Trump’s new Iran sanctions have put airstrikes on hold — but nuclear risks remain History suggests these dark scenarios cannot be dismissed. Even more critical, available measures to reduce these dangers must not be ignored. June 25, 2019, NBC News THINK, By Bennett Ramberg, Former policy analyst at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs
The Middle East presents a dangerous nexus of nuclear reactors and violence. It remains the only region where foreign powers have attacked their enemies’ nuclear plants. On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order putting in place what he called “hard-hitting” new sanctions on Iran. Should continuing tensions between Tehran and Washington boil over into intense hostilities, one ominous nuclear policy question cannot be ignored: Will the presence of reactors in an enlarged conflict zone open a Pandora’s box to the first radioactive war in history?
Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, wrote in a 2015 New York Times opinion piece that Washington needed to aim for “breaking key links in [Iran’s] nuclear fuel cycle” through military action. (And envisioned Israel playing a role.) That military option became moot when the Obama administration signed the Iran deal. Now that Trump has withdrawn from the agreement, however, military action is again an option — as well as serious consequences should any action go forward.
Consider, for example, if the current tensions escalate to the point that Tehran crosses Washington’s red line, as it has threatened, and expands nuclear materials production, openly breaking the deal struck with the Obama administration and its allies. Would the United States decide the time had come to eliminate Iran’s nuclear enrichment and related facilities?
In the powder keg of the Middle East, would Iran’s mullahs or their Hezbollah proxy then seek to make good on longstanding threats to launch reprisal rockets at Israel’s Dimona weapons reactor, releasing radioactive elements? And would such an attack propel Israel to respond in kind by striking Iran’s much larger Bushehr nuclear power plant?
History suggests these dark scenarios cannot be dismissed. Even more critical, available measures to reduce these dangers must not be ignored……..
Today’s Middle East nuclear reactor profile has become more complex, though. Iran now operates one Russian-designed 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant at Bushehr and is building two others. In 2020, a new power reactor is scheduled to go online in the United Arab Emirates, where three others are under construction. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt also now plan power reactors. …..
If a nuclear plant is hit, the results could be radiation hazards never seen in warfare. Several factors complicate risk projections…….
Acknowledging that mutually assured radioactive contamination would result from nuclear reactor attacks should be sobering enough to prompt all across the Middle East to heed the terrible lessons of Chernobyl: Releases of large inventories of radiation into the environment only sow grief that will last generations, benefiting no one. now https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-new-iran-sanctions-have-put-air-strikes-hold-ncna1021056
Nuclear Moral Hazard, Recent sales of U.S. nuclear plants raise questions about safety, liability, and economic incentives. (Today’s post is co-authored with Catherine Hausman, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.): Davis, Lucas and Catherine Hausman. “Nuclear Moral Hazard”, Energy Institute Blog, UC Berkeley, June 24, 2019,Last week, a company called Holtec International received federal approval to acquire New Jersey’s Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. Except Oyster Creek shut down last fall and will never produce another kilowatt-hour. Holtec is buying it to tear it down. It will be responsible for decommissioning the site, including managing spent fuel and other radioactive waste.
The Oyster Creek sale is one of severalsuchrecent transactions in which a U.S. nuclear plant is being sold by a large publicly-traded company to a smaller privately-owned company specializing in decommissioning. Though the other sales are pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it is not too soon to consider the potential implications for safety and the environment.
The U.S. nuclear industry has a strong record of safe operations. Historically, most owners of U.S. nuclear plants have been large companies, with significant “skin in the game” in terms of profitability and reputation if something were to go wrong. Do smaller companies have the same incentives? ………
Old Regime – Incentive for Safety
But, these nuclear asset transfers could have a big downside. In the past, safe operations meant that nuclear plants could make more money. We suspect that these economic incentives partly account for the good safety record of U.S. nuclear plants. Nuclear power plant owners worked hard to avoid problems because plant shutdowns are costly for plant owners.
Take Entergy, for example. At its peak, Entergy owned eight U.S. nuclear power plants, over 9,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity. With a large portfolio on the line, Entergy had an enormous incentive to make sure all its plants kept running without incident.
In short, under the old regime, it was profitable for nuclear operators to be extremely safe.
New Regime – Less to Lose
But that argument applied in an era when plants were actually generating electricity. Once plants close, this mechanism is no longer relevant – there are no operating profits on the line. Now the way to maximize profits is to minimize costs; so companies specializing in decommissioning will be working hard to figure out how to perform these functions as cheaply as possible.
And the reputation-based incentives also change. Before, companies worried that any problem at any plant would risk their reputation and thus their whole business – including other plants they owned and possibly including non-nuclear assets. But what about the new owners? Smaller companies have less to lose.
Bankruptcy protection is also an issue. For a company like Entergy with a $19 billion dollar market capitalization, only a large incident would put it out of business. Not true for a smaller company. Economists have long argued that bankruptcy protection raises a moral hazard problem – with “judgment proof” companies having less incentive to act safely.
Following in the Footsteps of Oil and Gas?
A similar moral hazard problem arises with oil and gas wells. Our colleague Judd Boomhower has writtenabout how small oil and gas producers face adverse incentives for safety and environmental risk. If the small oil and gas producer declares bankruptcy, it is not responsible for accident clean-up costs. Judd’s research shows that this can lead to less safe operating practices. Relatedly, the American West has thousands of “abandoned” wells that have not been properly remediated, many “owned” by companies that have gone bankrupt. Similar problems have shown up also with coal mines and offshore oil infrastructure. And the stakes for the nuclear sites are tremendous – across the country, we’re talking billions of dollars in anticipated clean-up costs.
Big Role for Regulation
When economic incentives alone do not ensure safe and thorough decommissioning, regulation should play a larger role. The new owners of these plants are inheriting substantial decommissioning funds, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasstated that it will be monitoring financial viability closely throughout the decommissioning process. But what happens if the new owners run out of money? Where will the necessary funds come from if the decommissioning funds prove insufficient to cover costs?
This is new territory for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. As the U.S. nuclear generation fleet heads toward retirement, the NRC needs to pivot away from regulating construction and operation, and toward regulating decommissioning and fuel storage. Given the incentive issues these sales raise, it is critical that the NRC get up to speed quickly on the emerging risks.
Decommissionings at several recently-closed plants are aiming for accelerated timelines, which could be good or bad for safety. Between that and the specialized expertise that the new owners are bringing, the sales could turn out to be a win for the public. But the economic incentives for proper decommissioning are not very reassuring, and it’s not clear that regulations are ready to fill that gap. https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2019/06/24/nuclear-moral-hazard/
Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor isn’t Chernobyl, but does have vulnerabilities A disaster at Israel’s reactor would be far less catastrophic than the 1986 meltdown, but the core is being kept in service far longer than intended, and experts warn that’s risky, Times of Israel, By JUDAH ARI GROSS 24 June 19, The hit television miniseries “Chernobyl” has reminded the world of the ever-present specter of a nuclear catastrophe made possible by the deadly combination of negligence, ignorance and incompetence…….
The effects of the reactor explosion are still seen and felt today, inside the exclusion zone and far beyond, with a still unfolding impact on people, wildlife and plants. Notably, hundreds of thousands of so-called liquidators risked their lives and long-term health to contain the radiation after the explosion, including some 1,500 who live in Israel and are woefully neglected by the government.
Could such a catastrophe occur in Israel’s own nuclear reactor, the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center outside Dimona, in the south of the country? In a rocket strike on the facility — which Iran, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Syria have each threatened or attempted to carry out — would large swaths of the Jewish state become contaminated with radioactive material? Or what about in a large earthquake along the Syrian-African rift, which is expected at some point in the coming years?
………… there are safety concerns connected to Dimona — namely that its core is aging, and will nevertheless continue to be used as Israel is unlikely to get a new one — and these often go undiscussed in public due to the largely classified nature of the facility, which produces fissile material for nuclear weapons, according to foreign media reports.
Israel is believed by foreign governments and media to be the Middle East’s sole nuclear power, but has long refused to confirm or deny that it has nuclear weapons, and officially maintains that the Dimona plant focuses on research and energy provision ……
In a nuclear catastrophe in Dimona, cleaning up this molecule [Cesium-137 ] — which can easily mix with groundwater and is readily absorbed by people, animals and plants — would present a significant challenge, requiring large amounts of resources. This radioactive molecule is still being foundin marine life around Japan, some eight years after the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear reactor. ………
Rocket attacks aren’t the only threat
In addition to the overt threats posed to the Dimona nuclear reactor by terror groups and enemy nations, as well as by earthquakes and other natural disasters, one of the less-discussed concerns surrounding the core is its advancing age and Israel’s apparent resolve to keep it running regardless, the expert said.
The Dimona nuclear core, which was given to Israel by France and went active in the early 1960s, is one of the oldest still operating in the world.
Originally designed to operate for 40 years, the core is now being pushed to remain in service for twice that, according to the expert.
This is not from frugality or unwillingness on Israel’s part to purchase a new core, but a legal inability or disinclination by the countries that produce these cores to sell one to the Jewish state, as Jerusalem refuses to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which is meant to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
As a result of Israel’s inability to replace the nuclear core, it is motivated to keep it in service for as long as possible, the atomic expert said, replacing and upgrading whatever parts it can and carefully monitoring the components it can’t for any possible “show-stopping” signs of trouble, notably in its aluminum reactor tank…….
Despite the government’s assurances, several Israeli nuclear experts — including some of the scientists who founded the Dimona reactor — as well as politicians have for years been calling for the aging core to be shut down over the risks it posed. ……
One of the central issues regarding Dimona’s safety is that it has no independent oversight. Since Israel is a non-signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the International Atomic Energy Agency do not inspect the site, nor do American inspectors, who did monitor the reactor in its early days until they determined that their checks were effectively worthless as many aspects of the site were being kept hidden from them. Instead, the reactor is monitored by Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission — the same body that is responsible for running it.
The highly classified nature of the work there also limits the amount of public debate about the nuclear research center……..
Two workers exposed to unsafe radiation dose at Lucas Heights nuclear facility, Guardian, Michael McGowan@mmcgowan 24 Jun 2019
Production at Australia’s only nuclear medicine facility halted after ‘safety incident’ Production has ceased and an urgent investigation has been launched after two employees at a newly opened Australian nuclear medicine facility at Lucas Heights were exposed to an unsafe dose of radiation late last week.Just two weeks after it was granted a licence to enter into full domestic production, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) has confirmed production at its new $168m nuclear medicine facility has been halted after “a safety incident” on Friday morning.
Ansto said three of its workers were “attended to by radiation protection personnel” after the incident, in which contamination was detected on the outside of a container holding 42 millilitres of the radioisotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99).
Two of those workers received a radiation dose above the legal limit roughly equivalent to a conventional cancer radiation therapy treatment, an Ansto spokesman said……
Located at the Lucas Heights nuclear facility in Sydney’s south, the $168m nuclear medicine facility was announced by the federal government in 2012 with the goal of tripling Australian production of Mo-99, the parent isotope of Technetium-99m. …..
It is the second contamination scare at the Lucas Heights facility in only a few months.
Safety risks exposed by nuclear bomb convoy exercise in Scotland, The Ferret, Rob Edwards on June 23, 2019 An emergency exercise imagining an explosion spreading radioactive contamination from a nuclear bomb convoy crash in East Lothian was hampered by communication breakdowns that would have put people at risk.
An official assessment of the exercise by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been passed to The Ferret. It reveals that paper masks worn by the emergency services would have failed to protect them from radioactivity leaking from a damaged nuclear warhead.
During the exercise police could not hear the convoy commander over the radio because he was wearing a respirator. Police also missed vital safety information because they failed to invite the commander to briefing meetings, and were criticised by the MoD for being “unfamiliar” with emergency procedures.
Campaigners condemned the exercise, codenamed Astral Climb, for not testing measures for protecting the public. They accused the MoD of failing to learn from mistakes made in previous nuclear bomb convoy exercises. …….
Though they are meant to be secret, the convoys are often photographed, filmed and followed on social media. They travel close to major centres of population such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham.
In May 2018 The Ferret revealed that safety problems plaguing the convoys had risen to a record high, with 44 incidents logged in 2017. A report by campaignershas warned that Scotland was “wholly unprepared” to deal with an accident or an attack on a convoy……..
It took more than two years for the MoD to release the report on Astral Climb in response to a freedom of information request by the campaign group, Nukewatch. The MoD apologised for such a “severe delay” and redacted sections of the report to protect “national security” and “personal information”.
The Scottish co-ordinator of Nukewatch, Jane Tallents, accused the MoD of failing to safeguard the public. “The MoD is now conducting convoy accident exercises which don’t even pretend to test any measures to protect the public from a radiation release,” she said.
“In the past more realistic exercise scenarios still stopped short of actual evacuation and sheltering of the public but at least played out on paper how that might be done. For Astral Climb 2016 the MoD imagined a convoy on a back road it never uses nowhere near any population centres.”
She added: “Nukewatch can only conclude that the MoD itself realises that a robust test of emergency procedures would always show that the public would be put at risk. Therefore they have moved to an annual box ticking exercise with the minimum of information being released to the public.”
Tallents urged the Scottish Government and emergency services to demand more transparency. “The scenarios for future exercises should be set by the regulators and civil emergency services to ensure that they are realistic and challenging,” she told The Ferret.
“Of course the best way to protect the public is to stop transporting nuclear warheads on our roads altogether.”…….
The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND) described the MoD report on Astral Climb as a “massive cause for concern”. Nuclear weapons were a “major threat” to the health and safety of local communities, it warned……
The Scottish Government pointed out that the transportation of defence nuclear material in Scotland was a reserved matter for the MoD. “The Scottish Government expects any such transportation to be carried out safely and securely and has made this expectation clear to the UK government,” said a spokesperson……..https://theferret.scot/astral-climb-nuclear-bomb-convoy-exercise/
CT scan service shut following radiation leak, SABITRI DHAKAL, Kathmandu, June 22 Bir Hospital shut down its CT scan service yesterday after radiation was found leaking from its highly shielded room.
The hospital has closed its services upon the recommendation of Nepal Academy of Science and Technology as a monitoring team from NAST found higher level of radiation in areas around the CT scan room. It has suggested that the hospital adopt protection measures against radiation leakage. The hospital had fixed a new CT scan machine six months ago.
Immediate exposure to high level of radiation will harm blood and skin cells. Effect of radiation on gonads, one of the reproductive organs in a male or female can lead to birth defects in babies, said Dan Bahadur Karki, president of Nepal Radiologist Association.
Skin burns can occur when exposed to higher level of radiation. A long term exposure to radiation could result in cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The early symptoms of sickness from radiation are nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Radiation leakages can occur in hospitals due to defects in X-ray machines or when proper shielding of the X-ray room is not maintained. To prevent radiation leakage lead shielding is necessary, said Buddha R Shah, a senior scientist at Physical Science Laboratory, Faculty of Science, NAST.
The hospital is unsure of resuming the services any time soon as it lacks enough budget for repair and maintenance of the CT scan room. “It costs around 20-25 lakh to maintain the room. We don’t have enough budget. It takes two to three months for any maintenance work at the hospital incurring a cost of above Rs five lakh as the hospital administration has to go through a tender process,” said Kedar Century, director at the hospital………https://thehimalayantimes.com/kathmandu/ct-scan-service-shut-following-radiation-leak/
THE CHERNOBYL nuclear power plant has had a new roof installed to contain radioactive waste, 33 years after the April 1986 disaster. By ABBIE LLEWELYN Jun 21, 20196
The roof has been in construction since 2010, moved into position in 2016 and systems began operation in February this year. The huge structure was placed over the original sarcophagus, which was hastily put together in 1986 after Reactor 4 exploded and released huge amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. The New Safe Confinement (NSC) aims to prevent the release of radioactive material for the next 100 years.
The Shelter Implementation Plan, of which the roof is the main element, has cost around £1.9billion – the roof alone costing around £1.3billion.
The NSC is designed to withstand temperatures ranging from -43C to 45C, a class-three tornado and an earthquake with a magnitude of 6 on the Richter scale.
The first container that encased the offending reactor was assembled in just five months. But by 1996, the original sarcophagus was damaged beyond repair from prolonged exposure to the radiation.
Rain water was leaking through the roof and came into contact with radioactive material before dripping into the soil, posing a serious threat to the environment.
Radiation levels in the area had risen to 10,000 roentgens per hour – normal levels are around 20-50 roentgens per hour.
The first sarcophagus was meant to last 30 years and repairs and maintenance was carried out until as recently as 2011, but ultimately it was decided that a second sarcophagus would be necessary.
The new roof is 162m long, 257m wide and 108m tall: the arch could house the Statue of Liberty or Notre Dame Cathedral – before the fire.
It was built so large in order to allow for machines to enter and remove the old sarcophagus.
After the nuclear disaster, a 30km exclusion zone was put in place, and 335,000 forced to evacuate – 115,000 from the surrounding area in 1986 and 220,000 more people from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine after the fact.
However, there has still been an increase in the incidence of cancer amongst those living near Chernobyl.
There have even been studies suggesting that the DNA of birds in the area has been altered.
Interest in Chernobyl has skyrocketed in recent weeks due to the HBO historical drama series ‘Chernobyl’.
The programme, available in the UK on Sky Atlantic, shows the events of that fateful day unfold, as well as the attempted cover-up by the Soviet Union.
It has been rated the highest of any programme on IMDB.
French energy group EDF says it is reviewing the start-up schedule and costs of its flagship Flamanville nuclear project after the regulator said it would have to fix faulty weldings, which have already delayed the project.
ASN, the nuclear watchdog, said on Wednesday that nuclear-focused EDF needs to repair eight of the joins at Flamanville in northern France.
“EDF is currently analysing the impact of this decision on the Flamanville EPR [nuclear reactor] schedule and cost, and, in the upcoming weeks, it will give a detailed update on the next steps in the project,” said the company in a statement on Thursday.
“This is negative news but it does not come as a surprise,” said analysts at Société Générale, since EDF had already flagged the likelihood of a delay. EDF’s shares fell 1.8 per cent by midday in Paris. The ASN said in October that the weldings were being reviewed. While, in July, EDF said there would be further delays and cost overruns due to problems with the connections. It pushed back the loading of nuclear fuel and the target construction costs at the late and over-budget plant.
EDF had said the loading of nuclear fuel was scheduled for the end of 2019 with commercial activity starting in 2020 and costs revised up again from €10.5bn to €10.9bn. Initially, Flamanville was expected to cost €3.3bn and start operations in 2012. ASN suggested in its communication to EDF that the plant would not be operational before 2022.
The Flamanville plant in France is one of three being built in Europe using the next-generation European Pressurised Reactor technology. The other two projects are the Olkiluoto project in Finland, which is more than a decade late, and the UK’s Hinkley Point, which is mired in controversy over the high cost of the project.
More broadly, EDF is expected to brief trade unions on Thursday about plans to reorganise the company. The plan, codenamed Hercules, say people familiar with the matter, would involve a holding company 100 per cent-owned by the state and two subsidiaries sitting beneath it. EDF Bleu, or EDF Blue, would house all nuclear and hydroelectric assets and EDF Vert, or EDF Green, would hold the renewables, services and network assets.
EDF Vert would then be floated to raise funds.
The company will also propose a regulated pricing mechanism for 100 per cent of France’s nuclear production to replace the current mechanism, said analysts at Bernstein. The plan to split the company stems from this move since, as Bernstein add, a “100 per cent regulated price for nuclear production in France would likely be considered state aid by the EU”.
The plan thus still has to clear the European Commission as well as probable public pushback to higher regulated prices and heavy union opposition. French trade unions remain particularly powerful within EDF and has used threats of power cuts in the past.
In a joint statement this week, the unions said they “oppose a strictly financial reorganisation that would lose sight of the industrial project, the social ambition and the general interest” of the group.
Chernobyl Episode 4 Scene | HBO | Graphite Clearing
This man knows what it’s really like shovelling radioactive debris on top of Chernobyl’s reactor ABC News
By Katri Uibu “Sometimes it happens in life that someone, somewhere, has to do something. Whether they want to or not.”
Key points:
At age 32, Jaan Krinal was forced to go to Chernobyl and clean the roof of the reactor
He says men were initially enthusiastic to help eliminate the radiation
One-third of the men of his town he served with in Chernobyl have died
When he left his wife and two children on May 7, 1986 and went to work, Jaan Krinal didn’t know he would be one of those people.
The 32-year-old was working on a state-owned farm in Soviet-occupied Estonia.
Because he’d been forced to complete the Soviet military’s retraining a year before, he was confused when officers surprised him at work and said he’d been called up again — immediately.
Jaan and 200 other men were taken to a nearby school. Once they’d walked through the door, no-one was allowed to leave.
The men’s passports were seized before they were loaded onto buses and taken to a forest, where they were told to slip into brand new army uniforms.
“That’s when I first questioned what’s really going on here,” Jaan recalls………
Workers told radiation could have health benefits
It all happened fast.
Hundreds of men boarded a Ukraine-bound train on May 8. By the next evening, they were setting up camp on the edge of Chernobyl’s exclusion zone.
They were just 30 kilometres away from the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster — the still-smouldering wreckage of a reactor torn apart by a series of explosions and spewing radiation in a plume across Europe.
Jaan was among the first group sent to clean up in the aftermath of the catastrophe.
Tasked with hosing down radiation on the houses in nearby villages, he was thrown into the thick of it……
Despite the apparent uselessness of the job, they continued to work 11-hour days without a day off until the end of June. After that, they had two days of downtime a month.
As the weeks rolled on, suspicions grew.
“We started to have doubts. But all the officers said, ‘Why are you fretting, the radiation levels aren’t that high.”
In a cruel irony, the commanders told the men that being exposed to radiation would actually have health benefits.
“They joked that whoever has cancer can now get rid of it — because the radiation helps,” Jaan says.
Men unaware of deadly reason behind roof time limit
By the end of September, whatever enthusiasm the men initially felt had faded.
As many developed a cough, concerns grew about whether they were being lied to about the radiation being harmless. The respirators the men were given wouldn’t stay on because of the heat and were used until they got holes in them.
Later they found they should have been replaced every day…….
A rumour had it that the very last leg of the assignment was going on the roof of the reactor to clean up as much debris as possible.
Humans were going to be given a task that remote-control robots had previously attempted, but failed. The machines simply stopped working due to the unprecedented levels of radiation.
“When they told us, ‘You have to go to the roof’, we thought, ‘Oh, this means we can go home soon’,” he says.
On the day, he changed his army uniform for a protective suit, glasses and a gas mask, and a metal groin guard.
“We were all lined up and told, ‘who doesn’t want to go on the roof, step forward’. But only a couple of us did,” he says.
“There was no mass rejection. Most people went up there.
“It had to be done. We couldn’t just leave it. I think everyone realised the longer the reactor would have stayed open, the more dangerous it would have become.”
Jaan was shown on a small screen exactly which piece of debris he had to pick up with a shovel and throw off the roof of the reactor, but strictly warned against going too close to the edge.
He had two minutes to complete the assignment — a bell would ring to tell him when to run back.
The two-minute timeframe was to limit exposure to radiation, which could kill a man.
But this wasn’t communicated to the men at the time.
Jaan says the roof-cleaning scene depicted in HBO’s mini-series Chernobyl mirrored real life events…….
A staggering one-third of the men of his town who went to Chernobyl have died.
The average age of death has been 52.
“Over the past couple of years, just a couple of us have died. But not too long ago it was around 10 men a year,” he says.
“There have been cancers. There have been suicides too, but thankfully not too many.”……
he hopes tourists won’t start flocking to the ghost city.
“I hope they’ll never start sending large groups of tourists there. It’s still a dangerous zone,” he says.
Turkey holds drill over risk stemming from Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear plant, DAILY SABAH, ISTANBUL, 20.06.2019 Fearing impact from a possible accident from an aged nuclear power plant in neighboring Armenia, residents of a border village held a drill on Wednesday coordinated by the local governorate.
As part of the drill, medical rescue teams and gendarme troops evacuated residents of Orta Alican, one of eight villages of the eastern province of Iğdır, which are located in close proximity of Metsamor. It is the first comprehensive drill of its kind in the region against the danger the plant poses.
“Survivors” of the nuclear accident were taken to a tent camp set up in central Iğdır by crews and they were “decontaminated.” Iğdır Gov. Enver Ünlü said it was their responsibility to conduct such a drill against “a disaster that might happen.”
He said Metsamor was assessed as one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear plants by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and according to data by European Union…….
Following an earthquake in 1988, Metsamor was closed. However, in spite of widespread international protests, it was reactivated in 1995. Armenia earlier rejected the EU’s call to shut down Metsamor in exchange for 200 million euros to help meet the country’s energy needs.
19/06/2019 PARIS (Reuters) – French nuclear regulator ASN said in a statement on Wednesday that utility EDF will have to repair eight faulty weldings that traverse the containment vessel at the nuclear reactor EDF is building in Flamanville, northern France.
In April, IRSN – ASN’s technical arm – had already recommended that EDF repair the eight weldings, which are hard to reach and hard to repair. EDF had hoped to convince ASN that the flaws in the weldings were not a threat to the reactor’s safety and wanted to leave them in place.
The ASN was due to rule on the recommendation this month. Its statement gave no further details.
EDFCEO Jean-Bernard Levy said on Tuesday that repairing the weldings would cause further delays to the reactor, which is already years behind schedule and billions of euros over budget.
Following the discovery of the problems with the weldings, EDF in July 2018 delayed the scheduled loading of nuclear fuel by a year to the fourth quarter of 2019.
(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Leigh Thomas)
HBO’s new series, “Chernobyl,” claims that these changes were designed to “prevent an accident like Chernobyl from happening again.”
But some nuclear scientists still worry that the fundamental design of an RBMK could pose a safety risk………
The type of reactor involved in the explosion, an RBMK or high-power channel reactor, has since been modified throughout Russia to account for some of its fatal design flaws, such as control rods with graphite tips and uranium with a low enrichment level. Many of the reactor’s original features were likely chosen to cut costs.
The goal of the retrofit, according to the HBO series, was to “prevent an accident like Chernobyl from happening again.” But that might be easier said than done.
The World Nuclear Association lists ten RBMK reactors that are still operating in Russia(one RBMK was recently decommissioned in Saint Petersburg in 2018). Russia is now the only country with these reactors, which were designed and built by the Soviet Union.
Four RBMKs are located in Kursk, a city in western Russia. Another three are found Saint Petersburg, a city with more than 5 million inhabitants, and three more are in Smolensk (about five hours outside Moscow). One of the Smolensk RBMKs is licensed to operate until 2050. The rest of the licenses expire sometime between 2021 and 2031.
QUAKE SHOCK Japan earthquake – Tsunami warning lifted after 6.8-magnitude tremor strikes near nuclear power plant and sparks power cuts, The Sun By Jon Lockett18 Jun 2019JAPAN has lifted an emergency tsunami warning after a 6.8-magnitude undersea earthquake struck near a huge nuclear power plant.Thousands of families lost electrical power and bullet train services were suspended on Tuesday, but there were no reports of serious injuries or damage.
Initial reports of waves crashing against the shore held chilling echoes of the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster – sparked just 80 miles away after it was hit by monster waves.
Tsunami warnings were issued for the Yamagata, Niigata and Ishikawa regions.
But only a minor swelling of the sea was observed in several cities about half an hour after the earthquake struck, 53 miles northeast of the island of Honshu…….
Bullet train service was suspended in parts of the region because of power outages and for safety checks. About 9,000 households in Yamagata and Niigata lost power, according to Tohoku Electric Power Co.
All seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata were off line and no abnormalities were reported. Two other nuclear power plants in the affected region were also intact, according to the Nuclear Regulation Authority…….https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9318581/japan-earthquake-tsunami-warning/
Get your fax right: Bungling officials spark Japan nuclear scare, https://phys.org/news/2019-06-bungling-japan-nuclear.html Bungling Japanese officials sparked a nuclear scare after a violent, late-night earthquake by ticking the wrong box on a fax form—inadvertently alerting authorities to a potential accident.
Employees of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), operator of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata—where the 6.4-magnitude quake struck—faxed a message to local authoritiesseeking to allay any fears of damage.
But TEPCO workers accidentally ticked the wrong box on the form, mistakenly indicating there was an abnormality at the plant rather than there was no problem.
One official filled out the form, and it was checked by a colleague before being sent.
Many Japanese government departments and companies still rely on fax machines for communication.
TEPCO’s Tokyo headquarters noticed the mistake, and a correction was published 17 minutes after the original release, the firm’s Tokyo-based spokesman told AFP.
Kashiwazaki city mayor Masahiro Sakurai saw the incorrectly filled-out form and immediately directed staff to check what was happening.
The mayor hit out at TEPCO, which also operated the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant—site of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl—when an earthquake and tsunami struck in 2011.
“When a real earthquake is happening, not a drill, this is a massive error,” Sakurai told local reporters, according to the Mainichi Shimbun daily.
“It is extremely poor on their part to make errors in the most important and basic information at a time of crisis,” he said, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
TEPCO apologised and vowed not to make the same mistake.
The late-night quake prompted a tsunami advisory, but only small ripples of 10 centimetres (three inches) were recorded.
The government said up to 26 people were injured—two seriously, although not life-threatening.
How The Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Meltdown Formed World’s Most Dangerous Lava, Forbes, David Bressan 16 June 19 “………Even areas thousands of kilometers away from Chernobyl are still today contaminated with radioactive particles, transported by the wind in a gigantic plume over Europe.
As the cooling system of the reactor was shut down and the insertion of control rods into the reactor core failed, the nuclear fission went out of control, releasing enough heat to melt the fuel rods, cases, core containment vessel and anything else nearby, including the concrete floor of the reactor building. The fuel pellets inside the fuel rods are almost entirely made of uranium-oxide while the encasing in which the pellets are placed is made of zirconium alloys. Melting at over 1,200°C the uranium and zirconium, together with melted metal, formed radioactive lavaburning through the steel hull of the reactor and concrete foundations at a speed of 30 cm (12″) per hour. Concrete doesn’t melt, but decomposes and becomes brittle at high temperatures. Part of the concrete was incorporated in the lava flow, explaining its high content of silicates, minerals composed mostly of silicon, aluminum and magnesium. Due to its chemical composition and high temperature, the lava-like material has a very low viscosity. When lava has low viscosity, it can flow very easily as demonstrated by stalactites hanging from valves and tubes in the destroyed reactor core.
Four hundred miners were brought to Chernobyl to dig a tunnel underneath. It was feared that the radioactive lava would burn through the containment structure and contaminate the groundwater. Only later it was discovered that the lava flow stopped after 3 meters (9 feet). Chemical reactions and evaporating water cooled the mixture below 1,100°C, below the decomposition temperature of the concrete.
About eight months after the incident and with the help of a remotely operated camera, the solidified lava was discovered in the ruins of the reactor building. Externally resembling tree bark and grey in color, the mass was nicknamed the Elephant’s Foot.
At the time of its discovery, radioactivity near the Elephant’s Foot was approximately 10,000 roentgens, a dose so high, only minutes of exposure would prove fatal. In 1996, radioactivity levels were low enough to visit the reactor’s basement and took some photographs. The photos are blurry due to radiation damage. The lava-like material resulting from a nuclear meltdown is also named corium, after the core of the reactor. An unknown uranium-zirconium-silicate found in the corium of Chernobyl was named later chernobylite. Chernobylite is highly radioactive due to its high uranium content and contamination by fission products. Corium will likely remain radioactive for the next decades to centuries. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2019/06/14/how-the-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-meltdown-formed-worlds-most-dangerous-lava-flow/#4d73b4f01691
Selfless Chernobyl ‘suicide divers’ saved Europe from nuclear devastation. Mirror UK , 16 June 19
The world held its breath as the brave volunteers risked it all to but to prevent a second huge explosion. he world owes him an eternal debt, but for Chernobyl hero Alexei Ananenko, it was just part of the job.Engineer Alexei was one of three men who volunteered to wade through radioactive water to prevent a second cataclysmic explosion at the stricken nuclear reactor.
They were dubbed “suicide divers” over the perilous mission.
Decked from head to toe in protective clothing, they descended into the bowels of Reactor 4 on a doomsday mission as the world held its breath.
Their heroism gripped viewers of Sky Atlantic drama Chernobyl. But with great understatement, 60-year-old Alexei insisted last night: “It’s nothing to brag about. Why should I feel a hero?
“I was on duty and it was my job. I was trained in what to do.”………
Experts believed that if 185 tons of molten nuclear lava hit the water below it would cause a radioactive steam explosion of 3-5 megatons – so massive that it would leave much of Europe uninhabitable for 500,000 years. Alexei was one of the few employees who knew where the latches and valves were located to drain water from the coolant system.
He, senior engineer Valeri Bespalov and shift supervisor Boris Baranov were tasked with turning them off.
Firefighters drained a huge volume of water so the men would not have to swim, but they were still forced to walk through radioactive fluid three metres below ground level.
The image of them carrying search lights as they wade through a toxic soup is captured in the TV drama…….
After the explosion a cloud of radioactive strontium, caesium and plutonium affected mainly the Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus, as well as parts of Russia and Europe. Between 1987 and 1990, 530,000 workers – known as liquidators and conscripted from across the USSR – worked in and around Chernobyl to clear up the toxic mess. ……….. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/selfless-chernobyl-suicide-divers-saved-16523155
Reluctantly, I have realised that the climate crisis is the most huge and urgent problem for humanity, now. This website is not able to do justice to this enormous topic. All that I can do is to pick out significant information as it arrives, and also note some, (not nearly enough) of the climate events happening.
Meanwhile, nuclear-news will focus on its original purpose, to reveal the disastrous effects of the nuclear industry, and to refute the propaganda lies from the nuclear lobby.
By Good News Network -Mar 26, 2019 Unlike Kickstarter which funds creative startups, or GoFundMe which addresses personal needs, Projects for Good was designed for people who want to support the greater good, not just with money, but with their talent and energy—and don’t know where to start.Patrick Furlotti is giving them that opportunity. Growing up in Santa Monica, California, Patrick learned at an early age that society could create a better world if people just worked together.
As a teen he volunteered with Heal the Bay, which was trying to clean up water pollution in 1980s Los Angeles. He folded, sealed, and mailed thousands of letters. The group scored a huge victory when a billion-dollar sewage treatment facility was erected right next to LAX airport.
I realized how valuable a campaign could be to the world, and that politicians weren’t all bad—they just didn’t know what to do. We provided momentum and direction.”
Beyond studying business at college, Furlotti began captaining ships for researchers who were studying human impact on coral and water quality around the Hawaiian islands.
At age 20, he was one of the youngest ever to captain a sailboat from California to Tahiti, gaining a deep respect for the natural forces that connect us to the planet. Now 37, he enjoys big wave surfing whenever he’s not launching or investing in social impact technology and environmental protection.
He also has attended many green tech conferences: “I saw all these people with great ideas—so many half-baked projects, but the world needs all these ideas.”
“I had seen firsthand how hard it is to get projects started, funded, and completed, and wanted to create a whole new model to help people with their ‘Projects for Good’.”
It took a year to design the web platform, and today they are adding new features all the time to make it “a complete project success ecosystem”.
‘Currently with Kickstarter and Gofundme, you can just give money. That’s cool, but what about if you’re really inspired and want to join the project? A lot of people don’t have any money, but they think, ‘I would really love to work for this cause.’”
“Our commitment is not to make money, but to build a community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about changing the world—not by featuring someone who is trying to build a robot that makes coffee and smoothies (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), but by focusing on projects that help the greater good,” Patrick told GNN.
“It’s about humans working together, and educating each other on what’s possible, that’s why I love partnering with Good News Network.”
PFG is trying to give project owners the tools they need—to make it cheaper to become a nonprofit, easier to find grants, and even make it free to crowdfund, so fees aren’t diverted from the money that is being donated. Patrick also believes there should be more transparency about where the money is going on these fundraising platforms.
The Community Center is where jobs can be posted, milestones recorded, and new members welcomed. These are some early success stories on the PFG platform:
Peter Gottesman is passionate about animal rights and has championed projects from saving cheetahs in Africa to rescuing bears in Laos through his non-profit Endangered Species Revenge. For him, Projects for Good offers exposure to caring people who want to support him. To date, he has raised over $6500 on PFG to help fund his animal causes.
Andrew Malais saw how badly Joshua Tree National Park needed a trash cleanup. He used PFG partially as a fundraising tool but mainly to list jobs and hire the perfect candidate or find volunteers. His project was a success, raising over 80% of its fundraising goal to purchase the supplies he needed and hire workers to cover the vast acreage.
Peter Fiekowsky raised money on Projects for Good to help develop patented technology that will capture excess CO2 in the atmosphere—and convert it into building materials. They are literally turning ‘air into concrete’. The founder of Foundation for Climate Restoration and partner in Blue Planet Ltd. praised Projects for Good for “helping the foundation raise the crucial seed funding needed to design our first Blue Planet prototype direct air capture machine.”
THE HUMAN EFFECTS OF THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY – theme for June 2019.
Fortunately, Chernobyl health records are now available to the public. They show that people living in the radioactive traces fell ill from cancers, respiratory illness, anaemia, auto-immune disorders, birth defects, and fertility problems two to three times more frequently in the years after the accident than before. In a highly contaminated Belarusian town of Veprin, just six of 70 children in 1990 were characterised as “healthy”. The rest had one chronic disease or another. On average, the Veprin children had in their bodies 8,498 bq/kg of radioactive caesium (20 bq/kg is considered safe).
Currently, policymakers are advocating a massive expansion of nuclear power as a way to combat climate change. Before we enter a new nuclear age, the declassified Chernobyl health records raise questions that have been left unanswered about the impact of chronic low doses of radioactivity on human health.
Chernobyl’s disastrous cover-up is a warning for the next nuclear age
