nuclear-news

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

India’s secretive, toxic, uranium industry and its radiation deaths

According to the uranium corporation’s own records, 17 UCIL laborers died in 1994, 14 more in 1995, 19 in 1996 and 21 in 1997; no cause of death was revealed in the records seen by the Center, but critics claim most if not all were radiation-related.

The corporation will not discuss the causes of these deaths. But a spokesman for the Jarkhandi Organization Against Radiation (JOAR), a local group formed in 1998 out of a student lobby for indigenous rights, said it has investigated these cases and that “from what we can see all of them contracted illnesses associated with radiation or exposure to heavy metals.”

India’s nuclear industry pours its wastes into a river of death and disease Scientists say nuclear workers, village residents, and children living near mines and factories are falling ill after persistent exposure to unsafe radiation Center For Public Integrity ,  By Adrian Levy  December 14, 2015  Jadugoda, Jharkhand, INDIA    “………Charting the trail of disease and ill health back to its source, Ghosh’s team learned that the alpha radiation they had recorded came from the mines, mills and fabrication plants of East Singhbhum, a district whose name means the land of the lions, where the state-owned Uranium Corporation of India Ltd is sitting on a mountain of 174,000 tons of raw uranium. The company, based in Jadugoda, a country town 160 miles west of Kolkata, is the sole source of India’s domestically-mined nuclear reactor fuel, a monopoly that has allowed it to be both combative and secretive.

After starting work in 1967 with a single mine, the corporation now controls six underground pits and one opencast operation that stretch across 1,313 hilly acres, extracting an estimated 5,000 tons of uranium ore a day, generating an annual turnover of $123 million. It supplies nine of the reactors that help India produce plutonium for its arsenal of nuclear weapons, and is thus considered vital to India’s security.

The company crushes the ore below ground and treats it with sulfuric acid, transforming it into magnesium diuranate or “yellowcake,” which is then loaded into drums and taken to the Rakha Mines railway station. From there, it is transported to the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad, 861 miles to the southwest. Workers ultimately process it into uranium dioxide pellets that are stacked in rods, inserted into reactors all over India.

Wherever uranium is extracted, anywhere in the world, from Australia to New Mexico, it is a messy, environmentally disruptive process. However, the poor quality of ore eked out of these wooded hills means that for every kilogram of uranium extracted, 1750 kilograms of toxic slurry, known as tailings, must be discarded into three, colossal ponds. Studies by scientists from North America, Australia and Europe show that while these ponds contain only small quantities of uranium, equally hazardous isotopes connected to uranium’s decay are also present, including thorium, radium, polonium and lead, some of which have a half-life of thousands of years. Arsenic is a byproduct, as is radon, a carcinogen.

The tailing ponds in Jharkhand, Ghosh’s team and other scientists discovered, have never been lined with rubble, concrete or special plastics, as organizations like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have advised for domestic ponds, and as a result their contents leached in winters into the water table. Lacking a cap, the ponds evaporated in summers, leaving a toxic dust that blew over nearby villages. Thirty five thousand people live in seven villages that lie within a mile and half of the three huge ponds, most of them members of tribal communities.

Moreover, during the monsoon season, the ponds regularly overflowed onto adjacent lands, with contaminants reaching streams and groundwater that eventually tainted the Subarnarekha River, according to studies of the issue by Ghosh’s team and other scientists. Pipes carrying radioactive slurry also frequently burst, leaching into rivers and across villages, according to photographs taken by residents. Lorries hired by the mines also dumped toxic effluent in local fields when the ponds were full, actions caught in photographs and on video taken by villagers and shown to the Center.

When Ghosh published his team’s results, there was no reaction from the mine or the Indian government. A senior official in the U.S. State Department declined to discuss the contents of Jardine’s leaked cable, but said he was aware of criticisms about the uranium corporation.

The evidence begins to pile up………  According to the uranium corporation’s own records, 17 UCIL laborers died in 1994, 14 more in 1995, 19 in 1996 and 21 in 1997; no cause of death was revealed in the records seen by the Center, but critics claim most if not all were radiation-related.

The corporation will not discuss the causes of these deaths. But a spokesman for the Jarkhandi Organization Against Radiation (JOAR), a local group formed in 1998 out of a student lobby for indigenous rights, said it has investigated these cases and that “from what we can see all of them contracted illnesses associated with radiation or exposure to heavy metals.” The spokesman, who asked the Center to withhold his name because intelligence officials and police have arrested him in the past and accused him of “anti-national activities,” claimed the number of deaths was actually “four times higher” than UCIL admitted.

Birulee contacted doctors and public health researchers at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in Delhi, one of India’s best government-funded institutions. They came up with a hypothesis about his mother’s death, blaming the family’s laundry. “My father,” Birulee said, “would bring back his cotton uniform, caked in uranium dust, to be washed once a week, as did all the other contract laborers. There were no facilities in the mines and no warnings.”

Birulee wondered how many other families had been similarly affected and, working with the JNU doctors, helped arrange for midwives to visit nearby villages. They found that 47% of women suffered disruptions to their menstrual cycle, while 18% had had miscarriages or stillborn babies over the previous 5 years. One third were infertile. Many complained their children were born with partially formed skulls, blood disorders, missing eyes or toes, fused fingers or brittle limbs. Livestock too were suffering, with veterinarians reporting that buffaloes and cows were infertile or suffering from blood disorders.

Arjun Soren was one of those affected. Born in Bhatin village, adjacent to another uranium mine on the other side of the tailing pond, Soren became the first member of the Santhal tribe to get a medical degree, and one of his first cases was to track the deteriorating health of his family. “My aunt died of cancer of the gallbladder,” Soren recalled. “My nephew has a rare blood disorder.” Then Soren himself was diagnosed with leukemia and transferred to Mumbai for treatment. “Radiation and toxins from the mining processes has to be the reason,” Soren said. “I spent my childhood playing, breathing, drinking, eating there.”………..

Birulee lodged a protest with the state’s Environment Committee, in Bihar’s capital. Its chairman, Gautam Sagar Rana, directed UCIL to finance an independent health inquiry, led by two professors from Patna Medical College, who were accompanied by the uranium conglomerate’s deputy general manager, R.P. Verma; and the head of its health unit, A.R. Khan. Analyzing a representative sample of those between 4 and 60 years old living within a mile and a half of the third tailing dam, the researchers hired by UCIL concluded that the residents were “affected by radiation.”……..http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/12/14/18844/india-s-nuclear-industry-pours-its-wastes-river-death-and-disease

December 16, 2015 Posted by | environment, health, India, Reference | Leave a comment

Nuclear fusion – a super expensive pipedream

nuclear-fusion-pie-SmThe challenges that make fusion potentially permanently decades away have been identified as threefold. The first is for the reactor to generate more energy than it takes to produce it. The second is for the reactor to produce more energy than the facility as a whole uses to make it. And the third is to actually make electricity in this fashion without going completely broke.

The False Promise of Nuclear Fusion http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/11/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-fusion/ by LINDA PENTZ GUNTER There have been some pretty radioactive climate change ideas making the rounds at the COP21 talks in Paris. Team Hansen’s wildly unrealistic notion of switching on 61 new nuclear reactors a year was taking the cake until an even fruitier one reared its familiar head: the nuclear chimera known as ITER.

ITER was originally called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, with ‘experimental’ being the operative word in that lofty title. Which is perhaps why today they refer to it only by acronym (apparently the word ‘thermonuclear’ also had some rather explosive connotations.) The official website equates ITER with its coincidental Latin meaning, ‘The Way’.

ITER was initiated in 1985 by then presidents Reagan and Gorbachev. The multi-nation project included not only the United States and the already crumbling Soviet Union, but the European Union and Japan. Today there are 35 countries in the partnership.

If it ever gets completed and actually works, ITER will be a fusion reactor known as a Tokomak. Fusion is the physicists’ wet dream, and they’ve been hallucinating about ITER for precisely three decades and Tokomaks and fusion itself for even longer.

ITER itself isn’t even the final step to electricity-producing fusion power plants. Its purpose is in “preparing the way for the fusion power plants of tomorrow.” A tomorrow that is heralded as ten years away, decade after decade. Continue reading →

December 12, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, technology | Leave a comment

Billionaires’ nuclear love affair in the ‘Breakthrough Energy Coalition’

Is Gates’s ‘Breakthrough Energy Coalition’ a nuclear spearhead?, Ecologist, Linda Pentz Gunter 6th December 2015 

“……A nuclear love-affair revealed

Gates'-travelling-Wave-NuclGates is already squandering part of his wealth on Terra Power LLC, a nuclear design and engineering company seeking an elusive, expensive and futile so-called Generation IV traveling wave reactor that can never deliver electricity in time.

Mukesh Ambani is an investor in Terra Power. Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is betting his money on the perpetually 40 years away nuclear fusion dream, which, even if it were ever to work, will be far too expensive to apply to developing countries.

Virgin Group founder, Richard Branson, publicly touts nuclear energy and put his name on Pandora’s Promise as executive producer. “We should continue to develop advanced nuclear power to add to the mix”, he said in promoting the film via the Breakthrough Institute’s website. (See our debunk of the film’s numerous errors of fact and omission.)

Chris Hohn’s TCI hedge fund invested in J-Power, a Japanese utility company whose assets included nuclear power stations. In 2008, the Japanese government barred TCI from increasing its stake in J-Power and the hedge fund withdrew.

Vinod Khosla loves nuclear power and is on record blaming environmentalists rather than nuclear energy’s obviously disastrous economics, for its failure. “Most new power plants in this country are coal, because the environmentalists opposed nuclear”, Khosla said in a 2008 interview.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma of Alibaba, was recently brought onto British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Business Advisory Group, probably not coincidentally one day before a state visit by the Chinese president to seal a deal involving China’s investment in the UK’s planned Hinkley-C nuclear power plant.

Ratan Tata’s eponymous corporation leapt at the chance of investing in nuclear energy in India with the passage of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty-violating US-India deal….. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986571/is_gatess_breakthrough_energy_coalition_a_nuclear_spearhead.html

December 7, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Germany expecting nuclear utilities to pay the costs of decommissioning and disposal of radioactive trash

nuke-reactor-deadflag_germanyGermany: Utilities Must Shoulder Nuclear Phase-Out Costs http://www.powermag.com/germany-utilities-must-shoulder-nuclear-phase-costs/ 12/01/2015 | Sonal Patel Germany’s nuclear power–producing companies will be able to shoulder the costs of the nuclear phase-out—including costs for decommissioning and the disposal of radioactive waste. That’s according to the country’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, as it published the results of a “stress test” on October 10. The government on July 1 reaffirmed that energy companies must bear the costs of dismantling their nuclear plants and concluded in October that reserves set aside by EON SE, RWE AG, Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG, Vattenfall AB, and Stadtwerke Muenchen GmbH of €38.3 billion ($41.98 billion) are within various scenarios examined during the stress test.

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Germany decreed the phase-out of all its nuclear capacity by December 2022. It shuttered eight reactors in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, and this June it closed the Grafenrheinfeld plant (Figure 3). Eight reactors remain open.

The government-commissioned study, prepared by auditing company Warth & Klein Grant Thornton AG, breaks down expected costs across five different categories, from dismantling to final storage. It finds that cost estimates made by companies are higher than the international average. Dismantling costs in Germany are estimated by the companies at €857 million ($939 million) per reactor compared to between €205 million ($224 million) and €542 million ($594 million) in other countries. If nuclear plants are dismantled in “an efficient manner,” overall costs could be slashed by about €6 billion ($6.5 billion), the auditors also said.

“We do not consider the scenarios requiring the highest provisions to be likely to materialise, as they are based on the assumption of major losses being incurred by the companies over a long period of time,” Minister Sigmar Gabriel said. Gabriel noted that the Federal Cabinet will soon establish a commission to review financing for the nuclear phase-out to adopt draft legislation on extended liability for the dismantling of nuclear power plants and the disposal of nuclear waste. The results of the stress test will be made available to the commission.

December 2, 2015 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany, Reference, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste storage in rock salt not as safe as they thought

wastes-1Nuclear waste storage sites in rock salt may be more vulnerable than previously thought, Phys Org 
November 26, 2015 Research from The University of Texas at Austin shows that rock salt, used by Germany and the United States as a subsurface container for radioactive waste, might not be as impermeable as thought or as capable of isolating nuclear waste from groundwater in the event that a capsule or storage vessel failed.

text-wise-owlA team of researchers from the university has used field testing and 3-D micro-CT imaging of laboratory experiments to show that rock salt can become permeable. Their findings, published in the Nov. 27 issue of Science, has implications for oil and gas operations, and, most notably,  storage. The team includes researchers from the university’s Cockrell School of Engineering and Jackson School of Geosciences.

“What this new information tells us is that the potential for permeability is there and should be a consideration when deciding where and how to store nuclear waste,” said Maša Prodanovic, assistant professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. “If it’s an existing nuclear waste storage site, you may want to re-evaluate it with this new information.”

Salt generally blocks fluid flow at shallow depth, a feature that allows oil reservoirs to form. But scientists have long suspected that salt becomes permeable at greater depth. Jackson School professor James E. Gardner confirmed this theory through laboratory experiments with synthetic rock salt……

The critical takeaway is that salt can develop permeability, even in absence of mining activity,” said assistant professor Marc A. Hesse of the Jackson School’s Department of Geological Sciences. “Further work is necessary to study the quantity of flow that can occur.”

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, stores low-level nuclear waste in salt beds beneath the ground. However, high-level waste from the nation’s nuclear energy sector is stored at the power plants in pools or dry casks, methods that are considered temporary solutions. For decades there has been a proposal to build a permanent central repository under Nevada’s Yucca Mountains, but that proposal has stalled because of political and regulatory hurdles. This has renewed interest in rock salt as an alternative permanent storage solution for high-level nuclear waste. In this context, the findings of the team from UT Austin provide a timely reminder that  is a dynamic material over long timescales.

Ghanbarzadeh hopes that “our discovery encourages others to ask questions about the safety of current and future disposal sites.”  http://phys.org/news/2015-11-nuclear-storage-sites-salt-vulnerable.html#jCp

November 27, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, wastes | Leave a comment

Natural greenhouse gases increase with higher temperatures: will ,accelerate global warming

highly-recommendedGlobal warming will be faster than expected http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/climate-change2015/11/151126104037.htm November 26, 2015

Source:
Linköping Universitet
Global warming will progress faster than what was previously believed. The reason is that greenhouse gas emissions that arise naturally are also affected by increased temperatures. This has been confirmed in a new study that measures natural methane emissions.
“Everything indicates that global warming caused by humans leads to increased natural greenhouse gas emissions. Our detailed measurements reveal a clear pattern of greater methane emissions from lakes at higher temperatures,” says Sivakiruthika Natchimuthu, doctoral student at Tema Environmental Change, Linköping University, Sweden, and lead author of the latest publication on this topic from her group.

Over the past two years the research team at Linköping University has contributed to numerous studies that all point in the same direction: natural greenhouse gas emissions will increase when the climate gets warmer. In the latest study the researchers examined the emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from three lakes. The effects were clear and the methane emissions increased exponentially with temperature. Their measurements show that a temperature increase from 15 to 20 degrees Celsius almost doubled the methane level. The findings was recently published in Limnology and Oceanography.

While increased anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are expected and included in climate predictions, the future development of the natural emissions has been less clear.

Now knowledge of a vicious circle emerge: greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels lead to higher temperatures, which in turn lead to increased natural emissions and further warming.

“We’re not talking about hypotheses anymore. The evidence is growing and the results of the detailed studies are surprisingly clear. [DB1] The question is no longer if the natural emissions will increase but rather how much they will increase with warming,” says David Bastviken, professor at Tema Environmental Change, Linköping University.

This means that warming will be faster than expected from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions alone. According to Professor Bastviken this also means that any reductions in anthropogenic greenhouse emissions is a double victory, by both reducing the direct effect on warming, but also by preventing the feedback with increased natural emissions.

 

November 27, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, Reference | 1 Comment

Coal ash is NOT more radioactive than nuclear waste

text-radiationCoal ash is NOT more radioactive than nuclear waste http://www.cejournal.net/?p=410   The idea that coal ash is 100 times more radioactive than nuclear waste has been making the rounds among bloggers and Twitterers discussing the coal ash catastrophe in Tennessee, thanks to a headline which makes that assertion in Scientific American online. In fact, Google the words in the headline and you’ll come up with dozens of Web sites that have repeated this statement.

The problem is that it is a profoundly preposterous idea unsupported by a single shred of evidence. Continue reading →

November 27, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Declaration of the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima

The world nuclear victims forum was held at Hiroshima.
“A charter of world Nuclear Victim’s rights” was adopted. https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10154396267119937&id=685379936
世界核被害者フォーラム

Declaration of the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima
(Draft Elements of a Charter of World Nuclear Victims’ Rights)
November 23, 2015

1. We, participants in the World Nuclear Victims Forum, gathered in Hiroshima from November 21 to 23 in 2015, 70 years after the atomic bombings by the US government.
2. We define the rights of nuclear victims in the narrow sense of not distinguishing between victims of military and industrial nuclear use, including victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of nuclear testing, as well as victims of exposure to radiation and radioactive contamination created by the entire process including uranium mining and milling, and nuclear development, use and waste. In the broad sense, we confirm that until we end the nuclear age, any person anywhere could at any time become a victim=a Hibakusha, and that nuclear weapons, nuclear power and humanity cannot coexist.
3. We recall that the radiation, heat and blast of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sacrificed not only Japanese but also Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese and people from other countries there as a result of Japan’s colonization and invasion, and Allied prisoners of war. Continue reading →

November 27, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Japan, politics international, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Is nuclear power competitive? Actually – NO!

scrutiny-on-costsNuclear Power Is No Fix for Climate, Energy Intelligence, M.V. Ramana, 27 Nov 15

“…….The primary constraint on the growth of nuclear power is economic competitiveness. Nuclear power is an expensive source of power, and expensive in two ways. The first is a result of the high cost of constructing a nuclear power plant; unlike, for example, natural gas-based plants, this construction cost is the dominant contribution to the economics of nuclear energy. While these high costs have been known for some decades now, around the turn of this century, when there was talk of a nuclear “renaissance,” nuclear promoters claimed that there were new ways of reducing capital costs through improved design and construction methods. Studies produced by nuclear industry organizations and academic institutions typically assumed that a 1,000 megawatt reactor would cost around $1,500 to $2,000 per kilowatt, or $2 billion.

Once actual projects were on the drawing board, however, these hypothetical numbers moved quickly north. In Europe, two French-led flagship projects were initially estimated at around $2,250-$2,475/kW in the case of the Olkiluoto-3 reactor in Finland in 2004, and around $2,600/kW in the case of the Flamanville plant in France in 2006, both higher than the figures assumed by the academic and industry studies. In the US, cost estimates by electric utilities building reactors were higher — the corresponding initial estimates for two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors under construction at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia were $4,700/kW, for just the nuclear reactor, and $6,412/kW, when the other costs associated with the project were included.

When construction actually started, those numbers were soon obsolete and costs once again rose. Today, as work on these projects continues and completion dates are extended well beyond original dates, the cost estimates keep rising. As of early 2015, Vogtle’s total cost was estimated at around $7,300/kW. Likewise, the costs of the two European projects have more than doubled. The story is similar in Russia, India and China, although the starting cost estimates were lower.

Original construction timelines now seem completely absurd. Olkiluoto-3’s construction time went from four years to 13 and Flamanville-3 from five to 11. One of the Koodankulam reactors in southern India took 12 years to be commissioned, in comparison with the initial estimate of six years; the second one is yet to start operating, and the construction period count there is upwards of 13 years. All of these experiences should serve as reminders that cost and time overruns for reactor construction, long the bugbears of the nuclear industry, have not been exorcised by modern construction and manufacturing methods.

The industry typically attempts to explain these cost and time overruns as the result of teething problems in first-of-a-kind projects and argues that as more projects get under way these problems will be sorted out. Unfortunately, historical experience belies this expectation: Nuclear construction costs have typically gone up, not down, as more reactors are built, and this trend has been extensively documented in the US, France and India. The tendency toward increased costs despite experience is being demonstrated currently, with the estimated cost of a planned French reactor at Hinkley Point in the UK higher than estimates for the same reactor at Flamanville and Olkiluoto, and with the estimated cost of the Russian reactors proposed to be constructed in Turkey and in Bangladesh being higher than the Koodankulam reactors in India.

Higher Generating Costs

For a long time now, the nuclear industry had a comforting answer to this problem of high construction costs: it may take a lot, both of time and money, to build a reactor, but once built and paid for, the reactor will generate low-cost electricity that can be sold for handsome profits. The experiences of the last few years have burst that bubble. Marginal costs associated with producing nuclear electricity have been rising, to the point that some utilities are doing the unthinkable: shutting down nuclear reactors even though their licenses would allow them to operate for a decade or more beyond the planned shutdown date.

Annual expenditures in the US averaged for the whole fleet — not counting initial construction costs, which have largely been paid off — cover fuel purchases, salaries for workers and activities like uprating generation capacity, replacing equipment and regulatory work. The total is in the vicinity of $40 to $45 per megawatt hour, which should be seen in the context of recent bids for new solar photovoltaic projects (including the cost of recouping initial construction expenditures) that are around $50/MWh, and even lower than $40/MWh in some parts of the country. These higher-than-expected nuclear generating costs and the falling costs of competing sources of electricity explain why in the past few years US utilities have decided to prematurely shut down at least eight reactors — particularly stand-alone single units that don’t enjoy the economies of scale of plants with two or more reactors.

Across the Atlantic, Vattenfall, the Swedish state-owned utility, is closing down two reactors at the Ringhals nuclear power plant earlier than planned. Another large utility, E.On, justified its decision to shut down two of the reactors at Sweden’s Oskarshamn power plant by saying that “there are no prospects of generating financial profitability either in the short or the long term.” Although there have been no shutdowns yet in France, its audit court, Cour des Comptes, estimated that production costs for EDF’s 58 reactors had risen from €49.6 to €59.8/MWh between 2010 and 2013. The company has also been selling much less electricity to its competitors than in earlier years, leading analysts to conclude that “nuclear energy is less competitive than it was in the past.” This, in France, the country most reliant on nuclear power — and which has also decided to pare back nuclear’s contribution to its overall generation from just under 80% to 50% by 2025……….. http://www.energyintel.com/pages/worldopinionarticle.aspx?DocID=906841

November 27, 2015 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, Reference | Leave a comment

Mini nuclear reactors – costly, and need costly security – while renewables get cheaper

But for all the activity, the nascent SMR industry faces familiar nuclear challenges: cost, public acceptability, security and waste disposal. The nuclear industry has a long record of broken promises over cost

Developing SMRs is not going to be cheap either …40-70 SMRs would need to be ordered to make building a factory worthwhile…….. All the while, the competition from renewable energy gets hotter as it falls in price.

Security is also a key issue for nuclear plants….The challenge for SMRs is that security costs soar relative to power output if there are small reactors in many locations to protect.

text-SMRsAre mini-nuclear reactors the answer to the climate change crisis?
Industry looks to the UK to develop factory-built reactors ready to provide affordable, low-carbon energy wherever it is needed – but issues around security and waste disposal remain, Guardian, , 24 Nov 15  Mini nuclear power plants could be trucked into a town near you to provide your hot water, or shipped to any country that wants to plug them into their electricity grid from the dock. That is the aim of those developing “small modular reactors” and, from the US to China to Poland, they want the UK to be at the centre of the nascent industry. The UK government says it is “fully enthused” about the technology.

With UN climate change summit in Paris imminent, the question of how to keep the lights on affordably, while cutting emissions, is pressing.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) aim to capture the advantages of nuclear power – always-on, low-carbon energy – while avoiding the problems, principally the vast cost and time taken to build huge plants. Current plants, such as the plannedFrench-Chinese Hinkley Point project in Somerset, have to be built on-site, a task likened to “building a cathedral within a cathedral”. Continue reading →

November 25, 2015 Posted by | Reference, technology | Leave a comment

Birth defects from nuclear radiation

The first documented excesses of congenital anomalies were among children of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

The 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl produced numerous reports of certain congenital anomalies among populations subject to fallout from the stricken reactor

anencephaly

Open Journal of Pediatrics
Vol.05 No.01(2015), Article ID:54828,13 pages
10.4236/ojped.2015.51013

Changes in Congenital Anomaly Incidence in West Coast and Pacific States (USA) after Arrival of Fukushima Fallout   Joseph Mangano*, Janette D. Sherman

Radiation and Public Health Project, New York, USA 

ABSTRACT

Radioactive fallout after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown entered the U.S. environment within days; levels of radioactivity were particularly elevated in the five western states bordering on the Pacific Ocean. The particular sensitivity of the fetus to radiation exposure, and the ability of radioisotopes to attach to cells, tissues, and DNA raise the question of whether fetuses/newborns with birth defects with the greater exposures suffered elevated harm during the period after the meltdown.

We compare rates of five congenital anomalies for 2010 and 2011 births from April-November. The increase of 13.00% in the five western states is significantly greater than the 3.77% decrease for all other U.S. states combined (CI 0.030 – 0.205, p < 0.008). Consistent patterns of elevated increases are observed in the west (20 of 21 comparisons, 6 of which are statistically significant/borderline significant), by state, type of birth defect, month of birth, and month of conception.

While these five anomalies are relatively uncommon (about 7500 cases per year in the U.S.), sometimes making statistical significance difficult to achieve, the consistency of the results lend strength to the analysis, and suggest fetal harm from Fukushima may have occurred in western U.S. states.

1. Introduction

The harmful effects of radiation exposure to chromosomes have been known for nearly a century, starting with the discovery of chromosomal deformities in irradiated fruit flies [1] . Experiments with mice [2] [3] and rats [4] confirmed this knowledge, and documented elevated risk for congenital defects, at relatively low doses of exposure. Populations exposed to pre-conception X-rays have been shown to have higher congenital anomalies [5] as were those living in areas with relatively high background radiation [6] [7] .

One form of radiation, byproducts of uranium or plutonium fission, was first introduced into the environment from weapons and reactors seven decades ago [8] -[10] . These isotopes bind with cells, tissues, and DNA of the unborn, and thus risks of congenital defects in irradiated populations have been studied. The first documented excesses of congenital anomalies were among children of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. [8] -[10] . During the 1950s, reports of various defects among newborns in the Marshall Islands, the site of 67 large-scale U.S. nuclear weapons tests, were made public. Other studies found links with between atmospheric tests and elevated birth defects, including a high rate of Down Syndrome in northwest England in 1963-1964, the peak period of global fallout from tests [11] . Another report documented elevated birth defect incidence near the Hanford nuclear weapons plant in Washington state (USA) [12] .

The 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl produced numerous reports of certain congenital anomalies among populations subject to fallout from the stricken reactor. One documented a doubling of congenital developmental anomalies among infants born to fathers who worked as liquidators to contain the meltdown [13] . Various analyses presented elevated congenital anomaly rates in various parts of the Belarus region, which received the greatest doses of radioactivity from the meltdown, in the years following Chernobyl [14] -[22] . Other research also found high birth defect rates in the Ukraine [23] [24] , Bulgaria [25] , Croatia [26] , and Germany [27] -[30] including areas with fallout levels well below those Belarussian sites closest to the reactor.

Post-Chernobyl studies also identified elevated rates of specific anomalies, the most-analyzed of which was Down syndrome (Trisomy-21), mostly in Germany [31] -[39] . Other conditions included neural tube defects in Turkey [40] -[43] , cleft lip/palate in Germany [44] [45] , and anencephaly in Turkey [46] . Meta-analyses concluded that a pattern of elevated congenital anomaly rates was associated with exposure to the Chernobyl meltdown [47] -[49] .

No published reports exist on the change in congenital defects rates in Japan after the March 2011 meltdown at Fukushima. However, at least one report examines morphological abnormality rates in aphids in the first sexual reproduction period after the meltdown, and found a 13.2% rate close to Fukushima vs. 3.8% in seven control areas [50] .

Changes in the rate of one type of birth defect, congenital hypothyroidism, have been reported. In the five U.S. states bordering on the Pacific Ocean, with the most elevated levels of environmental radiation after the meltdown, a 16% increase in incidence of the disorder was observed in the nine months following the meltdown, compared to a 3% decrease in 36 other U.S. states [51] . The gap was particularly large (28% increase vs. a 4% decrease) in the first 14 weeks after the arrival of fallout. In addition, the rate of California newborns with a Thyroid Stimulating Hormone score of 19 micro international units per milliliter of blood during initial screening, was 27% greater in the nine months after the meltdown compared to other periods in 2011-2012 [52] . The known affinity for radioactive iodine to attack cell membranes and DNA in the thyroid gland indicates a potential link between Fukushima fallout and congenital hypothyroidism.

Historical reports linking exposure to ionizing radiation with congenital anomaly risk, plus the initial reports on congenital hypothyroidism in the western U.S. suggest further analysis be conducted on other birth defects.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes national data collected by state health departments on incidence of five congenital anomalies in the nation. These include Anencephaly, Cleft Lip/Pa- late, Down Syndrome, Omphalocele/Gastroschisis, and Spina Bifida/Meningocele [53] . Approximately 7500 cases of these five defects occur in the U.S. each year. As of mid-2014, the CDC web site contained complete birth defect data for the years 2007 to 2012.

These five specific anomalies to be addressed in this report, merit some discussion, including their suspected link with radiation exposure………http://file.scirp.org/Html/13-1330400_54828.htm

November 21, 2015 Posted by | children, Reference | 2 Comments

17 year delay before USA govt even starts cleanup of Hanford radioactive waste

exclamation-Flag-USAU.S. government proposes 17-year delay in start of Hanford nuclear tank cleanup — until 2039 http://www.latimes.com/science/la-na-hanford-delay-20151118-story.html  Ralph VartabedianContact Reporter, 19 Nov 15 

The Energy Department has proposed a 17-year delay in building a complex waste treatment plant at its radioactively contaminated Hanford site in Washington state, pushing back the full start-up for processing nuclear bomb waste to 2039.

Hanford-waste-tanks

The department submitted the 29-page plan in federal court as part of a suit to amend an agreement with the state that requires the plant to start operating in 2022.

A series of serious technical questions about the plant’s design have caused one delay after another. Two of the major facilities at the cleanup site, which resembles a small industrial city, are under a construction halt ordered in 2013 by then-Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The plant, located on a desert plateau above the Columbia River, is designed to transform 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge, currently stored in underground tanks, into solid glass that could theoretically be stored for thousands of years.

The waste was a byproduct of plutonium production, which started with the Manhattan Project during World War II.

The 586-square-mile Hanford site is widely considered the most contaminated place in the country, requiring 8,000 workers to remediate half a century of careless industrial practices that were done under strict federal secrecy. The Energy Department filing shows the extent of the problems. Continue reading →

November 20, 2015 Posted by | Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Deep nuclear waste burial plan approved by Finland’s government

flag-FinlandDeep Storage Plans Approved. IEEE Spectrum  By Lucas Laursen 17 Nov 2015 Finland’s government issued a construction license to nuclear disposal consortium Posiva last week, Reuters reported. The license gives the group approval to build a storage facility on Olkiluoto Island, Finland, designed to last 100,000 years.

 

waste burial Olkiluoto Island

The facility would be the first of its kind in the world. Since the beginning of the nuclear power age, energy firms have paid to store nuclear waste in temporary holding ponds unlikely to last more than a couple of centuries.  The Posiva facility, decades in the planning, may pioneer a more sustainable era of disposal. (See “Finland’s Nuclear Waste Solution,” IEEE Spectrum, December 2009.)

Nuclear waste consists of metal rods composed mostly of uranium with a molecular weight of 238. Over time, the depleted uranium atoms release radioactive particles—a process called decay—that converts the uranium into lighter elements. Over billions of years, those atoms decay, too. By the end, all that is left is lead.

In the (long) meantime, however, the radioactive material can contaminate its surroundings, and therefore requires costly management. The United States and other nuclear-powered countries have thus far proven unable to agree on where to store their half-century’s worth of accumulated nuclear waste. An earthquake, volcanic activity, or even a slow leak of water could disrupt the temporary facilities in which the waste now sits.

To provide safer and more permanent storage, Posiva proposes to bury electrically-welded iron-and-copper capsules 400 meters underground. The capsules would be surrounded by clay barriers and capped with rubble and cement. The facility, which would have a 6,500 metric ton capacity, could likely hold Finland and Sweden’s projected future nuclear waste. But that capacity doesn’t come close to the volume required by larger nations such as the United States, which has over 70,000 metric tons of waste piled up, and produces an additional 2,200 tons a year.

Though tunneling has been going on for over a decade, Posiva had to wait for the Finnish government to approve its 2012 construction permit application before it could begin the trickier task of loading radioactive waste into its metal coffins. That task may begin as soon as 2023, continue for up to a century, and end when operators fill in the access tunnels with rubble and cap them off with cement. Posiva estimates that installation and operating costs for the first century will be around €3 billion (US $3.21 billion). http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/nuclear-waste-deep-storage-plans-approved

November 18, 2015 Posted by | Finland, Reference, wastes | 1 Comment

Finland’s nuclear waste burial plan

flag-Finlandwastes-1Finland’s Nuclear Waste Solution. IEEE Spectrum,  By Sandra Upson 30 Nov 2009 Here on Olkiluoto Island, the forest is king. Elk and deer graze near sun-dappled rivers and shimmering streams, and humans search out blueberries and chanterelle mushrooms. Weathered red farmhouses sit along sleepy dirt roads in fields abutting the woods. Far beneath the vivid green forest, deep in the bedrock, workers are digging the labyrinthine passages and chambers that they hope to someday pack with all of Finland’s spent nuclear fuel.

Posiva, the Finnish company building an underground repository here, says it knows how to imprison nuclear waste for 100 000 years. These multimillennial thinkers are confident that copper canisters of Scandinavian design, tucked into that bedrock, will isolate the waste in an underground cavern impervious to whatever the future brings: sinking permafrost, rising water, earthquakes, copper-eating microbes, or oblivious land developers in the year 25 000. If the Finnish government agrees—a decision is expected by 2012—this site will become the world’s first deep, permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel.

Of course, not everyone shares Posiva’s confidence. ”It’s deep hubris to think you can contain it,” says Charles McCombie, executive director of the Association for Regional and International Underground Storage, based in Switzerland.

There’s more at stake here than the interment of 5500 metric tons of spent Finnish fuel. More than 50 years after the first commercial nuclear power plants went operational in the United Kingdom and the United States, the world’s 270 000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel remain in limbo. After it gets swapped out of a reactor, utilities put it in specially designed pools, where chilled, circulating water absorbs the initial heat and radioactivity. After about five or six years, the fuel has cooled considerably, enabling utilities with limited pool space to load it into huge, million-dollar steel casks that are left to sit on concrete pads within guarded compounds.

The arrangement is far from ideal. Continue reading →

November 18, 2015 Posted by | Finland, Reference, wastes | 2 Comments

Travel to Mars completely stalled by reality of radiation danger

text ionisingSpace Radiation Is Quietly Stopping Us From Sending Humans to Mars
In order to create a colony, we need to be able to survive a long trip through space. Neel V. Patel, November 17, 2015 Innumberable dangers threaten human astronauts traveling into deep space. Some of these, like asteroids, are obvious and avoidable with some decent LIDAR. Others aren’t. At the top of the not-so-much list is space radiation, something NASA is in no way prepared to protect explorers from while ferrying them to Mars. The radiation environment beyond the magnetosphere is not conducive to life, meaning sending astronauts out there without protection is equivalent to sending them to their doom.

While we’ve sent astronauts into space for over half a century now, the vast majority of these missions have been limited to traveling into low Earth orbit — between 99 and 1,200 miles in altitude. The Earth’s magnetic field — which extends thousands of miles into space — protects the planet from being hit head-on by high-energy solar particles traveling over one million miles per hour.

There are three big sources of space radiation, and they all pose a certain amount of risk that can’t always be anticipated or protected against. The first is trapped radiation. Some particles don’t get deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field. Instead, they’re trapped in one of the big two magnetic rings surrounding the Earth, and accumulate together as part of the Van Allen radiation belts. NASA has only had to contend with the Van Allen belts during the Apollo missions.

The second source is galactic cosmic radiation, or GCR, which originates from outside the solar system. These ionized atoms travel at basically the speed of light, although Earth’s magnetic field is also able to protect the planet and objects in low Earth orbit from GCR.

The last source is from solar particle events, which are huge injections energetic particles produced by the sun. There’s a distinction between the solar winds normally emitted by the sun, which take about a day to get to the Earth, and these higher-intensity events that hit us within 10 minutes. Besides producing a potentially lethal amount of radiation for astronauts, SPE can sometimes be wildly unpredictable, making it difficult for NASA scientists and engineers to develop protective measures against them.

NASA examines space radiation the way employers determine acceptable risks for their employees — they will not subject astronauts to an occupational risk of developing cancer beyond a certain threshold……. Continue reading →

November 18, 2015 Posted by | radiation, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »