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

Confusion in estimating Fukushima radiation

TEPCO estimate sees more radiation than NISA’s, The Yomiuri Shimbun, 24 May 12 Tokyo Electric Power Co. has estimated the total amount of radioactive substances discharged from its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant measured 760,000 terabecquerels, 1.6 times the estimate released by the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency in February. Continue reading →

May 24, 2012 Posted by | environment, Fukushima 2012, Reference | 1 Comment

Plutonium’s deadly history

The Manhattan Project’s Fatal “Demon Core”, Physics Central, May 21, 2012 Sixty six years ago today, Louis Slotin saw a flash of blue light in the depths of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Seconds before, all that separated the young scientist from a lethal dose of radiation was a thin screwdriver.

The screwdriver supported a reflective covering that encased a sphere of plutonium, and if the reflector fell into place, a nuclear chain reaction would commence. When Slotin’s hand slipped, a lethal burst of radiation hit him, and he died nine days later. Continue reading →

May 23, 2012 Posted by | - plutonium, history, Reference | Leave a comment

Majority of Americans want renewable energy, see USA politics as corrupt

the public has clearly picked up on the fact that corrupt politics is a key reason we don’t have more of that. 82% of Americans (69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 95% of Democrats) agree with this statement: “The time is now for a new, grassroots-driven politics to realize a renewable energy future.

76% of Americans Want Clean Energy Instead of Nuclear, Natural Gas, & Coal Clean Technica MAY 15, 2012 BY ZACHARY SHAHAN  Yet another recent poll showed that Americans really support clean energy, across political affiliations (though, there’s clearly more support on the left).

The ORC International survey, conducted for the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute (CSI), found that 76% of Americans (58% of Republicans, 83% of Independents, and 88% of Democrats) want to see ”a reduction in our reliance on nuclear power, natural gas and coal, and instead, launch a national initiative to boost renewable energy and energy efficiency.” (And who knows what the remaining 24% are smoking?) Continue reading →

May 18, 2012 Posted by | ENERGY, opposition to nuclear, politics, Reference | Leave a comment

New devices to detect ionising radiation

Firms say new gear visually detects radiation hot spots, Japan Times, 18 May 12, A number of companies have started marketing equipment and devices that enable inspectors to visually detect radiation hot spots.

The devices are expected to be a great help to municipalities and construction companies engaged in decontamination work in areas affected by the nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co. has developed a camera that can detect gamma rays emitted by radioactive substances 10 or more meters away. The box-shaped device, which weighs 16.8 kg and measures 34 cm in all dimensions, is highly portable, the company says.
It detects three kinds of radioactive material — cesium-134, cesium-137 and iodine-131…..
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120518b1.html

May 18, 2012 Posted by | Japan, Reference, technology | Leave a comment

Kent County Council opposes nuclear waste bunker plan

Kent nuclear waste bunker proposal considered BBC News 16 May 12  A bunker used to store nuclear waste from all over the UK could be built in Kent, under a council’s plans. Shepway District Council is examining whether a nuclear disposal facility, where waste is buried underground, could be built at Romney Marsh. The authority said it could bring jobs to the area as Dungeness A and B power stations are phased out.

However, Kent County Council said it would use “every tool in the box” to oppose the scheme. The Romney Marsh Nuclear Research and Disposal Facility would be buried 200m (656ft) to 1,000m (3,280ft) below ground…..

Council leader’s ‘horror’ The leader of Kent County Council, Paul Carter, said his authority
opposed the plan and would push for a county-wide referendum if necessary. “We are totally opposed to initiating any process that even entertains the possibility of building a nuclear waste disposal site anywhere near or around Kent,” he said. “We will do everything possible to oppose this unviable proposal and will use every tool in the box to bring an end to this scheme…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-18086988

May 17, 2012 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, Reference, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Challenge to Wyoming uranium mining project

Uranium Mining Environmental Consequences to Be Reviewed in Court, Switchboard, by Geoffrey Fettus, 14 May 12,  For decades, uranium has been mined in ways that damage our waters and land, put our communities at risk, and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-up costs.

Now, for the first time in years, the environmental community has the chance to make its case before one of the crucial federal regulators on how we can do better. The stakes are high – especially for Western communities and their groundwater.

Last fall, NRDC and our Wyoming colleagues at the Powder River Basin Resources Council (PRBRC) challenged the proposed licensing of a planned uranium mine in Crook County, Wyoming.  The mine would use a process known as “in-situ leach” mining. This method combines the mining and milling of uranium into a single step, by leaching uranium and other heavy metals off the surface of uranium-bearing rock in place.

Instead of actually digging up the uranium ore, in other words, this process extracts uranium by injecting water mixed with base solution into the rock formation in an underground aquifer, to dissolve the uranium from its host rock. The uranium-laden water flows into underground production wells and, from there, is pumped to the surface and piped to a centralized facility, which extracts the uranium.

We have written about the regulatory system and its numerous inadequacies . If you are really interested, I encourage you to read it.  In brief, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the main licensing body for in-situ leach uranium mining. We are challenging that body’s decision to issue a license for the Wyoming mine. Continue reading →

May 17, 2012 Posted by | Legal, Reference, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Finland’s plan for eternal storage of nuclear waste

there is the problem of time. HLW will remain dangerous for longer than civilization itself has existed. Future civilizations may not even have the ability to address the dangers—even if we could somehow warn them what they’re dealing with. 

Meanwhile, the construction of new nuclear facilities continues apace, even in the U.S. Earlier this year, federal regulators granted licenses to construct two new plants in Georgia, the first such licenses in the U.S. since 1978. So our waste problem, and the world’s, will only get worse. 

Finland’s Crazy Plan to Make Nuclear Waste Disappear, Popular Mechanics,  By Tim Heffernan 11 May 12, The U.S. plan to bury nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain may be dead, but in Finland, engineers are going ahead with a plan to build an enormous bunker to house the dangerous stuff. And they have a radical solution to keep future civilizations away—hide the nuclear waste somewhere so unremarkable and unpleasant that nobody would ever think to go there.   Barring a disaster—or a miracle, depending on your viewpoint—the Finnish government later this year will begin the final licensing of the world’s first permanent storage facility for high-level nuclear waste. Continue reading →

May 11, 2012 Posted by | Finland, Reference, wastes | Leave a comment

Archival test results of low level radiation do NOT show health benefits

Reactor casualties 4 – The phony lost archive versus the real one. Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, 11 May 12, In a recent issue of “Nature” claims are made of a “lost archive” of Cold War era animal tissue. The animals had been injected with radioactive isotopes in the USSR and the USA. 1,000s of animals were involved. Both nations’ governments wanted to know the effect of internalised substances which were radioactive. The claim in “Nature” involves the supposed recent “discovery” of these lost archives of tissue in both countries. Lo and behold, the quoted scientist claims that the tissue “proves” the health benefits of low dose radiation. Sound familiar?

As Aebersold and Pecher determined in 1941, there is a multiplier effect as far as internalised emitters go. Their injection of Sr89 into terminally ill people in 1941 consisted of a few milligrams of Sr89 Cl (the soluble salt) and it was found to be the equivalent to 600r whole body external x. Bone marrow depletion turned out to be the limiting factor in the treatment. So while DOE concentrates its billions of dollars of global research on low dose, low let external x, and steadfastly refuses to conduct animal injection studies of the internal emitter type substances (Pu, Sr, Cs, I, etc – the industry emissions) it CLAIMS (and I am sure the Nature article is one of theirs) that the old tissue samples in the US and USSR ALLEGEDLY prove health benefits. They don’t. Continue reading →

May 11, 2012 Posted by | health, history, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Recycling plutonium more dangerous and costly than burying it

Experts urge Britain to bury plutonium rather than recycling
http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20120510p2g00m0in010000c.html 10 May 12, WASHINGTON (Kyodo) — Four U.S. nuclear experts urged Britain to bury plutonium rather than recycling for fuel for nuclear reactors as it is more cost-effective, according to the British science journal Nature’s Thursday edition.

Citing an estimate in 2000 that recycling plutonium from spent fuel to make mixed oxide fuel adds $750 million each year to the cost of electric power generation in France, the four said, ”Britain should seriously evaluate the less costly and less risky method of direct
plutonium disposal, and take the opportunity to lead the world towards a better solution for reducing stockpiles.” Continue reading →

May 10, 2012 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference, UK | 1 Comment

Offline nuclear reactors still dangerous, need constant cooling

News Navigator: What danger is still posed by offline nuclear reactors? Answers by Taku Nishikawa, Science & Environment News Department The Mainichi, 8 May 12, As of May 5, all nuclear reactors in Japan were offline. The Mainichi answers common questions readers may have about the safety and dangers of offline nuclear plants.

Question: With the reactors offline, has the danger of nuclear accidents disappeared?

Answer: The danger is likely less than while the reactors are running, but it still exists. Nuclear plants make power by turning turbines with the heat from the chained fission of Uranium-235 in nuclear fuel.
This chained fission is stopped in an offline reactor, but fuel rods continue to release “decay heat” as various unstable nuclei created during the reactors’ operation until now naturally break down. This decay heat has to continually be removed.

Q: What will happen if it is not removed? Continue reading →

May 10, 2012 Posted by | Japan, Reference, safety, technology | Leave a comment

Not all breast cancer cases need radiation therapy

Radiation May Not Be Needed for All Breast Ca   http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/BreastCancer/32523 By Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today May 05, 2012,  Radiofrequency ablation of the breast tumor excision site could substitute for radiation therapy in selected patients, a phase II study suggested. Continue reading →

May 7, 2012 Posted by | health, Reference, USA, women | Leave a comment

The difference between a uranium nuclear weapon and a plutonium one

Uranium or plutonium?  , The Korea Times, By Andrei Lankov”….. It makes a big difference whether they test a plutonium device, as they have done twice before, or if this time we will see the first test of a uranium one. There is a major difference between the two.

Plutonium occurs naturally only in tiny quantities and hence has to be produced artificially in a nuclear reactor where it is a normal byproduct of nuclear fission. However, a nuclear reactor is a large machine which cannot possibly be hidden by the prying eyes of satellites.

If the outside world knows the technical details of the reactor, it is possible to guess its total plutonium output, from when the reactor became operational. Analysts believe that North Korea’s nuclear reactors have produced between 30 and 50 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium (enough for five to 10 nuclear bombs).

 Uranium is different. Highly-enriched uranium (HEU), which is used in nuclear weapons, is produced by enriching uranium ore. There are different technologies but most of the time a cascade of centrifuges is used, with each centrifuge in the cascade producing a more concentrated product.
Unlike unwieldy reactors, such cascades are relatively easy to hide from satellites and reconnaissance planes. There is no way to be sure that all the centrifuge cascades have been located. Therefore it is difficult to estimate the size of stockpiles of HEU in a given country, and this means that HEU is remarkably more dangerous when it comes to proliferation…..  http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2012/05/304_110408.html

May 7, 2012 Posted by | Reference, Uranium, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Thorium nuclear reactors are no solution to energy problems

It doesn’t solve the proliferation problem. It doesn’t solve the waste problem, either. So every nuclear reactor, no matter what type, creates fission products, which are highly radioactive materials, some short-lived, some long-lived

This is highly radioactive waste. If you look at Oak Ridge’s current evaluation, they say you have to condition this waste, you have to convert the fluorides, and then you have to have a deep geologic repository.

What’s in this waste? Cesium-137 and strontium-190, hundreds of years, just like today’s reactors. Cesium-135 and iodine-129, millions of years half-life. Technetium-99, 200,000 years. 

Is Thorium A Magic Bullet For Our Energy Problems?  NPR May 4 2012, “……..With me is Dr. Arjun Makhijani. He is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. He’s here in our D.C. studios. Do you agree with Richard Martin that we missed out on thorium? If we had started out with thorium, would be in better shape now?

ARJUN MAKHIJANI: I don’t think so. I think the problems of nuclear power, fundamentally, would remain. The safety problems would be different. I mean, Mr. Martin and proponents of thorium are right in the sense that the liquid fuel reactor has a number of safety advantages, but it also has a number of disadvantages. Continue reading →

May 7, 2012 Posted by | Reference, Uranium, wastes | Leave a comment

Consumers ultimately paid up for nuclear bribery in japan

Consumers ultimately footed bill, Utilities gave nuclear plant hosts billions http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120502x1.html Kyodo Electric utilities, their subsidiaries and related organizations provided at least ¥28.7 billion to local governments, mostly as donations, during the five years through to March 31, local government sources and data obtained by Kyodo News revealed.

The electric power companies incorporated most of the expenses into their electricity
charges for consumers and business clients as necessary costs for power generation. Such donations are not required to be made public and may amount to more than the latest finding revealed Tuesday, experts said. Continue reading →

May 3, 2012 Posted by | Japan, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Investors need to consider the radioactive waste problems of rare earths processing

Uranium and thorium present real risk to rare earths developers – Dennis    Mineweb 2 May Interview with Carolyn Dennis of Dundee Capital Markets   “….. TCMR: Some rare earth deposits include uranium and thorium byproducts and, if a company is not recovering those, it needs to dispose of them. Is that a challenge most REE miners face?

CD: It’s a real risk across the board for rare earth companies. Each deposit, depending on the type of mineralogy, will have varying grades of uranium and thorium. The jurisdiction the deposit is in and how it approaches dealing with the uranium, thorium and radioactivity will dictate how much of an issue it is for the project. It can be a problem in processing as well. In a lot of cases, the thorium should be removed from the concentrate earlier in the process in order to improve processing downstream. Beyond that, radioactive waste material needs to be disposed of….”

May 3, 2012 Posted by | Reference, wastes | Leave a comment

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