The 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident was just the beginning of a continuous disaster
We can see this same “continuous” trend with the accident at Fukushima. The triple meltdown itself at Fukushima in March 2011 was just the beginning
nuclear power accidents are no longer one-off events. Instead, they can span years or even decades, creating a sort of “continuous accident”.
Is Fukushima the new normal for nuclear reactors? the Conversation, Benjamin Sovacool, 27 Aug 13, “…..In the early 1980s, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow argued that the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island was a “normal accident”. The crux of his argument was that complicated technological systems have unavoidable problems that can’t be designed around.
Perrow’s argument — still relevant today — rested on three pillars. First, people are fallible, even at nuclear reactors. Operator error is still a very common factor in incidents and accidents.
Second, big accidents almost always have very small beginnings. Nuclear power plants are so complex that relatively simple things — shirt tails, fuses, light bulbs, mice, cats, and candles — can disrupt the entire system.
And finally, many failures are those of organisations more than technology. Given the right event, all these factors can lead to system-wide failure. Perrow concludes that such high-tech, dangerous systems are hopeless and should be abandoned, as the inevitable risks of failure outweigh any conceivable benefits.
Nuclear reactors do have inherent advantages over fossil fuels, but Perrow’s argument raises serious questions about nuclear safety.
Never-ending accidents
Even so, Perrow was writing in the 1980s. Surely things have improved since then? Well, perhaps not. Continue reading
USA’s Minuteman missiles – supremely dangerous – to the USA
US nuclear weapons poised for catastrophe By James Carroll BOSTON GLOBE AUGUST 26, 2013
The vulnerability is there for all to see. The United States nuclear establishment has been wracked with problems for years. These are especially acute among thousands of officers at the controls of three bases where 450 Minuteman III missiles stand in buried silos on high alert.
In 2008, a Pentagon review found “a dramatic and unacceptable decline” in the way the Air Force was handling its nuclear mission. Senior officials were cashiered. Their replacements were ordered to fix the problems. They have failed to do so. What should be the most rigorously disciplined element in the US military is repeatedly found unworthy of its awesome responsibility. That’s a wake-up call, yet the nation sleeps on……..
supremely dangerous. The missiles are positioned in easily targeted fixed silos across a wide-open western landscape. They are poised for launch on moments’ notice less because of strategic necessity than because they are bound by the rule of “use them or lose them.” The scenario was conceived 50 years ago, under circumstances that are now forgotten. The land-based ICBMs, more than nuclear armed submarines or aircraft, have become the thread from which hangs the sword of accidental holocaust. Fail-safe “right procedures” are the only protection — yet current crews are proving incapable of following those procedures. Fail-safe is the joke that is not funny……… http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/08/26/nuclear-tipped-missiles-posed-for-nightmare-holocaust/VZ3KQOUsAUFm4qfuchjmCI/story.html
Danger in new nuclear reactor designs
Is Fukushima the new normal for nuclear reactors? the Conversation, Benjamin Sovacool, 27 Aug 13, “……..New designs, new problems There is some evidence that newer reactor designs and systems are more prone to accidents. Dennis Berry, Director Emeritus of Sandia National Laboratories, explains that the problem with new reactors and accidents is twofold: scenarios arise that are impossible to plan for in simulations, and people make mistakes.
As he put it:
Fabrication, construction, operation, and maintenance of new reactors will face a steep learning curve: advanced technologies will have a heightened risk of accidents and mistakes. The technology may be proven, but people are not.
Former nuclear engineer David Lochbaum has noted that almost all serious nuclear accidents have occurred when operators have little experience with a plant. This makes new systems incredibly risky………http://theconversation.com/is-fukushima-the-new-normal-for-nuclear-reactors-17391
USA’s nuclear reactors are excellent terrorist targets
How U.S. nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorists By Alan J. Kuperman, CNN, 26 Aug 13 Editor’s note: Kuperman is editor of Nuclear Terrorism and Global Security: The Challenge of Phasing out Highly Enriched Uranium, and coordinator of theNuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (NPPP) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, where he is an associate professor. The views expressed are his own.
Nearly a dozen years after the al Qaeda strikes of September 11, 2001, America’s nuclear power plants – and civilian research facilities with bomb-grade uranium – are still not required to protect against a maximum credible terrorist attack of this scale. It is time for policymakers to act, if they want to prevent disaster.
The vulnerability to a terrorist strike was a key finding of a year-long study that I co-authored, as part of a larger interdisciplinary project at the University of Texas at Austin, under a contract for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (which has no responsibility for the final contents of the study)…….
More from CNN: How nations risk nuclear terrorism
Nominally, our government is supposed to protect us against threats that exceed what utilities must defend against. Unfortunately, that is not happening. A terrorist attack could penetrate a facility in minutes to induce a meltdown, while government SWAT teams would not fully engage for at least an hour and a half, according to Congressional testimony by the Project on Government Oversight.
A second danger is the potential theft of bomb-grade, highly enriched uranium from this country’s three civilian research reactors that still use such fuel. The good news is that these facilities have committed to convert to safer, low-enriched uranium fuel, which is not suitable for nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the conversion program is delayed by technical snags, so the reactors will continue to use bomb-grade uranium for another decade or more.
Most troubling, these research sites are exempt from defending against the modest, posited terrorist attack that utilities must protect against. So, our civilian facilities with bomb-grade uranium are even less secure than nuclear power plants. The amount of bomb-grade uranium at each site might not be sufficient for a nuclear weapon, depending on the sophistication of the bomb-maker, but the U.S. government has been assiduously vacuuming up even smaller amounts of such material around the world, to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, as detailed in my latest book…… http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/26/how-u-s-nuclear-reactors-are-vulnerable-to-terrorists/
Closed door meeting between nuclear regulators and — FirstEnergy Corp
FirstEnergy’s nuclear security an issue in an NRC closed-door meeting, Cleveland.com By John Funk, The Plain Dealer August 26, 2013 KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa — FirstEnergy Corp.’s nuclear operating company has asked for a closed-door meeting with top federal regulators about security issues at the company’s nuclear reactor near Pittsburgh.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday that it would meet with company representatives on Sept. 5 at an NRC regional headquarters near Philadelphia.
Security forces at FirstEnergy’s Beaver Valley power plant apparently failed part of a routine “force-on-force” exercise in April. Beaver Valley contains two reactors.
The details of the force-on-force exercise are classified and may never be made public, but the NRC earlier this month warned the company in a public letter that it was considering a citation against the company because the security failure looked significant….. http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2013/08/firstenergys_nuclear_security.html
Businessman caught with plan to sell uranium to Iran
Man caught in ‘uranium for Iran’ sting Sierra Leone man lured to New York with uranium ore hidden in his shoes after US federal agent offered him 1,000-tonne deal Reuters in Miami theguardian.com, Friday 23 August 2013 US prosecutors have charged a man from Sierra Leone with trying to sell undercover agents 1,000 tonnes of yellowcake uranium he thought would be shipped to Iran. He was arrested in New York with a sample of the toxic material hidden in his luggage, authorities said.
Patrick Campbell, 33, of Freetown, was arrested at John F Kennedy airport on Wednesday after he arrived from Sierra Leone with the sample of uranium concealed in the soles of shoes in his luggage, according to a criminal complaint filed in a Florida federal court on Thursday.
He allegedly responded to an ad in May 2012 on the websitealibaba.com seeking to purchase uranium that was placed by an undercover US agent posing as an American broker representing persons in Iran, according to an affidavit by Homeland Security agent Louise Miller.
Campbell agreed to travel to Miami to meet the supposed buyer, who could then analyse the purity of the uranium. Continue reading
Radioactive leak shuts down New Jersey nuclear plant
NJ Nuclear Plant Shutdown After Radioactive Water Leak. (includes video) August 23, 2013 By Mike DeNardo SALEM, N.J. (CBS) – The Salem Unit-One nuclear plant in South Jersey remains shut down, after radioactive water leaked in a containment building Thursday night. Salem’s Unit-One nuclear plant was shut down around 7:30 p.m., when radioactive water started to leak, says Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Diane Screnci:
“They had a valve on one of the systems within the containment. And that valve was leaking, and it reached what are called their technical specification limits, and caused them to begin a shutdown.”
The leak was measured at four gallons a minute — above the one gallon per minute threshold to force a shutdown…. http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/08/23/nj-nuclear-plant-shutdown-after-radioactive-water-leak/
Two UK nuclear reactors shut down for safety reasons
Heysham nuclear reactors shut down for second time http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-23808744 23 Aug 13
EDF said the plant was shut down as a precaution
Nuclear reactors have been shut down for the second time in three months at a plant in Lancashire.
Two reactors at Heysham 1 nuclear power station were shut down after an electrical fault in a gas turbine set off a sprinkler system on Thursday.
Firefighters were called at 22:27 BST and four crews were sent to the scene from Lancaster, Bispham and Fulwood.
EDF Energy, which operates the plant, said it had been shut down as a precaution.
Lancashire Fire Service said 20 firefighters attended the scene but were not needed.
Ian Stewart, Heysham 1 station director, said: “We will be assessing the generators today, and we will then be looking at bringing the two reactors back on line.”
A reactor was shut down in May after smoke was seen coming from a turbine due to smouldering lagging.
Huge and growing area of tanks storing Fukushima’s radioactive water
Radioactive Leaks in Japan Prompt Call for Overseas Help, Bloomberg, By Yuji Okada, Jacob Adelman & Peter Langan – Aug 21, 2013
“……..Toxic Sludge. Tepco was storing 330,000 tons of radioactive water as of Aug. 13 in tanks covering an area equal to 37 football fields, according to the company. The utility is clearing forest to make room for more tanks as it adds to the stored water at a rate of 400 tons a day after pumping it out from under the plant’s reactors, which melted down as a result of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The water is treated to remove some of the cesium particles before it is stored, which has left 480 filters clogged with the radioactive material at the site. Each weigh 15 tons and are warehoused in what the utility calls temporary storage, though it will take hundreds of years for the radiation to decay. Other radioactive contaminants remain in the water even after treatment. That includes strontium, which has been linked to bone cancers.
Besides radiated water, the site north of Tokyo has more than 73,000 cubic meters of contaminated concrete, 58,000 cubic meters of irradiated trees and undergrowth, and 157,710 gallons of toxic sludge, according to the utility.
’Biggest Concern’
Japan’s nuclear watchdog has ratcheted up alarm over the potential for more leaks of highly radioactive water from the hundreds of storage tanks at the Fukushima atomic plant.
The possibility of leaks from other tanks “is the biggest concern,” said Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shunichi Tanaka at a press conference yesterday. “This will need to be handled carefully on the assumption that one incident could bring another.”
Late last night, Tepco said water leaking from the storage tank probably ran into the ocean, citing high radiation readings in a drainage ditch.
As much as 20 trillion becquerels of cesium and 10 trillion becquerels of strontium leaked into the ocean since May 2011, Tepco spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida said today. The total amount of cesium and strontium is equivalent to about 100 times the annual limit on radiation from the plant to the ocean under normal conditions, according to calculations based on Tepco data……….
Leaking Tanks
Japan’s government has ordered an investigation into the safety of hundreds of other tanks storing contaminated water in Fukushima, the site of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl reactor exploded in 1986.
There are 226 tanks of similar bolted design to the leaking unit with the same 1,000-ton capacity at the site, said Tatsuya Shinkawa, director of the nuclear accident response office in the government’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy, which called for the probe…… http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-21/tepco-shares-plunge-on-report-of-serious-radiated-water-leak.html
Low level nuclear alert issued at Hanford
Hanford issues low-level nuclear alert http://q13fox.com/2013/08/22/hanford-issues-low-level-nuclear-alert/#ixzz2cp68IuEI BENTON COUNTY, Wash. — An alert was issued late Wednesday night at the Hanford Nuclear Site in southeast Washington for the lowest level emergency following the detection of radiation on Hanford’s grounds.
The low-level emergency was issued at 10:32 a.m. when higher than expected levels of radiation were found on a routine test of the C Tank Farm, indicating the “potential of a waste transfer leak.” All operations were halted, and personnel were evacuated from the C Tank Farm area. Other affected facility personnel were instructed to take cover, or shelter in place.
Benton and Franklin Counties’ Emergency Operations Centers were activated shortly after the first reading, but the emergency alert was relegated to Hanford’s grounds. Additional radiological tests found no detectable levels of contamination, and the alert-level emergency was lifted at 5:05 a.m. Higher than expected levels of radiation were confirmed, but there was no indication of a leak or spill, and the levels were less than originally discovered, officials with Hanford said. Workers were instructed to report to the site as normal. C Tank Farm prepared to return to normal operations.
Built by early Hanford scientists, engineers, and constructors, single-shell and double-shell storage tanks were constructed throughout Hanford’s 200 Area to store the radioactive liquid wastes generated from the processing facilities on site.
“Decommissioning” -a pretty word for the nightmare that is Fukushima nuclear clean-up
the inevitable discourse manipulation – something that we have seen in the media ever since this disaster occurred. “Decommission the plant” suggests some calm and ordered scientific process akin to shutting down and defueling an old reactor which has reached the end of its design life. It sparks images of a wise nuclear engineer in a lab coat consulting a document, discussing some issue with a worker in brilliant white overalls with a Tepco logo, wearing a white hard-hat. The reality is that this is a nightmare disaster area where no one has the slightest idea what to do and which has always been out of control. All that they can do is continue to pump in the seawater to hope that the various lumps of molten fuel will not increase their rate of fissioning. And pray.
Pump and pray: Tepco might have to pour water on Fukushima wreckage forever Science Alert, CHRISTOPHER BUSBY 19 AUGUST 2013 Fukushima is a nightmare disaster area, and no one has the slightest idea what to do. The game is to prevent the crippled nuclear plant from turning into an “open-air super reactor spectacular” which would result in a hazardous, melted catastrophe…..
it is quite clear that the reactors are no longer containing the molten fuel – some proportion of which is now in the ground underneath them. Both this material and the remaining material in what was the containment are very hot and are fissioning. Tepco is quite aware – and so is everyone else in the know – that the only hope of preventing what could become an open-air super reactor spectacular is to cool the fuel, the lumps of fuel distributed throughout the system, mainly in the holed pressure vessels, and also in the spent fuel tanks and in the ground under the reactors.
That all this is fissioning away merrily (though at a low level) is clear from the occasional reports of short half life nuclides like the radioXenons. The game is to prevent it all turning into the open air super reactor located somewhere under the ground. To do this, they have to pump vast amounts of water into the reactors, the fuel pond and generally all over the area where they think the stuff is or might be. This means seawater since luckily they are near the sea. But they are also unluckily near the sea – since you cannot pump the sea onto the land without it wanting to flow back into the sea.
Now a good proportion of the radioactive elements, the radionuclides, are soluble in water. Continue reading
Frightening America makes a lot of money for 5 companies
5 Companies That Make Money By Keeping Americans Scared Reader Supported News, By Alex Kane, Salon 19 August 13 A massive industry profits off the government-induced fear of terrorism.
ichael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, has invaded America’s television sets in recent weeks to warn about Edward Snowden’s leaks and the continuing terrorist threat to America.
But what often goes unmentioned, as the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pointed out, is that Hayden has a financial stake in keeping Americans scared and on a permanent war footing against Islamist militants. And the private firm he works for, called the Chertoff Group, is not the only one making money by scaring Americans.
Post-9/11 America has witnessed a boom in private firms dedicated to the hyped-up threat of terrorism. The drive to privatize America’s national security apparatus accelerated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it’s gotten to the point where 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on private contractors, as author Tim Shorrock reported. The private intelligence contractors have profited to the tune of at least $6 billion a year. In 2010, the Washington Post revealed that there are 1,931 private firms across the country dedicated to fighting terrorism.
What it all adds up to is a massive industry profiting off government-induced fear of terrorism, even though Americans are more likely to be killed by a car crash or their own furniture than a terror attack.
Here are five private companies cashing in on keeping you afraid.
1. The Chertoff Group…..
2. Booz Allen Hamilton……
3. Science Applications International Corp…..
4. Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies….
5. Security Solutions International….. http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/424-national-security/18979-5-companies-that-make-money-by-keeping-americans-scared
Aging Palisades Nuclear Power Plant a worry to Chicago area residents
Residents Express Concern Over Aging Nuclear Plant Feds increase inspections at 42-year-old Palisades Nuclear Power Plant by 1,000 hours this year Chicago-area residents with property at a popular nearby vacation spot are growing increasingly concerned about one of their neighbors: The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant.
The South Haven, Mich., plant is a 42-year-old facility that many seasonal neighbors said is showing its age.
“It is a socio-technical system that has failed. That’s extremely dangerous,” said Ann Scott, an Oak Brook resident who also owns a cottage near the power plant. The plant has reported seven leaks since 2012, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Six leaks caused plant shutdowns. A leak in May spilled about 80 gallons of radioactive water into Lake Michigan.
Gail Snyder is another Chicago-area resident who owns property near the power plant.
neighbors are concerned by the recent shutdowns and startups at the plant. Critics said that can stress equipment at a nuclear power plant. “It’s just too old to keep going,” said Dillon Reed, a resident of Darien who also owns a cottage near the plant.
“It takes a lot of steps or a lot of things to go wrong for a nuclear disaster to occur, but the more pre-existing failures you have, the shorter that path becomes,” Lochbaum said…..
“They have allowed radioactive waste to leak into the water and there is no guarantee that today it isn’t going to happen again on a much greater scale,” Scott said. http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/palisades-nuclear-power-plant-chicago-219870131.html#ixzz2cG5OCRl1
New plan for Fukushima nuclear reactors – a concrete tomb?
Bloomberg: Tepco now in talks to cover Fukushima reactors with concrete for next 75 years — Officials reviewing plan in U.S.http://enenews.com/just-in-tepco-now-in-talks-to-cover-fukushima-reactors-with-concrete-for-next-75-years-officials-reviewing-plan-with-u-s-experts
(at left – Chernobyl’s concrete tomb building in progress)
Title: Nagasaki Bomb Maker Offers Lessons for Japan’s Fukushima Cleanup
Source: Bloomberg
Author: Shigeru Sato & Yuji Okada
Date: Aug. 15, 2013
[… Tepco] has sent engineers on visits to the Hanford site in Washington state this year to learn from decades of work treating millions of gallons of radioactive waste. Hanford also has a method to seal off reactors known as concrete cocooning that could reduce the 11 trillion yen ($112 billion) estimated cost for cleaning up Fukushima. […]
At Hanford, the energy department finished a $65 million cocooning project in June last year, the DOE said in a statement. That involved demolishing the last one of the nine reactor buildings down to the four-foot- (1.2 meter) thick concrete shield around the reactor core.
More concrete was added to the shield, along with a new concrete roof to put the reactor into so-called safe storage for 75 years. This allows radiation levels to decay to safer levels in the core and gives the operator time to determine the final disposal method, according to the statement.
There are three ways to decommission nuclear reactors, said Ishikawa. One is immediate dismantling. Another, used at the wrecked Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, entombed the whole building in concrete. The third is cocooning used at Hanford. Entombing and cocooning cost less than immediate dismantling as it reduces the expense for handling and moving highly radiated material, Ishikawa said.
Tepco is talking with the DOE on whether cocooning could work for the crippled reactors in Fukushima. Sealing them off in concrete for 75 years would allow more focus on cleaning up surrounding areas so that residents could return, said Ishikawa. […]
Published on ENENews ten hours earlier: Nuclear Experts: One century before Japan tries to deal with Fukushima’s melted cores? — “More likely what’s left of reactors will be left in situ for 100 years or more” (VIDEO)
Lengthy, expensive process of new tomb for Chernobyl’s shattered nuclear reactor
Chernobyl copes with nuclear fallout a quarter-century on, Global Post Jakub Parusinski February 25, 2013 As a new structure around the destroyed nuclear reactor goes up, life for locals remains blighted. The so-called exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was once home to some 120,000 people, who were evacuated following the reactor meltdown at in 1986. Trees that sprouted in living rooms are now pushing through rooftops inside this highly contaminated, sealed off area, while wild horses and wolves roam the woods.
However, there are also some 7,000 people working here, including almost 3,000 at the plant itself.
An international fund managed by theEuropean Bank for Reconstruction and Development is spending an estimated $2 billion to build a new confinement shelter to protect the world from Chernobyl’s radioactivity for the next 100 years……
Built by a French-led consortium, the 360-foot giant hangar-like casing is being constructed with modern equipment on infrastructure that’s better maintained than in the capital Kyiv, 70 miles to the south. While hundreds in the Ukrainian capital injure themselves every day slipping on ice-covered sidewalks, roads in the exclusion zone are swept clean for a stream of cement trucks….. Completion of the reactor confinement structure, set for 2015, will calm longstanding fears about a collapse of the current sarcophagus. Those living around the zone face a less certain future. … http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/130221/chernobyl-nuclear-reactor-confinement
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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