nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

A medical view on what is really going on in Fukushima

What Really Happened in Fukushima : A Report From a Medical Care Provider http://fukushimavoice-eng.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/what-really-happened-in-fukushima.html?spref=tw  Part 1, December 21, 2011

I am a medical care provider.  At my workplace we began taking care of patients from the evacuation zone from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the evening of March 11, 2011.

The president of the hospital where I am employed says people live longer when irradiated and Fukushima people now will be healthier because of radiation hormesis.  There is no argument allowed.  Since this statement comes from a physician, many people believe this in Fukushima.

Those who were contemplating on evacuating from Fukushima are now in a mental state that is not even conducive to thinking about it any longer.  This was becoming obvious beginning in April or May, 2011, and it might have been a coping mechanism for mass psychology and dangers.  However, it is entirely different now.  I feel they are no longer capable of avoiding dangers.

This is what I heard from a clinical laboratory technician at work.  Thyroid ultrasound examinations for children, which have already been done in my town and which will be held in other cities from now on, are being performed by Fukushima University Medical School Hospital laboratory technicians who have only done blood tests before.  In other words, they are being done by people who have never used ultrasound equipment before.

Technicians are being dispatched from Fukushima University Medical School.  For instance, there is a whole body counter car stationed in Kawamata-machi, Date district, where a part of the town is a deliberate evacuation area.  There are physicians and clinical laboratory technicians stationed there, and they are all young.

Currently there is ”that” Yamashita stationed at Fukushima University Medical School.  After being dismissed as the radiation advisor for Fukushima prefecture, he became a vice president for Fukushima University Medical School.  The reason not a single Fukushima physician even mentions medical care for radiation exposure is because of the power of Fukushima University Medical School.  Physicians in Fukushima who are not self-sufficient are not allowed to provide medical care for radiation exposure, and those who are self-sufficient left Fukushima.

Yamashita and Fukushima University Medical School are planning on creating a cancer center (already publicized).  Minami Tohoku General Hospital in Koriyama-city, which has been introducing Gamma Knife and PET for cancer treatments on a large scale, has not had any say.  It is obvious this is because of Fukushima University Medical School.

I have also learned the following from a radiology technician in mid-March, 2011.  Test  anomalies began to show in Kanto summer of 2011 also.  But in mid-March, X-rays for a particular patient began to show white spots.  They didn’t show up if the patient was undressed.  They didn’t show up in X-rays of other patients who were examined at the hospital.  This particular patient was actually not even an evacuee but a resident who lived 45 kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The technician initially thought they were dust specks, but they were clearly bright spots.  It was determined that clothes hung up to dry outside must have radioactive materials attached to them.  This “finding” was reported as such to the hospital president as well as the prefectural office.  At the time we had no idea what was going on at Fukushima Daiichi, and it was reported as a proof that “the radioactive materials have reached as far as here,” but it was never publicized.

July 29, 2012 Posted by | Fukushima 2012, Reference | Leave a comment

What ionising radiation does to your body

Long-term exposure to ionising radiation, even at doses too low to produce any symptoms of radiation sickness, can induce genetic mutations and cancer. This is the biggest risk facing survivors of the Fukushima disaster 

Giz Explains: What Nuclear Radiation Does To Your Body http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/07/giz-explains-what-nuclear-radiation-does-to-your-body/ Say some maniacal world leader finally hits the big red button. Or maybe a terrorist takes out the local nuclear reactor. You survive the initial attack, and you’re left to endure a world poisoned by nuclear radiation. How’s that gonna feel?

Measure The Dosage When nuclear reactions get going, they spit out particles with enough energy to rip electrons off of atoms or molecules. The altered bonds produce ion pairs that are extremely chemically reactive. This is known as ionising radiation, and it’s where the problems start.

There are many types of ionising radiation. Continue reading →

July 29, 2012 Posted by | 2 WORLD, health, Reference | Leave a comment

The children of Fukushima.

Fukushima Daiichi has been like a suppurating wound, leaching radionuclides into the environment since March 2011,

 According to the American Thyroid Association (ATA), thyroid problems from nuclear events occur when radioactive iodine is leaked into the atmosphere and thyroid cells that absorb too much of this radioactive iodine may become cancerous, with children being particularly susceptible.

Fukushima – Local Children Unwitting Guinea Pigs, Scoop,   By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com, 27 July 2012,   “…….The issue of nuclear radiation on human health cites besides Fukushima the August 1945 U.S nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the April 1986 explosion of the Chernobyl reactor complex in Ukraine, but in reality, there are no comparisons to evaluate Fukushima. Continue reading →

July 29, 2012 Posted by | Fukushima 2012, health, Reference | Leave a comment

Mihama reactor 2 turns 40 years; future uncertain, Japan Times, Kyodo TSURUGA, Fukui Pref. 27 July 12 — Reactor 2 at the Mihama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture marked its 40th year in operation Wednesday, while the government weighs allowing the now-idled unit to keep running longer than originally planned.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency last week approved changes in safety regulations to permit reactors to keep running for more than 40 years.

All but two of Japan’s 50 commercial nuclear reactors are now shut down due to safety concerns in the wake of the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in March 2011. Before they can be restarted, the reactors must pass “stress tests” to check their ability to withstand
earthquakes and tsunami.

The 500,000-kw reactor 2 at the Mihama plant, operated by Kansai Electric Power Co., is the third-oldest commercially run reactor in Japan. The two older are reactor 1 at Japan Atomic Power Co.’s Tsuruga plant, also in Fukui, and reactor 1 at the Mihama plant….. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120726a9.html

July 29, 2012 Posted by | Japan, Reference, safety | Leave a comment

Pitfalls in building nuclear reactors underground

Just build them underground! http://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/ca/part-10-smallreactors-mass-prod/10-2-2-just-build-them-underground/ There is a common misconception, that we could solve a lot of the problems with reactor construction, both large and small (though in particular the small ones) by building them in subsurface pits. I’m assuming the person who thought up this one has never dug a hole in his back garden! If you have, you’d know that digging a hole is not as easy as it seems. Firstly, the soil type has a big bearing on things. Depending on where you live you could be looking at thick sticky soil that difficult to shift, loose gravely soil that collapses easily or rocky earth, that rapidly turns into bedrock (so after a while you’re not digging any more but blasting!). As we need to put foundations down under out reactor to suit the soil type, and probably piling too (due to its weight), this means we essentially need to design each reactor’s containment vessel individually to suit local soil conditions, which increases costs.

Another problem is water intrusion, as anyone who’s ever dug a pit, then gone in for lunch, come back out and found it full of water will know all about! Our reactor “pit” needs to be designed like the hull of a boat to stop water leaking in and flooding it. Doing that with concrete, particularly thick section of it, is always difficult. The fact that the reactor will be generating heat complicates things as it raises the risk of subsidence or settlement cracking. While this can happen if the reactor is on the surface too, putting it under ground level “complicates things”.

In general with any construction project significant efforts are made to reduce the amount of earth movement required to start construction, not increase it, as lots of earth moving nearly always results in delays, hold-ups and ultimately higher costs (not the least of those being the cost of hiring out of earth moving equipment, those guys charge an arm and a leg!).

Overall, except in a small number of narrow cases building reactors this way will often work out as more expensive and slower than just putting the containment dome above ground.

July 26, 2012 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Building nuclear reactors underground

FirstEnergy looking into building small nuclear reactor   By John Funk, The Plain Dealer , July 25, 2012 FirstEnergy said today it had signed an agreement with a subsidiary of Babcock & Wilcox Co. to study the “potential deployment of the B&W mPower small modular reactor in FirstEnergy’s service territory.” The reactor would generate just 180 megawatts and be built in an underground containment structure, …..

Continue reading →

July 26, 2012 Posted by | Reference, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Obama government’s solar energy project for public lands

Roadmap for Solar Energy Development on Public Lands Released to Public Loan Safe.org, BY ALEX FERRERAS   JULY 25, 2012 As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy, the Department of the Interior, in partnership with the Department of Energy, will publish the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for solar energy
development in six southwestern states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

The final Solar PEIS represents a major step forward in the permitting of utility-scale solar energy on public lands throughout the west. Continue reading →

July 26, 2012 Posted by | Reference, renewable, USA | Leave a comment

A critical analysis of future nuclear reactors designs

By D A. Ryan,  Once upon a time I used to be a fan of nuclear energy. As far as I saw it, nuclear energy was the silver bullet solution to all of our energy problems and more. However, the more I’ve learned about the industry the more critical I’ve become.

Notably the fact that most of the economic figures in support of nuclear power (a couple of typical delusions you’ll find here and here) come straight out of Hogwarts school of magic, wizardry….and economics (more realistic appraisals of nuclear economics can be found here and here).

All in all my conclusion is that the case for future Generation IV nuclear reactors is much narrower than the supporters of nuclear energy would have you believe. While they do offer some advantages over LWR’s, notably in the area of safety, this comes with strings attached, notably higher capital costs. This is largely a result of the fact that many of these would need to be built from much more exotic materials, such as high temperature stainless steel alloys  Nickel alloys or Refractory materials, while the predominant material of choice in current reactors is steel (stainless and forged ferritic) and concrete. This materials requirement is itself an issue related to the high temperatures these alternative reactors would be required to operate at, not to mention the more aggressive and corrosive environment in some of them, notably the MSR proposals. Of course one to question whether these higher construction costs (and in some cases higher decommissioning costs) are justified……..

Small to medium sized modular reactors do offer a good deal more flexibility in terms of how nuclear power could be used and yet a further improvement in safety. However, they also comes with lower economies of scale and thus higher construction costs and worse a slower rate of reactor roll out (at least in the early days). We could claw back on these two issues by mass producing said reactors in large volumes but as I point out (again see the full article), it is far from proven whether that would be economically viable and whether there is in fact a market for large numbers of small reactors…….
by and large mass production means “dumbing down” our design, and that means accepting a reactor that’s much cheaper and easier to build but has a lower thermal efficiency, a higher rate of fuel consumption and ultimately produces larger volumes of nuclear waste compared to our “mega” reactors. With the exception of a small number of narrow cases, it’s difficult to envisage how this would offer an improvement on the current status quo…..

 Thorium fuelled reactors still need fissile isotopes, drawn ultimately from Uranium, for startup purposes. Failing this they require the use of expensive (and generally uneconomic) fast reactors and reprocessing of spent fuel. So yes, while Thorium could help stretch things out, it can only help a little bit, but not nearly as much as the supporters of Thorium reactors would have you believe. Thorium fuelled reactors would still generate substantial quantities of nuclear waste and come with a number of potential proliferation risks attached. Even the UK National Nuclear Laboratories (NNL) pours cold water over the idea……

Fusion?

Finally, I also had a look at Fusion power . his is the great white hope of nuclear energy and it has to be said we are making progress, but it’s a case of slow and steady progress. Indeed I would question whether we are in a position yet to even estimate how long it will take for fusion power to become commercial available…if indeed ever! Recent news from ITER is not positive, its now not due to go online till 2026, which would imply a completion of experiments in 2046. And it will take sometime beyond that before we wind up with a viable working commercial fusion reactor. As I speculate (here), it would likely be the latter half of this century (or the beginning of the next one) before we start to see Fusion play any sort of major role in mass global power generation…… nuclear energy supporters need to overcome their pathological hatred of renewables      http://www.green-blog.org/2011/08/11/a-critical-analysis-of-future-nuclear-reactors-designs/

July 25, 2012 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, technology | Leave a comment

Veil of secrecy over France’s unaffordable nuclear power decommissioning

“What is not tolerable is that the funds are managed by the operators” 

Over the past six years there has been a veritable veil pulled over this subject.”

French Nuclear Dismantling Funds May Fall Short, Report Says http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-24/french-nuclear-dismantling-funds-may-fall-short-report-says.html By Tara Patel – Jul 24, 2012 Electricite de France SA and Areva SA (AREVA), along with other French nuclear operators, may not be setting aside enough funds to pay for future dismantling of reactors and treatment and storage of atomic waste, according to a parliamentary report. Continue reading →

July 25, 2012 Posted by | decommission reactor, France, Reference | Leave a comment

There’s no “nuclear renaissance. It’s a Stillbirth!

We have heard from the nuclear lobby that a “nuclear renaissance” is just around the corner and, as evidence of this, we are told 65 reactors are “under construction” worldwide.

It is instructive to look at the number of years some of these have been “under construction”. For example, Lungmen 1 and 2 in China were begun in 1997 and have so far taken 15 years to build.

Moving from the disappointing to the ludicrous, Watts Bar 2 in the US has been ”under construction” since 1972. It is likely these long-delayed projects will eventually be cancelled, and almost certainly they will never be an economic success. 

countries in the “considering” list is a distortion of the facts by the World Nuclear Association, perhaps born of a desperation to conceal the decline of the industry.

 Nuclear industry ‘rebirth’ is instead stillborn http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=176811 The sad truth is that even according to the optimistic International Atomic Energy Agency data from the PRIS data, the number of reactors on which construction was started fell 75% from 2010 to last year, and again 75% from last year to this year PETER BECKER   2012/07/23 07

THE nuclear power industry is deeply troubled, with little cause for optimism. There is growing worldwide
public resistance to nuclear power stations, US President Barack Obama has terminated government subsidies for nuclear power, and Germany and Switzerland have committed to shutting down all their reactors. While the renewable energy industry has seen dramatic growth and constantly falling costs, the nuclear industry grapples with spiralling costs, the seemingly intractable waste-disposal issue, and the huge economic and human costs of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. Continue reading →

July 24, 2012 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, Reference | Leave a comment

Fukushima’s children: more than a third at risk of developing cancer

 doctors are outraged that the results are not being sufficiently publicized. 

The World Health Organization warns that young people are particularly prone to radiation poisoning in the thyroid gland. Infants face the direst consequences, as their cells divide at a higher rate.
Children who were under 18 when the nuclear disaster struck last year will be subject to continuous thyroid examinations every two years until they reach 20 years of age, and after that, every five years for the rest of their lives.

Over a third of Fukushima children at risk of developing cancer  http://www.rt.com/news/fukushima-children-radiation-exposure-abnormalities-632/  20 July, 2012,Over a third of children in Japan’s Fukushima region could be prone to cancer if medics don’t apply more effort in treating their unusually overgrown thyroid glands and commit to international health aid and consultations, according to a new report.
The shocking new report shows that nearly 36 per cent of children in the nuclear disaster-affected Fukushima Prefecture have abnormal thyroid growths. This is an extremely large number of abnormalities – some of which, experts say, pose a risk of becoming cancerous.
After examining more than 38,000 children from the area, medics found that more than 13,000 have cysts or nodules as large as 5 millimeters on their thyroids, the Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey states.
In comparison, a 2001 analysis by the Japan Thyroid Association found that fully zero per cent of children in the city of Nagasaki, which suffered a nuclear attack in August of 1945, had nodules, and only 0.8 per cent had cysts on their thyroids, reports the Telegraph.
Radiation enters the body and is distributed through soft tissue, especially in muscle, and then accumulates in the thyroid. It is this accumulation that can potentially lead to cancer. Continue reading →

July 21, 2012 Posted by | Fukushima 2012, health, Japan, Reference | Leave a comment

Nuclear and fossil fuel lobbies have conned Australia about wind energy

There are two main anti-wind farm groups in Australia busily fomenting anxiety and opposition. One is the Waubra Foundation, a group of mainly wealthy individuals, none of whom live in or near the town of Waubra, near Ballarat. Several of them, NIMBY style, have opposed turbines near their own properties elsewhere. They are led by an unregistered doctor, Sarah Laurie, and a wealthy mining investor, Peter Mitchell who also has connections to the Landscape Guardians. Despite their name, the Guardians have never attempted to guard our landscape from over-zealous residential developers, open cut coal or coal seam gas mining. They only target wind farm developments. All three – Waubra, the Guardians and Mitchell’s mining investment company share a South Melbourne post office box.

Wind turbine syndrome: a classic ‘communicated’ disease  https://theconversation.edu.au/wind-turbine-syndrome-a-classic-communicated-disease-8318?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+20+July+2012&utm_content=Latest+from+The+Conversation+for+20+July+2012+CID_be7f8aff1000afd17cabaf558b629431&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Simon+Chapman+investigates   At the beginning of this year I started collecting examples of health problems some people were attributing to wind turbine exposure. I had noticed a growing number of such claims on the internet and was curious about how many I could find. Within an hour or two I had found nearly 50 and today the number has grown to an astonishing 155. Continue reading →

July 21, 2012 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Reference, spinbuster | Leave a comment

20,000 cleanup workers not counted, in estimating Fukushima cancer risks

Thousands More Radiation-Related Deaths Expected From Fukushima, Asian Scientist, Study By Rebecca Lim July 20, 2012 Thousands of deaths could still be expected from the Fukushima nuclear fallout in the years to come, according to the first estimate of the disaster’s worldwide impact AsianScientist (Jul. 20, 2012) –

The research, published in the latest edition of the journal Energy & Environmental Science, found that inhalation exposure, external exposure, and ingestion exposure of the public to radioactivity may result in up to 1,300 cancer mortalities and up to 2,500 cancer morbidities worldwide, mostly in Japan.
Stanford University researchers John Ten Hoeve and Mark Jacobson feel that the risk of a meltdown is not small, given that “modest to major radionuclide releases (occurred) in almost 1.5 percent of all reactors ever built.”….

Estimates in the paper do not account for the increased radiation risk to the roughly 20,000 workers at the plant in the months following the accident.
Psychological effects such as depression, anxiety, fear, and unexplained physical symptoms which were seen post-Chernobyl, are likely to be repeated in evacuees after Fukushima, they say….

July 21, 2012 Posted by | Fukushima 2012, health, Japan, psychology - mental health, Reference | Leave a comment

Abnormal thyroid growths in 36% of Fukushima children

36 Percent Of Fukushima Children Have Abnormal Growths From Radiation Exposure  http://www.businessinsider.com/a-stunning-36-percent-of-fukushima-children-have-abnormal-growths-from-radiation-exposure-2012-7#ixzz21Cetabn4  Michael Kelley | Jul. 16, 2012,  Of more than 38,000 children tested from the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, 36 percent have abnormal growths – cysts or nodules – on their thyroids a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, as reported by ENENews.

The shocking numbers come from the thyroid examination section of the “Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey,” published by Fukushima Radioactive Contamination Symptoms Research (FRCSR) and translated by the blog Fukushima Voice.   Shunichi Yamashita, M.D., president of the Japan Thyroid Association, sent a letter to members in January with guidelines for treating thyroid abnormalities. In 2001 Yamashita co-authored a study that found normal children in Nagasaki to have 0 percent nodules and 0.8 percent cysts. Continue reading →

July 20, 2012 Posted by | Fukushima 2012, health, Japan, Reference | 1 Comment

Lengthy and dangerous process to remove nuclear fuel rods

The pool at No. 4 was behind the secret worst-scenario mapped out by the government, which warned millions of people might have to flee from spewing radiation, including parts of the Tokyo area, which has a population of 35 million people. U.S. authorities have also repeatedly expressed worries about the spent-fuel pool at reactor No. 4.

“If we are asked whether things are completely safe, we cannot say that,”  “If there is another major earthquake, we don’t know what may happen,

Japan removes two nuclear fuel rods from Fukushima plant Times Live Sapa | 18 July, 2012  A giant crane removed two rods packed with nuclear fuel from the Fukushima nuclear plant. This is the beginning of a delicate and long process to deal with a remaining risk of more radiation escaping from the disaster-struck plant.

All of the 1,535 rods next to reactor No. 4 at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in northeastern Japan must eventually be removed from a spent-fuel pool to safer storage – an effort expected to take through the end of next year, according to the government. Continue reading →

July 20, 2012 Posted by | Fukushima 2012, Reference | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »