exist in the soil underlying the east lagoon liner, given the long operating history of the lagoon and the potential for a liner system leak,’’ the May 8 report for Westinghouse says.
If the soil below the lagoon is polluted, as Westinghouse suspects, it could indicate that groundwater flowing away from the property and toward the Congaree River has been contaminated.
No one knows the extent of the contamination yet, but Westinghouse has a plan to dig radioactive sludge from the lagoon and haul it across the country for disposal in the Idaho desert.
Once the company has removed the mucky sludge and the lagoon’s 1980s era liner, it plans to test the soil below the waste pond to see how much contamination may be in the earth.
The new Westinghouse consulting report, released by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, says sludge in the east lagoon at Westinghouse is contaminated with low enriched uranium and technetium-99, nuclear materials generated as part of production of fuel rods at the 51-year-old factory.
Exposure to sufficient amounts of uranium can cause kidney damage in adults and children. Technetium 99, which concentrates in the thyroid and gastrointestinal tract, can increase a person’s chances of cancer if exposed to certain amounts………
For now, Westinghouse is moving forward with cleanup efforts. Although the company doesn’t plan to clean up some pollution until it closes the plant in future decades, Westinghouse has agreed to get rid of other contamination sooner. …….
The tainted material that would be shipped to Idaho, likely next year, includes 45,000 cubic feet of sludge, soil and debris from the east lagoon, a 160-foot long pond behind the plant on Bluff Road.
Radioactive pond sludge would be hauled away on railroad cars to a U.S. Ecology site in the Owyhee Desert near Grand View, Idaho, according to plans filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Contaminated cylinders and a polluted sludge pile also will be carted away from the site for disposal……. https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article242667201.html
May 14, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
environment, incidents, USA |
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Who Do You Call When Nuclear Weapons Go Missing? Mathematicians. Here’s What You Need To Remember: With no witnesses, no debris and a search area in the least understood part of the world’s ocean, there’s little even mathematical wizards can do. But even then, few thought 50 years ago that the lost bomb of Palomares would ever turn up. National Interest, 10 May 20
When a routine Cold War operation went terribly wrong, two planes and seven men died, a village got contaminated and a hydrogen bomb disappeared.
The search and cleanup required 1,400 American and Spanish personnel, a dozen aircraft, 27 U.S. Navy ships and five submarines. It cost more than $120 million and a lot of diplomatic capital.
And it made an obscure 18th-century mathematical theorem a practical solution to finding veritable needles in haystacks.
Around 10 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1966, two B-52Gs of the 31st Bomb Squadron based out of North Carolina approached two KC-135 tankers over the Spanish coast southwest of Cartagena.
The bombers each carried four 1.5-megaton B-28 hydrogen bombs as part of Operation Chrome Dome, a U.S. deterrence mission that placed nuclear-armed bombers on the Soviet Union’s doorsteps.
The resulting breakup destroyed the tanker in a fireball of blazing jet fuel. All four crew on board the tanker died. One hundred tons of flaming wreckage fell upon the arid hamlet of Palomares, near the Mediterranean Sea. Three of the four H-bombs aboard the bomber fell there, too.
Within 24 hours, a U.S. Air Force disaster team arrived from Torrejon Air Base near Madrid. Specialists from the Los Alamos and Sandia weapons labs — and Air Force logistics units — descended on the tiny rural town.
The search teams found the three H-bombs within a day. One landed on a soft slope, its casing relatively intact. The high explosives within the other two bombs detonated on impact, blowing 100-foot-wide craters in the dry soil and scattering plutonium, uranium and tritium across the landscape.
The region’s long history of human habitation complicated the land search. Almeria, the province where Palomares sits, hosted a mining industry for more than 5,000 years. Countless mine shafts, diggings and depressions pepper its dry landscape made famous by the spaghetti westerns filmed there. ,,,,,,, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/who-do-you-call-when-nuclear-weapons-go-missing-152441
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May 11, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Spain |
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Ukraine Continues Fighting Fires Near Defunct Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, Radio Free Europe, 27 Apr 20 KYIV — Firefighters in Ukraine continue to battle a series of fires near the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant nearly a month after they broke out.
The State Service for Emergency Situations said on April 27 that brigades were still working to extinguish fires in the Lubyanskiy, Paryshivskiy, Dytyatkivskiy, and Denysovytskiy forest districts in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
“The main efforts are focused on the localization of two fire sites, smoldering stumps, wood segments, and peat-boggy soil,” the service said, adding that radiation in the area does not exceed permissible levels.
The fires began on April 3 in the western part of the uninhabited exclusion zone before spreading to nearby forests.
Ukrainian officials have said they have extinguished the fires several times, but new fires continue appearing in the area…… https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-continues-fighting-fires-near-defunct-chernobyl-nuclear-plant/30579563.html
April 28, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, incidents, Ukraine |
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 Hanford Employee Being Tested for COVID-19; Cases Confirmed at Nuclear Fuel Services BY EXCHANGEMONITOR, 15 Apr, 20, An employee at the Hanford Site in Washington state is being tested for COVID-19, the Department of Energy said in an overnight post. …….
Hanford, like most other DOE nuclear cleanup sites, has drawn down to minimal operations during the federal public health emergency. Probably no more than 20% of its usual workforce remains on-site.
To date, Hanford has not reported any positive COVID-19 results among its workforce of about 11,000 federal and contractor employees.
Meanwhile, BWX Technologies subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services on Tuesday reported multiple cases of COVID-19 among its workforce.
The Erwin, Tenn., defense-uranium contractor did not say how many employees were infected, or how many potentially exposed employees were in quarantine following contact with the sick workers……
It was not clear whether the COVID-19 emergency response might delay any Nuclear Fuel Services contract milestones. Among other things, the company is producing low-enriched uranium to produce tritium in civilian nuclear reactors for National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) nuclear weapons programs.
Nuclear Fuel Services also could wind up purifying defense uranium for the weapons program around 2023. The NNSA is negotiating with the company to act as a backstop for the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in a few years.
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April 16, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
health, incidents, USA |
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Wildfires near Chernobyl under control, Ukrainian authorities say, By Jack Guy and Mary Ilyushina, CNN, April 14, 2020 The fires reportedly came within two kilometers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
April 14, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Ukraine |
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Blaze rages near Chernobyl, endangering abandoned nuclear plant https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/13/blaze-rages-near-chernobyl-endangering-abandoned-nuclear-plant/
“A fire approaching a nuclear or hazardous radiation facility is always a risk” By Margaryta Chornokondratenko and Alexander Marrow | Reuters
KIEV – A huge forest fire in Ukraine that has been raging for more than a week is now just one kilometer from the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant and poses a radiation risk, Greenpeace Russia warned on Monday, citing satellite images.
Ukraine’s Emergency Situations Service said it was still fighting the fires, but that the situation was under control.
Video footage shot by Reuters on Sunday showed plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky and trees still
ablaze, with firefighters in helicopters trying to put out the fires.
Aerial images of the 19 mile exclusion zone around the plant, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986, showed scorched, blackened earth and the charred stumps of still smoldering trees.
The Emergency Situations Service said radiation levels in the exclusion zone had not changed and those in nearby Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, “did not exceed natural background levels.”
Greenpeace Russia said the situation is much worse than Ukrainian authorities believe, and that the fires cover an area one thousand times bigger than they claim.
On April 4 Ukrainian authorities said the blaze covered an area of 20 hectares, but Greenpeace cited satellite images showing it was around 12,000 hectares in size at that time.
“According to satellite images taken on Monday, the area of the largest fire has reached 34,400 hectares,” it said, adding that a second fire, stretching across 12,600 hectares, was just one kilometer away from the defunct plant.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those claims.
Rashid Alimov, head of energy projects at Greenpeace Russia, said the fires, fanned by the wind, could disperse radionuclides, atoms that emit radiation.
“A fire approaching a nuclear or hazardous radiation facility is always a risk,” Alimov said. “In this case we’re hoping for rain tomorrow.”
Chernobyl tour operator Yaroslav Yemelianenko, writing on Facebook, described the situation as critical.
He said the fire was rapidly expanding and had reached the abandoned city of Pripyat, two kilometers from where “the most highly active radiation waste of the whole Chernobyl zone is located.” He called on officials to warn people of the danger.
Satellite images taken by NASA Worldview and seen by Reuters showed the two fires had extended far into the exclusion zone.
The fires, which follow unusually dry weather, began on April 3 in the western part of the exclusion zone and spread to nearby forests. Police say they have identified a 27-year old local resident who they accuse of deliberately starting the blaze.
It remains unclear if the person, who has reportedly confessed to starting a number of fires “for fun,” is partly or fully responsible.
April 14, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
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Raging forest infernos in Chernobyl Exclusion Zone burning for eight days are now ‘close’ to exploded nuclear reactor amid new fears of radiation contamination
- Wildfires burning through Chernobyl forests are nearing the nuclear reactor
- There are fears that flames could reach radioactive trucks and vehicles abandoned after the notorious 1986 power station explosion
- Kiev has deployed more than 300 people and 85 pieces of equipment By JACK WRIGHT FOR MAILONLINE, 13 April 2020
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- Wildfires burning through radioactive forests in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone are getting ever closer to the exploded nuclear reactor.Firefighters are rushing to build firebreaks around the sarcophagus covering the ruined plant in Ukraine amid swirling winds.
There are fears that flames could reach abandoned trucks and other vehicles contaminated from the disastrous 1986 explosion.
An extraordinary video from firefighter Andrei Kukib shows an emergency vehicle driving through the raging fire and smoke laying waste to the polluted ‘dead zone’.
Fires have been blazing for nine days in the almost uninhabited 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone surrounding the disused plant. On Tuesday, the fire covered some 87 acres, having tripled in size due to strong winds, the emergencies service said in a statement.
- There are fears of radiation in the ground unleashed by the infernos can reach nearest city Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and other populated areas.This could be worse if the flames reach the Chernobyl reactors.
Kateryna Pavlova, a senior official involved in the firefighting, said: ‘We have been working all night digging firebreaks around the plant to protect it from fire.’
She told The New York Times: ‘At the moment, we cannot say the fire is contained.’
More than 300 people and 85 pieces of equipment have been deployed daily in the fight to extinguish the flames which comes as Ukraine – one of Europe’s poorest countries – is also battling against coronavirus.
- The State Agency for Management of the Exclusion Zone – which Pavlova heads – has ordered in three Antonov planes (AN-32P) and two MI-8 helicopters which have air dropped more than 250 tonnes of water in the wildfires.Police said the blaze broke out after a man set fire to dry grass near the exclusion zone. The man was detained by Ukrainian police. Ukrainian authorities rejected the warnings of the acting head of the country’s state ecological inspection service, Yehor Firsov, who withdrew remarks made this week that ‘radioactivity is higher than normal at the heart of the blaze’.
Initially covered up by the USSR, the 1986 explosion sent radioactive fallout across Europe exposing millions to dangerous levels of radiation. People are not allowed to live within 18 miles of the power station, which is some 62 miles north of Ukraine’s capital city Kiev.
The three other reactors at Chernobyl continued to generate electricity until the power station finally closed in 2000.
A giant protective dome was put in place over the fourth reactor in 2016.
Fires occur regularly in the forests near the Chernobyl power plant.
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April 13, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, incidents, Ukraine |
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Chernobyl fires: Radiation fears as firefighters struggle to contain blazes in radioactive zone, 9 News, By AAP, Apr 10, 2020 Ukrainian firefighters are in their sixth day of battling fires within the Chernobyl exclusion zone amid concerns over radiation that has remained in the area since the nuclear disaster more than three decades ago.
More than 300 firefighters aided by several firefighting aircraft were working to contain the blazes, which in recent days have been exacerbated by high winds.
Authorities have more than doubled the number of firefighters in the area since Monday. The extent of the blazes has not been disclosed for the past two days.
Ukrainian firefighters are in their sixth day of battling fires within the Chernobyl exclusion zone amid concerns over radiation that has remained in the area since the nuclear disaster more than three decades ago.
More than 300 firefighters aided by several firefighting aircraft were working to contain the blazes, which in recent days have been exacerbated by high winds.
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April 11, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Ukraine |
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CTY Pisces – Photos of a Japanese midget submarine that was sunk off Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. There’s a hole at the base of the conning tower where an artillery shell penetrated the hull, sinking the sub and killing the crew. Photos courtesy of Terry Kerby, Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory. August 2003.
On April 10, 1963, the nuclear-powered fast attack submarine USS Thresher (SSN 593), the first of a new class of submarine, was lost at sea when it sank while conducting a deep dive test some 220 miles east of Cape Cod. All 129 crew members and civilians on the Thresher perished with her. Later that day, the commander in chief of the United States Atlantic Fleet ordered a court of inquiry to investigate Thresher’s sinking. The court of inquiry issued its report in June 1963 but was unable to determine what caused Thresher to sink. The court of inquiry did opine, however, that a flooding casualty in the Thresher’s engine room was the most probable cause of Thresher’s sinking. The court of inquiry encouraged further study.
Over a half-century later, very little of the record of the court of inquiry has been publicly released even though the Navy undertook a declassification review of the records in April 1998 with a stated purpose to declassify and release information from these records to the public “whenever possible.” That review came to naught when in February 2012, after up to 75 percent of the records had been declassified, the Navy changed course, deciding it would not make a public release of the records. Instead, the Navy said the records were “available for public release through” a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Last year, retired Navy Captain James Bryant, who had commanded a Thresher-class submarine in the 1980s, learned that Arlington National Cemetery planned a September 2019 dedication ceremony for a memorial to the 129 lives lost with the Thresher. As a result, Bryant, who now investigates, lectures and writes about the loss of the Thresher and the accuracy of the investigating court of inquiry, submitted a FOIA request in April 2019 to the Navy for records about the loss of the Thresher, specifically including the record of the court of inquiry. He requested expedited processing, hoping the Navy might release the records before the Thresher memorial’s dedication ceremony. In July 2019, after exhausting his administrative appeals, Bryant
filed a FOIA lawsuit.
In February this year, Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Navy to review 300 pages of documents a month starting April 30 and by the end of every month thereafter, and to begin rolling productions of documents starting on or before May 15 and every month thereafter.
Therefore, during this 57th anniversary year of the Thresher’s sinking, the American public, including the families of the 129 men who lost their lives, may finally begin to see the Navy’s documents on the loss of the Thresher and the record of the court of inquiry that investigated that loss. How much of the information in these documents the Navy will choose to release is a separate matter. The Navy may continue to keep as much information as possible from the public as allowed by law, may use its discretionary authority to release as much information as possible to the public, or may take an approach somewhere in between. What one can say with some degree of confidence, however, is that
some amount of these records will be released in full or with redactions before the 58th anniversary of the loss of the USS Thresher.
April 11, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Legal, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA |
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 Ukraine battles forest fires near Chernobyl https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/forest-fire-chernobyl-boosts-radiation-level-69983859
Ukrainian says firefighters are laboring to put out two forest blazes in the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power station that was evacuated because of radioactive contamination after the 1986 explosion at the plant
By The Associated Press 6 April 2020 MINSK, Belarus — Ukrainian firefighters labored into Sunday night trying to put out two forest blazes in the area around the Chernobyl nuclear power station, which was evacuated because of radioactive contamination after the 1986 explosion at the plant.
Ukraine’s emergencies service said one of the fires, covering about five hectares (12 acres), had been localized. It said the other fire was about 20 hectares (50 acres). Earlier Sunday, the head of the state ecological inspection service, Yehor Firsov, said the fires had spread to about 100 hectares (250 acres). The discrepancy in sizes could not immediately be resolved.
Firsov said radiation levels at the fire were substantially higher than normal. But the emergencies service said radiation levels in the capital of Kyiv, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south, were within norms.
The fires were within the 2,600-square-kilometer (1,000-square-mile) Chernobyl Exclusion Zone established after the 1986 disaster at the plant that sent a cloud of radioactive fallout over much of Europe. The zone is largely unpopulated, although about 200 people have remained despite orders to leave.
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April 6, 2020
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, incidents, Ukraine |
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nuclear-news 