Concerns over reliability, safety, chemistry of planned Advanced Boiling Water Nuclear Reactors (ABWR)
No2NuclearPower nuClear news No.77, September 2015 ABWRs According to World Nuclear News (WNN) there are four operable Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWR) in Japan while two more are under construction. Another two are being built in Taiwan and two planned for Lithuania, although another two have been shelved in the USA. The design is already licensed in Japan and the USA. WNN points out, disturbingly that ABWRs can run on a full core of mixed oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel, raising the prospect of armed plutonium shipments travelling from Sellafield to Anglesey and Gloucestershire. (6)No proper assessment of radioactive iodine in Fukushima food and water
no iodine would be detectable at all, it was announced that a whole body counter study will begin to measure the internal exposure dose of Fukushima residents. Now, however, dose assessment is said to be impossible due to “the lack of direct measurements in residents immediately after the accident.” Government experts should have been well aware of the half-life of iodine 131. Why did they not conduct a thorough survey at the time while iodine 131 was still detectable?
Oshidori Mako Interviews Experts Regarding Excess Occurrence of Pediatric Thyroid Cancer in Fukushima, Fukushima Voice, English Version 6 Aug 15,”…….Issue to be considered #3: Experts now doubt that excess thyroid cancer in Fukushima children is due to “screening effect”
Oshidori Mako Interviews Experts Regarding Excess Occurrence of Pediatric Thyroid Cancer in Fukushima, Fukushima Voice, English Version 6 Aug 15, “………Issue to be considered #2: Disposal of nuclear waste turning out to be half the cost of reprocessing with MOX fuel
Disposal beats MOX in US comparison http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-Disposal-beats-MOX-in-US-comparison-2108151.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 21 August 2015
America is reconsidering how it will dispose of 34 tonnes of plutonium as the previous plan involving a MOX plant has been said to be twice as costly as a dilution and disposal option in a leaked Department of Energy (DOE) report.
The plutonium arises from a June 2000 nuclear weapons reduction agreement with Russia under which both countries would put 34 tonnes of plutonium beyond military use. Russia opted to use its plutonium as fuel for fast reactors generating power at Beloyarsk.
The USA, meanwhile, decided to build a mixed-oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel plant at Savannah River, where the plutonium would be mixed with uranium and made into fuel for light-water reactors. The design is similar to Areva’s Melox facility at Marcoule, but modified to handle metal plutonium ‘pits’ from US weapons and their conversion from metal to plutonium oxide. It is this part of the process that has been problematic. Construction started in 2007 with an estimated cost of $4.9 billion but work ran into serious trouble before being ‘zeroed’ in the DOE’s 2014 budget, putting development on ice.
The Union of Concerned Scientists yesterday published what it said was an unreleased DOE report that compared the cost of completing the MOX plant to other options. Use in fast reactors was considered briefly, but with this technology not readily available in the near term, the prime comparison was against a ‘dilution and disposal’ option which would see the plutonium mixed with inert materials and disposed of in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, in New Mexico.
Despite being 60% built, the MOX plant still needs some 15 years of construction work, said the leaked report, and then about three years of commissioning. Once in operation the plant would work through the plutonium over about 10 years with this 28-year program to cost $700-800 million per year – a total of $19.6-22.4 billion on top of what has already been spent. Not only is the price tag very high, but the timescale is too long: the report said this would not meet the disposal timeframe agreed with Russia.
The cost of the MOX plant could not be mitigated by income from sales of the MOX fuel because the regulatory process to gain approval to use MOX would be too burdensome for a commercial utility. The report said “it may be unlikely” that even a utility in a regulated market where fuel costs are passed on to consumers would “bear the risk of MOX fuel even if it is free”.
Dilution and disposal would cost $400 million per year, said the report, “over a similar duration” as MOX, working out at close to half the cost. Other advantages for dilution and disposal are that it requires no new facilities to be created or decommissioned after use, although the increase in WIPP disposal means “it may eventually become desirable to explore expansion of WIPP’s capacity” beyond currently legislated limits. This unique geologic disposal facility was said to be of “tremendous value to both DOE and the State of New Mexico”.
International Research Team studies Fukushima contaminants in seafloor sediments
Examining the fate of Fukushima contaminants, Science Daily,
Fraction of buried, ocean sediment uncovered by typhoons, carried offshore by currents August 18, 2015, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- Summary:
- An international research team reports results of a three-year study of sediment samples collected offshore from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The research aids in understanding what happens to Fukushima contaminants after they are buried on the seafloor off coastal Japan. Scientists found that a small fraction of contaminated seafloor sediments off Fukushima are moved offshore by typhoons that resuspend radioactive particles in the water.
- An international research team reports results of a three-year study of sediment samples collected offshore from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in a new paper published August 18, 2015, in the American Chemical Society’s journal,Environmental Science and Technology.
The research aids in understanding what happens to Fukushima contaminants after they are buried on the seafloor off coastal Japan.
Led by Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist and marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the team found that a small fraction of contaminated seafloor sediments off Fukushima are moved offshore by typhoons that resuspend radioactive particles in the water, which then travel laterally with southeasterly currents into the Pacific Ocean.
“Cesium is one of the dominant radionuclides that was released in unprecedented amounts with contaminated water from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami,” says Buesseler. “A little over 99 percent of it moved with the water offshore, but a very small fraction–less than one percent–ended up on the sea floor as buried sediment.”
“We’ve been looking at the fate of that buried sediment on the continental shelf and tracking how much of that contaminated sediment gets offshore through re-suspension from the ocean bottom,” he adds.
The research team, which included colleagues from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, analyzed three years’ worth of data collected from time-series sediment traps……….
-
“The total transport is small, though it is readily detectable. One percent or less of the contaminated sediment that’s moving offshore every year means things aren’t going to change very fast,” Buesseler says. “What’s buried is going to stay buried for decades to come. And that’s what may be contributing to elevated levels of cesium in fish–particularly bottom-dwelling fish off Japan.”
While there were hundreds of different radionuclides released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant during the disaster, after the initial decay of contaminants with half lives (the time it takes for one half of a given amount of radionuclide to decay) less than days to weeks, much of the attention has remained focused on cesium-137 and-134– two of the more abundant contaminants. Cesium-134 has a half-life of a little over two years, and so any found in the ocean could come only from the reactors at Fukushima. Cesium-137 has a half-life of roughly 30 years and is also known to have entered the Pacific as a result of aboveground nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and ’60s, providing a benchmark against which to measure any additional releases from the reactors.
In October, Buesseler and the research team will return to Japan to redeploy more sediment traps. The continued study will help estimate how long it takes to decrease the level of radiocesium in seafloor sediments near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150818112431.htm
Uranium: a genetic poison that targets DNA
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Third Nuclear Atrocity: the Corruption of Science, CounterPunch, by CHRIS BUSBY 19 AUG 15 “……… The origin was the “black rain” which contained Uranium-235, Uranium-238 and particularly Uranium-234, which is the missing exposure, and is probably responsible for most of the cancer effects in all the survivors. We know that the Uranium was there because it was measured by Japanese scientists in 1983.
A recently declassified US document tabulates the enormous U-234 content of the enriched Uranium used in the bombs, codename: Oralloy. The Uranium nanoparticles in the Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) black rain were available for inhalation by all the exposure groups in the ruins of Hiroshima for years after the bomb.
All the bombs were made of Uranium, about 1 ton per Megaton yield. For all those tests in Nevada, the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan, Christmas Island, the results were the same: down came the nanoparticles to be inhaled by anyone nearby and distant.
Why does this matter? New research has been carried out on Uranium. We find that Uranium targets DNA through chemical affinity. This causes terrible and anomalous genetic damage, out or all proportion to its “dose” as calculated by ICRP. Other fallout components also bind chemically to DNA, e.g. Strontium-90, Barium-140.
Those exposed: Uranium miners, Gulf Veterans, Test Veterans, DU civilians, Nuclear Uranium workers, Nuclear Site downwinders, all suffer chromosome damage, cancer, leukemia, heart disease, the works. All this is published, as are the results of laboratory and theoretical studies showing mechanisms. But in the Lancet: nothing.
S L Simon and A Bouville who wrote the article on the health effects of the nuclear testing did not even mention Uranium there, nor in their epic 2010 study of the Marshall Islands exposures. The Nevada site data that they used for their baseline calculations ignored it totally.
In 2012, I made a presentation for the Marshall Islanders at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, attacking the Simon et al analysis. In their Lancet nuclear test article, Simon and Bouville major on Iodine effects. So let’s look at those.
Scientific evidence from Fukushima: massive excess of thyroid cancers
In Fukushima Prefecture, surveys have confirmed 103 thyroid cancers in 380,000 18-year olds (25 or so are still being checked out). The Lancet article by Wakeford et al. presents an excess Relative Risk culled from the Hiroshima studies of 0.6 per Sievert (Fig 2 p 473). In the very same issue, the maximum thyroid dose was given as 18mSv with the median dose as 0.67mSv.
So in the two years of screening, if everyone screened got the maximum thyroid dose of 18mSv we should expect an increase of 0.018 x 0.6 = 0.011, a 1.1% increase in the background rate. This background is about 1 per 100,000 per year or 7.6 in two years in 380,000. So the radiation should increase this to 7.7 cases (i.e. one extra case in 10 years).
There are 103, that is 95 more cases than expected, an error in the ICRP model of 95/0.14 = 678-fold. That is, there are 678 times more thyroid cancers than the Hiroshima-based ICRP model predicts.
This calculation is based on what was written in The Lancet – but nobody made the calculation. This on its own should show the authorities (and the public) that the game is up. But instead of doing the simple calculation, another article in The Lancet, written by Geoff Watts, praises the work of those at Fukushima Medical University, who are busy telling everyone that the increases in thyroid cancer cannot be caused by the radiation.
In other words, once again, the predictions from Hiroshima are believed, rather than the evidence in front of their eyes. It’s a kind of mass hypnosis (or maybe not)…….” http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/19/after-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-a-third-nuclear-atrocity-the-corruption-of-science/
Science corrupted in the cause of promoting the nuclear industry
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a Third Nuclear Atrocity: the Corruption of Science, CounterPunch, by CHRIS BUSBY 19 AUG 15 On the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, articles are appearing everywhere discussing the historical, philosophical, scientific, public health and social meaning of this event (I almost wrote ‘war crime’).
The bombings can be extrapolated onward in time through the atmospheric testing fallout and Chernobyl, to the more recent contamination in Japan after Fukushima.
Today, the analysis of the health risks from the Japanese A-Bombs is being cleverly twisted to provide a rationale for the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not just some historical tableaux that we can weep crocodile tears over, and discuss as socio-historic phenomena.
They are here today, present as ghosts, in all the manipulations and devious calculations made by the international radiation risk agencies and nuclear-industry scientists giving results that continue to permit the release into the environment of the same deadly substances that emerged for the first time in 1945.
Abusing Hiroshima to deny nuclear bomb health damage
I am currently presenting a case for the British Atomic Test veterans in the Royal Courts of Justice in London. The case pivots on the faulty radiation and health risk model that is based on the Lifespan Study of the Japanese A-Bomb survivors. Continue reading
America and Churchill planned huge pre emptive nuclear strike on USSR
Unthinkable as it may seem, Churchill’s plan literally won the hearts and minds of US policy makers and military officials.
These “first-strike” plans developed by the Pentagon were aimed at destroying the USSR without any damage to the United States.
The 1949 Dropshot plan envisaged that the US would attack Soviet Russia and drop at least 300 nuclear bombs and 20,000 tons of conventional bombs on 200 targets in 100 urban areas, including Moscow and Leningrad (St. Petersburg)
the Kennedy administration introduced significant changes to the plan, insisting that the US military should avoid targeting Soviet cities and had to focus on the rival’s nuclear forces alone.
Post WW2 World Order: US Planned to Wipe USSR Out by Massive Nuclear Strike, Sputnik News. Ekaterina Blinova. 15 Aug 15, Was the US deterrence military doctrine aimed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War era really “defensive” and who actually started the nuclear arms race paranoia?
Interestingly enough, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff to develop a strategy targeting the USSR months before the end of the Second World War. The first edition of the plan was prepared on May 22, 1945. In accordance with the plan the invasion of Russia-held Europe by the Allied forces was scheduled on July 1, 1945.
Winston Churchill’s Operation Unthinkable The plan, dubbed Operation Unthinkable, stated that its primary goal was “to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire. Even though ‘the will’ of these two countries may be defined as no more than a square deal for Poland, that does not necessarily limit the military commitment.” Continue reading
Nuclear nations raise “allowable” limits of ionising radiation – knowing that this is unsafe
damchodronma, 15 Aug 15, This is why the policy of nuclear nations is to raise ‘allowable’ limits for nuclear workers and the population generally when there are accidents… and since Atomic Age began. Contamination gets worse, it is worse for all life, but nothing about it is really safe or acceptable. It’s propaganda.
“The evidence from the Chernobyl affected territories reveals the real-world consequences of a simple and terrible new discovery: that the effects of low dose internal irradiation cause subtle changes in the genome that result in an increase in the general mutation rate. … first seen in cells in the laboratory. The Chernobyl evidence, shows that this seems to be true for all species, for plants and
animals and humans. It has profound implications that go beyond radiation protection and risk models.
“Krysanov …find that mice living in the high irradiation zone, 22 generations after the initial exposure, are MORE radiosensitive than mice living in lower exposure areas. The same effect is reported for plants by Grodzhinsky who wryly points out that plants cannot exhibit the ‘radiophobia’ that many of the Chernobyl effects have been blamed on. This flies in the face of current ideas about genetic selection.
“The effects of genomic instability are apparent in the evidence of massive harm to the organs and systems of living creatures at low doses of internal exposure, resulting in a kind of radiation ageing associated with random mutations in all cells. At the higher doses in the ‘liquidators’, after some years, their bodies seem to simply fall apart. In an astonishing statement we hear from Yablokov that in Moscow 100% of the liquidators are sick, in Leningrad 85%. These are men that ran like hares into the radiation fields with improvised lead waistcoats cut from roofs and who, by stabilising the situation at the reactor, saved Europe from a nuclear explosion equivalent to 50 Hiroshima Bombs – an outcome that would have made most of it uninhabitable. They are forgotten.
[THEY SIMPLY FALL APART]
“WHOLE BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS COLLAPSE; at the cell level, at the tissue level and at the population level. Burlakova and Nazarov describe these subtle effects at lower doses of internal irradiation in laboratory cell systems and also people, Grodzhinsky shows the effects in plants, – higher for internal exposures than external, Krysanov shows the effects in wild animals and Yablokov and the Nesterenkos in the children and adults living and continuing to live in the contaminated territories. The effects clearly operate at what are presently thought to be vanishingly low doses.”
“ECRR Chernobyl: 20 Years On” (2006) pg 2
ECRR = European Committee on Radiation Risk
Dr. Chris Busby, Scientific Secretary wrote Introduction.
co-edited with Dr. Alexey Yablokov
http://life-upgrade.com/DATA/chernobylebook.pdf
Spanish http://ciaramc.org/ciar/boletines/cr_bol226.htm
How the BBC distorted the story of Sellafield
The spectre of the new nuclear renaissance
Al’Khalili then went on to give every impression that high level nuclear waste can be safely stored using the process of ‘vitrification’, that is, turning it in glass, and so binding the waste safely into a permanent, impermeable matrix.
What he failed to mention is that the glass is by no means permanent and durable storage medium for “thousands of generations” as the glass is liable to break down – and that the problem of long term disposal of these wastes remains unsolved. For example, asR C Ewing and colleagues wrote in 1995 in the journal Progress in Nuclear Energy,
“the post-disposal radiation damage to waste form glasses and crystalline ceramics is significant. The cumulative α-decay doses which are projected for nuclear waste glasses … are well within the range for which important changes in the physical and chemical properties may occur, e.g. the transition from the crystalline-to-aperiodic state in ceramics.”
‘Inside Sellafield’ and military plutonium – the BBC’s nuclear lies of omission http://www.theecologist.org/reviews/2984689/inside_sellafield_and_military_plutonium_the_bbcs_nuclear_lies_
of_omission.html Dr David Lowry 12th August 2015
Lowry – understating the severity of accidents, concealing the role of the UK’s nuclear power stations in breeding military plutonium, and giving false reassurance over the unsolved problems of high level nuclear waste.For one of these programmes the BBC commissioned Baghdad-born Professor Jameel ‘Jim’ Al-Khalili, theoretical physicist and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science from the University of Surrey, to research and present one programme called ‘Britain’s Nuclear Secrets: Inside Sellafield‘.
As a regular BBC broadcaster, hosting the long-running The Life Scientific on Radio 4, and maker of several science television programmes on television, including on quantum physics and the history of electricity, he was eminently qualified to make this programme.
However the programme was highly misleading thanks to major omissions, concealing the severity of accidents, and how the UK’s entire ‘civilian’ nuclear programme was subverted into producing military plutonium that fed into the Sellafield bomb factory. Continue reading
How radioactive isotopes impact on the human body
Lies, damn lies, and radiation health, A Prosperous Way Down by Mary Logan Health impacts of unseen dangers
Each isotope has different rates of biomagnification and then uptake and also different impacts in the body. Strontium follows calcium pathways in the body, so it settles in bone marrow, replacing structure and weakening bones and teeth, and causing leukemia.Cesium follows potassium pathways, lodging in muscle such as the heart. Many other isotopes act in other damaging ways in the body.
The dangers are probably still small for most foods, but hazards are tenfold to a hundredfold for children, infants, and fetuses, who have the fastest rates of mitosis and development. Rapidly dividing cells in the young are most sensitive in any organism. Similarly, organs with rapidly dividing cells are affected (bone marrow, digestive tract, skin). So risk avoidance is most important for the young.
Some of the list of long-term impacts for human health include the following:
- Circulatory damage (high blood pressure, rhythm disturbances, MI, stroke, cardiomyopathies, rhythm disturbances artery spasm, especially during cardiac stress such as temperature extremes, physical/emotional stress) (Bandazhevsky, 2001)
- Hematologic problems (leukemias especially)
- Endocrine problems (especially Hypothyroidism, thyroid nodules/Cancer, and Diabetes)
- Immune system
- Uro-genital system
- Musculoskeletal system
- Dental problems as cesium replaces calcium in teeth and bones
- Central nervous system and psyche
- The eye (cataracts and retinopathies)
- Increase in congenital malformations
- Increase in cancers
- Accelerated aging
- Increased frequency of mutations
- Fertility problems and Change in secondary sex ratio (Yablokov, 2012)
- Because exposure to radiation is invisible and difficult to detect, it is far under-represented as risk factor for disease. Causes of mortality for radiation exposure are difficult to track beyond the obviously linked leukemias and cancer. Manmade radiation from above-ground testing beginning in the 1950s has been added to by military depleted uranium from expanding use in the Middle East and expanding failures in the 435 nuclear power plants (NPPs) around the world, along with the reprocessing plants. Radiation is often ignored as a reason for immunosuppression, various cancers, and perhaps even endocrine dysfunction, especially thyroid. Because radiation impacts have not been measured in the general population, radiation’s contribution to cancers and other diseases go unnoticed. Women are more vulnerable than men, and children are at least ten to perhaps hundreds of times as vulnerable as adults, because of the rapid mitosis of their cells as they grow. Fetuses are even more vulnerable…..http://prosperouswaydown.com/epistemology-radiation-health/
How the Fukushima nuclear disaster happened
The Worst Disaster That You’ll Never Hear Anything About, Criticl, 2 Aug 15 The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster embodies one of the worst man-made calamities in human history that day-by-day receives a dearth of coverage. Three nuclear reactors melting down on March 11th, 2011 ushered in the beginning of one of the most effective and insidious works of misinformation and obfuscation of reality that has been seen in recent memory.
The impetus for the disaster arose from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, which was estimated to be the most powerful earthquake to ever hit the island in recorded history. The magnitude of the 869 Jogan Sanriku quake (the previous record holder) is only an approximation due to the lack of seismograph technology, nonetheless the Tohoku earthquake was more powerful than the plant was designed to withstand.
Nuclear reactors are designed to shutdown at the slightest event, quickly reducing the amount of heat produced; yet any heat inside the reactor (comprised of the radioactive decay of short lived fission products) is still a magnanimous amount. Backup diesel generators were quickly ushered into action at Fukushima after outside power was destroyed by the quake in order to keep the reactors cool to prevent a meltdown.
However, standard operation procedures for the plant flew out the window when tsunami waves of 14-20 meters struck the Fukushima prefecture shortly after the earthquake, rendering the 5.7-meter seawall beyond useless and knocking out the generators. Interestingly enough, the nearby Onagawa plant was saved by a 14.8-meter seawall despite being struck by a more powerful wave. Yanosuki Hirai fought bureaucracy for years that clamored for the same 5.7-meter seawall at Onagawa, and got his higher wall, remarking, “Corporate ethics is different from compliance, just being ‘not guilty’ is not enough.” The wall was remarkably effective to the point that local residents sought shelter in the plant’s gymnasium after their homes were destroyed by the wave.
The resulting influx of water into the Fukushima reactor led to a station blackout, meaning the operators lost all monitors and the ability to remotely control the reactor. Isolation condensers can cool the reactor with no electricity as long as the condenser is filled with water. Regrettably, operators had no idea that the reactor was quickly running out of water and that the valves opening the condensers were not working, rendering the first line of defence against a potential meltdown useless.
Authorities decided next to depressurize the reactors and inject water from fire engines to flood the reactors, yet unseen diversions to steam condensers via small bypasses meant injected water was not sufficient to prevent an overheating of the core. Reactor 1 saw a hydrogen explosion resulting from molten fuel cladding three hours after the tsunami. Vents and piping intended to filter hydrogen were either severely damaged by the earthquake or unable to operate due to a lack of power.
Unit 2 and the Unit 3 Reactor Core had steam-powered turbines that would circulate cooling water, but suffered a hydrogen explosion due to the pressure in the reactor becoming too low for the turbines to operate. Operators were too inexperienced to properly inject water via the fire engines, which again resulted in a meltdown of both reactors. Leading the cleanup efforts several days later, Japanese authorities quickly created a temporary cover over Unit 1 and begin to filter out contaminated water and repair the other components of the reactors, while devising a plan to contain exposed radioactive material from the damaged reactors……………. Like what you see? https://thefirsttruth.wordpress.com/
https://criticl.me/post/worst-disaster-youll-never-hear-anything-about-3562
Media failed to report the death and health toll from Chernobyl
Fukushima Not Even Close To Being Under Control, Oil Price, By ZeroHedge Sun, 28 June 2015 “……..As an example of how media fails to deal with disaster blowback, here are some Chernobyl facts that have not received enough widespread news coverage: Over one million (1,000,000) people have already died from Chernobyl’s fallout.
Additionally, the Rechitsa Orphanage in Belarus has been caring for a very large population of deathly sick and deformed children. Children are 10 to 20 times more sensitive to radiation than adults.
Zhuravichi Children’s Home is another institution, among many, for the Chernobyl-stricken: “The home is hidden deep in the countryside and, even today, the majority of people in Belarus are not aware of the existence of such institutions” (Source: Chernobyl Children’s Project-UK).
One million (1,000,000) is a lot of dead people. But, how many more will die? Approximately seven million (7,000,000) people in the Chernobyl vicinity were hit with one of the most potent exposures to radiation in the history of the Atomic Age.
The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is known as “Death Valley.” It has been increased from 30 to 70 square kilometres. No humans will ever be able to live in the zone again. It is a permanent “dead zone.”
Additionally, over 25,000 died and 70,000 disabled because of exposure to extremely dangerous levels of radiation in order to help contain Chernobyl. Twenty percent of those deaths were suicides, as the slow agonizing “death march of radiation exposure” was too much to endure……..http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Fukushima-Not-Even-Close-To-Being-Under-Control.html
Failure of USA’s small scale reactor in Antarctica – costly and cancer-causing
Christina Macpherson’s websites & blogs
This is quite an old article, but I find it remarkable because, for once, it mentions the enormous cost of security measures needed for small nuclear reactors in remote areas.
That is what is being proposed for Australia – by both the thorium enthusiasts, and the overseas companies desperate to keep the nuclear industry alive by selling small reactors to Australa (or, even more insidiously, by providing them to Australia “for free”, in exchange for South Australia importing radioactive trash, as outlined by nuclear proponent Oscar Archer )
the PM-2A’s purpose was to test whether reactors could be built in remote locations using prefabricated parts.
After the reactor was closed down, the US shipped 7700 cubic metres of radioactive contaminated rock and dirt to California, but passed through Dunedin, with a population of 124,000, the second largest city on New Zealand’s South Island, where it stayed for four days, raising local concerns, the New Zealand news site stuff.co.nz.
Russia has found that the logistics of even finding customers for its ANPP’s outweigh even the logistics of operating the plants. Russia has staked a financial bonanza on prospective orders for the plants, but there are, simply, no takers. And if there were, the logistics of securing such a plant against terrorists or accidents in remote areas would require at least the staff of a stationary plant.
Small-scale US nuclear reactor blamed for spiking cancer rates, casting pall over Russia’s FNPP fetish AMSTERDAM – A small nuclear power plant operated the United States at Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound has been implicated in dozens of cases of an unusual cancer in personnel who worked at or near the station between the years 1964 and 1973, US and New Zealand media have indicated. March 7, 2011 by Bellona Continue reading
Thorough analysis of Switzerland’s plan for exit from nuclear power
It is a simple statement of fact that Germany today produces more solar and wind power than the entire projected electricity demand for Switzerland in 2050. What is possible in Germany should be manageable in Switzerland too. ………Conservation, greater efficiencies, alternative energy sources, the smart grid, and the introduction of new technologies mean that Switzerland should be readily able to find ways to replace the energy lost by the closing of its existing nuclear power plants.
Small country, big challenge: Switzerland’s upcoming transition to sustainable energy,Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 25 July 15 Dominic A. Notter
Abstract
Switzerland has long met a good portion of its energy needs by using nuclear power. But in the wake of the accident at Fukushima, the country will have to turn elsewhere—while still remaining true to its history of self-sufficiency and energy independence. This effort is made more complicated by fears that one of its traditional energy sources, hydropower, may no longer be as reliable as in the past. But with a combination of energy conservation, greater efficiencies, alternative energy sources, the “smart grid,” and the introduction of new technologies currently on the drawing board, the country may readily be able to replace the energy lost by the closing of its existing nuclear power plants. And the loss of the snowpack and glaciers (due to climate change) may not be as dire for Switzerland’s hydropower as first anticipated……. Continue reading
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- April 2026 (338)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 