Japan: Expert panel says 3 faults beneath Shika nuclear power plant may be active
Shika N-plant faults not ‘inactive’ / Power firm to challenge findings of NRA expert panel The Yomiuri Shimbun 15 May 15, An expert panel of the Nuclear Regulation Authority said Wednesday three faults running beneath the No. 1 reactor and other facilities of Hokuriku Electric Power Co.’s Shika nuclear power plant in Shika, Ishikawa Prefecture, may be active.
Members of the panel agreed on the view that “the possibility that the faults are active cannot be denied.”
The NRA’s new safety standards prohibit the construction of key nuclear facilities such as reactor buildings over active faults.
The No. 1 reactor may have to be decommissioned if the NRA concludes the faults are active. In addition, it also will become difficult to reactivate the No. 2 reactor.
There are eight faults under the nuclear facility site. Among them, it is said that three faults — one called S-1 running beneath the No. 1 reactor and others called S-2 and S-6 located beneath the plumbing system to deliver cooling seawater, which is a key facility — may be active……..
The panel has concluded so far that the No. 2 reactor at Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tsuruga nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture sits on an active fault, while it has denied possibilities that faults located beneath Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi nuclear power plant and Mihama nuclear power plant, both in the same prefecture, are active……..http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002149236
Norh East Japan rocked by M6.8 earthquake
Powerful M6.8 quake rocks NE Japan — Strongest to hit nation since 2011 — Official warns of upcoming aftershocks & tsunami, says tectonic plate is subducting in Pacific — CBS: Scientists detect month-long shaking on seafloor that could foreshadow mega quake similar to 3/11 (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/powerful-m68-quake-rocks-ne-japan-strongest-hit-country-2011-cbs-scientists-recorded-shaking-seafloor-could-foreshadow-mega-quake-similar-311-official-warns-upcoming-aftershocks-tsunami-tecton?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
Kyodo News, May 12, 2015 (emphasis added): A magnitude 6.8 earthquake rocked a wide area of Japan centering on the northeast early Wednesday [and] observed in areas ranging from Hokkaido in the north to Gifu Prefecture in central Japan.
UPI, May 12, 2015: According to NHK [it’s] the strongest earthquake to hit Japan since 2011.
NBC News, May 13, 2015: “We consider this morning’s earthquake to be an aftershock” [of the 3/11 quake] said Yohei Hasegawa, an official at the Japanese meteorological agency. The temblor, which struck just after 6 a.m. local time, was sparked by the Pacific tectonic plate “subducting,” or moving under, the main land plate, he added. Hasegawa warned that more tremors may be on the way. “It’s not just limited to this area alone.”
Japan Times, May 13, 2015: Moderate tremors were also felt in Tokyo… [Hasegawa] warned that another strong tremor could strike within a week, adding “if it happens (beneath) the sea, it could trigger a tsunami.”… a 78-year-old woman [said] “It reminded me of the disaster”… Kayoko Tamura [said] “It was the first time I felt such a strong earthquake here.”
NHK transcript, May 12, 2015: Officials… say it was the first strong earthquake to hit the region since July 2011 [and] aftershocks of a similar scale might come in the next week. >> Watch the broadcast here
CBS San Francisco, May 12, 2015 at 2:42pm: Earlier this week, scientists said they’ve recorded low frequency shaking on the ocean floor that may have been foreshadowing a larger earthquake similar towhat was released during the 2011 earthquake.
CBS San Francisco, May 12, 2015 at 12:42pm: Mega Quake Warning In Rumblings Off Japan’s Coast Alarms Scientists… [A] team of researchers says a similar pattern is emerging in a subduction zone where two tectonic plates are engaged… “Monitoring of offshore seismicity off southern Kyushu, Japan, recorded a complete episode of low-frequency tremor, lasting for 1 month”… These quakes moved in waves along the tectonic ridge and stopped abruptly… potentially increasing stress that could be released in a “mega thrust” earthquake.
France’s nuclear safety worries as fires break out close to 3 nuclear power plants
French police investigate fires near three nuclear sites http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/12/uk-france-nuclear-fires-idUKKBN0NX1HD20150512 PARIS French police are investigating fires that caused minor damage near three nuclear installations, state-owned utility EDF (EDF.PA) and atomic research agency CEA said on Tuesday.
Fires broke out on Monday morning at a weather station near EDF’s former Brennilis nuclear power station in Brittany and another near its Belleville nuclear plant on the Loire river, a spokeswoman said.
She said the fire had damaged equipment belonging to the IRSN nuclear research institute used to measure pollution and radioactivity at the weather stations, which are each about 1.5 kilometres away from the nuclear plants. “Police investigations are ongoing,” the EDF spokeswoman said.
Another fire was started on Monday evening at a weather station close to atomic research institute CEA’s Valduc site in Burgundy where nuclear weapons are manufactured and dismantled.
“There was the beginning of a fire, but it was quickly put out and there were no real consequences,” a CEA spokesman said, adding that a complaint had been filed with police.
The simultaneous incidents are reminiscent of drones that flew over French nuclear plants last year which raised safety concerns. [ID:nL5N0SR0DY] (Reporting by Michel Rose; editing by Jason Neely)
Alarm in New York following explosion at Indian Point Power Plant
New York Nuclear Scare After Explosion at Indian Point Power Plant New Yorkers contemplated the pros and cons of nuclear energy again Sunday after an explosion at Indian Point nuclear power plant in Westchester. By: Hana Levi Julian, Jewish Press May 10th, 2015 “….The Indian Point nuclear power plant that provides 25 percent of the electric juice for the Big Apple and Westchester County went into “emergency response” late Saturday afternoon.
Billows of black smoke rose into the sky over the Indian Point nuclear power plant near Buchanan, New York.
A transformer failed, causing an explosion that ripped through the non-nuclear side of the plant.
The blaze was just 200 yards away from the building in which the reactor was located.
Firefighters who rushed to the scene were able to extinguish the flames, Entergy spokesperson Jerry Nappi told CNN, adding that one of the plant’s two reactor units automatically shut down.
No one was injured in the fire and there was “no threat to the public safety at any time. All Indian Point emergency systems worked as designed,” the facility said in a tweet.
But the fire had to be extinguished twice, because the flames re-ignited. Even so, the fire was out within half an hour.
Governor Andrew Cuomo received a briefing on site and told reporters, “These situations we take very seriously. This is a nuclear powered plant; it’s nothing to be trifled with.”http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/new-york-nuclear-scare-after-explosion-at-indian-point-power-plant/2015/05/10/
Entergy’s Arkansas nuclear plant requires highest level of inspection oversight from NRC
Nuclear One earns worst rating Entergy’s Russellville plant in line for intense inspections, Arkansas Online, 10 May 15 By David Smith Arkansas Nuclear One has the worst performance rating out of all 100 nuclear power plants in the country, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission says.
The power plant is the only one in the country in the “column four” category of the commission’s rating of overall plant performance. The column four designation means the plant gets the highest level of inspection oversight from the commission.
Column one power plants require the fewest inspections. Plants in column five aren’t permitted to operate, the commission said.
It is rare for a plant to be in column four, said Victor Dricks, a spokesman for the commission.
“Sometimes there are one or even two plants in column four,” Dricks said. “It generally takes several years of very concerted effort on the part of a nuclear power plant operator to address issues and then be returned to column one.”
No nuclear plant has ever been placed in column five, Dricks said.
Representatives from the NRC and Entergy Arkansas will discuss the plant’s “significant decline in performance” at a meeting Tuesday in Russellville. The plant’s two nuclear reactors account for about 61 percent of the electricity that Entergy Arkansas generates in a year.
The public meeting at Lakepoint Conference Center, 61 Lake Point Lane near the nuclear plant, begins at 6 p.m.
Arkansas Nuclear One has received two findings of “substantial safety significance” that pushed its performance rating down into column four.
The first was filed in June last year in connection with the March 2013 handling of a 1 million-pound turbine stator, which fell 30 feet while it was being moved by a contractor, killing of one worker and injuring eight others. The accident occurred in a non-nuclear part of the plant.
The second finding, filed in January, is related to the 2013 accident. It involved Entergy’s failure to design, construct and maintain the seals that protect safety-related equipment in the emergency diesel fuel storage building from flooding.
When the stator fell, it damaged a water main, Dricks said. “The fire pump started and discharged thousands of gallons of water into the turbine building,” Dricks said. “There are floor seals that should prevent the water from flowing down into an auxiliary building. But the seals were defective, so water flowed into areas where it shouldn’t have been.”
Commission inspectors later discovered there were more than 100 unsealed conduits that allowed the water into the auxiliary building, Dricks said.
“They also found some degraded hatches,” Dricks said.
The cumulative effect of these two violations moved the plant into column four, the commission said……..http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2015/may/10/nuclear-one-earns-worst-rating-20150510/?f=business
USA spending $60 Mln on Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program in Russia (MNEPR)
US to Spend $60 Mln on Russian Nuclear Security Despite Sanctions http://sputniknews.com/us/20150508/1021898724.html The United States Department of Energy might spend over $60 million on nuclear security activities in Russia.
The DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) “has budgeted the funds to be spent this year through an international organization called the Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Program in Russia (MNEPR),” news website read, citing administration sources. NNSA spokesperson Derrick Robinson did not reject this information and said that US-Russian dialogue on nuclear security issues plays a great role in diminishing the level of nuclear terrorism threat.
He added that the United States has worked with Russia for a long time in order to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
The United States and the European Union, as well as some other Western nations, have accused Moscow of escalating the crisis in Ukraine, and imposed economic sanctions on Russia to exert a change in Kremlin policy. Moscow r
Another shutdown at Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant
he NRC ’s performance indicator for unplanned scrams for each 7,000 hours of operation changes from green to white if a nuclear plant has more than three unplanned shutdowns. Oyster Creek crossed the green/white threshold on July 11, 2014, when the plant had a fourth unplanned shutdown, the NRC has said.
Japan’s earthquake risk to nuclear reactors is being ignored, says seismic expert
Japan Earthquake Expert Says Nuclear Watchdog Ignoring Risk, Bloomberg, byYuriy Humber 3 May 15 Japan’s nuclear regulator ignored earthquake risk and its own rules in approving the safety of a nuclear power plant on the western island of Kyushu, said Kobe University professor and seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi.
Ishibashi, well-known in Japan for books and papers on earthquake threats that later became reality, said he has filed a formal complaint to the Nuclear Regulation Authority challenging the legality of its decision………
Ishibashi has seen his warnings of earthquake dangers come true in devastating fashion at least twice in a country that accounts for about 10 percent of the world’s quakes.
In a 1994 book “A Seismologist Warns” he said building codes were putting Japan’s cities at risk. The following year, the Kobe earthquakebuckled bridges, highways, and brought down buildings, killing more than 6,000 people.
Then in 1997, he wrote a report in Japan’s Science Journal where he coined the term “nuclear earthquake disaster.” The paper was written about 14 years before the Fukushima catastrophe, yet reads like a post-mortem of what happened: A major quake knocks out external power to the plant’s reactors and unleashes a tsunami that overruns its defenses, leading to loss of cooling and meltdowns.
Nuclear Restarts
Ishibashi says he doesn’t want his forecasts to play out again………Amid pressure from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government to process applications for nuclear plant restarts to help the economy, the NRA is under pressure to give utilities a pass, Ishibashi said. That makes the watchdog less rigorous in examining the safety assessments of utilities’ reactors, he said…..
Sendai Case
In the case of the Sendai plant, the NRA has allowed the operating company to ignore the risk of an earthquake in the tectonic slab underneath Kyushu, the seismologist said.
Kyushu Electric has also not factored in the risk from a so-called Nankai trough earthquake, Ishibashi said. A Nankai quake is one that could originate in the seas south of Japan’s main island, an eventuality that’s considered high-risk and constantly monitored by the government.
“Kyushu Electric was allowed to select their own criteria for quakes that could hit the plant and they ignored several as outliers — including a Nankai one,” Ishibashi said. “Taking the Nankai trough earthquake into account is indispensable” in modeling the dangers facing the Sendai plant, he said.
In terms of impact, a Nankai trough quake would cause tremors and ground motion that would last almost ten times as long as Kyushu Electric’s estimates applied for its Sendai plant assessment, Ishibashi said.
The government’s billing of the NRA, formed in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, as the world’s most stringent nuclear regulator is simply not true, Ishibashi said. The regulator feels beholden to government policy, which is pro-nuclear and supports restarts, he said.
“The NRA certainly seems to be feeling the pressure from the current administration,” Ishibashi said. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-30/japan-earthquake-expert-says-nuclear-watchdog-ignoring-risk
370 Billion Bq of Plutonium equivalent may have escaped from WIPP
Gov’t: Radioactive release “orders of magnitude” worse than predicted at US nuclear dump — 370 Billion Bq of Plutonium equivalent may have escaped from WIPP drum during “thermal runaway” & multiple fires — For amount to be that high, a “significant number” of breached drums is expected (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/govt-actual-radioactive-release-nuke-dump-orders-magnitude-predicted-370-billion-bq-plutonium-equivalent-escaped-wipp-drum-significant-number-nuclear-waste-containers-expected-be-breached-amount?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
Sante Fe New Mexican, Apr 23, 2015 (emphasis added): The head of a team of federal investigators [said] he’s not certain whether more than one drum of nuclear waste contributed to contamination of [WIPP]… The reaction pushed temperatures inside the container to nearly 1,600 degrees, ripping open the drum and scattering radioactive material thatbreached not only the fortified room that held the waste, but WIPP itself, which was designed to never leak… [Officials] would not rule out minor seepage from other drums.
U.S. DOE Accident Investigation Report Phase 2, Radiological Release at WIPP, Apr 2015:
6.4.1 Analysis Summary
- The radiological release… resulted from an exothermic reaction that led to a thermal runaway in drum 68660 [that] exhibited the following fire behaviors: Expanding flame front of material expelled from drum… Ignition of exposed combustibles… Propagation within the waste array by flame impingement… Melting and burning of exposed plastics.
- The combustibles external to the waste containers were ignited… direct fire effectswere limited to Rows 8 through 18… there were multiple small fires that caused direct flame impingement on several waste packages… the fire… caused the migration of contamination throughout Panel 7 [and] significant fire damage.
- A thermal runaway is characterized as a very rapid temperature rise within the container… [This] ultimately… led to failure of the lid… permitting a rapid release of combustible gases and combustible solids.
7.1 Accident Scenarios and Source Term Evaluation
- Source term at Station A should be 10 to 100 times lower than the source term in Panel 7 Room 7… Station A source term is estimated [at] 0.1 plutonium equivalent curies (PE-Ci).
- DOE-STD-5506-2007… recommends a bounding estimate of 1E^-4 ARF [0.0001 Airborne Release Fraction] for a drum over-pressurization without a fire… This release estimate, when applied to the… drum inventory of 2.84 PE-Ci, results in an initial source term released to the room of 2.8E^-4 PE-Ci [0.000284 PE-Ci]… less than 1 percent of the 0.1 PE-Ci source term at Station A.
- The chemical reaction resulting in over-pressurization of the drum described above is similar to the… evaluation of a drum deflagration from hydrogen buildup from radiolysis which assumes burning of material expelled from the drum and a contained burning of material remaining within the drum… [The modeled] release estimate from a drum deflagration is about 3 percent of the 0.1 PE-Ci source term at Station A… the actual amount of material released as measured at Station A was larger than the amount predicted… by almost two orders of magnitude… For either the drum over-pressurization or drum deflagration scenarios discussed above, a much greater airborne source term is possible if the nitrate salts behaved as a combustible dust ignited in air or if a greater fraction of material were ejected and burned.
- The 0.1 PE-Ci source term at Station A can be divided by the range of 0.01 to 0.05 LPFs [Leakpath Factor] to estimate the range of source terms initially released… This results in a range of 2 to 10 PE-Ci [74 to 370 billion Bq] airborne in the room… [I]nventory in drum 68660 [was] 2.84 PE-Ci.
- If drum 68660 released a source term as modeled… a significant number of waste containers would be expected to be breached to cause the 2 to 10 PE-Ci source term estimate… Based on the above estimates… release fractions and deposition in the underground, indicated the release from drum 68660 alone was much larger than what would be modeled… [T]he source term evaluation, using conventional release modeling assumptions, could not conclusively affirm that container 68660 was the sole contributor to the release.
Wide spread of radiation could result from smoke from fires in Chernobyl exclusion zone
Smoke from Chernobyl fire could spread radiation far and wide – experts Rt.com April 29, 2015 Smoke from burning forests in the 
is capable of spreading contaminants across great distances, even after the fire has been stopped, ecology experts told RT.
The forest fire near the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant started on Tuesday and triggered an emergency alert, with police and National Guard mobilized to bring the flames under control……
Although the sarcophagus remains untouched by the fire, decades-old contaminants could still be released and travel far and wide, borne aloft by the smoke, nuclear safety expert John H. Large told RT:
“Brush fires and forest fires were the greatest concern in terms of the means by which you can disperse a secondary radiological impact from the original dissipation that occurred in 1986,” he said. John went to Chernobyl in 2006 to assess the situation there and spoke to dozens of scientists working on containing the contamination.
“In the exclusion zone and further away you have an area that has been abandoned for farming, abandoned for man management,” John says. “That means you’ve got lots of brush and young wood growing out of control, and that means there’s a big fuel load to have a fire.”
He says the high temperatures and volumes of smoke produced in a forest fire can take contaminants hundreds of kilometers away from the exclusion zone: “Radiation really doesn’t respect any international boundaries.”
Forest fires have happened in the area before, but have never been so serious, Timothy Mousseau, biology professor at the University of South Carolina, told RT:
“Previous forest fires had re-released about eight percent of the radiation from the original catastrophe. The fire that we’re seeing today seems to be on a much larger scale, and so we could see a re-dispersion of a very significant component of the original radiation.”
Another problem is that as the trees that have absorbed contaminants burn up and release smoke, this turns radioactive particles into a much more dangerous form than if they simply lie in the ground….http://rt.com/news/254193-chernobyl-fire-radiation-spread/
Forest fires threatening Chernobyl nuclear plant
Forest fires heading for Chernobyl nuclear plant – Ukraine Interior Ministry, Rt.com April 29, 2015 The Ukrainian National Guard has been put on high alert due to worsening forest fires around the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
“The forest fire situation around the Chernobyl power plant has worsened,” a statement on Avakov’s Facebook page says.
“The forest fire is heading in the direction of Chernobyl’s installations. Treetop flames and strong gusts of wind have created a real danger of the fire spreading to an area within 20 kilometers of the power plant. There are about 400 hectares [988 acres] of forests in the endangered area.”
Police and National Guard units are on high alert. Ukraine’s Prime Minister personally went to the affected area to oversee the firefighting. He says the situation is under control, “but this is the biggest fire since 1992.”
However, in comments to Russia’s Moscow Speaks radio, a representative of Greenpeace Russia said that the situation is much worse: “A very large, catastrophic forest fire is taking place in a 30-km zone around the Chernobyl power plant. We estimate the real area of the fire to be 10,000 hectares; this is based on satellite images. This hasn’t been officially acknowledged yet.”
The potential danger in this fire comes from the radioactive contaminants the burning plants have absorbed, ecologist Christopher Busby told RT. “Some of the materials that were contaminating that area would ahve been incorporated into the woods. In other words, they land on the ground in 1986 and they get absorbed into the trees and all the biosphere. And when it burns, they just become re-suspended. It’s like Chernobyl all over again. All of that material that fell on the ground will now be burned up into the air and will become available for people to breathe.”Christopher Busby is the scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks………http://rt.com/news/253897-chernobyl-fires-rage-ukraine/
Money running out for safety cover, as dangerous Chernobyl nuclear wreck reaches 29th anniversary
The reactor itself is still too contaminated for workers to approach. Removal of radioactive materials there will only begin once the new confinement structure has been finished.
Chernobyl arch faces €265m funding gap ahead of disaster’s 29th anniversary, Arthur Neslen, Guardian 24 Apr 15 World must plug funding gap for massive 100-metre steel arch being built to contain remaining radioactive waste at the site. A massive engineering project to make the Chernobyl nuclear power plant safe is facing a €265m (£190m) funding shortfall.
Next week a conference held by Germany in London will call on countries to make up the gap, but the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has said it may have to ask its shareholders to make up the shortfall if donations dry up.
This Sunday marks the 29th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, when a power surge blew the roof off a reactor, spewing radioactive clouds across Russia, and eastern Europe.
A makeshift sarcophagus built in the explosion’s aftermath was supposed to protect the environment from radiation for at least 30 years. But it has since developed cracks.
The project to build a new radiation container had been due for completion this year but the deadline slipped to November 2017, as costs mushroomed from an initial estimate of €800m (£572m) to more than €2.15bn today.
Over 40 governments and the European commission have committed to help a Chernobyl Shelter Fund tasked with sealing off the 100 tonnes of uranium and one tonne of plutonium that remain within the site.
“If countries recognise the nature of the problem in Chernobyl and its importance for human security in Ukraine and ecological security in Europe, there is a hope that the gap could be closed at the donor conference on April 29,” Anton Usov, an EBRD spokesman told the Guardian. “Verbally the donors are committed to contribute more funds.”
The bank believes there is a broad understanding among nations of the threat that radioactive dust on the site still poses to Kiev, around 70km away……..
The reactor itself is still too contaminated for workers to approach. Removal of radioactive materials there will only begin once the new confinement structure has been finished. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/24/chernobyl-arch-faces-265m-funding-gap-ahead-of-disasters-29th-anniversary
Drone supposedly containing radiation landed on Shinzo Abe’s roof
Drone containing radiation lands on Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s roof, Straight.com by Charlie Smith on April 22nd, 2015 Shortly after a Japanese court has approved restarting a shuttered nuclear power plant, an unmanned aerial vehicle landed on the roof of the prime minister’s home.
It has sparked discussions in Japan about the prospect of terrorists using drones to launch attacks during the 2020 Summer Games, which will be hosted in Tokyo.
The levels of radiation in this instance were not deemed harmful.
There’s no evidence at this point that the drone was placed there as a protest against Abe’s desire to restart nuclear reactors in Japan.
Public opinion is strongly against the use of nuclear power in Japan four years after a meltdown in Fukushima………
Tokyo police have reportedly revealed that there was a camera on the drone, which was decorated with a sticker carrying a symbol indicating it was radioactive.
“The police also said traces of radioactive cesium were detected on the roof near the drone, though it was unclear if they came from the drone,” the New York Timesreported. “Cesium is not usually found in nature, but large amounts of it were released into the atmosphere during the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.” http://www.straight.com/news/435371/drone-containing-radiation-lands-japanese-prime-minister-shinzo-abes-roof
Meticulous research indicates much greater likelihood of another Chernobyl-scale nuclear accident
Wheatley and co’s work suggests that a Chernobyl-scale accident is worryingly likely to occur within the working lifetime of the reactors now being built. And when that happens, a once obscure place will enter the lexicon as a synonym for catastrophe, just like Chernobyl, Windscale and Fukushima.
These risks will have to be carefully weighed against the advantages. The question for engineers, policy makers and the general public alike is whether that risk is worth taking, given what’s at stake.
The Chances of Another Chernobyl Before 2050? 
50%, Say Safety Specialists, MIT Technology Review April 17, 2015 “…..And there’s a 50:50 chance of a Three Mile Island-scale disaster in the next 10 years, according to the largest statistical analysis of nuclear accidents ever undertaken……..
Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Spencer Wheatley and Didier Sornette at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Benjamin Sovacool at Aarhus University in Denmark. These guys have compiled the most comprehensive list of nuclear accidents ever created and used it to calculate the likelihood of other accidents in future.
Their worrying conclusion is that the chances are 50:50 that a major nuclear disaster will occur somewhere in the world before 2050. “There is a 50 per cent chance that a Chernobyl event (or larger) occurs in the next 27 years,” they conclude.
The nuclear industry has long been criticised for its over-confident attitude to risk. But truly independent analyses are few and far between, partly because much of the data on accidents is compiled by the nuclear industry itself, which is reluctant to share it.
The International Atomic Energy Agency rates accidents using a system called the International Nuclear Event Scale, which is related to the amount of radiation released. However, the Agency does not publish a historical database of these accidents, probably because it has a dual role of both regulating the nuclear industry and promoting it. Continue reading
USA and Russian generals warn of danger of cyber criminals causing a nuclear disaster
Сybercriminals may provoke nuclear disaster – US, Russian generals, Rt.com April 20, 2015 Modern technologies, coupled with Cold War-era nuclear doctrines and increasing tensions between the US and Russia make a nuclear war a real threat, say high-ranking retired officers from both countries.
The two generals say this system is susceptible to provocations and malfunctions. With the advent of precise computer technologies, the chance of such an error occurring has been decreasing. However, at a time when cyberattacks are becoming increasingly common, the danger of someone deliberately triggering a false warning has jumped.“This makes it all the more critical for Russia and the United States to talk, to relieve the pressures to “use or lose” nuclear forces during a crisis and minimize the risk of a mistaken launch,” their article reads.
The US and Russia have signed a joint nuclear arsenal reduction treaty called New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), in April 2010. It is aimed at drastically decreasing the number of nuclear weapons available to both nations.
Despite both Russia and the US complying with the treaty and reducing their arsenals to about 1,500 warheads each, they remain in possession of two of the world’s largest atomic payloads.
Cooperation on the treaty remains “a silver lining” amid growing Russia-US tensions, Assistant Secretary of State Frank Rose said on Thursday: “At such a hard time it is highly important to maintain transparency in the displacement and deployment of strategic nuclear weapons… The two sides have made a significant progress over the restrictions presumed by the treaty by February 2018”.http://rt.com/news/251361-nuclear-apocalypse-possible-warning/
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