Simon Daigle lists the public concerns that must be addressed in planned development of BWRX-300 small nuclear reactors – Submission to Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Submission Concerning the Proposed Development of BWRX-300 – multiple reactors at the Darlington Site (Ontario)
Submitted November 19,2023 by Simon J Daigle, Simon J Daigle, B.Sc., M.Sc., M.Sc(A) Montreal, Quebec Canada
Response to the proposed development of OPGs BWRX-300 reactors at the Darlington CANDU reactors site and the items below are all real public concerns and must all be addressed independently and individually, as per the following categories:
CNSC licensing of the BWRX-300 reactors & Multiple Reactors nearby a NPP is inadequate [References: 1, 2, 4, 5]
- BWRX-300 stands for Boiling Water Reactor eXperimental 300 and developed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) and will not aim to address any key challenges faced by traditional nuclear power plants. In fact, they will be costly, and generate extremely toxic nuclear wastes more than what would be expected by traditional NPP plants. [Ref. 4].
- This experimental compact design will not reduce construction costs, will not simplify operation nearby one NPP, or will ever enhanced safety measures. In fact, it will do the exact opposite as per IAEA [Ref. 1 and 5].
- It is questionable to say the least that by utilizing natural circulation and passive safety systems you will eliminate the need for external pumps and active cooling mechanisms because during a meltdown, fire or catastrophic event (lightening, flooding, extreme air temperatures over decades because of climate change), who will shut it off? A worker? I’m more reassured when a Pilot on commercial flight is present when he or she is using the auto-pilot function [Ref. 1].
- CNSC license to built an experimental reactor based on the CNSC’s decision that OPG has met the recommendations of the 2011 Environmental Assessment Report by the JRP is not objectively verifiable or can be validated based on the 2023 Update report [Ref. 2].
- No objective evidence is available to validate what specific recommendations of the JRP have been adopted, analysed and/or implemented by OPG or CNSC. [Ref. 2].
- No BWRX-300 reactors are operating anywhere in the world and is a real public concern for the citizens living nearby as well as the potential impacts of a catastrophic environmental event that could be transboundary across many municipalities.
Engineering Design Risks: Experimental, Natural water cooling & neutron leakage [4,5].
- Water cannot be used to cool a reactor as it is experimental design reactor that will use use low pressure water to remove heat from the core. A distinct feature of this reactor design is that water is circulated within the core by natural circulation and yet no data is measured or validated by any laboratory confirmed analysis or modelling study.
- Neutron leakage will be problematic for any SMR design as well as for the BRMX-300 reactor as no proof of any safe SMR reactor system can be validated or compared too to this very day.
- This is no experimental data to elude or conclude that this experimental reactor will work in terms of an internal cooling system of the core.
- BWRX-300 is by all means not small as it covers a full football field.
- No BWRX-300 reactors are operating anywhere in the world.
- The proposed design and operation of a BWRX-300 is entirely different from the CANDU design and involves a structure and a method of operating which is, in large part, below ground level.
- No data on any potential meltdown of the core of any modular nuclear including BWRX-300 including catastrophic events cascading located nearby a Nuclear Power Plant.
- Neutron leakage is a huge problem with SMRs and will be as well with the BWRX-300.
- SMR Neutronics and Design: [Ref. 4].
- “A nuclear reactor is designed to sustain criticality, a chain reaction of fission events that generates energy (∼200 MeV per fission event) and extra neutrons that can cause fission in nearby fissile nuclides.
- The neutron “economy” of a reactor depends on the efficiency of the chain reaction process; the fate of neutrons absorbed by abundant nuclides, such as 238U or 232Th; the fission of newly generated fissile nuclides, such as 239Pu and 233U; and the loss of neutrons across the fuel boundary.
- These “lost” neutrons can activate structural materials that surround the fuel assemblies. Each of these physical processes generates radioactive waste.
- Thus, the final composition of the SNF and associated wastes depend on the initial composition of the fuel, the physical design of the fuel, burnup, and the types of structural materials of the reactor.
- The probability of neutron leakage is a function of the reactor dimensions and the neutron diffusion length, the latter of which is determined by the neutron scattering properties of the fuel, coolant, moderator, and structural materials in the reactor core.
- The neutron diffusion length will be the same in reactors that use similar fuel cycles and fuel–coolant–moderator combinations; thus, the neutron leakage probability will be larger for an SMR than for a larger reactor of a similar type.”
- Public Consultation, indigenous peoples and social acceptability: [Ref. 2].
- No objective evidence has been elucidated or clearly documented with transparency.
- EIA Impact statement: page 84 of [Ref. 2].
- EIA impact statement, nor final PPE parameters, did not follow IAEA Multi-Unit Probabilistic Safety Assessment required for 1 or 4 experimental reactors nearby a Nuclear Power Plant despite the fact that EIA significance analysis had assessed all the residual adverse effects [Ref. 1, 5]. Please refer to the list of EIA and PPE selected quotes below as the reference to compare with the IAEA Multi-Unit Probabilistic Safety Assessment that is lacking [Ref. 1, 5].
EIA and PPE selected quotes:
“EIS significance analysis had assessed all the residual adverse effects to be “Not Significant”. Of the likely residual adverse effects that were forwarded for assessment of significance in the EIS:
• Seven (7) were also determined to result in minor residual adverse effects from the BWRX-300 but less than that described in the EIS,
• Four (4) were not applicable to the BWRX-300 reactor,
• Five (5) were determined to have residual adverse effects not significant after completion of additional studies to assess the likely effects to retained terrestrial features not considered in the EIS.
- The PPE Of the 198 PPE parameters, 60 PPE parameters were not applicable to the BWRX-300. Of the 138 applicable PPE parameters evaluated, eight (8) BWRX-300 parameters are currently not within their respective PPE parameters. These are largely due to characteristics inherent to the design of the GEH reactor technology. These eight parameters are related to the following topics:
- The rate of fire protection water withdrawal and the quantity of water in storage,
- Deeper foundations (38 m below grade) than the reactors previously assessed in the EIS (13.5 m),
- Airborne releases of radioactive contaminants and normal operation minimum release height above finished grade,
- The different proportions of radionuclides in solid wastes generated by the operation of the BWRX-300,
- The weight of the cask used to transport the BWRX-300 spent fuel on site, and
- The multiplication factors applied to basic wind speed to develop the plant design.
- A full environmental impact assessment is required to fulfill provincial and federal jurisdiction best practices for air, water and soil & biosphere impacts during a catastrophic event or meltdown of this experimental reactor as well as maritime and lake biosphere impacts.
Nuclear accidents, incidents, multiple explosion risks or 1 or 4 BMRX-300 reactors nearby a NPP, Soil Stability, hydrogeology, lithospheric & seismic Risks: [Ref. 1,2, 5].
- No objective risk assessment has been completed by OPG or CNSC as per the required IAEA Multi-Unit Probabilistic Safety Assessment required for 1 or 4 experimental reactors nearby a Nuclear Power Plant. [Ref. 1,5].
- The appropriateness of building 1 or 4 untested reactors next to the 4 existing CANDUs at Darlington as well as the current and potential stored nuclear waste is questionable given the fact that the probabilistic safety assessment was not completed according to the IAEA methodology [Ref. 1].
- JRP recommendations concerning the physical conditions of the Darlington site need to be applied with transparency by OPG and the CNSC. [Ref. 2].
Other public and safety concerns: these issues need to be addressed
- Climate change impacts have not been included in the EIS report.
- Unknown: reliability data to reduce the risk of potential accidents.
- Unknown: demonstrating that the BMRX-300 is a clean and reliable source of electricity, capable of generating vast amounts of energy without producing greenhouse gas emissions as it is only an experimental design.
- Concerns surrounding safety, waste disposal, and cost have hindered its widespread adoption globally. A handful of countries have adopted this design but no data on the true financial costs to governments or to that taxpayer. [Ref. 4].
Unknown: BWRX-300 did not address safety concerns, efficiency, efficacy as a cost-effective alternative compared to renewables such as hydro, solar or wind energy generation.
Unknown: sustainability and reliability compared to wind and solar energies to meet the growing demand for electricity.- BWRX-300 represents a significant step backwards in power technology. It is not compact, it does not meet nuclear wastes (as per the IAEA ALARA principle) that will last for thousands of years, and most certainly, it is not cost effective over time to store and monitor SMR or BWRX-300 nuclear wastes based on the probability of any heat instability of the nuclear core over time and the generation of highly toxic nuclear waste. You cannot turn off radioactivity like an electrical light bulb as there are no fuse switch off for ionizing radiation.
The U.S. Army tried to build a secret military nuclear city under Greenland’s ice
above – Camp Century thawing 2019
It was the behavior of the ice that proved to be the program’s undoing (alongside its estimated $2.37 billion price tag, equivalent to $25.24 billion today). The slow but gradual winter movement of the Greenland ice sheet caused the trenches to warp, with the ceiling of the nuclear reactor room dropping by five feet in 1962.
Long before Greenland’s shifting ice threatened sea level rise, it doomed one of the military’s most audacious projects
By George Bass, November 13, 2023 , more https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/11/13/project-iceworm-greenland-nuclear/
In the late 1950s, the U.S. Army was under attack from a formidable foe: budgeting.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “New Look” strategy sought to reorganize Cold War military funding so that it focused on tactical nuclear weapons as America’s main deterrent against potential attacks from the Eastern bloc. Defense spending would now be split among the Air Force (49 percent), the Navy (29 percent) and the Army, which was allocated the smallest share (22 percent).
Determined to preserve its status, the Army focused on promoting the ground deployment of mobile missiles as a key part of America’s nuclear deterrent. What the Army brass needed was a terrain that was within striking distance of the Soviet border and that offered a degree of natural concealment.
They found it in the frozen wilds of Greenland, which became the setting for Project Iceworm, a top-secret plan to convert part of the Arctic into a launchpad for nuclear missiles — and at the same time construct “a city under the ice.”
The goal of Project Iceworm, described by ProfessorNikolaj Petersen of Denmark’s Aarhus University in 2007 in the Scandinavian Journal of History, seemed straightforward. Rather than base long-range Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at silos in the United States where the Soviet Union might target them, the Army could instead burrow beneath a less monitored location, closer to the U.S.S.R.
The Greenland ice sheet lies less than 3,000 miles from Moscow. The plan called for digging underground trenches, through which medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) could be deployed.
But before the requisite number of warheads could be installed, Project Iceworm came up against a force even greater than the Soviet Union or budget constraints: Mother Nature.
Long before a study last week found that a warming planet had claimed all but five of northern Greenland’s ice shelves and threatened a dangerous sea level rise, Greenland’s shifting ice compromised one of the U.S. military’s most audacious projects.
The plan to station nuclear missiles under Greenland’s ice was inspired by Bernt Balchen, a Norwegian-born U.S. Army colonel who in the 1930s had spearheaded polar aviation and who had pointed out the strategic advantage of Greenland’s location between the superpowers.
Balchen had been involved in the construction of two U.S. air bases in Greenland. He noted that the United States was permitted to store nukes in Greenland under the Thulesag 1 agreement, signed with Denmark in 1941 following the country’s occupation by the Nazis, which gave America jurisdiction over the defense of Greenland. (Greenland had been under Danish control since the 1814 Treaty of Kiel, and there were fears that the Germans might use Greenland as a base from which to attack North America.)
Despite the threat’s dissolution at the end of World War II, Soviet ICBM tests conducted in the 1950s and the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite in 1957 reaffirmed the belief that a U.S. military presence on Greenland should be maintained. But how could America install underground nuclear missiles without transparently violating Denmark’s 1957 nuclear-free policy?
The solution was the construction of a polar training facility that would double as a cover story for digging into the ice. Camp Century was established in 1958, approximately 150 miles east of Thule, and was presented to the Danes as a scientific research site and a test area for construction work in arctic conditions.
In reality, Camp Century was a major military installation, with almost two miles of covered trenches as well as laboratories, an underground railway track and a PM-2A portable nuclear reactor to supply power. But it served as only a microcosm of what Iceworm was intended to be.
The so-called underground city was planned to eventually be three times the size of Denmark, at 52,000 square miles, and include more than 2,000 firing positions through which the 600 MRBMs (nicknamed “Iceman missiles”) could be moved on rail cars. Eleven thousand service personnel would live under the ice and be rotated out of their posts via aircraft equipped with landing skis that would touch down on surface airstrips.
To keep those prospective personnel motivated, Camp Century would offer greater amenities than just the standard military running track and rec center. The base would feature a hospital, school and movie theater, and it was scheduled to receive two more nuclear generators to supply the installation’s energy once it had been fully constructed.
Snowplows designed in Switzerland began to dig trenches into the ice. The longest of these, at more than 1,000 feet, was nicknamed “Main Street.” Covered with steel arches and a layer of camouflaging snow, it was sturdy enough to house the convoy of Iceman missiles that would be transported under the ground, each of which would carry a warhead with a 2.4-megaton yield (150 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945).
If launched, 600 of these missiles would be sufficient to destroy 80 percent of U.S. targets in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. By contrast, the U.S.S.R. would need to launch an estimated 3,500 eight-megaton missiles to destroy the missile installation in Greenland — if it even knew of the facility’s existence beneath the ice.
It was the behavior of the ice that proved to be the program’s undoing (alongside its estimated $2.37 billion price tag, equivalent to $25.24 billion today). The slow but gradual winter movement of the Greenland ice sheet caused the trenches to warp, with the ceiling of the nuclear reactor room dropping by five feet in 1962.
Despite an attempt to raise it during that summer, the military — now aware of how tenuous an atomic city hemmed in by shifting ice seemed — took the cautious approach of downgrading Century to a summer camp in 1964, before finally abandoning the site in 1967.
Instead of launching missiles, the last noteworthy exercise performed at the base was the drilling of a probe a mile down into the underlying bedrock, which at least lent the “scientific test area” cover story fed to Denmark a note of truth.
Ironically, it was this drilling that gave Iceworm its greatest success. While the bedrock core extracted in 1966 was stored and ultimately forgotten, its rediscovery in 2017 revealed it to contain fossilized leaf and twig fragments, proving that plants had once grown under one of the coldest regions on earth.
This helped thaw some of the frostiness that had developed between the United States and Denmark when Project Iceworm was publicly disclosed in 1997. Similar tensions had struck decades earlier, when, during a routine surveillance flight south of Thule Air Base in 1968, a B-52 bomber crashed and spread its payload — four 1.1-megaton thermonuclear bombs — over sea ice in North Star Bay. Air Force personnel and the local Inuit population were requested to assist with the cleanup, which became informally known as “Dr. Freezelove” and recovered only three of the four ruptured warheads.
A missing atomic bomb isn’t the only U.S. military debris left in Greenland. When Project Iceworm was abandoned, it was hoped that the shifting ice that had compromised its construction would entomb the materiel the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer had left behind. This included 9,200 tons of building equipment, 53,000 gallons of diesel fuel, carcinogenic chemicals used in paint, and radioactive cooling water from the camp’s portable nuclear reactor.
A 2016 study suggested that these contaminants are likely to be released in a few decades’ time as a warmer climate continues to melt the ice sheet. This news seemed to confirm a Greenlandic proverb: “If you hush up a ghost, it grows bigger.”
Classified! The secret radiation files.
most of the exposure people received came in the form of internal exposures from ingesting radioactivity, not from external, ambient gamma rays in the environment.
Medical examinations of people in contaminated regions showed a significant increase in the general number of chromosomal mutations in newborns, and the frequency of birth defects in southern Belarus was found to be significantly higher than the control. In terms of general health, Konoplia reported, adults showed an increase in diseases of the circulatory system, hypertension, coronary illness, heart attacks, and myocardial problems, plus a rise in respiratory diseases.
Researchers on the UN team who had security clearances had access to classified studies that showed that 79 percent of children in the Marshall Islands exposed to American bomb blasts under the age of ten had developed thyroid cancer. Seventy-nine percent of several hundred children had thyroid cancer when the background rate was one in a million.
Health physicists fear lawsuits more than nuclear accidents
By Kate Brown, 12 Nov 23, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/11/12/classified-the-secret-radiation-files/
In 1987, a year after the Chernobyl accident, the US Health Physics Society met in Columbia, Maryland. Health physicists are scientists who are responsible for radiological protection at nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons plants, and hospitals. They are called on in cases of nuclear accidents. The conference’s keynote speaker came from the Department of Energy (DOE); the title of his talk drew on a sports analogy: “Radiation: The Offense and the Defense.” Switching metaphors to geopolitics, the speaker announced to the hall of nuclear professionals that his talk amounted to “the party line.” The biggest threat to nuclear industries, he told the gathered professionals, was not more disasters like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island but lawsuits.
After the address, lawyers from the Department of Justice (DOJ) met in break-out groups with the health physicists to prepare them to serve as “expert witnesses” against claimants suing the US government for alleged health problems due to exposure from radioactivity issued in the production and testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. That’s right: the DOE and the DOJ were preparing private citizens to defend the US government and its corporate contractors as they ostensibly served as “objective” scientific experts in US courts.
Health physics is an extremely important field for our everyday lives. Health physicists set standards for radiation protection and evaluate damage after nuclear emergencies. They determine where radiologists set the dial for CT scans and X-rays. They calculate how radioactive our food can be (and our food is often radioactive) and determine acceptable levels of radiation in our workplaces, environments, bodies of water, and air. Despite its importance, as it is practiced inside university labs and government organizations, health physics is far from an independent field engaged in the objective, open-ended pursuit of knowledge.
Compromised Science
The field of health physics emerged inside the Manhattan Project along with the development of the world’s first nuclear bombs. From the United States, it migrated abroad. For the past seventy-five years, the vast majority of health physicists have been employed in national nuclear agencies or in universities with research underwritten by national nuclear agencies. As much as we in the academy like to make distinctions between apolitical, academic research and politicized paid research outside the academy, during the Cold War those distinctions hardly made sense. From the end of World War II until the 1970s, federal grants paid for 70 percent of university research. The largest federal donors were the Department of Defense, the US Atomic Energy Agency, and a dozen federal security agencies.
Historian Peter Galison estimated in 2004 that the volume of classified research surpassed open literature in American libraries by five to ten times. Put another way, for every article published by American academics in open journals, five to ten articles were filed in sealed repositories available only to the 4 million Americans with security clearances. Often, the same researchers penned both open and classified work. Health physics benefited from the largesse of the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission, which produced nuclear weapons for US arsenals. Correspondingly, the field suffered from a closed circle of knowledge that has had a major impact on our abilities to assess and respond to both nuclear emergencies and quotidian radioactive contamination.
Tracking the production of knowledge in the field of health physics shows how the effective renunciation of facts has played a major role in this branch of science. More generally, it demonstrates how the boundary between open and classified research is critical yet rarely acknowledged. The response of international health physicists to the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in Soviet Ukraine in April 1986, shows heavily politicized science in action. History reveals that the official, federally sponsored cultivation of “alternative facts” is not new but has deep roots in the twentieth century.
Chernobyl came at an unfortunate time for nuclear professionals. As the Cold War creaked to an end, lawsuits abounded. In the 1980s, Marshall Islanders—their homes blasted in nuclear tests, their bodies subjected to classified medical study by scientists contracted by the Atomic Energy Agency—went to court. In Utah and Nevada, those who lived downwind from the Nevada Test Site were lining up for lawsuits. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Edison Company in Pennsylvania faced lawsuits from plaintiffs living near the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.
In the late 1980s, reporters and congressional investigators began to inquire into US government agencies’ wide-scale engagement in human radiation experiments, which included exposing tens of thousands of soldiers to nuclear blasts. These legal actions and investigations constituted an existential threat for nuclear industries, civilian and military. Chernobyl cast into doubt industry statements that nuclear energy is safer than coal, than flying, than living in high-altitude Denver. If another nuclear accident were to occur, UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Hans Blix told the IAEA board of governors a few weeks after the Chernobyl explosions, “I fear the general public will no longer believe any contention that the risk of a severe accident was so small as to be almost negligible.”
Because radioactivity is insensible, society relies on scientists and their technologies to count ionizing radiation and analyze its effect on biological organisms. In 1986, the three-decades-old Life Span Study of Japanese bomb survivors served in the West as the “gold standard” for radiation exposure. It became the chief referent in lawsuits over health damage from radioactive contaminants. The Life Span Study started in 1950. In subsequent decades, American and Japanese scientists followed bomb survivors and their offspring, looking for possible health effects from exposure to the bomb blasts. By 1986, the group had detected a significant increase in a handful of cancers and, surprisingly, no birth defects, though geneticists had expected them.
The Life Span Study told scientists a great deal about the effects of a single exposure of a terrifically large blast of radiation lasting less than a second but little about the impact of chronic, low doses of radioactivity—the kind of exposures served up by the Chernobyl accident and related to the ongoing lawsuits in the United States. At the time, like now, scientists confessed they knew very little about the effects of low doses of radioactivity on human health. For that reason, after Chernobyl, leading scientific administrators in UN agencies and national health agencies called for using the Chernobyl accident to carry out a long-term, large-scale epidemiological study to determine the effects of low doses of radiation on human health. Unfortunately, those requests went nowhere at first because Soviet officials asserted that health damage was limited to the two dozen firefighters who died from acute radiation poisoning. They insisted that they were monitoring the health of neighboring residents and found no change in their health. Soviet spokespeople told the international community that they did not need help, thank you very much.
Silos of Knowledge
Health physics, a moribund field in the West and a secretive field in the Soviet Union, suddenly appeared in the spotlight after the Chernobyl accident. Archival records show that two silos of knowledge about the effects of low doses of radiation on human health emerged in the wake of the Chernobyl accident. Western health physicists oriented around the Life Span Study, while Soviet health physicists worked from specialized, closed clinics producing literature that mostly was filed in classified libraries. A few months after the accident, Western health physicists— extrapolating from Hiroshima—announced that, given the reported levels of radioactivity released in the accident, they expected to see no detectable health problems as a result. From the Soviet side, spokespeople gave vague assurances, but scientists were silent. For security reasons, Soviet health physicists did not take the podium. Anyway, they were busy.
Behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet scientists near the accident quietly got to work figuring out the extent of the damage. A few days after the accident, Anatolii Romanenko, minister of health in Ukraine, called up medical brigades to examine evacuees and villagers in contaminated areas. Several thousand doctors and nurses fanned out across the Soviet countryside. The effort would have been unimaginable outside of a socialist state highly skilled in the art of mass mobilization. In Ukraine alone, doctors examined seventy thousand children and over one hundred thousand adults in the summer following the accident. People judged to have received high doses were sent to hospitals in Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow. By late May, the number of hospitalized citizens rose to the tens of thousands.
For the subsequent five years, the last years of the Soviet Union, doctors and medical researchers in Ukraine and Belarus tracked health statistics in contaminated regions. They reported the results in classified documents each year. Their reports show that after the accident, frequencies of health problems in five major disease categories grew annually. Soviet doctors did not have access to ambient measurements of radioactivity in the environment and the food chain because that information was classified, so doctors did what they had long done in the Soviet Union. They used their patients’ bodies as biological barometers to determine doses of radioactivity. Medical practitioners counted white and red blood cells, held radiation detection counters to the thyroids of their patients, measured blood pressure, and scanned urine. They looked for chromosomal damage in blood cells and counts of radioactivity in tooth enamel. Using these biomarkers, Soviet doctors determined the doses of radioactivity their patients had encountered externally and ingested internally. Doctors calculated the range of radioactive isotopes lodged in their patients’ bodies. A KGB general who ran his own KGB clinic in Kiev for KGB agents and their families counted twelve different radioactive isotopes in organs and tissue of his patients.
In 1986, in neighboring Belarus, which received the majority of Chernobyl fallout, scientists at the Belarusian Academy of Science set up case-control studies to track the impact in real time on the health of children and pregnant women, two populations judged to be especially vulnerable. The academy also commissioned dozens of studies of radioactive contamination in the atmosphere, soils, plants, agricultural products, and livestock. They drew on a body of knowledge that Soviet scientists had clandestinely developed over four decades in clinics stationed near secret nuclear installations that had suffered a large number of accidents and spills of radioactive effluents during the Cold War rush to produce weapons. In April 1989, the respected president of the Belarusian Academy of Science sent to Moscow a twenty-five-page report that reflected the renaissance of science in the fields of radioecology and radiobiology that had flourished in the contaminated regions as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. Evgenii Konoplia laid out what his Institute of Radiobiology had found.
Almost the entire territory of Belarus had been contaminated, Konoplia wrote, except for a few northern regions.
Continue readingSpace debris
https://interconnectedrisks.org/tipping-points/space-debris 25 Oct 23
Thousands of satellites orbit the Earth, gathering and distributing vital information for weather monitoring, disaster early warning systems and communications. Recent technological advancements have made it easier and more affordable for countries, companies and even individuals to put satellites into space. Satellites make our lives safer, more convenient and connected, and represent critical infrastructure that is now essential for a functioning society. However, as the number of satellites increases, so does the problem of space debris, which poses a threat to both functioning satellites and the future of our orbit.
Space debris consists of various objects, from minuscule flecks of paint to massive chunks of metal. Out of 34,260 objects tracked in orbit, only around 25 per cent are working satellites while the rest are junk, such as broken satellites or discarded rocket stages. Additionally, there are likely around 130 million pieces of debris too small to be tracked, measuring between 1 mm and 1 cm. Given that these objects travel over 25,000 kilometres per hour, even the smallest debris can cause significant damage. Each piece of debris becomes an obstacle in the orbital “highway”, making it increasingly difficult for functional satellites to avoid collisions.
Key Numbers
8,300 functioning satellites in orbit
34,260 tracked objects in orbit
25,000 kilometres per hour travel speed
The danger is more than just theoretical. In 2009, a collision between a defunct satellite and an active communications satellite created thousands of debris pieces that still orbit Earth today. This debris can impact other objects, such as the International Space Station, which conducts manoeuvres around once per year to avoid such debris. Satellites can be warned of impending collisions; in fact, the European Sentinel-2 satellite registered more than 8,000 alerts between 2015 and 2017. Collision avoidance even between active satellites can also be difficult since agencies often need to communicate and quickly come to agreements. For example, in 2019, a European Space Agency satellite had to perform an emergency manoeuvre to avoid colliding with a communications satellite after an agreement with the operator could not be reached.
More than 100,000 new spacecraft could be launched into orbit by 2030, compared to the approximately 8,000 we have now. As more satellites are launched, the orbit becomes more crowded, increasing the risk of collisions. Each collision creates millions more pieces of debris, which can then collide with other debris or satellites, creating even more shrapnel. Eventually, this will reach a point where one crash sets off a chain reaction, causing our orbit to become so dense with shrapnel that it becomes unusable. The existing space infrastructure would eventually be destroyed and future activities in space could become impossible.
Space is the final frontier, and with countries and companies racing to stake their claim, we must consider what kind of future we want to create. If we continue on the current trajectory, we risk sacrificing Earth’s orbits and the opportunities they offer to society now and in the future. Importantly, we must regulate space launches more strictly and ensure that satellites and other spacecraft are disposed of responsibly, while also investing in technologies for tracking and removing orbital debris. By coming together as a global community to treat Earth’s orbits as a precious common good, we can safeguard our future in space before it is too late. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Decontaminating Fukushima: have the billions spent been worth it?
The Conversation, Jim Smith, Professor of Environmental Science, University of Portsmouth, October 24, 2023
The Chernobyl and (to a lesser extent) Fukushima nuclear accidents contaminated large areas of land with low-level radioactivity. After both accidents, huge efforts were taken to decontaminate the affected areas.
But a recent study at Fukushima raises doubts about whether these decontamination efforts were worthwhile. Less than one-third of the population has returned to the evacuated zones and extensive areas of forest in the region remain contaminated.
Following the accident at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, approximately 1,100 square kilometres were evacuated, resulting in the relocation of more than 100,000 people from their homes. A contaminated area about eight times larger remained inhabited, albeit subject to continuous radiation monitoring.
The dominant source of radiation exposure for people stemmed from gamma rays emitted by contaminated soils, pavements, roads and buildings. The objective of the decontamination operation was to ensure that the general public received an annual dose from Fukushima’s radioactivity of less than 1,000 microsieverts (µSv) above the natural background level. The average natural radiation dose in Japan stands at 2,200 µSv per year.
Radiocaesium, which is the most important long-lived radioactive element emitted by the accident in terms of radiation dose, adheres to soil particles very strongly. Consequently, the decontamination of agricultural land primarily involved removing the top 5cm of soil. In urban areas, decontamination efforts entailed the removal of topsoil from sports fields, as well as sandblasting or pressure washing hard surfaces, and pressure washing drains and gutters.
These efforts reduced doses by about 60% in residential areas and farmland, allowing people to return to their homes in a large part of the evacuated area. This is a far cry from Chernobyl, where extensive decontamination initiatives were ultimately abandoned, leaving huge evacuated areas that remain empty to this day. But was undertaking decontamination in Fukushima worthwhile?
Costs and benefits
Decontaminating the land in Fukushima has cost tens of billions of dollars. The process has, unfortunately, also caused substantial radiation exposure for the workers involved, and has generated huge amounts of radioactive soil waste. But the question of whether to decontaminate land is complex and only partially related to scientific evidence.
On the one hand, decontamination provides reassurance that radiation is being “cleaned up” and that doses are being reduced. But it can also give the impression that low-level radiation is more dangerous than it actually is.
Dose rates were not dangerously high in many areas of Fukushima that were subject to decontamination. In fact, doses were relatively low in the first year following the accident (less than 12,000 µSv), and these levels decreased significantly in subsequent years.
These levels fall within the natural range people are exposed to from radioactivity in rocks, soils, building materials and cosmic radiation worldwide (typically between 1,000 µSv and 10,000 µSv per year, but sometimes higher).
On balance, I think the reassurance that contamination was being cleaned up was valuable in many areas where people remained living. Decontamination also allowed agricultural land to be returned to productive use more quickly. However, the process of removing topsoil had the side effect of damaging soil fertility.
Accidental rewilding
In the evacuated zone where dose rates were around ten times higher, it’s less clear that decontamination was beneficial. Only 30% of people have returned to their homes in the decontaminated part of this area and much of the land in the most contaminated so-called “difficult to return zone” remains abandoned.
A better option may have been to declare most of this zone a nature reserve and allow managed rewilding of the area. Rewilding is happening to a large extent anyway, as it has at Chernobyl. It would also have avoided decontamination workers being exposed to radiation and allowed more financial support to help people relocate.
But this is a complex decision that needs to consider the views of many stakeholders, not least the evacuated people themselves.
Fukushima’s contaminated forests
The land in and around the region’s towns and villages has generally been decontaminated effectively. However, much of the Fukushima Prefecture (71%) is covered by forest. Most of this forest remains contaminated.
The persistence of radiocaesium in ecosystems, particularly in forests, has been known for many decades. Globally, radiocaesium levels in wild foodstuffs such as mushrooms, edible plants, game animals and freshwater fish tend to be higher than those found in agricultural systems.
Wild boar in certain regions of Germany, for instance, still exhibit radicaesium levels exceeding consumption limits as a consequence of both Chernobyl and historical nuclear weapons testing. Restrictions on the consumption of forest products have lasted for decades following the Chernobyl incident. And they are expected to persist in many forested areas of Fukushima too.
Radiocaesium lingers in forests due to the prevalence of organic soils and the absence of fertiliser application. Low nutrient levels facilitate the absorption of radiocaesium by plants. This is mainly attributed to radiocaesium’s chemical similarity to potassium, a crucial plant nutrient.
Forests do pose a wildfire risk. There have been many forest fires in the vicinity of Chernobyl since the accident. But radiation doses from smoke inhalation are extremely low, even for firefighters, and the fires have not significantly redistributed radioactivity.
There are no easy answers regarding clean up after a nuclear accident. Japan has made huge and often successful efforts to reduce radiation doses and reassure people living in or returning to the affected areas. But low-level radiation remains everywhere, particularly in forests……….. https://theconversation.com/decontaminating-fukushima-have-the-billions-spent-been-worth-it-215836 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes.
Declassified Soviet files reveal horror crimes of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
https://www.rt.com/russia/584980-kgb-documents-ukrainian-nazis/ 16 Oct 23
Nationalists began ethnic cleansing of Jews during WWII, even before German occupation began, documents show
RT has obtained a trove of declassified KGB documents, highlighting crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists in Soviet territories occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII. The files include witness accounts of people who survived ethnic cleansing, as well as testimonies of Ukrainian collaborators captured by the Soviet domestic intelligence, then known as the NKVD.
Large swaths of present-day Ukraine fell under Nazi occupation in summer 1941 as German troops advanced deep into the Soviet Union. In fact, attacks on ethnic Jews and Poles, as well as local communists, began immediately as Soviet troops withdrew.
“In the first hours following the retreat of the Bolsheviks, the Ukrainian population has demonstrated commendable activity against Jews,” a status report from the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police, dated July 16, 1941, reads.
Said “commendable activities” involved burning down a synagogue in the western Ukrainian city of Dobromyl and the murder of some 50 Jews by an “angry crowd” in Sambor. In Sokal, the help of local “trustworthy Ukrainians” allowed Nazis to find and exterminate some 183 “communist Jews.” Moreover, Ukrainian nationalists rounded up and brutally abused around 1,000 Jews in Lvov, subsequently putting them into a local prison, with the facility and the ‘inmates’ eventually taken over by the Germans, according to the status report.
With the German occupation regime properly established, the ethnic cleansing process was streamlined, with the so-called Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, created by the Nazis in August 1941, playing a very active role in it. According to the testimony of the Ukrainian police commander in Belya Tserkov, a major city in the Kiev region, Mikhail Tomasevish, members of his unit were so eager to kill Jews that they acted even beyond orders given by their Nazi masters. Namely, the local police secretary took pleasure in “questioning” arrested Jews, beating them with a rubber tube, and freely taking them “away” afterwards, with none of the detained ever returning to the police HQ.
Tomasevich led the police unit until 1943, when he fled alongside retreating German forces but ultimately ended up in the NKVD’s custody. While Tomasevich claimed most of the city’s Jews were exterminated before he assumed the post, he admitted partaking, one way or another, in the killing of over 1,000 people. Under his leadership, the police continued to actively search for survivors, using various tricks to lure the remaining Jews in the city to their deaths.
“To identify hiding persons of Jewish nationality, the [German field] gendarmerie, through the [Ukrainian] police, organized so-called traps, i.e., it was announced throughout the city that henceforth Jews would be allowed to live freely, but only in select houses,” Tomasevich testified.
“I put all the Jews who believed that and settled in the houses on a special register, a special folder of cases, titled ‘Yids’ [a derogatory term for ‘Jews’], was opened,” he explained, adding that when the flow of Jews willing to settle in the houses waned, all of them, some 50 people, were detained and killed “around January or February 1942.”
Civilian Ukrainian authorities, established under German occupation, have actively contributed to ethnic cleansings as well. For instance, according to an indictment in a 1944 case about Nazi crimes committed in the city of Sarny and its vicinity, local Ukrainian mayor Marinyuk directly facilitated the extermination of the entire local Jewish population in August 1942.
Some 13,000 people were gathered at a local concentration camp, guarded by field gendarmerie and Ukrainian police, under the pretext of being relocated for “work” in Germany. Instead, the Jews ended up before firing squads, with children thrown into the death pits and buried alive. Only some 40–50 people managed to escape the massacre, with Ukrainian nationalist units in pursuit, and those who managed to capture escapees were awarded a sack of salt.
Monuments to Ukrainian Nazis in Canada
W.O. Munce, https://www.thepostil.com/monuments-to-ukrainian-nazis-in-canada/
Given the fact that Ukraine and Nazis are again making news, it is important to point out that there are indeed commemorative monuments to Ukrainian Nazis in Canada, located where the Ukrainian populations are the greatest. The reasons for such monuments are known to the Ukrainian community alone, but so it is essential to make a record of them here, along with a hint at what those being commemorated did back in the days of World War Two.
“Ukrainian partisans and their allies burned homes, shot or forced back inside those who tried to flee, and used sickles and pitchforks to kill those they captured outside. Churches full of worshipers were burned to the ground. Partisans displayed beheaded, crucified, dismembered, or disemboweled bodies, to encourage remaining Poles to flee… It was this maimed OUN-Bandera, led by Mykola Lebed’ and then Roman Shukhevych, that cleansed the Polish population from Volhynia in 1943” (The Reconstruction of Nations).
The 14th Division of the Ukrainian SS surrounded the village Huta Pieniacka from three sides… The people were gathered in the church or shot in the houses. Those gathered in the church—men, women and children—were taken outside in groups, children killed in front of their parents. Some men and women were shot in the cemetery, others were gathered in barns where they were shot” (British archives).
“One of their major tasks as UPA partisans was the cleansing of the Polish presence from Volhynia. Poles tend to credit the UPA’s success in this operation to natural Ukrainian brutality; it was rather a result of recent experience. People learn to do what they are trained to do, and are good at doing what they have done many times. Ukrainian partisans who mass-murdered Poles in 1943 followed the tactics they learned as collaborators in the Holocaust in 1942: detailed advance planning and site selection; persuasive assurances to local populations prior to actions; sudden encirclements of settlements; and then physical elimination of human beings. Ukrainians learned the techniques of mass murder from Germans. This is why UPA ethnic cleansing was striking in its efficiency, and why Volhynian Poles in 1943 were nearly as helpless as Volhynian Jews in 1942. It is one reason why the campaign against Poles began in Volhynia rather than Galicia, since in Volhynia the Ukrainian police played a greater role in the Final Solution” (The Reconstruction of Nations).
“On that day, early in the morning, soldiers of this division, dressed in white, masking outfits, surrounded the village. The village was cross-fired by artillery. SS-men of the 14th Division of the SS ‘Galizien’ entered the village, shooting the civilians rounded up at a church. The civilians, mostly women and children, were divided and locked in barns that were set on fire. Those who tried to run away were killed. Witnesses interrogated by the prosecutors of the Head Commission described the morbid details of the act. The crime was committed against women, children, and newborn babies” (The Institute of National Remembrance. Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation).
Related Articles:
Canada’s Honoring of Nazi Vet Exposes Ottawa’s Longstanding Ukraine Policy
Following the war, Canada’s Liberal government classified thousands of Jewish refugees as “enemy aliens” and held them alongside former Nazis in a network of internment camps enclosed with barbed wire, fearing that they would infect their new country with communism. At the same time, Ottawa placed thousands of Ukrainian veterans of Hitler’s army on the fast-track to citizenship.
By celebrating a Waffen-SS volunteer as a “hero,” Canada’s Liberal Party highlighted a longstanding policy that has seen Ottawa train fascist militants in Ukraine while welcoming in thousands of post-war Nazi SS veterans. Canada’s second most powerful official, Chrystia Freeland, is the granddaughter of one of Nazi Germany’s top Ukrainian propagandists.
SCHEERPOST, By Max Blumenthal / The Grayzone 1 Oct 23
In the Spring of 1943, Yaroslav Hunka was a fresh-faced soldier in the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS Galicia when his division received a visit from the architect of Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies, Heinrich Himmler. Having presided over the battalion’s formation, Himmler was visibly proud of the Ukrainians who had volunteered to support the Third Reich’s efforts.
80 years later, the Speaker of Canada’s parliament, Anthony Rota, also beamed with pride after inviting Hunka to a reception for Volodymyr Zelensky, where the Ukrainian president lobbied for more arms and financial assistance for his country’s war against Russia.
“We have in the chamber today Ukrainian war veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today even at his age of 98,” Rota declared during the September 22 parliamentary event in Ottawa.
“His name is Yaroslav Hunka but I am very proud to say he is from North Bay and from my riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming. He is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service,” Rota continued.
Gales of applause erupted through the crowd, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Zelensky, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre and leaders of all Canadian parties rose from their seats to applaud Hunka’s wartime service.
Since the exposure of Hunka’s record as a Nazi collaborator – which should have been obvious as soon as the Speaker announced him – Canadian leaders (with the notable exception of Eyre) have rushed to issue superficial, face-saving apologies as withering condemnations poured in from Canadian Jewish organizations.
The incident is now a major national scandal, occupying space on the cover of Canadian papers like the Toronto Sun, which quipped, “Did Nazi that coming.” Meanwhile, Poland’s Education Minister has announced plans to seek Hunka’s criminal extradition.
The Liberal Party has attempted to downplay the affair as an accidental blunder, with one Liberal MP urging her colleagues to “avoid politicizing this incident.” Melanie Joly, Canada’s Foreign Minister, has forced Rota’s resignation, seeking to turn the the Speaker into a scapegoat for her party’s collective actions.
Trudeau, meanwhile, pointed to the “deeply embarrassing” event as a reason to “push back against Russian propaganda,” as though the Kremlin somehow smuggled an nonagenarian Nazi collaborator into parliament, then hypnotized the Prime Minister and his colleagues, Manchurian Candidate-style, into celebrating him as a hero.
To be sure, the incident was no gaffe. Before Canada’s government and military brass celebrated Hunka in parliament, they had provided diplomatic support to fascist hooligans fighting to install a nationalist government in Kiev, and oversaw the training of contemporary Ukrainian military formations openly committed to the furtherance of Nazi ideology.
Ottawa’s celebration of Hunka has also lifted the cover on the country’s post-World War Two policy of naturalizing known Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and weaponizing them as domestic anti-communist shock troops. The post-war immigration wave included the grandfather of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who functioned as one of Hitler’s top Ukrainain propagandists inside Nazi-occupied Poland.
Though Canadian officialdom has worked to suppress this sordid record, it has resurfaced in dramatic fashion through Hunka’s appearance in parliament and the unsettling contents of his online diaries.
“WE WELCOMED GERMAN SOLDIERS WITH JOY”
The March 2011 edition of the journal of the Association of Ukrainian Ex-Combatants in the US contains an unsettling diary entry which had gone unnoticed until recently.
Authored by Yaroslav Hunka, the journal consisted of proud reflections on volunteering for the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen-SS Galicia. Hunka decribed the Nazi Wehrmacht as “mystical German knights” when they first arrived in his hometown of Berezhany, and recalled his own service in the Waffen-SS as the happiest time in his life.
“In my sixth grade,” he wrote, “out of forty students, there were six Ukrainians, two Poles, and the rest were Jewish children of refugees from Poland. We wondered why they were running away from such a civilized Western nation as the Germans.”
The Jewish Virtual Library details the extermination of Berezhany’s Jewish population at the hands of the “civilized” Germans: “In 1941 at the end of Soviet occupation 12,000 Jews were living in Berezhany, most of them refugees fleeing the horrors of the Nazi war machine in Europe. During the Holocaust, on Oct. 1, 1941, 500–700 Jews were executed by the Germans in the nearby quarries. On Dec. 18, another 1,200, listed as poor by the Judenrat, were shot in the forest. On Yom Kippur 1942 (Sept. 21), 1,000–1,500 were deported to Belzec and hundreds murdered in the streets and in their homes. On Hanukkah (Dec. 4–5) hundreds more were sent to Belzec and on June 12, 1943, the last 1,700 Jews of the ghetto and labor camp were liquidated, with only a few individuals escaping. Less than 100 Berezhany Jews survived the war.”
When Soviet forces held control of Berezhany, Hunka said he and his neighbors longed for the arrival of Nazi Germany. “Every day,” he recalled, “we looked impatiently in the direction of the Pomoryany (Lvov) with the hope that those mystical German knights, who give bullets to the hated Lyakhs are about to appear.” (Lyakh is a derogatory Ukrainian term for Poles).
In July 1941, when the Nazi German army entered Berezhany, Hunka breathed a sigh of relief. “We welcomed the German soldiers with joy,” he wrote. “People felt a thaw, knowing that there would no longer be that dreaded knocking on the door in the middle of the night, and at least it would be possible to sleep peacefully now.”
Two years later, Hunka joined the First Division of the Galician SS 14th Grenadier Brigade – a unit formed under the personal orders of Heinrich Himmler. When Himmler inspected the Ukrainian volunteers in May 1943 (below), he was accompanied by Otto Von Wachter, the Nazi-appointed governor of Galicia who established the Jewish ghetto in Krakow.
“Your homeland has become so much more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – those residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name, namely the Jews…” Himmler reportedly told the Ukrainian troops. “I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles … I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”
“HITLER’S ELITE TORTURERS AND MURDERERS HAVE BEEN PASSED ON RMCP ORDERS”
Following the war, Canada’s Liberal government classified thousands of Jewish refugees as “enemy aliens” and held them alongside former Nazis in a network of internment camps enclosed with barbed wire, fearing that they would infect their new country with communism. At the same time, Ottawa placed thousands of Ukrainian veterans of Hitler’s army on the fast-track to citizenship.
The Ukrainian Canadian newsletter lamented on April 1, 1948, “some [of the new citizens] are outright Nazis who served in the German army and police. It is reported that individuals tattoooed with the dread[ed] SS, Hitler’s elite torturers and murderers have been passed on RCMP orders and after being turned down by screening agencies in Europe.”
The journal described the unreformed Nazis as anticommunist shock troops whose “‘ideological leaders’ are already busy fomenting WWIII, propagating a new world holocaust in which Canada will perish.”
In 1997, the Canadian branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center charged the Canadian government with having admitted over 2000 veterans of the 14th Volunteer Waffen-SS Grenadier Division.
That same year, 60 Minutes released a special, “Canada’s Dark Secret,” revealing that some 1000 Nazi SS veterans from Baltic states had been granted citizenship by Canada after the war. Irving Abella, a Canadian historian, told 60 Minutes that the easiest way to get into the country “was by showing the SS tattoo. This proved that you were an anti-Communist.”
Abella also alleged that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (Justin’s father) explained to him that his government kept silent about the Nazi immigrants “because they were afraid of exacerbating relationships between Jews and Eastern European ethnic communities.”
Yaroslav Hunka was among the post-war wave of Ukrainian Nazi veterans welcomed by Canada. According to the city council website of Berezhany, he arrived in Ontario in 1954 and promptly “became a member of the fraternity of soldiers of the 1st Division of the UNA, affiliated to the World Congress of Free Ukrainians.”
Also among the new generation of Ukrainian Canadians was Michael Chomiak, the grandfather of Canada’s second-most-powerful official, Chrystia Freeland. Throughout her career as a journalist and Canadian diplomat, Freeland has advanced her grandfather’s legacy of anti-Russian agitation, while repeatedly exalting wartime Nazi collaborators during public events.
CANADA WELCOMES HITLER’S TOP UKRAINIAN PROPAGANDISTS……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/01/canadas-honoring-of-nazi-vet-exposes-ottawas-longstanding-ukraine-policy/
A Powerful minority makes the nuclear decisions, in a strategy of concealment
“Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology – and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy,” Macron said during a visit to Framatome’s Le Creusot facility in December 2020.
The French nuclear mullahs are at the heart of this international lobby. In particular, they are engaged in a communication strategy that consists of underestimating, trivializing or denying the effects of radiation, and insisting that it is possible to live with radiation in contaminated areas. In other words, a strategy of concealment.
By Kolin Kobayashi, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2023/09/24/a-strategy-of-concealment/—
This year marks the 13th year since the Fukushima accident began, yet the path to a conclusion is by no means clear. The declaration of a state of emergency still cannot be lifted because of the various dangers and difficulties that have arisen. Despite this, Prime Minister Kishida’s government is doing more than ever to promote nuclear power as a basic energy source. This approach is similar to that of the French administration, which is also trying to promote nuclear energy as a dual-use nuclear weapon.
The international nuclear lobby, which represents only a minority, has the influence and money to dominate the world’s population with immense power and has now united the world’s minority nuclear community into one big galaxy. Many of the citizens who have experienced the world’s three most serious civil nuclear accidents have clearly realized that nuclear energy is too dangerous. These citizens are so divided and conflicted that they feel like a helpless minority.
The current situation with the Fukushima accident
Let’s start with the total amount of radiation that the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant still contains today. The spent fuel at the site contains 85 times more cesium-137 than Chornobyl and 50,000 to 100,000 times more than the Hiroshima bomb.
The fuel is still stored in pools on the top floor of the reactor buildings (30 metres above ground), with the exception of Unit 3, the removal of which was completed in 2019.
Now, although 12 years have passed, the precise program for future decommissioning is unclear. While the approximate overall radiation levels are known, the buildings and reactors themselves, where the decommissioning and dismantling work will take place, are highly radioactive and cannot be easily penetrated by workers.
The true extent of the accident is not known, nor is the exact state of dispersion of the corium (the molten magma from the nuclear fuel rods in the reactor core). In Unit 1, for example, it is clear from the images taken by a robot that many parts of the circular concrete foundation supporting the pressure vessel have been damaged by the high heat of the corium. There is a significant risk of collapse in the event of a strong earthquake, and if the 440-tonne vessel collapses, it could hit the storage pool next to it. If this pool is damaged, even partially, another major disaster could occur.
Release of contaminated water
The amount of contaminated water is increasing all the time, as water continues to flow to cool the corium. Currently, around 90 tonnes of contaminated water are being added to the tanks every day. There are currently more than 1,000 tanks, and TEPCO says they will be full by February next year.
TEPCO had promised not to release water without the consent of local communities and fishermen, but this promise was not kept. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) dispatched a team of experts to investigate whether the radioactivity levels of the contaminated water treated by TEPCO met the international safety standards set by the IAEA, and the final report was submitted to the government on July 4. On the basis of this report, the Japanese government decided to release the water and began discharging water into the Pacific Ocean on August 24, releasing 7,800 tons in 17 days.
However, the IAEA does not have the scientific authority to make reference to the ecological impact of this water discharge, nor has it carried out such a long-term assessment. It is more of a political decision than a scientific one.
TEPCO and the Japanese government have said that releasing contaminated water is essential for decommissioning work, but there are still places to build storage facilities. There are also methods other than releasing the water into the ocean, such as solidifying it in mortar and storing it on the surface.
However, the regulatory committee and study group said they had considered five solutions: geological injection, hydrogen release, underground burial, steam release and ocean release. In the end, they chose the cheapest method.
What is the international nuclear lobby?
Today, the nuclear issue is globally interwoven. The raw material needed — uranium — as well as nuclear technology and radiation protection standards, cannot be managed by a single country.
First of all, nuclear energy is the dark side of the atomic bomb. Nuclear reactors designed to produce electricity were originally machines designed to produce plutonium for the manufacture of atomic bombs. So it was only natural that French president, Emanuel Macron, should advocate the complementary nature of civil nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. “Without civilian nuclear energy there is no military use of this technology – and without military use there is no civilian nuclear energy,” Macron said during a visit to Framatome’s Le Creusot facility in December 2020.
The realpolitik of the atomic bomb led to the creation of the IAEA in 1948. The five nuclear-weapon states on the UN Security Council promoted nuclear energy for peace and encouraged its development in order to monopolize nuclear weapons, and they made the IAEA a nuclear supervisory agency to ensure that no other country produced atomic bombs. The UN Member States were deceived by Eisenhower’s fine-sounding words “Atoms for Peace” to the UN General Assembly on 8 December 1953.
The IAEA controls nuclear energy throughout the world. But this international organization is neither objective nor impartial, nor does it conform absolutely to scientific truth. It is a highly political institution.
Ordinary citizens trust international organizations simply because they hear about them in UN reports. But the IAEA is constantly working to promote nuclear energy. The effects of radiation are trivialized or denied, as if they were not a problem, merely a manageable danger for nuclear power plants.
The effects of radiation are grossly underestimated. The data base on which the IAEA relies is that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, collected by the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. These data are totally incomplete. They do not take into account people who were exposed to radiation more than 2 km from the hypocenters, people who entered the cities after the bombs were dropped, and people who were exposed to radiation from black rain in distant areas. In other words, low-dose radiation exposure is completely ignored.
The French nuclear mullahs are at the heart of this international lobby. In particular, they are engaged in a communication strategy that consists of underestimating, trivializing or denying the effects of radiation, and insisting that it is possible to live with radiation in contaminated areas. In other words, a strategy of concealment.
The famous Ethos project, which ran in Belarus from 1996 to 2001, ten years after the Chornobyl accident, seemed to be helping the population, but in fact it was consolidating the theory of acceptance of radiation. Jacques Lochard, former director of the CEPN (Centre d’étude sur l’Evaluation de la protection dans le domaine Nucléaire) in France, who carried out this project, quickly showed up in Fukushima in November 2011 and implemented the same strategy in a different form.
Lochard is the perfect example of the constantly revolving door among individuals from organizations that promote nuclear power and those involved in radiation protection. These circumstances are totally unknown to ordinary citizens.
The CEPN is an association with only four members: the CEA (Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives), EDF (Électricité de France), Areva/Orano and the IRSN (Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire). In other words, it is the embodiment of the French nuclear lobby and manages the French nuclear lobby’s communication on radiation protection.
The Chornobyl Ethos project and the CORE and SAGE projects that followed it, were organized and carried out by Lochard, now retired but appointed as a visiting professor at the Institute of Atomic Bomb Disease at Nagasaki University, and his right-hand man, Thierry Schneider. They have become respectable points of reference for the European Commission as a means of dealing with a nuclear accident.
The methods initiated by this minority of promoters will be imposed, with authority and money, on those who are victims of a future serious nuclear accident in Europe. According to this philosophy, there is no need to evacuate. We can live happily with radiation, even in contaminated areas.
In this way, the French nuclear lobby, in cooperation with the International Commission on Radiological Protection, the IAEA-UNSCEAR (United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation) and others, can assure us that we can overcome a serious nuclear accident, by simply adapting to radiation exposure. The phrase “let’s hope people have the strength to bounce back” is repeated. The word “resilience” has become a key word in this milieu.
But in Belarus and Ukraine, 37years after the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, 60% to 80% of children are still ill from the radiation resulting from Chornobyl. In Fukushima too, there are those 300 or more cases of thyroid cancer. The Japanese authorities still insist that in the case of Fukushima, the causal relationship between cancer and radiation is not yet known. This is despite the fact that this was admitted in the case of Chornobyl. It can therefore be said that at Chornobyl, as at Fukushima, the reality of the effects of radiation caused by the accidents is still not officially recognized.
France has clearly stated that nuclear weapons and nuclear power are the two wheels of the car, and President Macron has insisted that a total of 15 nuclear power plants will be built by 2050. Japan has also declared that it will continue to develop nuclear power plants in collaboration with France.
However, it is clear from the outset that if we continue to develop nuclear power plants, nuclear waste will continue to accumulate. At present, the storage pools at every nuclear power plant site — whether in Japan or France — are approaching the limit of their full capacity. However, no reliable method for the final disposal of high-level nuclear waste has yet been established.
In this way, the lessons of Chornobyl and Fukushima are not being applied at all, but rather, the actual health hazards are being covered up. Any so-called cleanup projects are being carried out for the sake of immediate interests only. In the end, they are forcing the victims to endure radiation exposure and ultimately abandoning them. This is because of the cover-up strategy of the international nuclear lobby in the background.
Kolin Kobayashi is a Tokyo-born France-based anti-nuclear activist and retired freelance journalist. He is president of the non-profit organization, Echo-Echanges.
The Discharge of Fukushima’s Radioactive Water could be a Precedent for Similar Actions
Obviously, it would be misleading to rely on the IAEA’s statements suggesting that radioactive wastewater does not pose any risk to global health. This information strengthens the likelihood that the IAEA did not reveal valid and precise radiation data regarding the Chornobyl accident and Zaporizhia nuclear power plant during the ongoing Ukrainian war either.
Pinar Demircan 7 Sept 23 https://www.dianuke.org/the-discharge-of-fukushimas-radioactive-water-could-be-a-precedent-for-similar-actions/
Underlying the disregard for objections from global civil society and transforming the ocean into a nuclear waste dump lies a bigger goal inspired by capitalist practices that arise from its crisis: to achieve another threshold by normalization of cost-cutting measures for the sake of the nuclear industry.
While the climate crisis is rapidly turning forests and habitats of living creatures into coal and ash with a tiny spark of fire in Turkiye, Greece, and Canada, the planet’s seas, already polluted with plastics and waste, are also being recklessly infused with radioactivity, driven by profit and cost-centered policies. On August 24, within the framework of the procedures carried out by the Japanese government and TEPCO, the discharge of 1.34 million tonnes of radioactive water which is accumulated in tanks at the plant site, started.
The installation of a treatment system costing 23 million USD, the discharge of wastewater without an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is being realized by foregoing safer alternatives such as solidification of wastewater into construction materials or long-term storage costing 100 times more that constitutes ecocide. Clearly, this method of release that is expected to be carried out over the next 40 years, indicates a systemic assault on the global ecosystem that is longer and more severe than presently apparent.
The Japanese Government is not telling the truth about ‘purification’
The discharge process of the wastewater resulting from the complete meltdown of three reactor cores at the Fukushima nuclear facility began in 2011 and is at par with the danger level ascribed to the Chornobyl disaster. This also highlights how the Fukushima discharge differs from the regular discharge processes of nuclear power plants and indicates the extent of danger that nuclear power plants pose. Furthermore, the radioactive isotopes treated in the accumulated wastewater is only half of the whole amount according to what was stated on the website of the Japanese Ministry of the Environment.
A detail that has been overlooked till today is that there is no information regarding the amount of discharge during this 40-year time frame for the disposal of radioactive water into the ocean. This might indicate that the discharged amount may even be equivalent to the period of, for example, 100 years despite the declared duration of 40. In addition, since the present objections have been disregarded, it is worth considering the potential impact of future oppositions at the end of the 40 years.
A threshold to be achieved
Apparently, over the next decade, the radioactive water discharged from Fukushima is anticipated to disseminate into multiple seas worldwide, encompassing the Marmara, Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Sea, which surrounds Turkiye. A recent scientific study [2] suggests that the evaporation in these seas will escalate industrial radioactivity levels in the ecosystem. Given this backdrop, it is important to ask why TEPCO, the Japanese government, and the IAEA continue to disregard the adverse impacts of the discharge, which also makes them responsible for the potential increases in cancer, DNA damage, increased miscarriages, hormone imbalances, and unhealthy future generations worldwide? Underlying the disregard for objections raised by global civil society, and transforming the ocean into a nuclear waste dump, lies a bigger goal inspired by capitalist practices that arise from its crisis: to achieve another threshold of the normalization of cost-cutting measures for the sake of nuclear industry.
How can we be sure of the exact amount to be released?
It is also possible to consider the above statement with the possibility of adding wastewater from the other nuclear power plants across Japan to the already 1 million 340 thousand tonnes of water accumulated over the past 12 years at Fukushima. While nuclear power plants operate under higher costs and have to cope with four times cheaper renewable energy production costs, the ocean dumping of the radioactive wastewater offers an easy solution for the nuclear industry. Crossing this threshold guarantees the capability to manage climate-induced hazards to nuclear facilities since now, societal consent has been obtained for this plan of action. Imagine how beneficial this course of action will be for the nuclear industry, with the IAEA promising its support for the industry – to the 410 reactors operating worldwide, approximately 50 reactors under construction, and 80 reactors [3] in various stages of maintenance, repair, decommissioning, and dismantling.
Take for example, Rosatom of Russia, the owner of the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant which reached its final stage of construction for the first reactor in Turkiye. It has a long history of concealing the Mayak nuclear power plant accident, well into the 1990s. Furthermore, from 1948 to 2004, Rosatom discharged nuclear waste into the Techa River, thus reinforcing its already questionable track record, and also points to how the legalization of nuclear discharge might be beneficial for the industry. It is also easy to predict the potential impact of this approach in the Mediterranean region by a nation with an underdeveloped democratic system and institutional dynamics dominated [4] by political power. This is especially important since an exemption made for the Akkuyu NPP in the article which allows for the discharge water from the facilities around the Mediterranean temperature of the plant and allows the sea temperature to reach up to 35 Celsius and poses serious ecological challenges indicating that Turkiye violates Barcelona Agreement.
The Role of the IAEA
The example of Fukushima’s radioactive water discharge presents us a picture of a political power that has adopted the corporate management mentality prioritizing profits and industry interests under the guise of efficiency and profitability. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) plays a vital role in ensuring that nuclear energy generation is conducted safely and within established guidelines. However, a leaked document [5] from the IAEA reveals that the agency, which declared its support for TEPCO and the Japanese government, advised them to refrain from making statements that could portray nuclear power plants negatively and disseminate information that influences the press and public opinion. As this scandal brings to light the deep connections between the IAEA, the Japanese government, and TEPCO, it is important to consider the role of the IAEA as a highly regarded global organization.
It is noteworthy to mention that the IAEA’s involvement in the nuclear industry stems from a confidential agreement WHA 12-40 [6] with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1959, stating that “whenever either organization proposes to initiate a programme or activity on a subject in which the other organization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement”. Consequently, the IAEA, established to promote the growth of nuclear power plants worldwide, refrained from disclosing any potential health hazards posed by these plants.
Obviously, it would be misleading to rely on the IAEA’s statements suggesting that radioactive wastewater does not pose any risk to global health. This information strengthens the likelihood that the IAEA did not reveal valid and precise radiation data regarding the Chornobyl accident and Zaporizhia nuclear power plant during the ongoing Ukrainian war either.
It is important to inform the global society that the IAEA, which focuses mainly on promoting nuclear power, should not be involved in discussions related to public health in line with the principle of separating responsibilities to avoid conflict of interest. Therefore, it is recommended that civil society should inform the international community about the content of the recently disclosed IAEA document and demand an end to the discharge of radioactive water from Fukushima into the ocean. Accordingly, it should be ensured that all processes involved in disposing radioactive contamination in Fukushima are subject to internal and financial control measures performed by a minimum of two separate units.
At this stage, it is essential to take measures by clarifying the issues emphasized by the non-governmental organizations following the processes, and it should be ensured that realistic solutions can only be produced with the involvement of a consortium of neighbouring countries such as South Korea, China, Taiwan and the Pacific Islands. In this regard, the process management for the construction of the steel dome shelter, which was completed in 2016 with financing by 40 countries that came together in 1997 to protect the exploded fourth reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant from external weather conditions, can be taken as an example. [7]
Undoubtedly, the economic and administrative control mechanisms created for Chornobyl due to Ukraine’s lack of financial resources is not acceptable for the technology-giant Japan, which bears the costs of the disaster on its own. However, since global society has not entirely shown its commitment to changing the system, an in-system solution can prevent adding the radioactive disaster to the climate crisis before the transformation of life on the planet hits its constraints. In other words, claiming efficiency and profitability and institutionalization of the logic of ‘running the state like a business’, which has become the common discourse of political powers will at least help to achieve the rationality of emulated corporate management.
” The future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release” – Rafael Grossi.
“more broadly, the future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release,” he said. Though there has been heightened public alarm toward nuclear plants recently – for instance, regarding the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine – “the problem there is war, the problem is not nuclear energy,” Grossi said.
AEA chief ‘completely convinced’ it’s safe to release treated Fukushima nuclear wastewater .
By Jessie Yeung, Marc Stewart and Emiko Jozuka, Tokyo CNN, 7 July 23
Japan’s plan to release treated radioactive water into the ocean is safe and there is no better option to deal with the massive buildup of wastewater collected since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog told CNN.
Japan will release the wastewater sometime this summer, a controversial move 12 years after the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown. Japanese authorities and the IAEA have insisted the plan follows international safety standards – the water will first be treated to remove the most harmful pollutants, and be released gradually over many years in highly diluted quantities.
But public anxiety remains high, including in nearby countries like South Korea, China and the Pacific Islands, which have voiced concern about potential harm to the environment or people’s health. On Friday, Chinese customs officials announced they would maintain a ban on food imports from 10 Japanese prefectures including Fukushima, and strengthen inspections to monitor for “radioactive substances, to ensure the safety of Japanese food imports to China.”……………………..
On Tuesday, Grossi formally presented the IAEA’s safety review to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The report found the wastewater release plan will have a “negligible” impact on people and the environment, adding that it was an “independent and transparent review,” not a recommendation or endorsement……………………….
The 2011 disaster caused the plant’s reactor cores to overheat and contaminate water within the facility with highly radioactive material. Since then, new water has been pumped in to cool fuel debris in the reactors. At the same time, ground and rainwater have leaked in, creating more radioactive wastewater that now needs to be stored and treated.
That wastewater now measures 1.32 million metric tons – enough to fill more than 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Japan has previously said there were “no other options” as space runs out – a sentiment Grossi echoed on Friday. When asked whether there were better alternatives to dispose of the wastewater, the IAEA chief answered succinctly: “No.”
It’s not that there are no other methods, he added – Japan had considered five total options, including hydrogen release, underground burial and vapor release, which would have seen wastewater boiled and released into the atmosphere………………………………………
International skepticism
But some critics have cast doubt on the IAEA’s findings, with China recently arguing that the group’s assessment “is not proof of the legality and legitimacy” of the wastewater release.
Many countries have openly opposed the plan; Chinese officials have warned that it could cause “unpredictable harm,” and accused Japan of treating the ocean as a “sewer.” The Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum, an inter-governmental group of Pacific island nations that includes Australia and New Zealand, also published an op-ed in January voicing “grave concerns,” saying more data was needed.
And in South Korea, residents have taken to the streets to protest the plan. Many shoppers have stockpiled salt and seafood for fear these products will be contaminated once the wastewater is released – even though Seoul has already banned imports of seafood and food items from the Fukushima region.
International scientists have also expressed concern to CNN that there is insufficient evidence of long-term safety, arguing that the release could cause tritium – a radioactive hydrogen isotope that cannot be removed from the wastewater – to gradually build up in marine ecosystems and food chains, a process called bioaccumulation…………………………………
more broadly, the future of nuclear as an alternative energy source relies on the success of the Fukushima release, he said. Though there has been heightened public alarm toward nuclear plants recently – for instance, regarding the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine – “the problem there is war, the problem is not nuclear energy,” Grossi said……….. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/06/asia/japan-fukushima-water-iaea-chief-interview-intl-hnk/index.html
Crooked Canadian company Lavalin trying to sell ?zombie nuclear technology to China and UK
Canada now dominates World Bank corruption list, thanks to SNC-Lavalin, Financial Post Armina Ligaya | September 18, 2013 Canada’s corporate image isn’t looking so squeaky-clean in the World Bank’s books — all thanks to SNC-Lavalin.Corruption’s double standard: It’s time to punish countries whose officials accept bribes
Out of the more than 250 companies year to date on the World Bank’s running list of firms blacklisted from bidding on its global projects under its fraud and corruption policy, 117 are from Canada — with SNC-Lavalin and its affiliates representing 115 of those entries, the World Bank said.
“As it stands today, the World Bank debarment list includes a high number of Canadian companies, the majority of which are affiliates to SNC Lavalin Inc.,” said the bank’s manager of investigations, James David Fielder.
“This is the outcome of a World Bank investigation relating the Padma Bridge project in Bangladesh where World Bank investigators closely cooperated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in an effort to promote collective action against corruption.”
As a result of the misconduct found during the probe, the Montreal-based engineering and construction firm, and its affiliates as per World Bank policy, were debarred in April 2013 for 10 years, as part of a settlement with SNC-Lavalin. And in one fell swoop, 115 Canadian firms were blacklisted by the World Bank, making Canada seemingly look like the worst offending country.
It’s quite the jump from 2012, when no Canadian companies were barred……..http://business.financialpost.com/2013/09/18/canada-now-dominates-world-bank-corruption-list-thanks-to-snc-lavalin/
Lavalin looks to expand nuclear enterprise in China http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/lavalin-looks-to-grow-in-china/article17950935/ SHAWN MCCARTHY – GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail, Apr. 13 2014, SNC-Lavalin Inc. is hoping to revitalize its international nuclear business through an effort with its Chinese partners to burn reprocessed fuel in a Candu reactor as a way to reduce radioactive waste.
Officials from Candu Energy Inc. are leading a Canadian nuclear industry mission to China this week, which will include a visit Monday to the Qinshan nuclear power station south of Shanghai where two heavy-water Candu 6 reactors are in operation. Candu Energy is the former Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., and is now wholly owned by SNC-Lavalin
The Mississauga-based nuclear vendor has been working with the Chinese operator of the Qinshan plants to fashion reprocessed fuel from the waste products of competing light-water reactors. The Candu could, in effect, become the blue box of the nuclear industry, company executives said in an interview.
“We’re very excited that this advances the discussion we can have about introducing more Candus into China,” Jerry Hopwood, the company’s vice-president of marketing and product development, said.
Candu reactors use heavy water, which includes a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, both for coolant and to moderate atomic reactions. Light-water reactors use ordinary water for both purposes.
Each approach offers different benefits, but the world market is dominated by light-water reactors, which require enriched uranium as fuel. In contrast, the heavy-water Candus can burn natural uranium as well as reprocessed fuel.
Mr. Hopwood said China now has 21 light-water reactors that produce two streams of energy-rich waste: spent fuel from the reactor itself and depleted uranium from the enrichment process. China plans to more than double its number of light-water reactors to meet the demands of its growing economy.
“Those reactors are going to produce a lot of waste fuel and China has a plan to recycle all the waste fuel from its reactor,” Mr. Hopwood said. “We believe there is a very strong opportunity to sell a significant number of Candu units in China.”
He said the partners have completed all the development and licensing work, and the Chinese operators expect to begin running reprocessed fuel in the two Candu reactors at an industrial level by the end of the year.
The company is also working with Chinese partners to modify the existing Enhanced Candu model so it will more efficiently burn the recycled fuel but also run on thorium, an abundant alternative to uranium that produces less highly radioactive waste. China has vast reserves of thorium but must import uranium, and develop a thorium-fired reactor.
As well, Candu Energy is one of two finalists in the United Kingdom’s competition to select a reactor design that will eliminate a stockpile of plutonium. “We think this work in China is paving the way for other options where Candu’s fuel-cycle ability is a benefit, notably in the U.K.,” Mr. Hopwood said.
The trade delegation will include Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, Reza Moridi, who is a nuclear physicist, and several business leaders from the Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries, an Ontario-based suppliers’ group that is eager to land export and service business in the world’s fast growing reactor market.
Critics contend the Candu 6 is an outdated design that lacks safety features included in newer reactors, and that it is a technology that the international marketplace has largely rejected since the 1990s.
“So yeah, the industry is trying to say Candu isn’t dead. Never say die,” said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace Canada. “If Candu isn’t dead, it’s a zombie.”
Disproportionately High Contributions of 60 Year Old Weapons-137Cs Explain the Persistence of Radioactive Contamination in Bavarian Wild Boars
Environmental Science and Technology, Felix Stäger, Dorian Zok, Anna-Katharina Schiller, American Chemical Society, ACS Publications 30th Aug 2023
Abstract
Radionuclides released from nuclear accidents or explosions pose long-term threats to ecosystem health. A prominent example is wild boar contamination in central Europe, which is notorious for its persistently high 137Cs levels. However, without reliable source identification, the origin of this decades old problem has been uncertain. Here, we target radiocesium contamination in wild boars from Bavaria. Our samples (2019–2021) range from 370 to 15,000 Bq·kg–1 137Cs, thus exceeding the regulatory limits (600 Bq·kg–1) by a factor of up to 25. Using an emerging nuclear forensic fingerprint, 135Cs/137Cs, we distinguished various radiocesium source legacies in their source composition. All samples exhibit signatures of mixing of Chornobyl and nuclear weapons fallout, with 135Cs/137Cs ratios ranging from 0.67 to 1.97. Although Chornobyl has been widely believed to be the prime source of 137Cs in wild boars, we find that “old” 137Cs from weapons fallout significantly contributes to the total level (10–68%) in those specimens that exceeded the regulatory limit. In some cases, weapons-137Cs alone can lead to exceedances of the regulatory limit, especially in samples with a relatively low total 137Cs level. Our findings demonstrate that the superposition of older and newer legacies of 137Cs can vastly surpass the impact of any singular yet dominant source and thus highlight the critical role of historical releases of 137Cs in current environmental pollution challenges.
Synopsis
Sixty years old 137Cs from nuclear weapons fallout contributes significantly to the notorious contamination levels in wild boars in Central Europe that were previously believed to be dominated by Chornobyl.
Introduction
In the face of climate change, nuclear energy is experiencing a renaissance as a low-carbon option to feed humanity’s hunger for energy. (1) However, the release of radionuclides into the environment from nuclear accidents or nuclear weapons fallout poses potential threats to public health and societies and economic activities as some radionuclides are capable of persistently contaminating the food chain, resulting in widespread and long-term risk of radiation exposure. (2,3) The fission product cesium-137 (137Cs, half-life T1/2 = 30.08 y) is a prominent example of such contaminants as it is ubiquitously present in the environment. It originates from the fallout of atmospheric nuclear explosions from the mid-20th century (weapons-137Cs) and nuclear accidents, most prominently the Chornobyl (4) and Fukushima (5,6) nuclear accidents (reactor-137Cs).
For safety regulations, many countries have employed strict regulatory limits for 137Cs levels in general food products (e.g., EU < 600 Bq·kg–1 and Japan: <100 Bq·kg–1). (7) However, although routine radiation surveillance provides essential quantitative information on 137Cs contamination levels, the attribution of a contamination to its origins remains poorly understood as the ubiquitous weapons-137Cs cannot be distinguished from any reactor-137Cs. This analytical challenge impedes the comprehensive understanding of the origin of environmental 137Cs contamination, which is a critical prerequisite for a quantitative assessment of the responsibilities for certain 137Cs legacies and the establishment of more targeted strategies for environmental remediation and protection. More than ever, with threats of nuclear strikes or accidental releases in the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war, it is now imperative to be able to identify the source of any release of 137Cs and evaluate their environmental consequences.
Synopsis
Sixty years old 137Cs from nuclear weapons fallout contributes significantly to the notorious contamination levels in wild boars in Central Europe that were previously believed to be dominated by Chornobyl.
Introduction
ARTICLE SECTIONS
In the face of climate change, nuclear energy is experiencing a renaissance as a low-carbon option to feed humanity’s hunger for energy. (1) However, the release of radionuclides into the environment from nuclear accidents or nuclear weapons fallout poses potential threats to public health and societies and economic activities as some radionuclides are capable of persistently contaminating the food chain, resulting in widespread and long-term risk of radiation exposure. (2,3) The fission product cesium-137 (137Cs, half-life T1/2 = 30.08 y) is a prominent example of such contaminants as it is ubiquitously present in the environment. It originates from the fallout of atmospheric nuclear explosions from the mid-20th century (weapons-137Cs) and nuclear accidents, most prominently the Chornobyl (4) and Fukushima (5,6) nuclear accidents (reactor-137Cs). For safety regulations, many countries have employed strict regulatory limits for 137Cs levels in general food products (e.g., EU < 600 Bq·kg–1 and Japan: <100 Bq·kg–1). (7) However, although routine radiation surveillance provides essential quantitative information on 137Cs contamination levels, the attribution of a contamination to its origins remains poorly understood as the ubiquitous weapons-137Cs cannot be distinguished from any reactor-137Cs. This analytical challenge impedes the comprehensive understanding of the origin of environmental 137Cs contamination, which is a critical prerequisite for a quantitative assessment of the responsibilities for certain 137Cs legacies and the establishment of more targeted strategies for environmental remediation and protection. More than ever, with threats of nuclear strikes or accidental releases in the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war, it is now imperative to be able to identify the source of any release of 137Cs and evaluate their environmental consequences.
While isotopic signatures of actinides (e.g., uranium and plutonium) have been used successfully to distinguish the contributions between various sources, (8,9) radiocesium isotopic fingerprints have not yet been applied routinely for source identification. Cesium-135 is an ideal and long-lived candidate (T1/2 = 2.3 My) after a release, better suited than fast-fading 134Cs (T1/2 = 2.07 y). Also, the production mechanism of 135Cs provides more detailed information on the nuclear origin of a contamination, which hence allows attribution of a radiocesium contamination to its source via its distinct 135Cs/137Cs ratio. Its mother nuclide (135Xe) has a large cross-section for thermal neutron capture, resulting in suppressed onset of 135Cs under the high neutron flux density of a reactor core. (10) By contrast, despite the intense but short neutron flux at the moment of a nuclear explosion, 135Xe mostly “survives” the explosion because most primary fission products of the 135 isobar are 135Te and 135I, which have yet to decay to 135Xe. (11)
A nuclear explosion hence yields a relatively high 135Cs/137Cs ratio, whereas a reactor yields a low ratio. Nowadays, analytical protocols for commercial triple quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-QQQ-MS) as well as thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) are available for the precise determination of 135Cs/137Cs, thus allowing the application of the 135Cs/137Cs ratio as an isotopic fingerprint in nuclear forensics and environmental tracing studies. (12−19) In any case, the application of 135Cs/137Cs as a forensic fingerprint is still far from routine as it requires meticulous chemical separation and sophisticated analytical procedures.
Synopsis
Sixty years old 137Cs from nuclear weapons fallout contributes significantly to the notorious contamination levels in wild boars in Central Europe that were previously believed to be dominated by Chornobyl.
Introduction
ARTICLE SECTIONS
In the face of climate change, nuclear energy is experiencing a renaissance as a low-carbon option to feed humanity’s hunger for energy. (1) However, the release of radionuclides into the environment from nuclear accidents or nuclear weapons fallout poses potential threats to public health and societies and economic activities as some radionuclides are capable of persistently contaminating the food chain, resulting in widespread and long-term risk of radiation exposure. (2,3) The fission product cesium-137 (137Cs, half-life T1/2 = 30.08 y) is a prominent example of such contaminants as it is ubiquitously present in the environment. It originates from the fallout of atmospheric nuclear explosions from the mid-20th century (weapons-137Cs) and nuclear accidents, most prominently the Chornobyl (4) and Fukushima (5,6) nuclear accidents (reactor-137Cs). For safety regulations, many countries have employed strict regulatory limits for 137Cs levels in general food products (e.g., EU < 600 Bq·kg–1 and Japan: <100 Bq·kg–1). (7) However, although routine radiation surveillance provides essential quantitative information on 137Cs contamination levels, the attribution of a contamination to its origins remains poorly understood as the ubiquitous weapons-137Cs cannot be distinguished from any reactor-137Cs. This analytical challenge impedes the comprehensive understanding of the origin of environmental 137Cs contamination, which is a critical prerequisite for a quantitative assessment of the responsibilities for certain 137Cs legacies and the establishment of more targeted strategies for environmental remediation and protection. More than ever, with threats of nuclear strikes or accidental releases in the course of the Russo-Ukrainian war, it is now imperative to be able to identify the source of any release of 137Cs and evaluate their environmental consequences.
While isotopic signatures of actinides (e.g., uranium and plutonium) have been used successfully to distinguish the contributions between various sources, (8,9) radiocesium isotopic fingerprints have not yet been applied routinely for source identification. Cesium-135 is an ideal and long-lived candidate (T1/2 = 2.3 My) after a release, better suited than fast-fading 134Cs (T1/2 = 2.07 y). Also, the production mechanism of 135Cs provides more detailed information on the nuclear origin of a contamination, which hence allows attribution of a radiocesium contamination to its source via its distinct 135Cs/137Cs ratio. Its mother nuclide (135Xe) has a large cross-section for thermal neutron capture, resulting in suppressed onset of 135Cs under the high neutron flux density of a reactor core. (10) By contrast, despite the intense but short neutron flux at the moment of a nuclear explosion, 135Xe mostly “survives” the explosion because most primary fission products of the 135 isobar are 135Te and 135I, which have yet to decay to 135Xe. (11) A nuclear explosion hence yields a relatively high 135Cs/137Cs ratio, whereas a reactor yields a low ratio. Nowadays, analytical protocols for commercial triple quadrupole inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-QQQ-MS) as well as thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) are available for the precise determination of 135Cs/137Cs, thus allowing the application of the 135Cs/137Cs ratio as an isotopic fingerprint in nuclear forensics and environmental tracing studies. (12−19) In any case, the application of 135Cs/137Cs as a forensic fingerprint is still far from routine as it requires meticulous chemical separation and sophisticated analytical procedures.
Bavaria, southeastern Germany, is notorious for its heavy 137Cs contamination following the Chornobyl nuclear accident. (20) It was reported that 137Cs inventory in surface soil ranged from 102 to 105 Bq·m–2 in April 1986 [data from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), Germany]. As a potent accumulator of 137Cs, (21,22) regional wild boars (Sus scrofa) were subsequently contaminated, and the 137Cs activity concentrations in their meat exceeded the regulatory limit by approximately 1–2 orders of magnitude. However, unlike most forest species, which initially also exhibited high 137Cs contamination in their bodies followed by a decline with time (i.e., a short ecological half-life), (23,24) 137Cs levels in wild boars have not shown a significant decline trend since 1986. (20,25)
In certain locations and instances, the decline in contamination levels is even slower than the physical half-life of 137Cs. (26) This phenomenon has been termed “wild boar paradox” and is generally attributed to the ingestion of 137Cs accumulating hypogeous fungi (e.g., deer truffle, Elaphomyces) by wild boars. (27,28) Depending on the soil composition, especially clay mineral content, (29) these underground mushrooms are a critical repository of the downward migrating 137Cs. They are one major food item for wild boars, particularly during winter when food on the surface is scarce. (30) However, due to the lack of convincing evidence for identifying the sources of 137Cs, the origins of the persistent contamination in wild boars remains unclear.
Here, we analyzed the 137Cs activities together with 135Cs/137Cs ratios in wild boar meat samples, collected from 11 Bavarian districts during 2019–2021. Reporting the largest environmental sample set of 135Cs/137Cs to date (n = 48), we undertook a critical comparison with the published values and validated the feasibility of utilizing 135Cs/137Cs for source identification. Using a mixing model, we estimated the contribution of weapons-137Cs and reactor-137Cs, which not only deepens our understanding of the “wild boar paradox” but may also allow a future location-specific prediction of the evolution of the 137Cs contamination in wild boars with time. Lastly, our method can be applied for the traceability of 137Cs in any environmental samples in the future.
Materials and Methods……………………………………………………..
Results and Discussion………………………………………………………..
……..more https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.3c03565
Important new BMJ article increases our perception of radiation risks
September 3, 2023
The BMJ article which was published on Aug 16, 2023 (accessible free of charge) is the result of a lengthy occupational study by US Professor David Richardson and a team of 11 academics and public health researchers in the US, UK, France and Spain. https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj-2022-074520
Its conclusion states
“This major update to INWORKS provides a direct estimate of the association between protracted low dose exposure to ionising radiation and solid cancer mortality based on some of the world’s most informative cohorts of radiation workers. The summary estimate of excess relative rate solid cancer mortality per Gy is larger than estimates currently informing radiation protection, and some evidence suggests a steeper slope for the dose-response association in the low dose range than over the full dose range. These results can help to strengthen radiation protection, especially for low dose exposures that are of primary interest in contemporary medical, occupational, and environmental settings.”
In a nutshell, the article’s findings
- substantially increase our perception of radiogenic risks
- confirm that the linear no threshold model for radiation risks is acceptable
- give new hard evidence of increased risks at low levels of exposure
- act to question the continued use of the LSS studies of Japanese bomb survivors in deriving absolute radiation risks for the public
- act to question the ICRP’s continued use of DDREFs which at present halve radiation risks, and
- act to put pressure on ICRP, WHO, IAEA, etc to revise upwards the current low risks of radiation.
DISCUSSION
- Numerical Risk of Radiation…………………………………………………………………………………………………..So it can be shown that the INWORKS study increases the currently perceived absolute risk of fatal cancer in the UK from ~ 5% to 13% per Sv. This is a substantial increase and will need to be addressed by the ICRP and national authorities.
- 2. Strengthens and Increases the risks found older studies. Second, the new study strengthens an earlier 2018 study (Richardson et al, 2018) by the same team by adding another 10 years’ data to the epidemiology datasets used in the metastudy. It not only strengthens the findings but actually increases the observed ERR risk by ~10% ie from 0.47 to 0.52 per Gy.
- 3. Increased Risks at Low Doses. Perhaps most significant, are the study’s findings of higher risks at very low doses between 0 and 150 mGy which are the doses we need to be concerned with………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………more https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/important-new-bmj-article-increases-our-perception-of-radiation-risks/?fbclid=IwAR0TtpWfyxm1ebiaHGw_eUJd1n1PWRfkmGF3n-YtBnO0rMIRi2XqcPzYYWY
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