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Nuclear: The unstoppable lessons of the Fukushima Catastrophe

Mediapart 16th March 2018, Two voices from Japan shake the pronuclear torpor of France on the seventh anniversary
of the Fukushima catastrophe. Listen to Naoto Kan, former prime minister
who became anti-atom, and read Masao Yoshida, the defunct director of the
Powerhouse, is to understand the powerlessness of Governments in the face
of a nuclear catastrophe.  https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/160318/nucleaire-les-imparables-lecons-de-la-catastrophe-de-fukushima

March 19, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Seven years after Fukushima disaster ghost towns remain

 news.com.au, Mar 13, 2018 “………On Sunday, residents along the coast gathered outdoors to remember the tragedy as sirens wailed at 2.46pm, the moment the magnitude-9.0 offshore earthquake that set off the tsunami struck on March 11, 2011……..

Cleaning up the still-radioactive Fukushima nuclear plant site remains a daunting challenge that is expected to take 30 to 40 years.

A government-commissioned group of experts concluded last Wednesday that a costly underground ice wall is only partially effective in reducing the ever-growing amount of contaminated water at Japan’s destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant, and said other measures are needed as well.

…….. The groundwater mixes with radioactive water leaking from the damaged reactors.

Contaminated water also results from rainwater that comes in contact with tainted soil and structures at the plant, which suffered meltdowns of three reactors after a March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.…….. https://www.9news.com.au/world/2018/03/13/17/29/seven-years-after-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-communities-remain-ghost-towns

March 14, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

What if Pickering nuclear power plant had a Fukushima type accident?

Report paints grim picture of Fukushima-scale nuclear accident in Pickering, A Fukushima-scale nuclear incident at Pickering would mean the loss of 154,000 Toronto-area homes for up to 100 years, says an environmental group.  The Star, By TESS KALINOWSKIStaff Reporter, Sun., March 11, 2018 

A Fukushima-scale meltdown at the Pickering nuclear power plant would exact a devastating human and economic toll on the province, causing 26,000 cases of cancer — nearly half of them fatal — and the evacuation of 154,000 homes in York and Durham regions and east Toronto.

Some areas would be uninhabitable for 100 years.

Losses from uninsured housing alone would be in the range of $125 billion.

That’s the catastrophic scenario outlined in a report by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, published on Sunday to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the earthquake that triggered the Japanese nuclear disaster.

The non-profit coalition, which opposes nuclear power generation, wants Ontario to dismantle its oldest nuclear generating station in Pickering and buy water-generated electricity from Hydro Quebec. But provincially-owned Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has applied to have the Pickering plant’s operating licence extended beyond its Aug. 31 expiry.

Could Fukushima happen in the Toronto area? It wouldn’t take the precise circumstances of the Japanese disaster to result in a similar accident here, said Jack Gibbons, chair of the Clean Air Alliance.

“There’s a risk. No one can say for sure what the exact probability of a serious accident is but everyone knows the probability is greater than zero,” he said.

Nobody is suggesting there will be a tsunami in Lake Ontario, said Gibbons. But the Toronto region is subject to some seismic activity. It could also be vulnerable to a plane crash or a cyberattack. Then there’s the possibility of human error, the number one cause of nuclear accidents, according to the report, in which Gibbons wrote the forward and British expert Ian Fairlie modelled the potential radiation impacts it outlines.

“Could an accident happen? Accidents do happen. The nuclear industry told us Chernobyl would never happen. They told us Three-Mile Island would never happen. They told us Fukushima would never happen. But they did,” Gibbons said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI reported that a Kansas plant, known as Wolf Creek, was the target of one such attack, according to the New York Times.

Cleaner electricity could be supplied more cheaply without the risk of human and economic devastation, said Gibbons.

The Clean Air Alliance says that the 47-year-old Pickering facility, the oldest nuclear generating station in the province, is running on 1960s and 1970s technology.

………… Its report overlays the impacts of Fukushima on the Pickering area. It notes that about 80 per cent of the Fukushima radioactive emissions were carried out to sea. If Ontario were subject to the same contamination levels and weather conditions as Japan, the highest doses of radiation would cover an area north of Lake Ontario between Toronto and Oshawa toward Barrie, and then southwest near London and Kitchener. Toronto to Hamilton would receive lower doses.Pickering, Markham, Newmarket, Whitchurch-Stouffville, Aurora and northern Scarborough would suffer the most devastating impacts. About 653,000 people would need to be evacuated and key transportation routes such as highways 401, 404 and 407, as well as CN, CP and GO Transit rails, would run through contaminated areas, says the report.

In 2015, the Durham Region Health Department and OPG did a mass mailing of potassium iodide tablets, known as K1, to residents and businesses within 10 kilometres of the Pickering and Darlington nuclear generating stations. Those within 50 kilometres of those facilities can order the tablets from preparetobesafe.ca any time, says the health unit.

OPG has an arrangement with Canada Post to automatically send the tablets to new addresses or to address changes registered with the post office that are within 10 kilometres of a nuclear plant.

OPG’s liability is capped at $1 billion — leaving most property losses unrecoverable, said Gibbons.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada confirmed to the Star that private insurers do not offer coverage for nuclear accidents. Earthquake insurance is not part of a standard homeowner policy although it is available as an add-on. About 31 per cent of Canadian policyholders buy it, said the industry group. That includes 45 per cent of policyholders in British Columbia and 4 per cent in Quebec, the areas most vulnerable to seismic activity.  https://www.thestar.com/business/real_estate/2018/03/11/report-paints-grim-picture-of-fukushima-scale-nuclear-accident-in-pickering.html

 

March 14, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

A mother’s call to protect future generations from the toxic nuclear industry

Radiation Free Lakeland 11th March 2018 The government has yet another consultation out on new build – on where to site new nuclear reactors.This entirely vicious consultation to enable new nuclear build has been difficult to reply to as there should be no new reactors anywhere.

Today is Mothers’ Day and this is for all those whose children are no longer here to wish them a happy Mothers’ Day. It is for all those in Fukushima who are suffering 7 years after the tsunami caused a
terrible and ongoing nuclear disaster.

It is for my own peace of mind that I as an individual and as a volunteer with Radiation Free Lakeland, am doing everything I can to protect my family and our water, our air, our earth and our sea from ever more pernicious nuclear developments.
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2018/03/11/to-mark-the-7th-anniversary-of-fukushima-here-is-our-reply-to-the-uks-latest-vicious-new-build-consultation/

March 14, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Japanese residents gathered along the north-east coast, remembering the Fukushima disaster

The National 12th March 2018, JAPAN has marked the seventh anniversary of a tsunami that claimed more
than 18,000 lives on the north-east coast and triggered a nuclear disaster
that turned nearby communities into ghost towns.

Residents along the coast gathered outdoors to remember the tragedy as sirens wailed at 2.46pm, the
moment the magnitude-9.0 offshore earthquake that set off the tsunami
struck on March 11 2011. The tsunami overwhelmed sea walls and washed away
buildings, cars and entire neighbourhoods as it swept inland. It knocked
out power at the seaside Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, causing
partial meltdowns in three reactors.  http://www.thenational.scot/news/16079578.Fukushima_disaster_marked_seven_years_on/

March 14, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Increase in incidence of thyroid in Fukushima’s young children and adolescents can be expected to continue

Porquoi Docteur 11th March 2018, [Machine Translation] In this population, an abnormal number of children
and adolescents develop in fact thyroid cancer, according to a study
revealed in August 2015 conducted among 300,000 young Japanese in the
prefecture of Fukushima.

Published in the journal Epidemiology, it
indicates that 103 cases of thyroid cancer have been reported in children
and adolescents under 18 who resided in Fukushima prefecture between 2011
and 2014.

This is 25 more than ‘last year. “It’s hard to establish a cause
and effect relationship, but you have to continue the exams because the
proportion of tumor discoveries increases with age,” said Dr. Shunichi
Suzuki when he presented the results.
https://www.pourquoidocteur.fr/Articles/Question-d-actu/14602-Fukushima-les-cancers-de-la-thyroide-en-augmentation-chez-les-jeunes

March 12, 2018 Posted by | general | 2 Comments

$Millions being wasted in futile effort to foist a nuclear waste dump on Nevada

NRDC 5th March 2018,  Yucca has long been viewed as the expedient solution, but that attempt to
foist a solution on an unconsenting state has instead been a failure. If
Congress decides to waste tens of millions of dollars to restart the
licensing process for the Yucca site, more anger and further delay is sure
to follow.  https://www.nrdc.org/experts/geoffrey-h-fettus/final-resting-place-nuclear-waste

March 12, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Eon, Germany’s giant energy utility to buy Innogy, the renewable energy business

FT 10th March 2018, Eon, the German utility, is in advanced discussions to strike a complex
deal worth more than €20bn to acquire Innogy, the renewable energy
business that was spun out and still majority controlled by Germany’s
RWE.

The deal, which may be announced as soon as Monday evening, will mark
the latest high-profile transaction in the German energy market just months
after Eon sold a minority stake in its former subsidiary Uniper to
Finland’s Fortum for €3.8bn.

A deal to acquire Innogy would be a bold
move for Eon, offering the clearest sign yet that the German utility is
back on the offensive after years of retrenchment and a series of harsh
regulatory blows. The deal comes after both Eon and RWE were hit hard by
the so-called Energiewende.

Germany’s radical shift away from fossil fuels
towards renewables, which put intense pressure on the two group’s core
conventional power operations. Germany’s leading power companies also
suffered another severe setback in 2011, when the government in Berlin
decided to accelerate the phase-out of nuclear power in response to the
Fukushima disaster.
https://www.ft.com/content/f6952a70-24a7-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0

March 12, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Fukushima nuclear disaster anniversary: Japan must now turn away from nuclear power

Editorial: 7 years after Fukushima meltdowns, time to review insistence on nuclear power,  (Mainichi Japan)    Japan has no choice but to make fundamental changes to its energy policy. Weren’t we all convinced of that when the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant broke out seven years ago, and we were faced with the horrors and the massive impact of a nuclear disaster? 

And yet, time has passed with little change in policy or society. Rather, whether out of sheer inertia or habit, the past seven years have been spent on maintaining nuclear power plants.

Steps are being taken toward resuming the operation of nuclear reactors that had been halted, and though permitting the continued use of aging reactors had once been an exception, it is becoming more the rule. Japan also keeps holding out hope for the nuclear fuel cycle, which has repeatedly proven to be a failure.

The process by which policy decisions are being made has not changed, which means there is no framework through which to turn the public’s desire to break free from its dependence on nuclear power into reality.

…….. Last year, the global cumulative installed capacity of solar power amounted to a total of around 400 gigawatts, while that of wind-generated power reached approximately 540 gigawatts, which was an increase of 10 times and 2.5 times, respectively, since 2010. The installed capacities of such renewable energy surpass that of not only nuclear power, but also of coal-fired thermal power.

……..Probably the most accurate take of the world’s nuclear power market is that it is on the decline. Even China, which is marginally supporting the nuclear energy market, is increasingly being seen as a major force behind the expansion of renewable energy, more so than nuclear power. Japan, which is stubbornly trying to maintain nuclear power, is already falling behind global trends.

There is, however, a slight hint that change may be afoot within the Japanese government……..

……. Assessing global trends, which power sources should we invest our limited resources in? The answer is crystal clear if we look squarely at reality. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180309/p2a/00m/0na/013000c

March 10, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Have faith! Clean, Endless Nuclear Fusion Power MIGHT be coming

Clean, Endless Fusion Power Now Only 15 Years Away. Maybe.https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/03/clean-endless-fusion-power-now-only-15-years-away-maybe/  KEVIN DRUM, MAR. 9, 2018

Good news! Commercial fusion power has always been 30 years away no matter what year it is, but now some folks say it’s only 15 years away:

The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source.

….A newly available superconducting material — a steel tape coated with a compound called yttrium-barium-copper oxide, or YBCO — has allowed scientists to produce smaller, more powerful magnets. And this potentially reduces the amount of energy that needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction off the ground….The planned fusion experiment, called Sparc, is set to be far smaller — about 1/65th of the volume — than that of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, an international collaboration currently being constructed in France.

By 2040 or so, we’ll have robots doing all the work and clean, cheap fusion providing all the power we need. You just gotta believe.

March 10, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

UK police say Sergei Skripa, former Russian spy, was poisoned with nerve agent

Sergei Skripal: former Russian spy poisoned with nerve agent, say police, Former Russian spy’s case being treated as attempted murder, with police officer also ‘seriously ill’  Sergei Skripal  Guardian, Vikram Dodd, Luke Harding and Ewen MacAskill 8 Mar 2018 

The former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were deliberately poisoned with a nerve agent in a case that is now being treated as attempted murder, the police counter-terrorism chief has said.

Scotland Yard assistant chief commissioner Mark Rowley said the police officer who was first to the spot where Skripal was found in Salisbury on Sunday afternoon was “seriously ill” in hospital. His condition had deteriorated, Rowley said, adding: “Wiltshire police are providing full support to his family.”

Describing the poisoning as a major incident, Rowley said scientists had identified the substance used. He refused to reveal what the specific poison was.

Suspected Skripal poisoning: who might have ordered it and why?

All three were suffering from “exposure to a nerve agent”. Detectives now believed that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were specifically targeted, he added, in a deliberate act. They remain critically ill in hospital.

Although further details are awaited, the suspicion in Downing Street will be that the Kremlin has attempted another brazen assassination operation on British soil. Moscow will furiously deny involvement, but Theresa May will have to consider how the government might respond should the police and other evidence point to Russia and its multiple spy outfits.

Unlike in the case of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with a slow-acting radioactive cup of tea, detectives got to the scene in Salisbury quickly. Hundreds of officers were now working around the clock, Rowley said. They were examining CCTV footage from the city centre and building a detailed timeline of events, he added……….. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/07/russian-spy-police-appeal-for-witnesses-as-cobra-meeting-takes-place

March 9, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Funding for Yucca nuclear waste project is not likely

NUCLEAR WASTE:  Slim odds for Yucca Mountain funding in omnibus, Sam Mintz and Geof Koss, E&E News reportersy, March 8, 2018

March 9, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Evacuation plans – Dr Ian Fairlie

Beyond Nuclear International 4th March 2018,  Dr Ian Fairlie: If another severe nuclear accident, such as Windscale (in
1957), Chernobyl (1986) or Fukushima (2011) were to occur, then the most
important response, in terms of preventing future cancer epidemics, is
evacuation. The other main responses are shelter and stable iodine
prophylaxis. Adverse health effects would primarily depend on wind
direction and on the nature of the accident. This article looks primarily
at the Fukushima evacuation and its after-effects.
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2018/03/04/fleeing-from-fukushima-a-nuclear-evacuation-reality-check/

March 9, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Public Service, Exelon cancel capital spending at Salem nuclear plan

Seeking Alpha, 

: Carl Surran, SA News Editor 

Public Service Enterprise Group (PEG -2%) and Exelon (EXC -0.7%) say they will cancel funding of future capital projects at the Salem nuclear plant, after a $300M taxpayer-funded financial bailout of New Jersey’s nuclear industry stalled in the state legislature……. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3336194-public-service-exelon-cancel-capital-spending-salem-nuclear-plant

March 5, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Toshiba gets out of a uranium deal

Toshiba gets out of GoviEx deal, Mining Journal , 4 Mar 18, 

Japanese conglomerate Toshiba has severed an offtake and bond agreement with uranium producer GoviEx Uranium (CN:GXU) following the sale of its Westinghouse nuclear division to Brookfield.

Toshiba and the Africa-focused uranium explorer signed a US$40 million deal in 2012 in which the Japanese company lent the equivalent of 200,000 pounds of U3O8 (with the bond now worth 382,193Ib because of the compounded interest), as well as an offtake and shareholding agreement.

GoviEx will pay $4.5 million to get out of the bond by the end of the month, it said.

The developer is still working on financing the $220 million Madaouela project…..http://www.mining-journal.com/project-finance/news/1316062/toshiba-gets-out-of-goviex-deal

March 5, 2018 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

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