*** Fukushima *** and other nuclear-----updates and links

Huge Blaze Edges Closer To US Nuclear Lab

Firefighters continue to battle a major fire in New Mexico that is getting nearer to the United States' top nuclear weapons production site

[link to www.google.com]

Nuclear Energy Institute spent $545k lobbying‎

By AP The main trade group for the nuclear power industry spent $545000 in the first quarter lobbying about financial support for new reactors and safety

[link to www.google.com]

(Host) Senator Bernie Sanders is blocking the confirmation of a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Sanders says the NRC is "inappropriately" taking steps to extend the license of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Sanders says William Ostendorff was one of three commission members who voted last week to ask the Department of Justice to intervene in a lawsuit on behalf of Yankee's owner.

Entergy is suing the state to keep the plant operating for another 20 years.

Sanders says the NRC has gone beyond its basic authority.

[link to www.vpr.net]

TEPCO Restarts Fukushima Water Treatment After Fixing More Leaks
[link to nuclearstreet.com]

NRC Renews Prairie Island Nuclear Plant License for 20 More Years
[link to nuclearstreet.com]

-an example of the extension of the 40 year life-span for reactors.

When he was a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy in the late 1960s, U.S. Rep. Craig Hosmer declared that "power companies expect nuclear generating stations to last 30 years."

Nuclear physicist Ralph Lapp, an advocate of atomic power, predicted a 25-year life span.

One person who should know the real story is engineering professor Richard T. Lahey Jr., at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. Lahey once served in the nuclear Navy. Later, in the early 1970s, he helped design reactors for General Electric Co.; he oversaw safety research and development.

Lahey dismisses claims that reactors were made with no particular life span. "These reactors were really designed for a certain lifetime," he said. "What they're saying is really a fabrication."

And nuclear engineer Bill Corcoran, who worked for plant designer Combustion Engineering, said certain features were specifically created with 40 years in mind, like the reactor vessel, which holds the radioactive fuel. He said metals were calculated to hold up against fatigue for that long. Concrete containment buildings had to be strong enough to last that long.

No one analyzed if they could last much longer.

[link to www.msnbc.msn.com]

- 'Oyster Creek' in New Jersey, Creak as the locals call it, BWR was commissioned in 1969. Oldest operating in US. Just renewed until 2029.

At Fort Calhoun, where the river has risen gradually, the water seeps in through sandbag walls, electrical conduits and other places that workers had not thought much about before. There are so many small water pumps running to keep up with the leaks that keeping them supplied with gasoline and diesel requires something akin to a bucket brigade.
Orange plastic fuel cans are rolled on a cart over the catwalks and then handed off to employees who are headed deeper into the plant. Climbing over the sandbags at the entrances, they carry them in, and workers on their way out pick up a few empties and carry them out for refilling.

Nuclear Plant’s Vital Equipment Dry, Officials Say

[link to www.nytimes.com]

- why does this not instill confidence? Are we bailing water by hand as well? 21st century technology?

I picture trying to keep running an old internal combustion-powered water pump in a rice paddy. Third world tech. Is this the best we can do at a nuclear power plant?

Media Given Tour Of Flooded Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station


Read more: [link to www.ketv.com]

LATEST NEWS RELATED TO PRIS AND THE STATUS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

[link to www.iaea.org]

Are You Ready?


FEMA

[link to www.fema.gov]

Goals of Reactor Safety

Ultimately, the goal of reactor safety is to reduce the likelihood of a threatening situation caused by the operation of a nuclear power plant to the absolute lowest degree possible. Specifically, this goal translates into four subgoals:

1. Public Safety - There must be no release of radioactive material in dangerous quantities from a nuclear facility to the general public.

2. Industrial Personnel - Every reasonable effort should be made to eliminate accidents involving plant employees. The frequency of such events should be reduced to the lowest possible level, certainly lower than that of other comparable industries.

3. Economic - The likelihood of a serious accident which would result in severe damage to the nuclear facility should be kept as small as possible.

4. Operational Problems - System malfunctions and deviations from normal behavior should be reduced to a minimum.

Historically, governments have been primarily concerned with public and personnel safety; hence, nuclear safety research sponsored by government agencies is more likely to address these issues. Operating groups - utilities and vendors - support a broad sponsorship in all four areas. Again, this trend will likely continue.
[link to users.owt.com]


- I'd have to say they are 0 for four.

Today it is reported that there is a high potential for “major calamity” at Los Alamos if Las Conchas fire travels another three miles to Area G's 20,000 barrels of nuclear waste in a "fabric-type building," or if the fire triggers seismic activity. There is "Zero percent containment" of the fire that is now all around the facility according to Reuters.

"These growing wildfire threats are in addition to existing seismic risks that are now understood to be far more serious than previously believed just a few years ago," reports the non-government nuclear watchdog Nuclear Watch New Mexico, first to alert the public about the nuclear waste threat at the facility.



Continue reading on Examiner.com Los Alamos major calamity looms: 0% contained fire. Seismic threat. - National Human Rights | Examiner.com [link to www.examiner.com]

Nancy from House of Foust is on Calhoun also! Here are some pics:
[link to www.houseoffoust.com]

[link to search.japantimes.co.jp]

The government designates 113 households outside the no-go zone in Fukushima Prefecture as radioactive hot spots and urges the residents to move out.

"So many people in Japan are now saying that they can't trust their own government."

Adding to such concerns are the views of Richard Broinowski, a former Australian diplomat who is now adjunct professor at the University of Sydney. In response to recent emailed questions from the JT, Broinowski — who is currently writing a book about the Tohoku disasters — said he doubts whether the Japanese authorities have done the most thorough research into the irradiation of food.

Specifically, he said, "What I am anxious to know is: Are qualified Japanese epidemiologists and public health experts (that is, those not in the pay of the nuclear industry) undertaking objective and impartial research into how deeply and to what intensity, radiation dispersal of cesium-137, strontium-90, iodine-131, noble gases and plutonium-239 ... has spread, and how much the general population of the Tohoku region and other regions of Japan have been exposed?"

He added: "I also suspect that full disclosure of such data is not in the interests of the Japanese nuclear industry."


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[link to search.japantimes.co.jp]

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday that it had activated a water circulation system to stably cool another spent nuclear fuel pool at the crisis-hit Fukushima Daiichi atomic power plant, while also starting to transfer relatively low-level radioactive water at the plant to an artificial floating island called a megafloat.

[link to mdn.mainichi.jp]

As for the steel megafloat, which is berthed at a quay near the plant, about 8,000 tons of low-level radioactive water will be transferred over the next three or four months. The government's nuclear safety agency said TEPCO has not yet decided what to do with the water after it is transferred, but it will not be directly dumped into the sea.


From previous article.

Now why would they say that? 'Will not be dumped DIRECTLY into the sea'? Aside from being immoral, unethical and highly illegal, why do they feel a need to stress this? It doesn't need to be said at all... unless it is a psychological slip originating from pre-emptive propaganda strategy.

They say they are out of storage space. The mega-barge will hold 10,000 tons. They are generating 500 tons of waste water a day cooling the reactors and SFPs.. Their waste treatment plan is failing and even if they can get it going they can only process 1200 tons a day max. So far the best they ahve done is 400 tons in a day. And then they had to shut down because of leaks. They are going to transfer 8,000 tons to mega-barge but it's going to take 3 or 4 months?

Could it mean it will be in-directly leaked into the ocean via an un-known (wink, wink) hole in a vessel unsuitable for storing radio-active waste water? On a trip from japan to ? to do ? with the waste water.

And just who is going to keep Tepco honest on this one? Is anybody monitoring their actions? Besides themselves and their buddies, that is.

I firmly believe it will be dumped in the sea. Followed by yet another appology. "We had no choice" we will study it later...blah blah blah. Same shit as April.

[link to www.myweathertech.com]

I strongly felt this was happening early in April but couldn't really prove it. Coverup.

[link to www.jaif.or.jp]

In giving the warning, Japanese authorities have literally extended the official 30-kilometre evacuation zone.

The new radiation hotspots were found in Date City, which is about 50 kilometres north-west of the Fukushima nuclear plant.

[link to story.albuquerqueexpress.com]

Japan nuclear crisis reaches new levels

Japan's nuclear crisis may have taken its most dangerous turn yet after a US official said one of the pools containing highly radioactive spent fuel rods at the stricken plant had run dry.

Triggering the new levels of alarm were comments by U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko in Congress. "There is no water in the spent fuel pool and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures," he said.

Japanese officials have been working desperately for two days to try to get more water into the pool to cover the rods, which remain hot for months after they are removed from the reactors and can quickly release radioactive components if exposed to the air.

[link to www.buenosairesherald.com]

- tell us something we don't know. The SFP has been leaking. The SFP has been low on water. The radiation has been leaking.

Quick Question-- is there any possible way the nuclear cores at Fukushima could be launched up into space?

Japan Update 7/03: Estimated Death Toll 22,629; Nuclear Crisis Mounts

Japan's combined tsunami death toll/missing persons total continued its decline over the past week. Workers recovered 27 bodies. The NPA dropped 204 from missing persons. Japan contemplates life without nuclear power.

There is a death toll among "nuclear evacuees" from Fukushima as well. Seventy-seven of the elderly evacuated from nursing homes in the Dai-ichi evacuation zones died in the intervening three months. Last year for the same period, the number of deaths was 25 for those same nursing homes.

[link to news.gather.com]

Updates from Kyodo


://english.kyodonews.jp/news/japan_nuclear_crisis/

Fukushima Disaster Shows Nuclear Power Is Never 'Safe'

As has been well documented by the Associated Press, the New York Times, Huffington Post, ProPublica, and others, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, has been captured by the nuclear industry and has been in regulatory retreat for over a decade. At the behest of the industry, the NRC has been busy deregulating safety standards based on the probability that the Black Swan, i.e., a meltdown, will not occur. Sadly, these same regulators have ignored the flaws in their risk assessments. According to NRC documents, between 42 percent and 59 percent of the most risk-significant accident scenarios aren't even modeled in nuclear risk assessments. The NRC and the nuclear industry have relied on risk models that leave them half blind to the very events they're attempting to avoid.
[link to www.usnews.com]

Feel safe?

If you mean an explosion, not likely as a nuclear explosion per se requires pressure.

A steam explosion can't be ruled out. This would be the corium reaching ground water.

Tokyo, July 2: Experts at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have reportedly managed to decrease the temperature of the pool at its reactor No 3, stopping the evaporation of radioactive water.


According to information provided by Tokyo Electric Power Cooperation (TEPCO), the temperature has been decreased to 40 C, Focus News quoted a report by the ITAR-TASS news agency, as saying.

[link to www.dailyindia.com]

Fukushima to disarmament

Any country that can enrich uranium to fuel nuclear reactors has everything it needs to enrich uranium further, to weapons-grade strength. In a nuclear reactor, 1-2 per cent of the uranium fuel is inevitably converted to plutonium. This can be separated through chemical processing and used to build a bomb, as Israel, India, and North Korea did — and as many fear that Iran is seeking to do. Currently, there is no restriction on any country building a uranium-enrichment plant or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium. As we have seen, safeguards alone are not up to the job. We will not prevent further proliferation of nuclear weapons and their eventual use, much less achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, without strict international control of all uranium enrichment, and without banning the separation of plutonium from spent fuel.

That which cannot be controlled must be prevented. Today, that means preventing the threat of climate change and eradicating nuclear weapons. But we cannot afford efforts to address one challenge that end up aggravating the other. Attempting to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through nuclear energy, thereby fueling the dangers of the ultimate global incendiary — nuclear war — could be the most tragic of all miscalculations.

[link to www.khaleejtimes.com]

-good article-former PM australia

Fukushima parks deserted, choking on rampant weeds
[link to www.yomiuri.co.jp]

-to mow or not to mow?