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

11,000 displaced residents yet to ask TEPCO for compensation

TOKYO — About 11,000 residents of Fukushima Prefecture, who were displaced after the nuclear accident in March 2011, are yet to file claims for compensation with nuclear plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).

According to TEPCO, of the 165,824 people who were ordered to evacuate after the accident, around 11,000 people from 13 municipalities have not claimed compensation for damages, Fuji TV reported Friday. TEPCO said the right to claim compensation will expire in September 2014.
[link to www.japantoday.com]
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Monju reactor's sodium heater temporarily halted by error

Part of the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor halted last weekend due to human error, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency said late Friday on the heels of an effective ban on restarting the reactor due to the operator's deteriorating safety culture.

A heater that keeps sodium molten as a secondary coolant for the reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, in western Japan, halted for some 30 minutes from about 4:30 p.m. Sunday during a checkup of a power supply system, causing the sodium temperature to fall about 40 C from 200 C, while its melting point is around 98 C, it said.

The JAEA attributed the error to insufficient information in its service manual, and said it reported the event Monday to the Nuclear Regulation Authority and the local governments, but lagged in making it known to the public as it was too minor an incident to compel it to report to authorities under internal rules.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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and to sink heavy waste....

The sooner the old and decrepit plants are closed, the better for everyone.



San Onofre shutdown latest setback in nuclear power’s downward spiral
[link to enformable.com]

Thread: Friends just assisted with the San Onofre shut down!!!!

...and we are worried about them knowing our every move because of all the RFID and Smart Meter technology...

but they probably would not even say even if they knew...

What happened to the goldfish?

3 of 5 were never found.
Maybe the jokers ate them..

or maybe they eat us all

Oh noes..

Giant radio-active mutant killer goldfish...

Commissaries to sell Japanese produce again, 2 years after disaster
“After doing extensive research, as well as looking at Japanese data, and setting up a radiological surveillance program at our command, we are able to give assurance to the DOD community that locally procured items are safe,” Kim said.

Officials were mainly concerned about radiological contamination of food procured for commissaries, dining facilities and Navy ships, he said.

“We looked at the data and took thousands of samples of locally procured produce,” he said. “Not one item passed the threshold for unsafe radiological levels.”

Some parts of Japan remain badly contaminated by radiation from Fukushima, but Kim said there’s no chance of food from those areas making it into the U.S. military food chain because the Japanese government has its own food safety standards, he said.

The regions affected by the ban include some of Japan’s most productive farming areas. In the past two years the military has been forced to bring in food from distant parts of the country, which has added to transport costs, Kim said. So costs should drop while variety improves.

Source: [link to www.stripes.com]

TEPCO completes transfer of radioactive water to steel tanks

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Sunday it has completed the transfer of radioactive water from leaky underground storage cisterns to steel tanks.

The amount of water transferred totaled around 24,000 tons, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. The stored water had been used to cool the reactors at the plant.

There are seven underground cisterns at the plant site, but three were found to be leaking in April. TEPCO has since been transferring the radioactive water to the newly installed steel tanks.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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Regulators to inspect Japan's sole operating reactors on June 15

The Nuclear Regulation Authority will conduct an on-site inspection June 15 of the only nuclear reactors now operating in Japan to check whether they are safe enough to be allowed to continue operating beyond July when new safety requirements take effect, sources close to the matter said Saturday.

About 20 inspectors, including NRA Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa, will examine equipment such as an air-cooled power generator for emergency use and water pump newly installed at the No. 3 and 4 reactors at the Oi nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture to respond to a severe accident.

The new requirements have been compiled to enhance nuclear regulation in the wake of the devastating accident at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011, triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami in March that year.
[link to english.kyodonews.jp]
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San Onofre is Dead & So is Nuclear Power

From his California beach house at San Clemente, Richard Nixon once watched three reactors rise at nearby San Onofre. As of June 7, 2013, all three are permanently shut.

It's a monumental victory for grassroots activism. it marks an epic transition in how we get our energy.

In the thick of the 1970s Arab oil embargo, Nixon said there'd be 1000 such reactors in the US by the year 2000.

As of today, there are 100.
[link to www.nukefree.org]
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More about the shut down of SONGS... good article...

California nuclear plant to shut: a case of unforgiving nuclear economics

The announcement Friday that San Onofre’s two functioning reactors were being shut down brings to four the number of reactors that nuclear utilities have slated for closure since last November. Meanwhile, nuclear utilities have three new reactors on the drawing boards.

At least for now, "we're losing them faster than we're building them," quips David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer by training who focuses on nuclear-energy issues at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington.

What looked to the utility to be a sensible $780 million investment in 2009 and '10 to extend the lifetime of the two reactors turned into an economic albatross, Lochbaum suggests.
[link to www.csmonitor.com]
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Texas Site Begins Taking Federal Nuclear Waste

Republican mega-donor Harold Simmons' remote hazardous waste dump in West Texas began accepting low-level radioactive material Thursday from a federal lab in New Mexico — the latest step in Simmons' vision of a site that accepts all types of waste.

The first two containers carrying radioactive waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were placed into an 8-inch-thick, reinforced concrete canister at the bottom of a new burial site.

"We wanted to be a one-stop shop with everything in," Waste Control Specialists President Rod Baltzer told U.S., Texas and New Mexico officials at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. "We're proud to have a large and very robust complex."

Also buried at Simmons' massive dump are PCBs from the Hudson River in New York and Cold War-era radioactive waste from a shuttered weapons plant in Ohio, where purified uranium metal was processed for use in reactors to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons from the 1950s until 1989.

As many as two shipments a week will come from the New Mexico laboratory, officials said.

The goal is to remove 3,706 cubic meters of Los Alamos waste by June 30, 2014.
[link to abcnews.go.com]
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Finally... guess it includes all GE MarkI and a couple of others...

U.S. orders new safety upgrades at nuclear plants

Washington (CNN) -- U.S. regulators are directing 31 nuclear reactors similar in design to the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, where an earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown two years ago, to take additional steps to help contain radiation and other damage from any accident that is not quickly halted.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission directive on Thursday requires enhancements to systems for venting accumulated pressure from containment structures during an emergency. Vents must also be able to safely handle rising temperatures, hydrogen concentrations and radiation levels.

U.S. plants covered under the directive are older, boiling-water reactors mainly similar in design to the Fukushima facility. [link to edition.cnn.com]
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Humans Used for Radiation Experiments: A Shameful Chapter in US History
[link to www.citywatchla.com]

{snip}



The program employed industry and academic scientists who used their hapless patients or wards to see the immediate and short-term effects of radioactive contamination — with everything from plutonium to radioactive arsenic. The human subjects were mostly poisoned without their knowledge or consent.

In one Vanderbilt University study, 829 pregnant women were unknowingly fed radioactive iron. In another, 188 children were given radioactive iron-laced lemonade. Detailed by a 1986 report of the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power, from 1963 to 1971, 67 inmates in Oregon and 64 prisoners in Washington had their testicles targeted with X-rays to see what doses made them sterile.

At the Fernald State School, mentally retarded boys were fed radioactive iron and calcium but consent forms sent to parents didn’t mention radiation. A 1994 Minneapolis StarTribune report, “48 more human radiation experiments revealed,” noted psychiatric patients and infants were injected with radioactive iodine.

Scientists knew from the beginning of the 20th century that radiation could cause genetic and cell damage, cell death, radiation sickness and even death. A Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was established in 1993 to investigate charges of unethical or criminal action by the experimenters. Its findings were published by Oxford University Press in 1996 as The Human Radiation Experiments.

STRUGGLE AHEAD OVER WHO PAYS FOR NUKE’S $4.3B COSTS
[link to www.utsandiego.com]

[snip]

Consumers have already been paying for this massive project for about 30 years, through a line item on utility bills called “nuclear decommissioning fee” or something similar. The project is about 90 percent funded, with the money in a state-run investment pool, Edison officials say.

This brings us to about $8.4 billion in costs for San Onofre. That’s a big number, but bear in mind that nearly half is already squirreled away.

Meanwhile, the California Public Utilities Commission is conducting a giant, quasi-judicial process to decide who pays that $4.3 billion of uncollected cost.

People may find out how they received cancer?
[link to ireport.cnn.com]

[snip]

The largest and most expensive environmental clean up in the Western Hemisphere.
U-238 used at the site has a half life of 4.47 billion years. U-238 is then created into Pu-239 which has a half life of 24,100 years. 2/3 of the nations high level waste is stored at Hanford
Dirtiest Reactor Site in the World. 54,000,000 gallons of high level nuclear waste at the site in 177 tanks that at most. Some are 50 years past their expiration date of being replaced. Plus another 50,000 drums in temporary storage.



Hanford's tanks are constantly emitting Hydrogen gases raising the temperature.Risking an explosion that would not rival any of the Nuclear disasters that haveever happened on the planet. We would be looking at a catastrophic failure that would make land uninhabitable for 24,000 years. For 40 years contractors dumped plutonium, cesium, technetium, tritium, strontium, and various other isotopes inot the air, soil, groundwater and even the Columbia River which passes through Portland and Vancouver into the Pacific Ocean.300 gallons of waste per year leak out of these old tanks.

They died.




Fishy incident at Ohio nuclear plant solved
[link to www.toledoblade.com]

Federal government poised to raise nuclear liability cap
[link to www.cbc.ca]

snip

Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver is set to roll out his plan to raise the amount in damages that Canadian nuclear operators would have to pay in case of an accident, the Canadian Press has learned.

The liability cap is now set at $75 million but that is widely considered outdated, especially in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster that has led to tens of billions of dollars of damage claims.

The federal Conservatives have put forward legislation several times in the past that would have increased the liability cap to $650-million, while also giving the minister leeway to increase the cap in the future. But the bills have failed at least three times.

"Even if an operator has significant assets, allowing a power utility to become insolvent may not be in a country's best interests," the paper states in a footnote, pointing to the Japanese government's need to inject public money into the Fukushima utility so that it wouldn't collapse due to compensation claims.

But critics say anything except unlimited liability acts as a subsidy to the nuclear industry.

[link to fukushimaemergencywhatcanwedo.blogspot.com.au]


2 years on... laffable.....

114 microseiverts outside near reactor 4..

Wonder what it is inside the buildings of the reactors which melted down..?

2 years later and there is still not a robot or method which can get close enough to get those levels measured accurately..?

Or are they concealing the data..?

The Levels of today are in between 450-463 Cpm directly at the Reactor
and just outside the Gates we get 35-40 Cpm!

And our glorious Friends of Tepco are able to see inside of the Torus,
see the running Investigation!

[link to jciv.iidj.net]

Thread: Fukushima 156,000 nSv/h...what does that MEAN? LINK!