Fukushima’s ice wall fraught with problems, but what else can they do?
At Fukushima, those problems will be even more extreme, but the cost of doing nothing is even higher
How to Build an Ice Wall Around a Leaking Nuclear Reactor Yahoo News, Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic 14 Aug 13 Building cryogenic barriers sounds like the specialty of an obscure supervillain, but it’s a well-established technique in civil engineering, used regularly for tunnel boring and mining. Ground freezing was even tested as a way of containing radioactive waste in the 1990s at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and performed admirably.
at left, workers near Fukushima radioactive water storage tanks
Joe Sopko, the civil engineering firm Moretrench’s director of ground freezing, has spoken with several consultants about the details of the project, and he’s convinced it’s certainly possible. “This is not a complicated freeze job. It really isn’t,” he told me. “However, the installation, because of the radiation, is.”…….
Here’s how it works. Freeze pipes, made from normal steel, are sunk into the ground at regular intervals. The spacing is normally about one meter. Then, some type of coolant is fed into the pipes. Sopko uses a brine — salty liquid which can be cooled far below the freezing point of fresh water without turning into a solid. On the surface, a big refrigerator chills the liquid, which is pumped into the pipes. The liquid extracts heat from the ground, and returns to the chiller, where it is recooled and sent back down. It’s not a fast process and can take many months. (Sometimes, for speed’s sake an expendable refrigerant like liquid nitrogen is used, but it requires trucking in tanks full of the stuff.) Continue reading
America needs to apologise to Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Apparently, in the minds of most Americans America can do no wrong. An act that would be perceived as profoundly immoral if any other nation were behind it, is seen as being quite acceptable and even laudable when it is America that sits in the driver’s seat. No matter how grossly immoral a particular action may be, when America is the actor that action is somehow magically transformed in light of America’s perceived exceptional greatness into something good, wholesome, and even holy — certainly nothing deserving of an apology.
I can think of no better example of this than America’s 1945 atomic bombing of the two high-density civilian population centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki..
America’s Nuclear Madness: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part I) OpEd, By Robert Quinn, 12 Aug 13, ” The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. — George Orwell
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. — Thomas Jefferson
This month marks the 68 th anniversary of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki………..right-wing media made much of a Wikileaks-released diplomatic cable claiming to tell of plans President Obama had to apologize for America’s 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his 2009 visit to Japan. Investors Business Daily castigated Obama for his alleged plans to “apologize” to Japan “for defending freedom” and “for winning with devastating finality the war Japan started.”The National Review Online, Rush Limbaugh, The Drudge Report, and Fox News, among other right-wing media outlets, followed Investor Business Daily’s lead, claiming that the only reason Obama’s planned apology failed to materialize is that Japan had the good sense to disapprove of the plan.
The White House denied that there ever was any plans to apologize to Japan for America’s WW II atomic decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Wikileaks cable bears this out. Following a meeting with Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan cabled Secretary of State Clinton expressing Japan’s concern that a visit by Obama to Hiroshima, coming on the heels of Obama’s previously expressed commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, would fuel speculation, particularly among anti-nuclear groups, whether an Obama apology might be in the offing. Japan worried that such speculation would play into the hands of these anti-nuclear groups, providing them with greater visibility and a stronger voice in their efforts to garner increasing public support for their anti-nuclear agenda. The diplomatic cable was sent, then, not to ward off a planned Obama apology as Obama’s detractors have claimed, but rather to ward off any speculation that such an apology might be in the works, and that an Obama visit to Hiroshima might serve to provoke. To this end, Japan’s foreign ministry recommended that both governments do what they can to keep all such speculation to a minimum, and that this could be accomplished by having Tokyo be the primary focus of Obama’s 2009 visit. End of story.
What if Obama actually did have plans to apologize to Japan on behalf of America for its atomic incineration of two Japanese high-density civilian population centers? What of it? What exactly is the crime in this? Might it just be that such an apology is in order, and long overdue? The media has given no consideration to this at all. Instead, the entire focus has been on whether Obama is guilty or not of having had plans to apologize for America. The right-wing conservative media assumed Obama’s guilt, the left-leaning liberal media came to his defense, and the mainstream media, where it wasn’t following the right wing’s deceptive lead, reported on the controversy. The important issue in all of this — the moral justification, or lack thereof, of America’s atomic bombing of Japan — was entirely ignored.
Is Apologizing When You’ve Said Or Done Something Detestable Un-American? Continue reading
Confusing nuclear data: Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
Nuclear Energy Activist Toolkit #12: Finding Stuff in ADAMS Dave Lochbaum, director, Nuclear Safety Project August 13, 2013 In November 1999, the NRC discontinued providing information to local public document rooms near nuclear plants around the country in favor of an online electronic library it calls the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS).
Finding records in ADAMS is wicked easy.
Finding records one actually wants in ADAMS is often just wicked.
One can search by key word or phrase or date or docket and literally get up to 1,000 hits (ADAMS will only return 1,000 hits even when 1,000,000 records match the search criterion. This makes it easier for you to find the record of interest among the 1,000 hits – unless, of course, that record is among the hits not returned.)
To make finding stuff even “easier,” records can be viewed in ADAMS by folders for the day they were added to the electronic library. The very descriptive information provided for each record make it extremely easy to zero right in on stuff of particular interest.,,,,,,,
the absolute easiest way to find a record in ADAMS is to have a hard copy in your hand before you start searching. If so, read the hard copy and save yourself the wasted time and undue agony trying to find it in ADAMS even when equipped with its date, subject, addressee, etc.
Even for immortals, life is just too short to become an ADAMS aficionado.
There are times when the federal government should not award contracts to the lowest bidder. Like when it seeks an online document library that is not “electronic keep away.”
The UCS Nuclear Energy Activist Toolkit (NEAT) is a series of post intended to help citizens understand nuclear technology and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s processes for overseeing nuclear plant safety.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s false safety assumptions
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Is Using Obviously Faulty Models to Pretend Crumbling Nuclear Reactors Are Safe By Washington’s Blog Global Research, August 12, 2013 Ignoring Basic Engineering Science Puts Us All At Risk
Faulty assumptions by America’s financial regulators led to the 2008 crash … and many other disastrous results.
Similarly, America’s main nuclear regulator – the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – made numerous assumptions before Fukushima that turned out to be totally false. For example, the NRC wrongly assumed: Continue reading
America’s official lies about the reasons for atomic bombing of Japanese cities
Regardless of the number of American lives Truman claims to have saved, the vast majority of Americans accept the official story as gospel. The indoctrinating media and sixty-eight years of propagandistic history texts from grammar school through high school did its job well. But, except for the fact of the bombs having been dropped, the official story is a lie. Not merely mistaken, but a lie.
In terms of moral justification, the official story no doubt provides a great deal of comfort to a great many Americans. Unfortunately, all indications are that this moral centerpiece of the official story just isn’t true. The truth, as it turns out, is so barbaric that it’s almost inconceivable..
America’s Nuclear Madness: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part I) By Robert Quinn“ OpEdNews 8/11/2013 “………..The Official Story
Sixty-eight years ago, August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb to ever be used in warfare on the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on the civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. All toll, nearly a quarter of a million civilian men, woman, children, and babies lost their lives in those blasts. Of those who survived the blasts, many were maimed for life and many more would later die slow, painful deaths due to radiation poisoning and various forms of cancer.
In Hiroshima, a city with a population of 290,000, the initial death count by the end of August 1945 was estimated at 100,000. By the end of 1950 the estimated death toll had risen, according to some estimates, to 200,000. In Nagasaki, a city with a population of 240,000, including 400 prisoners of war, it’s estimated that some 70,000 were killed by the initial blast, with 140,000 dead within the next five years.
The official story at the time was that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets whose destruction was necessary to bring the war to an end. This was a lie. The American public was also told that leaflets were dropped warning the inhabitants of these cities of the impending destruction and that they should leave. This, too, was a lie. The official story tells of President Truman’s decision to go nuclear on Japan as a necessary last resort designed to hasten a Japanese surrender, thereby saving American soldiers the horrors of a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland. As we will see, this, too, was a lie.
The official story claims that dropping the bombs saved the lives of many thousands of American soldiers which otherwise most certainly would have been lost. In October 1945, two months after the bombs were dropped, Truman wrote in his diary: Continue reading
Nevada’s secret nuclear radiation guinea pigs
“Nuclear Guinea Pigs”: Deadly Experiments and Contaminated Reality By Greg Guma Global Research, August 11, 2013 Half a century ago, on the spurious grounds that extreme sacrifices were required in the battle to prevent a communist takeover of the world, the US government decided to use the citizens of Nevada as nuclear guinea pigs.
Although atomic testing was pursued there for several years in the 1950s, notification would have alarmed area residents. As a result, they weren’t even advised to go indoors. Yet, according to declassified documents, some scientists studying the genetic effects of radiation at the time were already concerned about the health risks of fallout.
For most of those committed to the US nuclear program, the need to keep this type of research secret was a no-brainer. After all, if the public realized that the technology used to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki had led to experiments at home, early nuclear research – not to mention weapons deployment – might have met stronger opposition. The government badly wanted its nukes, and the scientists yearned to unlock the secrets of human mutation. Thus, an unholy alliance was struck. Continue reading
No military need for atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
America’s Nuclear Madness: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part I) By Robert Quinn” OpEdNews 8/11/2013 “………….Japan Had Already Been Defeated Prior To Dropping the Bombs After the war had ended, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (a board consisting of more than 1,000 individuals, both military and civilian), was tasked by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson with the examination and analysis of U.S. involvement in WW II. The Survey concluded in 1946 that “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
But it was not only with the advantage of hindsight that this conclusion was reached. General Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of allied forces in Europe) and General MacArthur (Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific) came to the same conclusion before the bombs were ever dropped. I don’t think there’s any question that both General Eisenhower and General MacArthur would have done whatever was necessary to spare their troops the horrors of a ground invasion. But the fact is that neither of them believed that a ground invasion of mainland Japan was necessary. Continue reading
UNSCEAR members protest against minimising health effects of Fukushima radiation
Shocked UNSCEAR members in Belgium protest “It even goes back behind the lessons of Chernobyl and other studies.”
http://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_les-delegues-belges-indignes-on-minimise-les-consequences-de-fukushima?id=8042566 English translation by Alex Rosen, M.D., Vice-chairman, German IPPNW Shocked UNSCEAR members in Belgium protest
A giant wall of ice – will it stop Fukushima radiation leak?
Can a giant ice wall stop Fukushima radiation from leaking into the sea? Grist, By Lisa Hymas Aug 9, 2013 “……..So now Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, which owns the plant, has a plan to build an underground wall of frozen earth to stop the radioactive water leakage. NPR explains:
[T]o understand, you need to know the geography of Fukushima. There are three melted down reactors, and they’re all right on the coast. To the west, you have mountains. To the east, you have ocean. And so what’s happening is groundwater flows downhill. It flows down through the ruins of the plant and then flows out to the sea. …
So now, TEPCO has proposed literally creating a wall of ice around the plant. And what they’re talking about is not a wall above ground, but freezing the ground around the plant to stop water from flowing in. …
So the basic idea is that they run piping into the ground and they put coolant in the piping and that freezes the earth around the pipes, and it all sort of gradually forms together into a wall. This is something that civil engineers see sometimes, but it’s not that common. And certainly, the way they’re talking about using it in Fukushima is unprecedented. This wall will be nearly a mile around according to TEPCO. It would require more than 2 million cubic feet of soil to be frozen. But if it worked, then it may be the only way to keep water from flowing into the plant and contaminated water from flowing out.
The New York Times points out another challenge: “the wall will need to be consistently cooled using electricity at a plant vulnerable to power failures. The original disaster was brought on by an earthquake and tsunami that knocked out electricity.”…..
[The wall is] expected to cost between $300 million and $400 million. http://grist.org/news/can-an-ice-wall-stop-fukushima-radiation-from-leaking-into-the-sea/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed
Proposal for an island of nuclear waste off Fukushima coast
Asahi: Huge island made of “contaminated soil and rubble” proposed off Fukushima coast — Place for disposal of radioactive debris — “Measures will be taken to prevent adverse impact on ocean” http://enenews.com/asahi-huge-island-made-contaminated-soil-rubble-proposed-fukushima-coast-could-be-disposal-radioactive-debris
Title: INTERVIEW: Former member of ‘nuclear village’ calls for local initiative to rebuild Fukushima
Source: AJW by The Asahi Shimbun
Author: TAKAFUMI YOSHIDA
Date: August 8, 2013
Yukiteru Naka, former General Electric engineer who spent 40 years at nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture
[…] In May, I presented a Futaba County Island Construction Plan to heads of municipal governments in Futaba county.
It calls for creating a huge island off the Fukushima No. 1 plant from contaminated soil and rubble and building facilities for decommissioning as well as for disposal of and research on debris.
(A high level of) radiation is not expected on the island because it will be covered with a large amount of soil. All possible measures will be taken to prevent an adverse impact on the ocean. […]
I came up with the proposal for the purpose of reconstructing all of Fukushima Prefecture. In return, I expect government assistance in building the man-made island and other projects. […]
Will companies set up in a place full of abandoned homes? Can agriculture be revived when there are no successors? The government’s approach is not realistic. […]
[The island could] change the image of Futaba county drastically and develop an area where young people want to gather.
The Futaba County Island Construction Plan should contribute to decommissioning the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant and reconstructing local communities. I expect experts to study the feasibility of the project. […] See also: Like a Pyramid: Mountain of debris 20 meters tall in Miyagi — Hot white vapor rising up from trash — 100km north of Fukushima (PHOTO)
Chernobyl’s trees show radiation damage
Chernobyl’s legacy recorded in trees By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News Exposure to radiation from the 1986 Chernobyl accident had a lasting negative legacy on the area’s trees, a study has suggested.
Researchers said the worst effects were recorded in the “first few years” but surviving trees were left vulnerable to environmental stress, such as drought.
They added that young trees appeared to be particularly affected.
Writing in the journal Trees, the team said it was the first study to look at the impact at a landscape scale.
“Our field results were consistent with previous findings that were based on much smaller sample sizes,” explained co-author Tim Mousseau from the University of South Carolina, US.
“They are also consistent with the many reports of genetic impacts to these trees,” he told BBC News.
“Many of the trees show highly abnormal growth forms reflecting the effects of mutations and cell death resulting from radiation exposure.”…… Prof Mousseau and his team hope to follow up this study by carrying out similar work in the Fukushima region in Japan, where logging also had considerable economic importance and pine trees were widely dispersed. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23619870
Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013 a step towards USA action
Finally, there is a glimmer of hope that – more than 30 years after the Nuclear Waste Policy Act passed, and 15 years after the feds guaranteed they’d start accepting the waste – paralysis and dithering might give way to action
The new bill would:
essentially yank all responsibility from the Department of Energy (which spent about $10 billion on moribund Yucca Mountain) and would create a new organization solely devoted to solving the nuclear waste storage and disposal problem (as was recommended by the president’s Blue Ribbon
Commission, and is widely hailed as a solid idea by Republicans and Democrats alike).
develop the aforementioned “consensual process” for figuring out where to actually put nuclear waste by engaging with willing, rather than unwilling, communities, thus hoping to avoid the gridlock that resulted from 
Nevada’s rabid opposition to deep, permanent geologic storage at Yucca Mountain.
emphasize getting the ball rolling for short-term storage first, and for permanent disposal second. This means pushing the new agency to start accepting waste as soon as possible at an “interim storage” site or sites, while it wrestles with the more thorny issue of where to put a permanent, deep geologic repository (or repositories).
End of paralysis on nuclear waste disposal? Orange County Register, August 9th, 2013, by By TERI SFORZA At this very moment, the vast majority of America’s highly radioactive nuclear waste – and San Onofre’s as well — is cooling in steel-lined concrete pools filled with water, which “are essentially loaded guns aimed at neighboring communities,” a scientist testified at a Congressional hearing last week.
“Unlike the reactor cores, the spent fuel pools are not protected by redundant emergency makeup and cooling systems and/or housed within robust containment structures having reinforced . “Thus, large amounts of radioactive material – which under the (Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982) should be stored within a federal repository designed to safely and securely isolate it from the environment for at least 10,000 years – instead remains at the reactor sites.” Continue reading
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) won’t save moribund nuclear ndustry
Report: Nuclear industry shouldn’t rely on SMRs Malia SpencerReporter-Pittsburgh Business Times 9 Aug 13 A report this week from the nonprofit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research asserts that relying on the development of small modular reactors “is unlikely to breathe new life into the increasingly moribund U.S. nuclear power industry.”….
The reasons for the critical findings? According to the report, SMRs will likely need tens of billions of
purchase orders or government subsidies, will create new reliability vulnerabilities, and will raise concerns about safety and proliferation.
Westinghouse was cited in the report along with Pennsylvania as one of the companies and states that could see “major implications” if SMRs fail to take off……
http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog/energy/2013/08/report-nuclear-industry-shouldnt.html
Mayor of Nagasaki’s Peace Declaration
Full text of Nagasaki Peace Declaration http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130809p2a00m0na002000c.html By Tomihisa Taue,Mayor of Nagasaki The following is the full text of the Peace Declaration presented Aug. 9, 2013 by Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue, at a ceremony to mark the 68th anniversary of the World War II atomic bombing of the city.
Sixty-eight years ago today, a United States bomber dropped a single atomic bomb directly over Nagasaki. The bomb’s heat rays, blast winds, and radiation were immense, and the fire that followed engulfed the city in flames into the night. The city was instantly reduced to ruins. Of the 240,000 residents in the city, around 150,000 were afflicted and 74,000 of them died within the year. Those who survived have continued to suffer from a higher incidence of contracting leukemia, cancer, and other serious radiation-induced diseases. Even after 68 years, they still live in fear and suffer deep psychological scars.
Humankind invented and produced this cruel weapon. Humankind has even gone so far as using nuclear weapons on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Humankind has repeatedly conducted nuclear tests, contaminating the earth. Humankind has committed a great many mistakes. This is why we must on occasion reaffirm the pledges we have made in the past that must not be forgotten and start anew. Continue reading
Yoshito Matsushige, photographer of iconic Hiroshima bombing pictures
the American military confiscated all of the post-bomb prints, just as they seized the Japanese newsreel footage,
Journalist Took Five Historic Pictures—That Must Never Be Repeated The Nation, Greg Mitchell on August 8, 2013 Yoshito Matsushige, a photographer for the Chugoku Shimbun, took the only pictures in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, that have surfaced since. It was these five photos Life magazine published on September 29, 1952, hailing them as the “First Pictures—Atom Blasts Through Eyes of Victims,” breaking the long media blackout on graphic images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On August 6, 1945, Matsushige wandered around Hiroshima for ten hours, carrying one of the few cameras that survived the atomic bombing and two rolls of film with twenty-four possible exposures. This was no ordinary photo opportunity. He lined up one gripping shot after another, but he could only push the shutter seven times. Continue reading
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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