Investigation into the California Public Utilities Commission’s San Onofre response
Criminal probe focuses on San Onofre response Warrant examines utilities commission, Edison meetings and UCLA grant funds San Diego Tribune, By Jeff McDonald and Ricky Young Dec. 29, 2015 A state criminal investigation into the California Public Utilities Commission centers around former President Michael Peevey’s persistent intervention into the process to assign costs for the failure of the San Onofre nuclear plant, newly released court documents show.
A sworn affidavit by an investigator for Attorney General Kamala Harris, unsealed last month, lays out the developing criminal case in detail for the first time.
The 18-page document says improper meetings were held, which might bring misdemeanor charges, but that a conspiracy to commit those misdemeanors could be considered a felony……..
The court document details Peevey’s efforts to win funding for UCLA and researcher Stephanie Pincetl, starting with an undisclosed March 2013 meeting in Warsaw, Poland, with an Edison executive. The affidavit argues that there was probable cause to believe that the executive, Stephen Pickett, conspired to engage in prohibited backchannel communications……..
According to the document, the investigator interviewed Edison International President Ted Craver about Peevey’s efforts to secure Edison grants for UCLA.
Diaz said he “interviewed Ted Craver, who confirmed that Peevey ‘went at him hard,’ telling him that they (SCE) did not get the importance of combatting climate change and this was an opportunity to do something, and if they were smart, they would figure out how to ‘wrap this in a cloak’ and it would be good for public relations.”
The document goes on to describe how Edison never agreed to pay for the research, but it was built in as a requirement in the utilities commission approval process for the San Onofre settlement……..
There is probable cause to believe that Michael Peevey, former President of the California Public Utilities Commission, utilized his position to influence SCE’s commitment of millions of dollars to UCLA to fund a research program,” the affidavit states………
No charges have been filed as a result of the investigation, which is proceeding separately from a federal review of commission practices……. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/dec/29/diaz-affidavit-cpuc-probe/
USA: Your town’s radiation levels this week
Fukushima Update: “Your Radiation This Week, BEFORE IT’S NEWS, Dec 19 to Dec 26, 2015″ By Bob Nichols
Normal Radiation is 5 to 20 CPM. 50 CPM is an alert level.
RADIATION CPM* • TIMES NORMAL BACKGROUND LEVEL • CITY, STATE • TYPE (
Baby Pulse Spikes Rad Monitors in US: ..……
Thousands of USA’s Oak Ridge nuclear workers sick and dying from cancers and other radiation-caused illnesses
Of the 33,480, the government has specifically acknowledged that exposure to radiation or other toxins on the job likely caused or contributed to the deaths of 15,809 workers. And this tally almost certainly underestimates the total dead among the 600,000 who worked in the weapons program at its peak.
The women who worked at the plant were told to keep their mouths shut, and those
who talked about their jobs were quickly let go.
Nuclear workers: Projects’ results were worth illnesses, deaths Amarillo.com December 28, 2015 Tribune News Service Editor’s note: This is the third story in a series examining the health problems that afflict the U.S. nuclear workforce as the government launches a $1 trillion plan to modernize the arsenal.
In 1944, when the feds wanted young women to help out with a top-secret project in the hills of Tennessee, they found 19-year-old Evelyn Babb.
She grew up on four acres in Appalachia, where her family had one milk cow and a couple dozen chickens. She jumped at the chance to make 70 cents an hour at the new Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn., twisting knobs on dials, with no clue what she was doing. Bosses advised her to tell friends she was making highchairs for infants.
When President Harry Truman dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, Babb learned the truth: She had helped produce the atomic hell that killed thousands of Japanese as one of the climactic acts of World War II.
In many cases, the money went to survivors. Of the 33,480, the government has specifically acknowledged that exposure to radiation or other toxins on the job likely caused or contributed to the deaths of 15,809 workers. And this tally almost certainly underestimates the total dead among the 600,000 who worked in the weapons program at its peak.
The plants with the highest number of deaths are the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, with 3,741, and the Hanford Site in Washington state, with 3,461. They’re the sites that provided the plutonium and uranium for the bombs, nicknamed Fat Man and Little Boy, that Truman used to wipe out Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of the nation’s top-secret Manhattan Project.
“The death numbers tell you something, but they are just a slice of the story,” said Ralph Hutchison, a former Presbyterian pastor who’s coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, a group that has held peace vigils outside the Y-12 plant every Sunday for the last 16 years. “What’s the quality of life for people who have debilitating chronic illnesses?”
The number of dead is sure to grow much higher.
Seventy years after the atomic bombings, thousands of former workers at Department of Energy nuclear sites are sick from cancers and other diseases after being exposed to radiation, a long list of toxins and a brew of other dangerous substances.
Yet more than half of the 107,394 workers who have sought help since 2001 — 51.1 percent — have been denied, TNS’ investigation found.
And many workers have endured years of guilt after they unknowingly helped produce weapons of mass destruction.
“I felt proud until I started realizing that I had a part in killing all those people, and that’s something I didn’t believe in,” said Ruth Huddleston, 90, of Oliver Springs, Tenn., who went to work at Y-12 at age 18. “I had helped kill thousands of people.”……….http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2015-12-28/nuclear-workers-projects-results-were-worth-illnesses-deaths#.VoMfhne5dh0.twitter
USA planned extensive nuclear bombing of populations – declassified documents reveal
Stranger than Strangelove: how the US planned for nuclear war in the 1950s, The Conversation, Paul Lashmar, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Sussex December 28, 2015 Those who have written about the nuclear Cold War remain grateful to Stanley Kubrick for giving us the satirical 1964 film Dr Strangelove which captures the madness that swept the world for 40 years. The name Strangelove may be overused but the United States has now released a secret file that really does justify the sobriquet: “Stranger than Strangelove”. Almost anodyne in title, Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959 is a truly shocking document, revealing the scale of the holocaust that would have been unleashed in a nuclear war.Renewed calls to shut down aging Indian Point nuclear station
New calls to shut Indian Point; plant’s critics cite age, proximity to cities, North Jersey.com , DECEMBER 27, 2015, BY SCOTT FALLON A nuclear power plant just 15 miles from North Jersey is at a crossroads as federal regulators determine whether to allow Indian Point in Westchester County to continue operating for another two decades in the face of fierce opposition from New York officials.
A series of mishaps this year, including one in which a reactor was shut down this month, has renewed calls by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to close the aging plant on the Hudson River. They come as an arm of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission continues to scrutinize Indian Point’s application to renew the licenses on its two reactors, a marathon process that began eight years ago.
In a scathing letter to the commission last month, a top Cuomo official called the 40-year-old reactors brittle and fatigued, and said the plant’s proximity to a major population center makes it impossible to have an effective evacuation plan.
“Given the deterioration of this aging plant, it should not be permitted to operate for another 20 years,” wrote Jim Malatras, director of state operations in New York.
A spokesman for Entergy Corp., which owns Indian Point, did not respond to a request for comment……
The reactors’ 40-year licenses have expired — Unit 2 in 2013 and Unit 3 on Dec. 12 — but they are allowed to operate while the renewal process continues…….
Evacuation zone
Indian Point has long been a concern of North Jersey officials because Bergen and Passaic counties sit just outside the plant’s federally designated 10-mile evacuation zone, which critics have long said is too small. New Jersey has developed emergency plans, including one to accept thousands of people from Rockland County if need be.
New Jersey has not weighed in on Indian Point’s future. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has not submitted any comments to the NRC because it has “no regulatory role” over the plant, said Larry Hajna, an agency spokesman.
Indian Point’s relicensing saga comes during a relatively quiet time for New Jersey’s own nuclear industry. Three nuclear reactors have been approved to operate for several more decades while a fourth – Oyster Creek in Ocean County – is scheduled to close by the end of the decade. Although Governor Christie has called for another reactor to be built in New Jersey, plans by the state’s largest electric utility to build one in Salem County are on hold.
In New York, Cuomo is trying disrupt Indian Point’s relicensing efforts by denying a certification under the state’s Coastal Zone Management Plan. In a report sent to NRC last month, New York officials reiterated much of the criticism leveled at Indian Point through the years: That there is no way New York City and its densely populated suburbs could be adequately evacuated if a disaster occurred, the plant is vulnerable because it sits near two fault lines, and a billion fish and other marine organisms are killed annually when they are sucked from the Hudson River into the plant’s intake valves.
Some environmental advocates say the report could disrupt Indian Point’s license renewal. A New York court has said the plant is exempt from the state’s review. That decision is being appealed…….. http://www.northjersey.com/news/new-calls-to-shut-indian-point-plant-s-critics-cite-age-proximity-to-cities-1.1480825
St. Louis and the Radiation problem – recommendation – Just get out of town!
Fukushima Update: “Your Radiation This Week BEFORE IT’S NEWS, Dec 19 to Dec 26, 2015″ By Bob Nichols “………St. Louis and the Rad problem: St. Louis, now and forever more, will be remembered as a Manhattan Project nuclear garbage dump. It was for the most poisonous, flammable elements in the universe that just happen to also be radioactive. What will happen to the pieces of the rocks that incinerated Hiroshima, Japan and turned former people into mere shadows on the concrete? Nagasaki was blown away by Plutonium, manufactured by all reactors.
My recommendation remains the same for healthy,
able-bodied people in St. Louis – Just leave, get out of town……
Oak Ridge, USA, dependent on nuclear industry, kept secret about its polluting work
Nuclear workers: Projects’ results were worth illnesses, deaths Amarillo.com December 28, 2015 Tribune News Service ….”……it’s a sensitive subject in Oak Ridge, with the community so dependent on the still-running Y-12 plant.
And over the years, there have been plenty of secrets to keep.
The women who worked at the plant were told to keep their mouths shut, and those who talked about their jobs were quickly let go.
Huddleston, the calutron girl who said she felt the burden of helping kill Japanese citizens, said she didn’t even tell her son what she was doing at Y-12 until five years ago.
“I was told so long — I just never did talk about it,” she said………..http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2015-12-28/nuclear-workers-projects-results-were-worth-illnesses-deaths#.VoMfhne5dh0.twitter
Sloppy health data collection in the history of America’s nuclear workers
Nuclear workers: Projects’ results were worth illnesses, deaths Amarillo.com December 28, 2015 Tribune News Service “…………The death toll for American workers has never been disclosed. The U.S. Department of Labor, which administers the compensation program, makes routine reports on how much it spends and how many people it serves, but never on the number who have died.
At first, department officials told TNS they do not even bother to collect information on the cause of injury or deaths for deceased workers. But later they said they do, on a limited basis, to comply with federal law.
The investigation also found vast differences in the way the federal program is run. As an example, workers at the nuclear facility at Hanford are nearly twice as likely to win money from the government as workers at their sister plant at Savannah River.
The department goes to great lengths to protect its data, taking several months to release it and comply with a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Then the department refused to release the names of companies that have provided medical care for sick workers under the program, formally called the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. The department cited privacy concerns, but TNS is appealing that decision.
An examination of the data reveals the program that began accepting applications in 2001 has far surpassed anything envisioned by its founders.
The explosive growth of the program surprised even its chief architect.
Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico who served as energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, said sloppy record-keeping at the nuclear sites made it difficult to predict the ultimate size of the program.
“See, you don’t know when you enter a program like this what the result is going to be, except you need to be guided by: Is it the right thing to do?” he said in September.
Richardson said the federal government had shown “a lack of conscience” in its decades-long refusal to help workers who had legitimate claims until Congress finally reversed course.
He said getting the program passed became easier after the Washington Post in 1999 first reported that thousands of unsuspecting workers had been exposed to plutonium and other highly radioactive metals for 23 years at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky.
Richardson, who apologized at the time for the government’s denial of any plutonium exposures, said the program’s dramatic growth is a good sign, adding that no one’s getting rich, with individual payments capped at $400,000.
James Melius — the chairman of the federal Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, a presidential panel that examines compensation claims — said it’s hardly a surprise that the program has grown so rapidly.
“The DOE complex is huge,” he said, with “literally hundreds of thousands of workers who are potentially eligible who worked at various times within the complex.”……..
Congress passed the program in 2000 after the Department of Energy submitted studies covering 600,000 people that showed workers at 14 sites had increased risks of dying from cancer and nonmalignant diseases……….http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2015-12-28/nuclear-workers-projects-results-were-worth-illnesses-deaths#.VoMfhne5dh0.twitter
“Radiation Sensors in Major U.S. Cities Turned Off By EPA
BEFORE IT’S NEWS, Dec 19 to Dec 26, 2015″ By Bob Nichols”………“Radiation Sensors in Major U.S. Cities Turned Off By EPA”: Billings, Montana on Oct 16, 2015 was reading a Combined Beta and Gamma Rad of 1,227 Beta and 703 Gamma for a Combined reading of 1,930CPM. The Beta Rad unit stopped publicly reporting, then four (4) days later on Oct 20, 2015 at 12:37:25 the unit came to life again. It’s… ahh, personality had changed, though. The new Beta and Gamma reading was 926 Beta and 401 Gamma. The new Combined radiation number on Oct 20 was 1,227 CPM Combined. The Combined reading was 603 CPM less than it was 4 days before. There was no Note or Comment on the missing four days. It was a 4 Day Rad Gap and an unexplained disappearance of 603CPM. The disappearing CPM was comprised of 302 CPM Gamma and 301 CPM Beta. In the next 4 Hours the Combined CPM eroded another 550 CPM for a total CPM Loss of 1,153 CPM. Billings, Montana today is barely in the List of cities above 1000 CPM. Billings is now 23rd on the list and reads 1,101 CPM. The missing Radiation remains “Unaccounted For.” Presumably it [the radiation] did not go to the Moon; therefore, it is on Earth somewhere now. (So, they apparently tried to “rig” the system and failed, so instead turned it all off. Just my hunch… – CP)Increased risk of cancer for American heart patients due to diagnostic radiation exposure
American patients are ‘exposed to excessive radiation during heart tests – raising the risk of cancer’, Daily Mail, 29 Dec 15
- Scientists revealed US heart patients face higher risk of radiation exposure
- Myocardial perfusion imaging is used to diagnose coronary artery disease
- The imaging technology requires the use of radiation, the study said
- US patients receive a 20% higher radiation dose during these tests
- That’s because US facilities don’t closely follow radiation dosing guidelines
By LISA RYAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM , 30 December 2015 |…………..Dr Einstein said the results from the studies show that doctors must do more to minimize radiation exposure.
That’s because radiation exposure will still cause cancer in a small – but real – number of patients, according to Dr Rebecca Smith-Bindman of the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr Smith-Bindman wrote, in an accompanying editorial: ‘The right imaging tests performed at the right time can lead to earlier and more accurate diagnoses, better treatment decisions and improved patient outcomes, and advanced imaging has had a very positive impact on patient care.’
Yet, she cautioned that ‘unnecessary and inappropriately performed tests cause patients discomfort and anxiety
They can lead to a large number of irrelevant incidental findings and expose them to ionizing radiation – which can have negative effects on their health – she concluded.
The studies were published in JAMA Internal Medicine. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3377866/American-patients-exposed-excessive-radiation-heart-tests-raising-risk-cancer.html
Did USA’s Dept of Environmental Protection ignore hazardous radiation from gas drilling?
Report revives debate over risks of radiation from drilling waste, State Impact Pennsylvania DECEMBER 28, 2015 BY JON HURDLE Concern over whether oil and gas drilling waste emits radiation at unhealthy levels in Pennsylvania has resurfaced with the publication of a report alleging the Department of Environmental Protection ignored hazardous radioactivity from the industry when it issued its own study on the issue almost a year ago.
The environmental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network said on Dec. 16 that DEP “turned a blind eye” to the dangers of radioactivity from gas wells, landfills, and sites where gas is being used, and accused the department of publishing a “fatally flawed and misleading” report last January on Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactivity (TENORM).
The DRN report, written by Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a consultant on radioactive waste issues, said DEP failed to act on evidence of radium, a leading cause of lung cancer, leaking from landfills where oil and gas waste is dumped; failed to adequately regulate the transport of brine or wastewater transport, and did not accurately sample the radioactivity of various waste products…….https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2015/12/28/report-revives-debate-over-risks-of-radiation-from-drilling-waste/
“An Ecomodernist Manifesto” the ‘cool’ new nuclear front group
The Technofix Is In: A critique of “An Ecomodernist Manifesto”, Clive Hamiliton 28 APRIL 2015 For some years the California-based Breakthrough Institute has been vigorously promoting what it claims to be a new “post-environmentalism,” one highly critical of the mainstream environment movement ……..
The institute maintains a determinedly optimistic view of the world, although the bright facade frequently veils a rancor directed against other environmentalists. This rancor perhaps explains some of its baffling policy stances.
The institute frequently attacks renewable energy and energy efficiency, at times with a highly tendentious use of data. For an organization concerned about spiraling greenhouse gas emissions, it’s hard to work out why the group is so dismissive, except as a way of differentiating itself from mainstream environmentalism. Conversely, it vigorously promotes nuclear power, also deploying data and arguments in a misleading way.
Nuclear power has become an obsession for the institute, a kind of signifier by which players in the environmental debate are allocated to the “good guys” box or the “bad guys” box. In a perfect example of mimesis, the dogmatic stance of some anti-nuclear campaigners is reflected back by these pro-nuclear campaigners……….
An Ecomodernist Manifesto, signed by 18 “scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens” associated with the institute, is not satisfied with proclaiming that we can look forward to a good Anthropocene. The manifesto declares that we are entering a great Anthropocene.
What force can turn a gloomy prognosis into a golden future? The answer, of course, is technology. The manifesto’s authors are convinced that “knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.”
For those who believe we must embrace low-emissions technology (i.e. all of us who recognize the reality of anthropogenic climate change) the manifesto is oddly selective, dismissing many large-scale renewable energy technologies (especially wind power and biomass), and taking a skeptical view of solar energy’s potential.
And so the manifesto returns to the ecomoderns’ peculiar obsession: only nuclear power can give us climate stabilization.But, the authors concede, the nuclear industry is flat on its face in most places, so we must wait for the next generation of nuclear fission (or even fusion!) plants, before which opposition will surely melt away. In the meantime, we will need to build more hydroelectric dams and construct “fossil fuel plants with carbon capture and storage” technology.
Here the ability to set aside science is on full display. The manifesto does not say how long we will need to wait for the next generation of nuclear plants, or how much of the global carbon budget will be used up while we cool our heels. Perhaps it might take 20 years for the first plants to be built, and 40 before they are making a large dent in global emissions. By then the planet will be, in Christine Lagard’s arresting phrase, “roasted, toasted, fried and grilled,” and there will be no way to rescue the situation……..
The technofix is in
An Ecomodernist Manifesto does not offer a new way out of the climate morass, but only a warmed-over version of the old-fashioned American technofix. Politics has gone AWOL in it. The only place politics intrudes is where the manifesto bewails social and institutional obstacles to the further spread of nuclear power. So it is the greens who bring politics to the climate debate! This is not an accidental slip, for The Breakthrough Institute gives the impression of being motivated less by the vision of a great future on a human-regulated Earth than by animosity towards other environmentalists.
Predictably, the manifesto has been greeted with enthusiasm by various purveyors of climate science denial….
The Breakthrough Institute has allied itself with some unsavory characters, like the American Enterprise Institute which has been active in promoting climate science denial and has been partly funded by Exxon and the Koch Brothers. Is this the “post-partisan politics” foreshadowed by “The Death of Environmentalism”? If so, it’s a tarnished vision and reflects The Breakthrough Institute’s self-defeating policy of cozying up to environmentalism’s natural enemies and alienating its most stalwart friends. – …….. http://clivehamilton.com/the-technofix-is-in-a-critique-of-an-ecomodernist-manifesto/
Inspection records were faked at USA nuclear power station
Nuclear plant contractors faked 10 months of inspection records By Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune December 27 2015 Contractors at Entergy‘s Waterford 3 nuclear power plant on the west bank of St. Charles Parish failed to conduct required hourly fire inspections and falsified records for 10 months to show the inspections occurred, according to the results of a 15-month-long investigation announced Wednesday (Dec. 23) by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In a Dec. 14 letter notifying Entergy of its findings, the commission’s regulatory staff also said an Entergy Operations Inc. supervisor “deliberately failed to identify and take corrective actions upon being provided with information of suspected wrongdoing by contract fire watch individuals.”
Further, the agency found that a manager for the contracting firm providing the fire inspection workers “deliberately provided incomplete and inaccurate information to an access authorization reviewing official regarding the trustworthiness and reliability of a contract fire watch individual.” Entergy identified the company that provided the fire watch workers as GCA Contractors.
The NRC has given Entergy the opportunity of requesting a “pre-decisional enforcement conference.” Or the company may request “alternative dispute resolution,” before the commission decides on enforcement penalties.
The hourly fire watch tours are required to assure that no fires break out in parts of the huge nuclear power plant building where sensitive equipment is located, including wiring and piping involved in operating the nuclear reactor during accidents or emergencies. The inspections were skipped, and the records falsified, between July 2013 and April 2014. …….. http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/12/contractors_skipped_fire_inspe.html
Nuclear Orwellian Doublespeak
New Protection Action Guidelines Will Leave You Chilled to the Bone, Nuclear World, Marti LeRoux 26 Dec 15, In Dr. Bertell’s 1986 speech, she candidly describes the two tactics that she used to report radiological incidents and the release of radionuclides into the environment.
“It’s become even worse of late because in order to impress the public with how insignificant the exposures are, there seem to be two tactics. One tactic is to make the numbers small. So if you’ve been in the business of reporting radiation exposure or accidents for awhile, you’ll remember that it used to be in terms of maybe eighty millirem at Three Mile Island, or a hundred millirem as background radiation, or 5,000 millirem permitted to workers per year. It’s now changed so that instead of eighty millirem it would be eight-tenths of a millisievert. Eight-tenths is a littler number. Instead of workers getting 5,000 millirems per year they now get fifty millisieverts. So they changed the unit to make it a hundred times bigger which makes the numbers a hundred times smaller. So that’s one tactic.
The other tactic is to give everything in percent so that you’re told `well, there’s a little bit of iodine 131 in your milk, but it’s O.K., it’s only a small percentage of the permissible level.’ Now you’re not really told where that permissible level came from, or who said you could have radioactive material in your milk and it was O.K. But to even express it as a small percentage of a permissible level is very deceptive because those permissible levels are extraordinarily high.”
Since this speech was given, there have been many more radiation disasters in the US and abroad, most notably, Fukushima. Recently, the White House dramatically raised “permissible” levels of radiation in our drinking water and soil. This was done without any input or discussion from you or me. By raising permissible levels the administration seeks to create a “new normal” for our radiation exposure.
It’s a huge win for the nuclear industry because it allows them to legally say that everything is within “permissible levels.” However, the permissible levels “allowed” by the White House is equivalent to Orwellian doublespeak.
Doublespeak deliberately cloaks words in order to distort, disguise or reverse the true meaning of words. It’s a very insidious form of manipulation and a subtle form of brainwashing that is unrelentingly used on the American public in many different ways, but especially so by mass media. Doublespeak is employed in order to make nuclear’s version of the “truth” sound palatable. It’s intentionally designed to create ambiguity and confusion.
What politicians and nuclear lobbyists have determined to be “permissible” is in fact unacceptable, but has the US mainstream media bothered to report it? Of course not.
It turns out that major mainstream media outlets in the US are owned by the very same corporations that own nuclear power plants. Talk about conflict of interest!
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established new radiation guidelines called Protective Action Guides or PAGs. Tragically, these newly established PAGs are extremely negligent and that’s putting it mildly. PAGs have provisions that cover evacuation, shelter, food restrictions and a host of other actions that governmental agencies are permitted to use following a wide range of “radiological emergencies.”
New Protective Guidelines Only Protect the Nuclear Industry
Orwellian doublespeak abounds when dealing with the nuclear agenda. Take the name Protective Action Guidelines (PAG) for example, these new PAGS have very little to do with actually protecting us. They have more to do with protecting the established nuclear industry. Additionally, very little action is involved, if any. I believe it is safe to say that next to no action is involved when it comes to cleaning up nuclear contamination.
Cancer rates, infertility and genetic mutations will be the order of the day, as very little action will be required for governmental agencies to step in and clean up nuclear contamination because these “protective” guidelines are so lax as to be almost useless. I would even go so far as to say they are laughable, but that would not be showing respect to the generations that will suffer as a direct result of the White House’s refusal to take their responsibility seriously.
Is it any wonder that we hear nary a word spoken against nuclear in the US mainstream media? That’s no coincidence because GE, the company that brought you Fukushima also owns, NBC, CNBS, USA Network, A&E, The History Channel, Bravo, SYFY, Lifetime, and The Biography Channel (just to name a few). ……….http://www.nuclearworld.net/pag/
The dangerous deception of ‘nuclear safety’ – Limerick Nuclear Plant
Nuclear safety a ‘dangerous deception’ http://www.pottsmerc.com/article/MP/20151226/NEWS/151229801— Dr. Lewis Cuthbert ACE President 12/26/15,
It is dangerous deception to suggest safety is first for Limerick Nuclear Plant (Mercury, Nov. 18). No emergency plan or drill can make Limerick safe.
A body of evidence shows why “safety first” is not Exelon’s policy for Limerick Nuclear Plant.
Examples:
1. Without continuous high-intensity flashing lights (day and night), Limerick’s cooling towers are considered a height safety hazard by FAA.
• Any structure over 200 feet is a safety hazard. Limerick’s cooling towers are 507 feet high, • A structure less than three miles from a public-access airport must be marked. Limerick’s Heritage Airport is about one mile from Limerick’s cooling towers.
Exelon, an electric company, should have no difficulty immediately restoring lights on Limerick’s cooling towers, yet Exelon failed to do that.
Safety first? Hardly! The fact is, lights onoth cooling towers remained out for at least 24 days, despite increased air traffic over the holidays and occasional dense fog (reported Dec. 2). Even worse:
• Unit 2 cooling tower lights were left out for over six months. May 2015 residents informed NRC, yet it was December before Exelon restored Unit 2 lights.
• November 9 Exelon reported that Unit 1 cooling tower lights went out too. Unit 1 lights will remain out until spring 2016 (Mercury Dec. 10).
The only reason Limerick’s cooling tower height safety hazard designation was waived in the first place during construction was the promise that Limerick’s cooling towers would have continuous flashing lights. Now, they remain out for as long as six months at a time because Exelon, an electric company, won’t fix them immediately. This is reckless negligence!
2. Four Years after Fukushima, Limerick’s Fukushima-like reactors are no safer.
• Exelon is making a mockery of NRCs 2012 Post-Fukushima Safety Recommendations to minimize meltdowns risks at Limerick Nuclear Plant. Exelon is using dangerous delay tactics to avoid costs for minimizing catastrophic meltdowns risks. NRC negligently lets them get away with it.
• Despite requesting compliance without delay in 2012, NRC’s 2015 reports show that Exelon’s “PLANS” for compliance aren’t even complete.
Some important Limerick safety compliance issues have been delayed until 2019, despite dramatically increasing meltdown risks at Limerick. Examples of dangerous delays to avoid and/or eliminate Exelon’s costs:
• Vent installations – to avoid hydrogen explosions. In 2015, Exelon still has no workable plan.
• No filters for vents – to minimize radiation releases after meltdowns. Exelon refused to install filters, despite NRC staff stating, “Vents without filters become radioactive hoses into the sky. Vents are vital, regardless of costs to the industry.”
• Spent fuel pool instrumentation – still not installed, despite risk of fuel pool meltdowns.
• Emergency equipment still not guaranteed to be deployable – during earthquakes and tornadoes. Despite stronger and more frequent threats at Limerick, Exelon’s timeline to finalize procedures and designs remains open. Despite earthquake fault fractures under Limerick’s reactors, fuel pools, control room, turbine building, and rad-waste building, Exelon is planning to delay its self-serving seismic “study” for Limerick until 2019.
3. Exelon makes no effort to reduce public exposure to limerick’s routine and accidental radiation releases or cooling tower pollution.
Despite documented cancer rates far higher than the national and state average, especially in children, Exelon failed to:
• Filter routine radioactive discharges into the Schuylkill River, a vital drinking water resource.
• Notify the public until 23 days after the March 19, 2012 radioactive spill into the river.
• Stop using high-burn fuel (up to 30 percent more radioactive gas releases).
• Filter massive, toxic cooling tower pollution.
• Clean up water and soil from Limerick’s radioactive spills.
It’s far too dangerous for Exelon to avoid costs for Limerick’s safety. That further jeopardizes our health, safety, and financial interests. If safety was actually first, Limerick would close now. Agree? E-mail aceactivists@comcast.net.
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