Hanford nuclear plant employees told to ‘take cover’ over incident, Rt.com : 26 Oct, 2018 Employees at the Hanford Vit Plant – one of the US’ largest nuclear waste processing facilities – have been told to “take cover.” The alert was issued as a precaution, the company operating the facility said.
The employees at the waste treatment plant were allegedly told to “go to the closest Take Cover facility” and avoid “eating or drinking until further notice,” according to the text message published by the people on social media.
The warning to the employees was issued because steam was coming out from one of the tunnels at the waste treatment plant construction site, Bechtel, the company in charge of the construction works said, adding that it was made out of “precaution.”
1:10 AM – Oct 27, 2018
“There is no indication of a release of hazardous material,” a Bechtel statement said. However, the workers were still said to stay in cover until further notice………https://www.rt.com/usa/442365-hanford-nuclear-plant-employees-cover/
October 27, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, USA |
Leave a comment
October 26, 2018
The High Flux nuclear reactor in Petten in the province of Noord Holland was shut down on Thursday because radioactively contaminated water had leaked into the crawl space of the building, owners Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group NGR said in a statement…….https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/10/leak-shuts-down-nuclear-reactor-in-petten/
October 27, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents |
Leave a comment
|
The Pantex nuclear weapons facility in Texas was just locked down … it took a while for them to explain why https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/the-pantex-nuclear-weapons-facility-in-texas-was-just-locked-down-it-took-a-while-for-them-to-explain-why/news-story/a9d78aee41461ba3e1e10a723f962712 Jamie Seidel, News Corp Australia Network, October 24, 2018 NOTHING invokes such fear as the threat of a nuclear accident. So when a leading US manufacturer of nuclear weapons declares an ‘operations emergency’, the world sits up and pays attention. Problem is, they’re not telling us anything.
All we were told is what is contained in a simple tweet:
Pantex Plant@PantexPlan The Pantex Plant is experiencing an operational emergency. The Emergency Response Organization has been activated. 3:59 AM – Oct 24, 2018
Mollified much?
Not when it comes to the amount of explosive radioactive material held at the plant, near Carson County, Texas.
Pantex is where the US nuclear arsenal is both constructed and disassembled.
New devices are built.
Old devices are broken down for safe disposal.
Naturally, it’s a high security site. And safety precautions are well established.
Local media reported “an unexpected event at the plant”.
But not what that unexpected event was.
“At this time, there appears to be no offsite impact and no need for the public to take any action.”
Those are calming words. To a point.
“The Pantex onsite response effort is being conducted by the Emergency Response Organization, a highly-trained group of employees with detailed knowledge of plant operations and emergency response procedures. These employees represent plant functions such as security, logistics, safety, medical response, radiological assessment, firefighting, operations and public information.”
That’s not so calming.
Security? Medical response? Radiological assessment?
The local sheriff closed local roads close to the eastern edge of the extensive facility.
Then, out of nowhere, it was all over. Perhaps.
Pantex Plant@PantexPlant Replying to @PantexPlant
The security event at Pantex has ended without incident. Thanks to the Carson County Sheriff and @AmarilloPD for their quick response.
4:47 AM – Oct 24, 201
Only later was an official explanation given.
A ‘routine’ inspection had sparked a bomb scare.
Security guard dogs had ‘sniffed out’ something suspicious.
“Pantex identified a potential concern with a vehicle in the … administrative building parking lot,” a statement reads. “As a precaution, all employees were sheltered in place.”
Interestingly, while employees were told to seek safety, surrounding inhabitants — equally at risk from nuclear fallout — were not.
“The vehicle was inspected for any prohibited items. After searching the vehicle, it was determined there were no prohibited items or explosives, and the emergency event was resolved without incident.”
Lucky for the locals.
The Carson County, Texas, plant has a history of problems. In 2015, it was reported ‘hundreds’ of employees had fallen ill with radiation related sicknesses since it was established in the 1950s.
|
|
October 25, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, USA |
Leave a comment
60,000 tons of dangerous radioactive waste sits on Great Lakes shores Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press Oct. 19, 2018 “……… Fukushima and ‘The Devil’s Scenario’
On March 11, 2011, following a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and an ensuing, 50-foot tsunami, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan lost cooling capabilities for four of its six reactors. The cores became damaged and radiation was released into the atmosphere, making it the world’s second-worst nuclear power industry accident after Chernobyl.
But it’s what happened — or almost happened — at the plant’s Unit 4 spent-fuel pool that gives nuclear watchdogs nightmares.
A hydrogen explosion four days into the disaster left the building housing the Unit 4 spent-fuel pool in ruins. The pool was seven stories up in a crumbling, inaccessible building.
It “was so radioactive, you couldn’t put people up there,” von Hippel said. “For about a month after Fukushima, people didn’t know how much water was in the pool. They were shooting water up there haphazardly with a hose, trying to drop it by helicopter.”
Two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission secretly conducted a worst-case scenario study of the ongoing disaster. The biggest fear that emerged: that a self-sustaining fire would start in the Unit 4 spent fuel pool, spreading to the nearby, damaged reactors. That, they found, would release radiation requiring evacuations as far away as 150 miles, to the outskirts of Tokyo and its more than 13.4 million residents.
“That was the devil’s scenario that was on my mind,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said during a special commission’s 2014 investigation of the accident.
“Common sense dictated that, if that came to pass, then it was the end of Tokyo.”
The worst-case-scenario report was not released for nearly a year. “The content was so shocking that we decided to treat it as if it didn’t exist,” the Japan Times quoted a senior Japanese government official as saying in January 2012.
What kept the spent fuel rods covered with water in Unit 4 was a miraculous twist of fate: The explosion had jarred open a gate that typically separated the Unit 4 spent fuel pool from an adjacent reactor pool.
“Leakage through the gate seals was essential for keeping the fuel in the Unit 4 pool covered with water,” a 2016 report on the Fukushima accident by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded.
“Had there been no water in the reactor well, there could well have been severe damage to the stored fuel and substantial releases of radioactive material to the environment.”
It’s a startling “very near-miss,” said Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“Given wind directions that are common in Japan, they could have been looking at removing the population of Tokyo for decades, or centuries,” he said. “You’re talking tens of millions of people that would have to relocate. That’s the bullet that Japan dodged.”……..https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/10/19/nuclear-waste-great-lakes/1417767002/
October 20, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Japan |
3 Comments
|
Workers who trudged through nuke plant contributed to June uranium leak, report says, The Island Packet, BY SAMMY FRETWELL, sfretwell@thestate.com, October 11, 2018
Workers at the Westinghouse nuclear fuel factory for years walked across a plastic liner that was supposed to keep toxic uranium acid from leaking out of the Lower Richland plant.
All that foot traffic eventually weakened the liner, which covered the plant’s concrete floor. And this summer, Westinghouse discovered that a uranium solution had seeped through the liner, eaten a hole in the plant’s floor and trickled into the earth.
Westinghouse wasn’t conducting detailed inspections to find problems in a section of the plant where toxic acid is mixed for production of nuclear fuel rods, the federal inspection report shows. That acidic solution deteriorated concrete after it seeped onto the plant’s floor for a “prolonged” period of time, the report said.
The report said several safety systems, designed to contain leaks, failed. As a result, “hydrofluoric acid solution was spilled’’ on June 16 from a process tank through the floor.
“They were not doing their maintenance inspections correctly or adequately,’’ Tom Vukovinsky, a senior fuel facility inspector with the NRC, said of Westinghouse.
The NRC’s findings add to a series of questions raised this year about how Westinghouse has operated the 550,000-square-foot factory.
Since discovering the uranium solution had leaked through the plant’s floor this summer, residents of the the Lower Richland community near the factory also have learned about other leaks, previously unknown. The NRC acknowledged recently it did not know for years about leaks in 2008 and 2011, which has caused concern among nearby residents. ………https://www.islandpacket.com/news/state/south-carolina/article219825805.html
|
|
October 13, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
environment, incidents, USA |
Leave a comment
|
Was Three a Near-Fukushima Event on the Atlantic During Hurricane Florence? ObRag, Ocean Beach California by MICHAEL STEINBERG on OCTOBER 10, 2018 Nuclear Shutdown News for September 2018 Black Rain PressNuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those working for a nuclear free future. Here is our September 2018 report.
A Near-Fukushima on the Atlantic?
On September 17 the Raleigh News & Observer reported, “Floods limit access to Duke’s Brunswick nuclear plant: crews us partopotties, cots.”
Did the Atlantic coast have a near-Fukushima event when during September Hurricane Florence made landfall? Utility Duke Energy’s Brunswick two nuclear reactors are located 30 miles south of Wilmington, NC, where the former Category 4 hurricane made landfall as a tropical storm in mid September.
It was reported that “workers are sleeping on cots and using portable toilets because the water is currently shut off and the toilets can’t flush”, and that there was “limited access to the plant, and some workers have been able to leave the site and check up on their homes nearby. After the storm passed some drove to a Walmart in Southport to stock up on provisions.”
Brunswick’s twin reactors started up in the 1940s, and are now approaching their designed operating life, 40 years. They are called boiling water reactors, the same model as the three Fukushima reactors that melted down in 2011, and were built by the same company, General Electric.
US nuclear plants are required to shut down if hurricane force winds, 73 miles per hour or higher, are moving in. Fortunately the winds weren’t quite that strong when Florence hit the East Coast.
Numerous nuke plants in the Carolina and Virginia were in the storm’s path. But only Brunswick reduced power. The “plant declared an ‘Unusual Event,’ the lowest level of nuclear emergency,” according to the News & Observer.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported, “Flooding of roads and downed trees prevented fresh crews from relieving the nearly 300 Duke Energy ‘storm riders’ who had been on site for days. And the blocked roads made it impossible to reach the 10 mile emergency evacuation zone if a higher level emergency is declared”
Food had to be brought in by helicopters…….https://obrag.org/2018/10/was-three-a-near-fukushima-event-on-the-atlantic-during-hurricane-florence/
|
|
October 11, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, USA |
Leave a comment
The Tip of the Radiation Disaster Iceberghttps://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/31/the-tip-of-the-radiation-disaster-iceberg/ by JOHN LAFORGE The World Nuclear Association says its goal is “to increase global support for nuclear energy” and it repeatedly claims on its website: “There have only been three major accidents across 16,000 cumulative reactor-years of operation in 32 countries.” The WNA and other nuclear power supporters acknowledge Three Mile Island in 1979 (US), Chernobyl in 1986 (USSR), and Fukushima in 2011 (Japan) as “major” disasters. ¶ But claiming that these radiation gushers were the worst ignores the frightening series of large-scale disasters that have been caused by uranium mining, reactors, nuclear weapons, and radioactive waste. Some of the world’s other major accidental radiation releases indicate that the Big Three are just the tip of the iceberg.
CHALK RIVER (Ontario), Dec. 2, 1952: The first major commercial reactor disaster occurred at this Canadian reactor on the Ottawa River when it caused a loss-of-coolant, a hydrogen explosion and a meltdown, releasing 100,000 curies of radioactivity to the air. In comparison, the official government position is that Three Mile Island released about 15 curies, although radiation monitors failed or went off-scale.
ROCKY FLATS (Colorado), Sept. 11, 1957: This Cold War factory produced plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons 16 miles from Denver. It caused 30 to 44 pounds of breathable plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 to catch fire in what would come to be known as the second largest industrial fire in US history. Filters used to trap the plutonium were destroyed and it escaped through chimneys, contaminating parts of Denver. Nothing was done to warn or protect downwind residents.
WINDSCALE/SELLAFIELD (Britain), Oct. 7, 1957: The worst of many fires burned through one reactor igniting three tons of uranium and dispersed radionuclides over parts of England and northern Europe. The site was hastily renamed Sellafield. Another large radiation leak occurs in 1981and leukemia rates soared to triple the national average.
KYSHTYM/CHELYABINSK-65 (Russia), Sept. 29, 1957: A tank holding 70 to 80 metric tons of highly radioactive liquid waste exploded, contaminating an estimated 250,000 people, and permanently depopulating 30 towns which were leveled and removed from Russian maps. Covered up by Moscow (and the CIA) until 1989, Russia finally revealed that 20 million curies of long-lived isotopes like cesium were released, and the release was later declared a Level 6 disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The long covered-up explosion contaminated up to 10,000 square miles making it the third- or 4th-most serious radiation accident ever recorded.
SANTA SUSANA (Simi Valley, Calif.), July 12, 1959: The meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment just outside Los Angeles caused “the third largest release of iodine-131 in the history of nuclear power,” according to Arjun Makhajani, President of the Institute for Energy & Environmental Research. Released radioactive materials were never authoritatively measured because “the monitors went clear off the scale,” according to an employee. The accident was kept secret for 20 years.
CHURCH ROCK (New Mexico), July 16, 1979: Ninety-three million gallons of liquid uranium mine wastes and 1,000 tons of solid wastes spilled onto the Navajo Nation and into Little Puerco River, and nuclear officials called it “the worst incident of radiation contamination in the history of the United States.” The Little Puerco feeds the Little Colorado River, which drains to the Colorado River, which feeds Lake Mead—a source of drinking water for Los Angeles.
TOMSK-7 (Russia), April 7, 1993: In “the worst radiation disaster since Chernobyl,” Russian and foreign experts said a tank of radioactive waste exploded at the Tomsk nuclear weapons complex and that wind blew its plume of radiation toward the Yenisei River and 11 Siberian villages, none of which were evacuated.
MONJU (Japan), Dec. 8, 1995: This sodium-cooled “breeder reactor” caused a fire and a large leak of sodium coolant into the Pacific. Liquid sodium coolant catches fire on contact with air and explodes on contact with water. Costly efforts to engineer commercial models have failed. Japan’s Monju experiment was halted in 2018 after over 24 years of false starts, accidents and cover-ups.
TOKAI-MURA (Japan), Sept. 30, 1999: A uranium “criticality” which is an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction caused a “neutron burst” that killed three workers and dispersed neutron radiation throughout the densely populated urban area surrounding the factory.
Not to be slighted, deliberate contamination has also been enormous: Five metric tons of plutonium was dispersed over the earth by nuclear bomb testing, and other nuclear weapons processes; Over 210 billion gallons of radioactive liquids were poured into the ground at the Hanford reactor complex in Washington State; and 16 billion gallons of liquid waste holding 70,000 curies of radioactivity were injected directly into Idaho’s Snake River Aquifer at the Idaho National Lab.
September 18, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
2 WORLD, incidents |
Leave a comment
More leaks discovered at troubled SC nuclear fuel factory; feds investigating, The State.com BY SAMMY FRETWELL, sfretwell@thestate.com August 31, 2018 HOPKINS
September 3, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, USA |
Leave a comment
|
Unfinished nuclear fuel plant had water leak NHK, 28 Aug 18The operator of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant under construction in northern Japan says it found a water leak earlier this month at one of its facilities.
Japan Nuclear Fuel says an employee spotted the leak in the pipes of a storage pool at the plant in Rokkasho Village, Aomori Prefecture.
The operator found that the pipes were corroded in 20 places and one of them had a hole. They are located outdoors and used for inspections.
The operator believes that rainwater seeped through gaps in insulation materials wrapped around the pipes………https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180829_02/
|
|
August 29, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Japan |
Leave a comment
Putin lost his supposedly ‘invulnerable’ nuclear-powered missile at sea — now he has to go find it https://www.businessinsider.co.za/russia-to-search-for-nuclear-powered-cruise-missile-lost-at-sea-2018-8, Ryan Pickrell , Business Insider US Aug 26, 2018
- Russia is gearing up to search for a missing nuclear-powered cruise missile that was lost at sea during a failed test-fire last year.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin has boasted about the weapon’s advanced capabilities, but all tests have reportedly ended in failure.
- While the missile is supposed to be able to fly indefinitely, its nuclear-powered core has yet to initiate to allow it to do that.
Russia lost a nuclear-powered missile during a failed test last year, and now Moscow is gearing up to go find it, according to CNBC, citing people familiar with a relevant US intelligence report.
Proudly claiming that the world will “listen to us now”, Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted in early March that his country had developed a new nuclear-powered cruise missile with unlimited range, but each of the four tests between November 2017 and February reportedly ended in failure, according to reports from May.
“The low-flying, stealth cruise missile with a nuclear warhead with a practically unlimited range, unpredictable flight path and the ability to bypass interception lines is invulnerable to all existing and future missile defence and air defence systems,” Putin claimed. “No one in the world has anything like it,” he added.
The reports from testing don’t support the Russian president’s claims.
The longest recorded flight, according to US assessments, lasted only a little over two minutes. Flying just 35km, the missile spun out of control and crashed. In each case, the nuclear-powered core of the experimental cruise missile failed, preventing the weapon from achieving the indefinite flight and unlimited range the Russian president bragged about.
The tests were apparently conducted at the request of senior Kremlin officials despite the protests of Russian engineers who argued that the platform was not ready for testing. Russian media reports claim the weapon will be ready to deploy in ten years.
During one weapons test in November of last year, the missile crashed into the Barents Sea. Three ships, one with the ability to handle radioactive material, will take part in the search operations, which have yet to be officially scheduled.
Experts are concerned about the possibility that the missile may be leaking radioactive nuclear material. The missile is suspected to rely on gasoline for takeoff but switch to nuclear power once in flight.
August 27, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Russia |
Leave a comment
Russia Seems to Have Lost the Ultimate Doomsday Weapon: A Nuclear-Powered Cruise Missile https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russia-seems-have-lost-ultimate-doomsday-weapon-nuclear-powered-cruise-missile-29632
Here’s what we know.
– Citing an unnamed U.S. intelligence official, CNBC reports that that Russian military lost one of the four cruise missiles used during tests conducted over the Barents Sea between last November and February, all of which ended in failure.
– While it’s currently unclear which launch resulted in the lost missile, U.S. Air Force nuclear-sniffing WC-135 ‘Constant Phoenix’ aircraft were active in the Barents Sea and Baltic Sea from March to August of this year, with a Russian fighter intercepting one of the aircraft over the Baltic Sea on August 8.
– This missile, one of many doomsday devices touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government during Moscow’s last showcase of new military capabilities, is purportedly capable of loitering as an unmanned second-strike platform that can remain in the air for an extended period of time over a virtually unlimited range.
Obviously, the cruise missile could cause an environmental catastrophe if the
reactor is breached . But besides the stupidity of losing a bunch of nuclear material in the middle of the open ocean, the incident reveals the short-sighted nature of nuclear-powered cruise missiles at all: they cause environmental devastation, they’re horribly expensive, and decommissioning them is a virtual nightmare. It makes little sense for Russia to even test the damn things since the Ministry of Defense has such an effective
nuclear deterrent in place already.
Frankly, a nuclear-powered cruise missile is a 1950s dream that goes against all logic in a world with hundreds of ICBMs tipped with multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles, all of which can kill a city.
This article by Brad Howard originally appeared at Task & Purpose. Follow Task & Purpose on Twitter .
August 25, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Russia |
Leave a comment
Russia is preparing to search for a nuclear-powered missile that was lost at sea months ago after a failed test, CNBC 221 Aug 18
- Moscow is preparing to recover a nuclear-powered missile lost at sea, according to sources with direct knowledge of a U.S. intelligence report.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged earlier this year that the new missile had unlimited range.
- The missile was tested four times between November and February, each resulting in a crash, according to sources who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity.
Amanda Macias | Crews will attempt to recover a missile that was test launched in November and landed in the Barents Sea, which is located north of Norway and Russia. The operation will include three vessels, one of which is equipped to handle radioactive material from the weapon’s nuclear core. There is no timeline for the mission, according to the people with knowledge of the report……
Russian President
Vladimir Putin unveiled the new nuclear-powered missile in March, boasting it had
unlimited range. Yet, the weapon has yet to be successfully tested over multiple attempts.
August 22, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, Russia |
Leave a comment
https://komonews.com/news/local/sinkhole-discovered-at-hanford-tank-farm by Thomas Yazwinski, August 18th 2018 , RICHLAND, Wash. — A sinkhole with an opening approximately 2 feet in diameter was discovered Thursday morning inside the SX Tank Farm at Hanford.
It was observed while soil compaction work was underway near Tank SX-108.
We’re told the depth of the cavity has not been determined.
Washington River Protection Solutions officials tell Action News they plan to use a special camera to inspect the hole and inside the nearby tank.
Work inside the farm was stopped and personnel left the farm according to procedure.
Radiological surveys conducted in the farm yesterday found no contamination and no significant increase in radiation readings.
August 20, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, USA |
Leave a comment
Fire at Hanford radioactive lab sends workers to hospital https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article216417500.html, BY ANNETTE CARY acary@tricityherald.com, August 09, 2018 RICHLAND, WA
A Hanford laboratory was evacuated and two workers went to the hospital after a small fire shortly before noon Thursday.
A worker at the 222-S Laboratory in central Hanford put out the fire with a hand-held fire extinguisher while other employees pulled the fire alarm and called 911, according to a message to employees of Washington River Protection Solutions.
The Hanford Fire Department responded and confirmed the fire was out. Surveys were done to verify that no radioactive material was involved. About 250 laboratory employees evacuated the lab facilities, with all employees accounted for at 12:11 p.m. and sent to air-conditioned office buildings.
One employee was taken to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland with symptoms of heat stress and later reported symptoms of respiratory irritation.
A second employee was taken to the Richland hospital after reporting symptoms of respiratory irritation.
Workers were allowed back into the lab at 3:15 p.m.
The 222-S Laboratory accepts samples of some of the Hanford Site’s most radioactive and hazardous chemical waste to determine the content of dangerous substances down to parts per trillion.
Work is done under fume hoods or in the lab’s 11 radiation hot cells, with operators outside the cells operating tools within the cells.
Most of the analyses are of high-level radioactive waste from Hanford’s underground waste tanks. Information is used to determine what wastes can be combined within tanks and to help plan how workers can be protected while working at specific tanks.
No other information was available Thursday afternoon. Annette Cary: 509-582-1533
August 13, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
incidents, USA |
Leave a comment
nuclear-news 