USA’s present danger of nuclear spent fuel pools
Congress needs to focus on how nuclear waste is stored now By Dave Lochbaum and Robert Cowin, Union of Concerned Scientists – 05/01/13 U.S. nuclear power plants have been generating electricity for more than 50 years, but the nuclear industry and the federal government have yet to figure out what to do with nuclear waste, which remains dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. On April 25, a bipartisan group of senators — Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) — released draft legislation addressing this intractable problem. Continue reading
Corrupt, useless and weak EPA new guidelines for radiological attacks
while the new guide will be subject to a 90-day public comment period once it formally is published in the Federal Register, it has been labeled for “interim use,” meaning it is effective immediately
“a recipe for absolute mayhem in the midst of an emergency,” “And that’s because of politics.”
EPA RELAXES PUBLIC HEALTH GUIDELINES 
FOR RADIOLOGICAL ATTACKS, ACCIDENTS, Next Gov, By Douglas P. GuarinoGlobal Security Newswire April 9, 2013 After years of internal deliberation and controversy, the Obama administration has issued a document suggesting that when dealing with the aftermath of an accident or attack involving radioactive materials, public health guidelines can be made thousands of times less stringent than what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would normally allow. Continue reading
Breakthrough in solar energy storage for powering national grids
VIDEO The Lithium-Polysulfide Flow Battery http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3713 29 April 13,
U.S. researchers believe a breakthrough in battery technology will see more utility-scale solar and wind energy powering national grids.
Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a new low-cost flow battery storage system that could solve issues relating to the peaks and troughs in power generation from renewable energy sources.
Flow batteries pump two types of liquid through a chamber, where two streams of dissolving molecules cause a chemical reaction that store or release energy.
They are currently thought to be the most effective way to maintain grid stability because the tanks, pipes and fittings used in flow battery systems can be scaled-up to store power for large-scale solar and wind facilities where energy generation depends on weather conditions.
But today’s flow batteries are expensive – the liquids used often require large quantities of rare earth materials to operate and a special membrane that separates the active and inactive ions. According to the SLAC/Stanford team, with solar and wind heading toward 20 percent of generation capacity, there needs to be a simpler and more efficient flow battery system.
“For solar and wind power to be used in a significant way, we need a battery made of economical materials that are easy to scale and still efficient,” said Yi Cui, Stanford associate professor of materials science and engineering.
Cui’s team designed a new membrane-free battery that does away with rare materials, using a chamber with a single molecular stream of lithium and sulphur ions. A reaction with a catalyst produces lithium polysulfides, discharging energy and absorbing lithium. The lithium ions are then reabsorbed into an organic compound to be used again.
The researchers say the next step is to develop and field test a utility-scale flow battery based on their design capable of handling megawatts of energy storage.
Another flow battery concept we’ve covered in the past utilising cheap and readily available materials is the Rustbelt Flow Battery; which uses iron.
Fukushima radiation- accumulating exposure is the worry
Experts are most worried about three radioactive substances iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137-all of which can cause various types of cancer years later.
Although the radioactivity in iodine-131 fully disintegrates in 80 days, it can find its way rapidly into people through the air and through milk and leafy vegetables, lodging quickly in the thyroid gland, where it can cause DNA damage and raise cancer risk, particularly in young children. Among the people who were exposed to the Chernobyl accident as children, at least 1,800 have gone on to develop thyroid cancer, a study has found.
Cumulative radiation from Japan’s plant sparks health worries http://www.brecorder.com/top-stories/0/1179391/ April 18, 2011 RECORDER REPORT Japan’s crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has so far leaked around a tenth of the amount of radiation released in the Chernobyl disaster, data showed on April 12, leading some experts to warn of serious long-term health risks.
“If that is the total radiation so far from the time of first leakage, that amount is very serious. It’s undoubtedly very bad. That is close to one-tenth of Chernobyl’s radiation in a month,” said Lam Ching-wan, a chemical pathologist at the University of Hong Kong and member of the American Board of Toxicology.
“It means there is damage to soil, ecosystem, water, food and people. People receive this radiation. You can’t escape it by just shutting the window.”With Japan widening the evacuation zone beyond the initial 20-km exclusion zone and encouraging children, pregnant women and hospitalised patients to stay out of some areas 20-30 km from the nuclear complex, Lam said he feared the radiation leakage may still be far from under control. Continue reading
International Atomic Energy Agency not facing up to the facts on Fukushima
IAEA Gives Little Insight To Fukushima Disaster Cleanup http://www.simplyinfo.org/?p=10267 April 24th, 2013 The IAEA visited the Fukushima Daiichi disaster site after multiple failures ended up in the news. They made very few comments from the trip and reaffirmed they think TEPCO can handle the disaster.
What they did mention:
- It will take more than 40 years to clean up the disaster
- Technology still needs to be created to deal with the task of removing the melted fuel
- Problems and failures at the plant will continue to be an issue
- TEPCO should replace temporary systems with something more permanent and safer
- Contaminated water is expected to seep outside the plant after “decades”
The Japanese government is still intent on sending everyone back to the area as soon as possible.
Sources:
The fallacy of assuming that weapons manufacture creates jobs
America’s War Games How the Obama administration is redefining the US military’s strategic priorities with far-reaching consequences, Aljazeera, 27 April 13 “……. William Hartung, from the Center for International Policy says that Pentagon contractors have “for years used the jobs argument to revive weapons systems that have been cancelled. To push for things that even the Pentagon itself has not wanted.” For months, a study has been circulating in Washington, underwritten by the Aerospace Industries Association, a major defence industry trade group. It claims that a million jobs would be lost as a result of sequestration cuts to defence spending.
Hartung, who has analysed the study, says it exaggerates the potential job loss number by a factor of three, and that many of those jobs will be replaced. He points out that spending on education, health care, and infrastructure “can create 1.5 to 2 times as many jobs. So the economy would be much better off spending on things other than the Pentagon.”
Several recent reports examining ways to cut Pentagon spending call for changes in the US nuclear weapons posture. They claim that it would produce hundreds of billions of dollars of savings in coming decades, and the Obama administration is reportedly considering nuclear weapons cuts. But they will be difficult to achieve.
“People are still mired in Cold War thinking and they feel like the more nuclear weapons we have the better,” Hartung says. “And in addition to that the nuclear weapons industry has some of the biggest strongest companies in the military industrial complex.”
Lockheed Martin builds submarines, launches ballistic missiles, and runs the nuclear weapons laboratories; General Dynamics builds nuclear subs; and Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are all hoping to build the next nuclear bomber……http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2013/04/2013424113558268754.html
Effect of global rise in ionising radiation
Fukushima’s Catastrophic Aftermath: The Dangers of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation, Global Research, By Stephen Lendman 28 April 13, “……Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900 – 1986) was the father of America’s nuclear navy. In January 1982, he told a congressional committee that until a few billion years ago, “it was impossible to have any life on earth.”
“There was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life, fish or anything.” Gradually the amount subsided. “Now, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible.”
“Every time you produce radiation, (a) horrible force” is unleashed. “In some cases (it’s) for billions of years, and I think the human race is going to wreck itself.”
“I am talking about humanity. The most important thing we could do is start having an international meeting where we first outlaw nuclear weapons to start off with. Then we outlaw nuclear reactors, too.”
“The lesson for history is when a war starts, every nation will ultimately use whatever weapons are available. That is the lesson learned time and again.” ”
“Therefore, we must expect, if another war, a serious war breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form. We will probably destroy ourselves.” Widespread contamination acts in slow motion…..
China definitely keeping “no first nuclear strike” policy
. The original Chinese text is unambiguous and emphatic in its assertion that no first use has been “scrupulously” observed “from the start” and will continue to be “to the end” [始终恪守].
China Still Committed to No First Use of Nuclear Weapons http://allthingsnuclear.org/china-still-committed-to-no-first-use-of-nuclear-weapons/Gregory Kulacki, China project manager and senior analyst April 23, 2013
On April 16, the Chinese Ministry of Defense released a white paper that mentioned Chinese nuclear weapons but did not contain familiar language expressing China’s declaratory policy, particularly that China would never use nuclear weapons first, under any circumstances. This commitment to “no first use” has been a bedrock of Chinese nuclear weapons policy since the announcement was first made in 1964, immediately following China’s first nuclear weapons test. All previous white papers issued by the Chinese Ministry of Defense contained the language.
James Acton suggests the omission indicates China may be abandoning its long-standing commitment to no first use. It doesn’t. Continue reading
Man made corium lava – from Fukushima, toxic for centuries
Wired: ‘Healthy debate’ about location of Fukushima corium — Lava can melt a foot of concrete per hour — Cooling with water may not stop corium flow Title: The Most Dangerous (Man-Made) Lava Flow http://enenews.com/wired-healthy-debate-about-where-fukushima-coriums-are-lava-can-melt-a-foot-of-concrete-per-hour-cooling-with-water-may-not-stop-corium-flow
Source: Wired
Author: Erik Klemetti
Date: April 18, 2013 at 11:45a ET
h/t Room101
Title: The Most Dangerous (Man-Made) Lava Flow
[…] researchers at the Argonne National Lab have created corium in the laboratory […] They found that corium lava can melt upwards of 30 cm (12″) of concrete in 1 hour! This is why it is so important to know if a nuclear reactor accident has gone into true “meltdown” as the corium lava will rapidly melt its way through the inner containment vessels (or more) in a matter of hours unless it can be cooled again.
However, results from these CCI (core-concrete interaction) experiments, suggest that cooling with water may not be sufficient to stop corium from melting the concrete. One thing to remember — much of the melting of concrete during a meltdown occurs within minutes to hours, so keeping the core cool is vital for stopping the corium for breaching that containment vessel.
[…] TEPCO, the Japanese energy company who ran Fukushima Dai’ichi, claims that the corium didn’t breach the outer wall of the containment vessel (although there is a healthy debate about this). […]
So, why is corium so dangerous? Well, even long after the flow has stopped, that lava will be highly radioactive for decades to centuries (along with the surrounding countryside if radioactive material made it out of the containment vessel) as the various radioactive materials in the lava decay. In fact, we don’t even have pictures of the corium lava from Fukushima Dai’ichi due to the high levels of radioactivity near the reactor. […]
Serious worries about safety of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Another Cause for Alarm in Iran’s Nuclear Program: 
Earthquakes, The Atlantic, Jill Keenan, 18 April 13, The country’s nuclear power plant is built near tectonic plates, and reports show it may not be safe in the event of a major seismic event. On April 16, a massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit southeast Iran, sending tremors across the region and causing casualties that are expected to reach into the hundreds. According to an Iranian official , it was the biggest earthquake to hit the country in 40 years. This devastation comes only one week after another earthquake hit the town of Kaki, also in southern Iran, killing at least 37 people and injuring more than 850 others. Shockwaves from both earthquakes were felt as far away as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and western Saudi Arabia. They are only the two most recent in a series of earthquakes that regularly haunt this seismically unstable country.
Most ominously, the epicenter of the April 9 earthquake’s first tremor, which measured a 6.3 on the Richter scale, was centered only 62 miles away from Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. Continue reading
Muslumovo, a town radioactively poisoned for 60 years
Soviet radiation biology took a different trajectory from science in the United States. American researchers at that time were working with the highly politicized medical studies of Japanese bomb survivors. They narrowed the list of radiation-related illnesses to leukemia, a few cancers, and thyroid disease. Soviet doctors in formulating chronic radiation syndrome had grasped the effects of radiation on the body more holistically. They determined that radiation illness is not a specific, stand-alone disorder, but that its indications relate to other illnesses. They determined that radioactive isotopes weaken immune systems and damage organ tissue and arteries, causing illnesses of the circulation and digestive tracts and making people susceptible to conventional diseases long before they succumb to radiation-related cancers.
Strange illnesses in one of the most contaminated towns in the world challenge what we think we know about the dangers of radioactivity. Slate, By Kate Brown, April 18, 2013, ”…… the sad fact is that there are irradiated zones that are fully inhabited, and have been since the first years of the nuclear arms race. Despite a media culture enthralled with nuclear accidents, the cameras generally turn off after the first clouds of radioactive vapors dissipate.
“………..For Soviet leaders, the river dwellers were a unique opportunity in the history of health physics—what scientists call “a natural experiment” that promised to answer an important civil defense question about how to survive a nuclear attack. In 1962, the Cheliabinsk branch of the Soviet Institute of Bio-Physics, called FIB-4, started conducting regular medical exams of the Muslumovo population. FIB-4 doctors invited village children playing on the streets to a clinic room to take blood samples. In Cheliabinsk, they set up a repository of irradiated body parts: hearts, lungs, livers, bones. They started a collection of genetically malformed babies who died soon after birth, each infant preserved in a two-quart glass jar. A Dutch photographer, Robert Knoth, visited the repository and saw hundreds of babies in jars. He photographed one infant with skin like patched, rough burlap. Another boy had eyes on top of his head like a frog. During the examinations, doctors did not inform the villagers of their exposures or of diagnoses of radiation-related illness.
In 1986, soon after the Chernobyl disaster, Glufarida Galimova, working as chief doctor at a pediatric clinic in Muslumovo, her native town, was puzzled by the saturation of illness in her community. The illnesses were rare, strange, complex, and often genetic: hydrocephalic children, children with cerebral palsy, missing kidneys, extra fingers, anemia, fatigue, and weak immune systems. Many kids were orphaned or had invalid parents. Continue reading
Fukushima radiation brings hypothyroidism to babies on USA West coast
Study: Fukushima radiation fallout has devastated health of US babies on West Coast and in other areas http://www.naturalnews.com/039923_Fukushima_radiation_hypothyroidism.html#ixzz2Qr6W6hxg April 15, 2013 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer New peer-reviewed research published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics raises fresh concerns about the health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on American children and babies. As has long been suspected by those with an understanding of the widespread reach of radioactive fallout from Fukushima, newborns living in California, Hawaii, Washington, and other West Coast states appear to have been directly affected by Fukushima fallout in a serious way, which is reflected by the disproportionate rate of hypothyroidism observed amongst this demographic.
Conducted by a duo of scientists from the Radiation and Public Health Project, a non-profit education and scientific organization that seeks to understand the relationship between nuclear radiation exposure and public health, the research evaluated average rates of hypothyroidism both before and after the Fukushima disaster. In their findings, Joseph J. Mangano and Janette D. Sherman reported that, compared to one year earlier, babies born between one week and 16 weeks after the nuclear meltdowns in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington were 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism.
2,110 percent increase in iodine-131 on US West Coast following Fukushima linked to hypothyroidism Each of these states and the Pacific Ocean, according to the study, experiences significantly elevated levels of radioactive iodine-131 (I-131), as well as various other radioactive isotopes, in the days and weeks following the March 11, 2011, disaster. Based on the data, the 2,110 percent increase in detectable I-131 all along the U.S. West Coast following the disaster appears to be directly correlated with the higher-than-average rates of congenital hypothyroidism. Continue reading
Inhuman radiation experiements on citizens, by USA government
Contaminated Nation. Inhuman Radiation
Experiments, CounterPunch, by JOHN LaFORGE, 12 Aprl 13, This year marks the 20th anniversary of the declassification of top secret studies, done over a period of 60 years, in which the US conducted 2,000 radiation experiments on as many as 20,000 vulnerable US citizens.[i] Continue reading
403 containers of highly radioactive waste to be dumped in Nevada
DOE finalizing plans to dump man-made uranium in Nevada, Fox News, By Barnini Chakraborty April 12, 2013 WASHINGTON – A Department of Energy plan to drag hundreds of canisters of radioactive nuclear material into the Nevada desert for a “shallow land burial” is raising safety concerns as experts worry what could happen if the security of the bomb-making material were compromised. Energy officials told FoxNews.com the department is preparing to ship 403 welded steel containers of a man-made highly radioactive cargo to the Nevada National Security Site, about an hour northwest of Las Vegas. Continue reading
USA citizens exposed to experimental ionising radiation
Contaminated Nation. Inhuman Radiation Experiments, CounterPunch, by JOHN LaFORGE, 12 Aprl 13 “………Experiments Spread Cancer Risks Far and Wide In large scale experiments as late as 1985, the Energy Department deliberately produced reactor meltdowns which spewed radiation across Idaho and beyond.[x] The Air Force conducted at least eight deliberate meltdowns in the Utah desert, dispersing 14 times the radiation released by the partial meltdown of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.[xi]
The military even dumped radiation from planes and spread it across wide areas around and downwind of Oak Ridge, Tenn., Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Dugway, Utah. This “systematic radiation warfare 
program,” conducted between 1944 and 1961, was kept secret for 40 years.[xii]
“Radiation bombs” thrown from USAF planes intentionally spread radiation “unknown distances” endangering the young and old alike. One such experiment doused Utah with 60 times more radiation than escaped the Three Mile Island accident, according to Sen. John Glen, D-Ohio who released a report on the program 20 years ago.[xiii]
The Pentagon’s 235 above-ground nuclear bomb tests, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are not officially listed as radiation experiments. Yet between 250,000 and 500,000 U.S. military personnel were contaminated during their compulsory participation in the bomb tests and the post-war occupation of Japan. [xiv]
Documents uncovered by the Advisory Committee show that the military knew there were serious radioactive fallout risks from its Nevada Test Site bomb blasts. The generals decided not to use a safer site in Florida, where fallout would have blown out to sea. “The officials determined it was probably not safe, but went ahead anyway,” said Pat Fitzgerald a scientist on the committee staff.[xv]
Dr. Gioacchino Failla, a Columbia University scientist who worked for the AEC, said at the time, “We should take some risk… we are faced with a war in which atomic weapons will undoubtedly be used, and we have to have some information about these things.”[xvi]
With the National Cancer Institute’s 1997 finding that all 160,000 million US citizens (in the country at the time of the bomb tests) were contaminated with fallout, it’s clear we did face war with atomic weapons — our own. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/12/inhuman-radiation-experiments/
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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