Fire breaks out at Nuclear plant
Fire breaks out at N-plant
NIIGATA–A fire broke out Saturday night at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. in Kashiwazaki and Kariwamura, Niigata Prefecture, scorching the motor of an air conditioner. No radiation leaks or injuries were reported.
According to TEPCO, the fire broke out at about 10:25 p.m. at a storage space. Wiring connected to the motor burned out, and its steel cover was scorched.
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Though the machine has been in use since May 1992, its wiring was not periodically inspected.
The nuclear plant was struck by the Niigata Prefecture Chuetsu Offshore Earthquake in July 2007, and all its seven reactors were shut down. Since the earthquake, there have been nine fires at the plant, including the latest one.
………………….Kashiwazaki Mayor Hiroshi Aida on Monday summoned Akio Takahashi, the head of the power plant, to a meeting at which he demanded that the plant come up with preventive measures. Aida told Takahashi that he was concerned about the fact that a fire had broken out at a time when concerned municipalities are considering whether to approve the restart of the No. 7 reactor.
Pro nukes would prefer nicer name for depleted uranium’s risk
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Nuclear Test Downwinders
RECA, clinic help Nuclear Test Downwinders
“…………………..From 1951 to 1958 and for the month of July 1962, an estimated 22,000 people living in Southern Utah, northern Arizona and southeastern Nevada received a large amount of fallout from above-ground nuclear testing conducted at the Nevada Test Site.
These Downwinders, as they have come to be known, show abnormally high rates of malignant and non-malignant thyroid disease and leukemia and over the last decade have shown a higher then expected incidence of lymphoma, breast and thyroid cancers, according to the Utah Cancer Registry……………
Superfund priority cleanup site. The UC: America’s Most Ecocidal “Green” University
Superfund priority cleanup site. The UC: America’s Most Ecocidal “Green” University,
Part II by WIll & Darwin Sunday Apr 12th, 2009
“……………………………………………The military exists in a constant state of mobilization and preparation for warfare, a process that increasingly involves experimentation with toxic pollutants, dumping of hazardous wastes, and militarization of previously thriving ecosystems. The US military is responsible for over one-third of the US’ toxic waste, more than that generated by the top five pollution corporations housed in the US combined. The pollutants it has introduced into the total environment – with consequences that remain relatively unknown and unpredictable — have included pesticides and defoliants like Agent Orange, solvents, petroleum, perchlorate (a component of rocket fuel), lead, mercury, and of course depleted uranium. Within the U.S., one out of every ten Americans lives within ten miles of a military site that has been listed as a Superfund priority cleanup site.
………………………………..It is here that we come to another particularly important point: Most humans targeted by military production’s “Universal Soldier” — pollution — are working class and impoverished people of color and, even more disproportionately, indigenous people. Thus, the military’s environmental wreckage is out of sight, out of mind for the most privileged of our planet, such as the vast majority of mainstream US environmental activists, especially students and graduates of elite universities…………
……….The primary source of environmental degradation in Iraq, however, is of course depleted uranium — a bi-product of the same radioactive processes that have created the vast “national sacrifice areas” and “clans of one-breasted women” in the United States, Russia, and elsewhere.
Somalian pirates and radioactive wastes
Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates
by K’naan THE HUFFINGTON POST 12 April 09 “………………… in Somalia, the answer is: it’s complicated. The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast with such
lop-sided journalism, that it’s lucky they’re not on a ship themselves………
….Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates. Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991………….
…………. a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Achair Parterns, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they were to dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, whereas to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.
In 2004, after a tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including “Uranium, radioactive waste,……..
….The UN envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. ……….
……..our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western Vessels, and the producing of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high……….
………..We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is truly a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice.
As is apparent these days, one man’s pirate is another man’s coast guard.
Yet another $50 billion for rust-bucket nukes?
Yet another $50 billion for rust-bucket nukes? Scoop by Harvey Wasserman 13 April 09 The nuke power industry is back at the public trough for the fourth time in two years demanding $50 billion in loan guarantees to build new reactors.Its rust-bucket poster child is now the ancient clunker at Oyster Creek, whose visible New Jersey rust and advanced radioactive decay are A-OK with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which just gave it a twenty-year license extension. The industry’s savior may be France, whose taxpayer-funded EdF and Areva Corporations may be poised to build their own reactors on US soil using French and American taxpayer money.
And President Obama’s first big test on nuke power may be how he fills a vacancy—and the chair—at the NRC.
The latest demand for a $50 billion taxpayer handout has been sleazed into the Senate budget bill………………………….This latest bailout incarnation has been widely tagged “nuclear pork” even in the right-wing Washington Times,………
………No independent financiers will take an un-subsidized flier on new reactors. Nuke operators can’t get private insurance on a major melt-down. With the proposed Yucca Mountain dump all but dead, the industry—after fifty years—has no certified place to take its high-level radioactive waste……………
……… green energy groups are organizing a national write-in campaign to begin next week, and a call-in effort for April 27, the day after the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe. No one doubts the industry will pour on one legislative scam after another in its desperate attempt to get taxpayer money as it is being priced into oblivion by rapid advances in renewables and efficiency……………
……..whomever Obama appoints, it’s painfully clear that the world’s most expensive failed technology is not going away without a long, hard fight. ***
Penghu protests against plan to build nuclear waste storage site
Penghu protests against plan to build nuclear waste storage site Kaohsiung, Taiwan News By Elizabeth Hsu April 11 (CNA)
“…………………….protest in Fengshan in Kaohsiung County Saturday, voicing their strong opposition to the government’s plan to establish a nuclear waste storage site on a Penghu islet.
The protesters, headed by Penghu County Magistrate Wang Chien-fa, chanted anti-nuclear slogans at the rally held at a local temple and vowed to use whatever power they had to stop the plan from being carried out.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) announced in mid-March that it has listed Daren Township in Taitung County and Dongjiyu of Penghu County as the two suggested sites to store low-level radioactive waste.
The two counties are required to decide whether or not to accept the proposal by holding a referendum, according to the MOEA…………………………..Dongjiyu covers more than 140 hectares of land, 100 hectares of which have been listed by the Penghu County government as a “nature conservation zone” in an attempt to block the state-run Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) from opening a nuclear storage facility on the islet.
Taipower, however, can still appropriate the other 40 hectares of land, Wang said, and he urged county residents to unite in opposition to the referendum………………………………“Since the government wants to develop tourism in Penghu, it should not act to set up a nuclear waste storage site there, ” he argued, vowing to fight to the death against the facility.
In addition to Wang, Yeh Chung-ju, chief of Wanan Township, and Legislator Wong Chung-Chun of the ruling Kuomintang also joined the protest.
Penghu protests against plan to build nuclear waste storage site – Taiwan News Online
Landfills raise radiaoactive concerns
Landfills raise concernsPollution prompts calls for operators to help provide clean water The State 11 April 09 By SAMMY FRETWELL – sfretwell@thestate.com
“…………………….All told, landfills across South Carolina — from nuclear waste dumps to disposal sites on military bases — have polluted the groundwater in 125 places, according to DHEC’s 2008 groundwater contamination inventory.
Design Flaws In Nuclear Transport Ships Increase The Risk Of Accidents Claims Report
Design flaws in nuclear transport ships increase the risk of accidents, claims report
Sunday Herald 13 April 09 Consultant says claims of safety ‘lack scientific and technical credibility’By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor
THE GROWING number of nuclear waste shipments being made through the Irish Sea risk accidents that could cause widespread radioactive contamination, according to an expert report out this week.The transport ships have “design flaws” that could make them unsafe while the emergency plans in place for coping with an accident are non- existent or inadequate, the report says.At least 45 movements of nuclear materials have been made north and south through the Irish Sea since 2004.
Cargoes of radioactive waste and fuel are transported from the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria to nuclear plants in Japan, the US and Europe.advertisementThe report was commissioned by a coalition of more than 70 local authorities in the UK and Ireland worried about nuclear power. It was written by the independent marine pollution consultant, Tim Deere-Jones, and is due to be published in a few days.
Pentagon contracted ship struck by pirates
Pirates Strike a US Ship Owned by a Pentagon Contractor, But is the Media Telling the Whole Story?
MEDIA CHANNEL By AlterNet.10 April 09 The Somali pirates who took control of the 17,000-ton “Maersk Alabama” cargo-ship in the early hours of Wednesday morning probably were unaware that the ship they were boarding belonged to a U.S. Department of Defense contractor with “top security clearance,” which does a half-billion dollars in annual business with the Pentagon, primarily the Navy……….
…………..The U.S. military says the Alabama was not operating on a DoD contract at the time and was said to be delivering food aid………………
……….Often, the reporting on pirates centers around the gangsterism of the pirates and the seemingly huge ransoms they demand…………
…………But this type of coverage of the pirates is similar to the false narrative about “tribalism” being the cause of all of Africa’s problems………..hardly the whole “pirate” story………………..
…………. Nuclear dumping has polluted the environment. “In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed,” wrote Johann Hari in The Independent. “Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since — and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.”
According to Hari:
As soon as the [Somali] government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged.
Oyster Creek’s waste stockpile just gets larger
Oyster Creek’s waste stockpile just gets larger pressof AtlanticCity.com By BEN LEACH 9 April 09 , Oyster Creek isn’t going anywhere, and neither is a stockpile of accumulated nuclear waste………………………………….While exact figures are not available for the amount at Oyster Creek, there are 2,180 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in the state, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 2008-2009 Information Digest………………………. the spent fuel at most nuclear plants across the country goes into storage on the site of the nuclear plant. Oyster Creek stores all of its spent fuel on-site……………………. At Oyster Creek, spent fuel rods must be kept in the on-site storage pool for at least 10 years, according to a Lacey Township ordinance. From there, the rods are typically moved to the “dry” method, which involves placing them in a concrete cask.
The structures – 10 feet wide, 15 feet tall and 20 feet long – are made from reinforced concrete. According to David Benson, a spokesman for Oyster Creek, there are 20 modules at the plant, 16 of which are full.
Each chamber weighs about 600 pounds, with almost two-thirds of that weight a result of the spent fuel itself.
Those modules are protected by security around the clock,…………………..
Paul Gunter, director of reactor oversight for Beyond Nuclear Inc., a national nuclear watchdog, said the storage casks remain in plain sight despite security measures.
“Some kind of passing vehicle could just stop and shoot any of these casks from Route 9,” Gunter said.
The protection of nuclear waste is more than just a local issue.
AFP: Iraq to create nuclear energy commission
Iraq to create nuclear energy commission7 hours ago Google News 10 April 09 BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraq plans to create an atomic energy agency nearly three decades after Israeli bombers destroyed a reactor being built by the late dictator Saddam Hussein, the government spokesman said on Thursday.”The government has decided to create a national nuclear energy commission that will be responsible for controlling nuclear activities in the country and assuring they are in line with international regulations,” Ali al-Dabbagh said.”It will also deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAE) and other institutions, make suggestions on the peaceful use of atomic energy and be charged with disposing of nuclear waste,” he added.In 1976, Iraq and France signed an accord to build a nuclear reactor. Five years later, as the Iraq-Iran war raged and amid fears the nearly completed reactor might be loaded with nuclear fuel, it was bombed and heavily damaged by Israeli warplanes.There is still nuclear waste at that plant, 19 kilometres (12 miles) south of Baghdad, which must be disposed of.In February, Iraqi Electricity Minister Karim Wahid asked France to help the country build a new reactor.
Nuclear waste hearing ends in opposition to Taitung site
Nuclear waste hearing ends in opposition to Taitung site Taiwan News 9 April 09
A public hearing discussing the possibility of storing low-grade nuclear waste in a Taitung County village ended on a note of strong opposition yesterday after two protesters had been taken away by police.After years of controversy and protests, the government decided to select Nantien Village in the county’s Tajen Township as one of the possible disposal sites for low-radioactive waste from its three existing nuclear power stations…………………………..Participants in yesterday’s hearing voiced strong opposition to the Tajen site. The area was geologically unstable, making it unsuitable to provide a permanent home for the low-radioactive materials, geologist Chiang Kuo-chang said.The chairman of the county’s tourism association, Yang Wen-ta, said the issue was larger than just Tajen and concerned not only environmentalists and the local aboriginal population, but the whole of Taitung County.
Before the hearing got under way, an organic farmer carrying a banner with an anti-nuclear slogan was prevented entrance to the meeting and shown into a police vehicle. An environmental activist who came outside to ask about the situation was also forced into the car and taken to a police station, reports said. Both said they were kept at the precinct office for two hours.
Power originally stored its waste on Orchid Island, a remote island off southeast Taiwan mainly inhabited by aboriginals.
Nuclear waste hearing ends in opposition to Taitung site – Taiwan News Online
News Flash: Greed and Stupidity Can Coexist!
News Flash: Greed and Stupidity Can Co-exist THE HUFFINGTON POST Monica Youn 7 April 09 “…………………..A crucial function of government is to protect us from the consequences of the stupid decisions of other people – we should not have to worry that a nuclear power plant operator will decide that certain safety precautions simply aren’t profitable or necessary.
In the nuclear example, were the government to succumb to industry pressure and repeal certain safety regulations on nuclear plants, any resulting accident would be the result of policy as well as stupidity. In other economic sectors, regulations exist to prevent the profit-maximizing incentives of various industries from creating unacceptable levels of public risk………….
Halliburton is among defendants in nuclear waste lawsuit under CERCLA
Halliburton is among defendants in nuclear waste lawsuit under CERCLA Examiner.com Frank Taylor April 7
Halliburton Energy Services is one of the corporations from which the United States seeks to recover the response costs that it incurred due to releases and threatened releases of hazardous substances into the environment from facilities where radioactive materials were manufactured, repaired, reworked, stored, and processed for disposal. GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences Corp. and Pengo Industries, Inc., are among the other defendants in United States of America v. Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., (case number 4:07-cv-03795 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas) The federal government, which filed the lawsuit in 2007, alleges that the defendants are liable under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, commonly known as CERCLA, for more than $26.7 million in unreimbursed response costs for the cleanup of sites in Houston, Webster, and Odessa. The State of Texas intervened in the case to recover the response costs that it had contributed to the federal government.
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
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
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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