Document analysing the (un)safety status of San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant
San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station Decommission San Onofre 29 sept 12 Aging Nuke Plants On Fault Lines In Tsunami Hazard Zones = Fukushimas… Any Questions? PLEASE Turn off a light for Fukushima USA / San Clemente
The Number 1 US Nuclear Safety Concern ==> San Onofre’s Replacement Steam Generators The DAB Safety Team is thankful to numerous anonymous concerned SONGS Workers, who have provided factual information in the interest of the Public Safety to us so that we could arrive at these “Reasonable Conclusions” regarding SONGS Replacement Steam Generators
Degradation. We acknowledge Fairewinds Energy Association, Professor Daniel Hirsch, Friends of the Earth, San Clemente Green, Media, News Papers and the SD Reader, whose material has contributed to the successful completion of this document. Continue reading
Radiation exposure to Nevada’s Native American communities
The assessment of radiation exposures in Native American communities (Nevada) http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/the-assessment-of-radiation-exposures-in-native-american-communities-nevada/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10795343
Risk Anal. 2000 Feb;20(1):101-11.
The assessment of radiation exposures in Native American communities from nuclear weapons testing in Nevada.
Frohmberg E, Goble R, Sanchez V, Quigley D.
Source
Clark University, Center for Technology, Environment, George Perkins Marsh Institute, Worcester, MA 01610, USA.
Abstract
Native Americans residing in a broad region downwind from the Nevada Test Site during the 1950s and 1960s received significant radiation exposures from nuclear weapons testing. Because of differences in diet, activities, and housing, their radiation exposures are only very imperfectly represented in the Department of Energy dose reconstructions. There are important missing pathways, including exposures to radioactive iodine from eating small game. The dose reconstruction model assumptions about cattle feeding practices across a year are unlikely to apply to the native communities as are other model assumptions about diet. Thus exposures from drinking milk and eating vegetables have not yet been properly estimated for these communities. Through consultations with members of the affected communities, these deficiencies could be corrected and the dose reconstruction extended to Native Americans. An illustration of the feasibility of extending the dose reconstruction is provided by a sample calculation to estimate radiation exposures to the thyroid from eating radio-iodine-contaminated rabbit thyroids after the Sedan test. The illustration is continued with a discussion of how the calculation results may be used to make estimates for other tests and other locations.
PMID: 10795343 [PubMed – indexed for MEDLINE]
Danger as oil companies plan drilling in nuclear waste ocean dump
The Kara Sea is so remote that the Soviet Union used it as a dumping ground for radioactive material for more than 25 years. The two oil companies have avoided calls for the nuclear waste, estimated to consist of over 17,000 barrels of radioactive waste, worn-out reactors, and even an old nuclear submarine, to be cleared up before any exploration takes place.
The most dangerous item down on the sea floor in that area is the K-27 nuclear submarine, which was dumped their by the Soviet navy in 1981. The NRPA said that any significant corrosion could damage the ships reactor and cause an environmental disaster.
Exxon, Rosneft eye oil in nuclear wasteland http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2012/0927/Exxon-Rosneft-eye-oil-in-nuclear-wasteland
Exxon Mobil and Rosneft are planning to drill for oil in the Kara Sea, which the Soviet Union used as a dumping ground for radioactive material for more than 25 years, according to OilPrice.com. By James Burgess, September 27, 2012 It has been well documented that oil majors from around the world are looking at oil exploration in the Arctic, where they believe that some of the largest untapped fields in the world still lie.
Environmentalists have been fighting efforts to start exploring for oil, fearing that any serious oil spill could mean the destruction of one of the last pristine wildernesses on the planet. Continue reading
USA classes Assange with al-Qaeda and Taliban: Australian govt toes the USA line
‘Enemy’ tag poses fresh test of citizens’ rights, The Age editorial September 28, 2012 The law must be the same for Assange as for everyone else. THE designation of WikiLeaks and its co-founder, Julian Assange, as enemies of the US adds to the gravity of the consequences for releasing classified embassy cables two years ago.
The development, revealed in newly released US Air Force documents, puts Assange in the same category as al-Qaeda terrorists and the Taliban. Personnel who contact him risk being charged with crimes that may carry the death penalty.
Senior US politicians have called Assange a terrorist and demanded he be charged with espionage, hunted down or assassinated.
The Age has refuted Australian government claims of ignorance of US plans to pursue Assange. When coupled with public denunciations – Prime Minister Julia Gillard declared Assange to be a criminal – this government inspires little confidence that it would be any more diligent than the Howard government was in standing up for its citizens’ rights.
A member of the military charged with a military offence can expect to be tried in a military court. US Army private Bradley Manning faces a court martial charged with aiding the enemy by transmitting information that became available to the enemy via WikiLeaks. However, as a result of being deemed ”enemy combatants” – an expedient but legally dubious categorisation – Australians David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib endured long detentions without charge at Guantanamo Bay until a special military tribunal was set up to try detainees.
That points to the risks for anyone declared an ”enemy” of the US military. Assange, though, is not a combatant; as WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, he sees himself as a journalist. The Age published excerpts from the cables by arrangement with WikiLeaks, as did The New York Times in the US and The Guardian in the UK. This information exposed the truth
about the conduct of governments involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Publication was based on the conviction that citizens have a right to know about glaring differences between what governments say in public and what they say and do in private. We had no compunction about making public the secret business of governments and their militaries when the public had been deceived about grave decisions of state,
which went to the justifications for and progress of two wars. At the time, The Age cited an obvious historical precedent. Four decades ago, the Pentagon papers, also illegally copied and provided to The New York Times, showed the Johnson administration had deceived Congress and the public about the Vietnam War.
It is hard to mount a credible argument that exposing deceptive conduct and collusion by elected governments is against the public interest. If governments are embarrassed, lose credibility and are politically damaged, they deserve to be……. http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/enemy-tag-poses-fresh-test-of-citizens-rights-20120927-26o6e.html#ixzz27o1kr02U
Intrigue as authorities tried to cover up danger of Three Mile Island nuclear accident
Gordon MacLeod had, in his words, “recommended and, on the next day, urged the governor in the strongest possible terms to call for the departure of pregnant women and young children from an area within five miles of the Three Mile Island plant.”
`Gordon,’ the governor said, `I’m going to have to ask for your resignation.'”
People Died at Three Mile Island http://www.ratical.org radiation/KillingOurOwn/KOO14.html Gordon MacLeod sat across from the governor of Pennsylvania. It was October 9, 1979. MacLeod had been state secretary of health since twelve days prior to the accident at Three Mile Island.
A tall, trim Bostonian, MacLeod was a lifelong Republican who had served in Richard Nixon’s Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. As both a medical doctor and an engineer he had moved from a research fellowship at Harvard Medical School to a chairmanship at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.
In 1979 Governor Richard Thornburgh, a neighbor of MacLeod’s, had urged him to take charge of the state’s Department of Health, which was in disarray. MacLeod had resisted, but finally agreed, with the understanding he would serve just two years, then return to academia.
Now, eight months later, as controversy still raged over how much radiation had been released at Three Mile Island, the governor’s office called the secretary of health for a conference. The meeting began with some small talk, MacLeod told us a year later. And then Thornburgh got to the point. “`Gordon,’ the governor said, `I’m going to have to ask for your resignation.'”
“I just sat there,” MacLeod told us, “stunned. After going to all that trouble to get me to come on board, he was now telling me to leave after just eight months because things were `just not working out.'”[1]
Thornburgh’s public explanation for MacLeod’s firing was a “difference in institutional style.” But the state media had other ideas. As the UPI reported it, MacLeod had been “state government’s harshest critic of the way the Thornburgh administration responded to the Three Mile Island accident. And that may have been why he was fired.” Indeed, MacLeod’s problems with Thornburgh had begun on March 29, the day after news of radioactive releases from TMI began to spread. MacLeod had, in his words, “recommended and, on the next day, urged the governor in the strongest possible terms to call for the departure of pregnant women and young children from an area within five miles of the Three Mile Island plant.” MacLeod told us later that if he had a chance to do it over, he would also have urged the departure of children in puberty, who are also extraordinarily radiation-sensitive.
But the state’s nuclear engineers and radiation health physicists disagreed with MacLeod, and they told the governor there was no need for an evacuation. Initially Thornburgh advised area residents to stay indoors, but said nothing about evacuating.[3]
Meanwhile Dr. Ernest Sternglass had gone to Harrisburg the day after the accident. After testing on his own and finding high radiation levels, he urged that the state evacuate pregnant women and small children. He was worried in particular that I-131 doses could prove devastating to the small children and infants in utero who were particularly vulnerable to miscarriages, stillbirths, malformations, childhood leukemias, and other radiation-linked problems. Thornburgh publicly charged Sternglass with being an alarmist and stood firm in his refusal to call for an evacuation.
That night the state’s Department of Environmental Resources announced that because the holding tanks at TMI were overloaded with radioactive liquids, Met Ed had been flushing them for hours into the Susquehanna River. No one had bothered to notify communities downstream that were continuing to draw their drinking water from the river.[4]
Finally Thornburgh asked NRC chairman Joseph Hendrie, a nuclear engineer, what he would do if he had a pregnant wife in the area. Hendrie replied that he would get her out “because we don’t know what is going to happen.”
Thornburgh then decided to do what MacLeod had quietly urged and what he had attacked Ernest Sternglass for publicly suggesting. At noon on March 30–two days after the start of the accident–he announced that he was “advising those who may be particularly susceptible to the effects of radiation, that is, pregnant Women and pre-school-age children, to leave the area within a 5-mile radius of the Three Mile Island facility until further notice.”
Nuclear company Exelon’s amazing influence over President Obama
Exelon, “Obama’s Utility” Has Amazing Influence in the White House- Energy the “Chicago Way” Against Crony Capitalism, August 23, 2012 by Nick Sorrentino “……Exelon, the nuclear electrical utility based out of, you guessed it- Chicago, has the inside track at the White House. This special access appears to have influenced regulation which has hammered competitors of Exelon, helped Exelon garner very favorable DOE loans, and may have even influenced whether Exelon competitors were able to build power plants. (From The New York Times)
“Exelon’s top executives were early and frequent supporters of Mr. Obama as he rose from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. John W. Rogers Jr., a friend of the president’s and one of his top fund-raisers, is an Exelon board member. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political strategist, once worked as an Exelon consultant, and Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker.
With energy an increasingly pivotal issue for the Obama White House, a review of Exelon’s relationship with the administration shows how familiarity has helped foster access at the upper reaches of government and how, in some cases, the outcome has been favorable for Exelon.” http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2012/08/exelon-obamas-utility-has-amazing-influence-in-the-white-house-energy-the-chicago-way/
Nuclear and coal power plants the victims of global warming
As the U.S. Warms, Power Plants Face New Water Limits Climate Central,By Andrew Freedman, 25 Sept The power sector is responsible for a large share — about 40 percent — of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., particularly thermoelectric-generating stations, such as coal-fired power plants. And so it is not without a hint of irony that a recent study concluded that the effects of global warming, particularly drought and heat waves, will increasingly limit the generating capacity of these power plants — thereby making them both contributors to and victims of global warming…
… In the U.S., power plant operators must comply with laws such as the Clean Water Act, as well as state regulations that prohibit nuclear and other plants from operating once water temperatures go above a certain threshold, Continue reading
US drones in Pakistan – counterproductive
Pakistan Drone Study Finds ‘Damaging And Counterproductive’ Consequences From U.S. Policy HUFFINGTON POST 09/25/2012 A new study conducted by law professors at Stanford and New York University contends that the U.S. use of drones to target suspected militants in Pakistan has had a “damaging and counterproductive effect” on the country and has killed far more civilians than previously acknowledged. Continue reading
Nuclear waste problem slams the brakes on USA’s nuclear ndustry
“You can’t store this waste in a region where there’s intense local opposition to it.”
the used fuel will sit, in the “backyard” of nuclear plants, likely for several years, because of the federal court ruling.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently announced it will start a two-year environmental review of temporary waste storage, even as it refuses to grant permits for any new reactors
Nuclear industry slowed by its own waste By Kristi Swartz, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 23 Sept 12, Just as the nuclear industry is starting to build reactors after a 30-year drought, it faces another dry spell.
The industry thought it had what it needed for its rebirth: federal loan guarantees; a uniform reactor design; a streamlined licensing process. The nightmares from the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, 1,000 new safety regulations and cost overruns would be left in the past, industry officials believed.
But what never came together was a long-term plan for how to store the used radioactive fuel. As a result, judges and regulators have slammed the brakes on new reactor projects — with two exceptions, one of those in Georgia Continue reading
The nuclear company Exelon’s ties to Obama
Ties to Obama Aided in Access for Big Utility, NYT By ERIC LIPTON August 22, 2012 WASHINGTON — Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago.
Exelon’s top executives were early and frequent supporters of Mr. Obama as he rose from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. John W. Rogers Jr., a friend of the president’s and one of his top fund-raisers, is an Exelon board member. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political strategist, once worked as an Exelon consultant, and Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker. Continue reading
Increasing worry over the piling up of nuclear wastes
Nuclear industry slowed by its own waste By Kristi Swartz The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 23 Sept 12, “…..NO MAGIC BULLET’ Utilities store a total of 2,000-2,300 metric tons of used nuclear fuel a year, according to industry figures. That adds up to about 65,000 metric tons of radioactive waste currently sitting at nuclear plants.
“If we reject long-term storage, we’re left with dry casking, and that’s it,” said Cham Dallas, a professor and director at the University of Georgia’s Institute for Health Management and Mass Destruction Defense. “Yes, it’s probably safe, but can we continue this policy for an infinite number of years?”
The concerns over safely handling nuclear waste are many. Continue reading
Bill to slow relicensing of aged nuclear reactors
the NRC too frequently rubber-stamps 20-year extensions to licenses that are supposed to last 40 years. They said that could endanger people living near nuclear power plants.
like allowing a doctor to assure a twenty year-old smoker they will never get lung cancer,”
Bill would add nuclear relicensing rule The Hill, By Zack Colman – 09/27/12 A House bill introduced Wednesday would delay the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) ability to renew licenses for aging nuclear reactors. Continue reading
Entergy Sues U.S. for Failure to Dispose of Nuclear Waste, Bloomberg News By Tom Schoenberg and Julie Johnsson on September 27, 2012 An Entergy Corp. (ETR ) unit sued the U.S. for $100 million alleging the government breached a contract for disposal of nuclear waste at two plants in Michigan.
Entergy Nuclear Palisades LLC, owner of the Palisades Nuclear Plant
and the Big Rock Point plant, alleged yesterday that the Energy
Department collected fees under a 1983 contract without ever starting
to dispose of the radioactive material. The suit is in the U.S. Court
of Federal Claims in Washington……
Most nuclear-plant owners continue to store spent nuclear fuel onsite
despite contributing for decades into a fund meant to finance a
central waste depository.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is freezing U.S. operating
licenses for at least two years as it reassesses waste-storage risks
and strategies in response to a June 8 order by the U.S. Court of
Appeals in Washington.
Entergy Corp., based in New Orleans, is the second-largest owner of
nuclear plants in the U.S….. The case is Entergy Nuclear Palisades
LLC v. U.S., 12-cv- 1641, U.S. Court of Federal Claims (Washington).
… http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-27/entergy-sues-u-dot-s-dot-for-failure-to-dispose-of-nuclear-waste
NRC to hear challenge to nuke plants Citrus County Chronicle , September 19, 2012 Pat Faherty It is all about water. That is the way Cara Campbell, Ecology Party chair, described the upcoming hearing on the proposed nuclear power plant in Levy County.
On Oct. 31, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will hold an evidentiary hearing on a challenge to the application for two nuclear power reactors. Continue reading
Obama all too cosy with nuclear company Exelon
Ties to Obama Aided in Access for Big Utility, NYT By ERIC LIPTON August 22, 2012 WASHINGTON — Early in the Obama administration, a lobbyist for the Illinois-based energy producer Exelon Corporation proudly called it “the president’s utility.” And it was not just because it delivers power to Barack Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago.
Exelon’s top executives were early and frequent supporters of Mr. Obama as he rose from the Illinois State Senate to the White House. John W. Rogers Jr., a friend of the president’s and one of his top fund-raisers, is an Exelon board member. David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s longtime political strategist, once worked as an Exelon consultant, and Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, helped create the company through a corporate merger in 2000 while working as an investment banker.
With energy an increasingly pivotal issue for the Obama White House, a review of Exelon’s relationship with the administration shows how familiarity has helped foster access at the upper reaches of government and how, in some cases, the outcome has been favorable for Exelon. Continue reading
1 This Month
23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
-
Archives
- October 2026 (219)
- September 2026 (339)
- August 2026 (330)
- July 2026 (355)
- June 2026 (287)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (267)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
