Nuclear Power; Is it Safe?

Nuclear Power; Is it Safe?

History of Nuclear Power Compiled by Rita Stuart Calvert rita_calvert@yahoo.com

The Influence of Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics

In his paper on mass–energy equivalence, which had previously been considered to be distinct concepts, Einstein deduced from his equations of special relativity what has been called the 20th century's best-known equation: E = mc2.This equation suggests that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy and presaged the development of nuclear power.

Although previously known as a pacifist, on the eve of World War II, he helped alert President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon, and recommended that the U.S. begin similar research. In 1954, a year before his death, Einstein said to his old friend, Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my life — when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification — the danger that the Germans would make them..."

The Russell–Einstein Manifesto was issued in London on July 9, 1955 by Bertrand Russell in the midst of the Cold War. It highlighted the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict. The signatories included eleven pre-eminent intellectuals and scientists, notably Albert Einstein just days before his death on April 18, 1955.

“The splitting of the atom changed everything save man’s mode of thinking; hence we drift toward unparalleled disaster.” And “Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water!”

MOST FAMOUS QUOTE:

Site of the making of the bomb

Designer of the bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, PhD “Manhattan Project” Under Oppenheimer's guidance, the laboratories at Los Alamos were constructed. There, he brought the best minds in physics to work on the problem of creating an atomic bomb. The joint work of the scientists at Los Alamos resulted in the first nuclear explosion at Alamagordo on July 16, 1945, which Oppenheimer named "Trinity.“ The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb) is a 1980 documentary.The film's title comes from an interview seen near the conclusion of the documentary. Robert Oppenheimer is asked for his thoughts on Sen. Robert Kennedy's efforts to urge President Lyndon Johnson to initiate talks to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. "It's 20 years too late," Oppenheimer replies. After a pause he states, "It should have been done the day after Trinity."

First Atomic Bomb Test – “Trinity”at White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico

July 16, 1945

Eisenhower’s “Misgivings”

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DWIGHT EISENHOWER, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe "...in 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent."

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

Dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima August 6, 1945

Dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki August 9, 1945

Effects of the bomb

Testimony of Hibakusha Fumiko Amano

Fumiko (3rd from left) in school pic 195

Fumiko’s Oldest Brother Hideso

Fumiko Amani, Dallas Peace Center, August 6, 1995 and at Ceremony to Commerate the 50th Anniversary at the Cathedral Taped Testimony

First Hydrogen Bomb Test –

“Castle Bravo”at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, March 1, 1954

First Peaceful Use –USS Nautilus June 14,1952

Nuclear Scientist –USS Nautilus o

Malcolm Stuart, PhD – (1929-1979)

Next Peaceful Use: Power Plants

Predictions and Fears

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After working with the Nautilus and other projects with the Military, Dr. Stuart went to work designing nuclear power plants from 1973-1978.

Becoming concerned about the inherent danger of meltdowns, he asked for a sabbatical and went to California to work as a consultant with the Electrical Power Research Corp. for Alternative Energy. He suffered two “illnesses” earlier that destroyed his thyroid and left him sterile. He was diagnosed with lung cancer on arrival in Oct. 1978 – on March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island melted down. Dr. Stuart died on June 2, 1979 after completing his work. The Nautilus was taken out of service the week of June, 1979.

What is a “meltdown”?

From ORACLE Thinkquest

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It is impossible for any PWR or LWR nuclear reactor to explode like an atomic bomb. This is because in order for an uncontrolled chain reaction to occur that is similar to an atom bomb, the uranium fuel must be extremely enriched, much more than the 4% 235U that is present in regular, commercial nuclear reactor fuel. So, if it can't explode, what does happen in a nuclear reactor? The answer is what is called a meltdown.

When a meltdown occurs in a reactor, the reactor "melts". That is, the temperature rises in the core so much that the fuel rods actually turn to liquid, like ice turns into water when heated. If the core continued to heat, the reactor would get so hot that the steel walls of the core would also melt. In a complete reactor meltdown, the extremely hot (about 2700� Celsius) molten uranium fuel rods would melt through the bottom of the reactor and actually sink about 50 feet into the earth beneath the power plant. The molten uranium would react with groundwater, producing large explosions of radioactive steam and debris that would affect nearby towns and population centers.

First Accident – Three Mile Island March 28, 1979

Interviews with TMI Residents, About the Day of the Meltdown

Testimony of Resident, TMI

Rates of Cancer by Proximity to TMI Accident

Investigation: Revelations about Three Mile Island disaster raise doubts over nuclear plant safety. A special Facing South investigation by Sue Sturgis Digg. o

It was April Fool's Day, 1979 -- 30 years ago this week -- when Randall Thompson first set foot inside the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Thompson was hired as a health physics technician to go inside the plant and find out how dangerous the situation was. He spent 28 days monitoring radiation releases.

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Today, his story about what he witnessed at Three Mile Island is being brought to the public in detail for the first time -- and his version of what happened during that time, supported by a growing body of other scientific evidence, contradicts the official U.S. government story that the Three Mile Island accident posed no threat to the public.

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"What happened at TMI was a whole lot worse than what has been reported," Randall Thompson told Facing South. "Hundreds of times worse." What the Thompsons say they found out during their time inside TMI suggests radiation releases from the plant were hundreds if not thousands of times higher than the government and industry have acknowledged -- high enough to cause the acute health effects documented in people living near the plant but that have been dismissed by the industry and the government as impossible given official radiation dose estimates.

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But the official story that there were no health impacts from the disaster doesn't jibe with the experiences of people living near TMI. On the contrary, their stories suggest that area residents actually suffered exposure to levels of radiation high enough to cause acute effects -- far more than the industry and the government has acknowledged.

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Similar stories surfaced in The People of Three Mile Island, a book by documentary photographer Robert Del Tredici. (I have this book.) He found local farmers whose cattle and goats died, suffered miscarriages and gave birth to deformed young after the incident; whose chickens developed respiratory problems and died; and whose fruit trees abruptly lost all their leaves. Local residents also collected evidence of deformed plants, some of which were examined by James Gunckel, a botanist and radiation expert with Brookhaven National Laboratory and Rutgers University.

Revelations about Three Mile Island disaster raise doubts over nuclear plant safety, p. 2

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In 1984, for example, psychologist Marjorie Aamodt and her engineer husband, Norman -- owners of an organic dairy beef farm east of Three Mile Island who got involved in a lawsuit seeking to stop TMI from restarting its Unit 1 reactor -- surveyed residents in three hilltop neighborhoods near the plant. Dozens of neighbors reported a metallic taste, nausea, vomiting and hair loss as well as illnesses including cancers, skin and reproductive problems, and collapsed organs -- all associated with radiation exposure. Among the 450 people surveyed, there were 19 cancer deaths reported between 1980 and 1984 -- more than seven times what would be expected statistically.

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Consulting for the plaintiffs' attorneys, the Aamodts contacted Dr. Steven Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health in Chapel Hill to provide support for the plaintiffs.

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Wing reanalyzed the Columbia scientists' data, looking at cancer rates before the TMI disaster to control for other possible risk factors in the 10-mile area. His peer-reviewed results, published in 1997, found positive relationships between accident dose estimates and rates of leukemia, lung cancer and all cancers. Where the Columbia study found a 30 percent average increase in lung cancer risk among one group of residents, for example, Wing found an 85 percent increase. And while the Columbia researchers found little or no increase in adult leukemias and a statistically unreliable increase in childhood cases, Wing found that people downwind during the most intense releases were eight to 10 times more likely on average than their neighbors to develop leukemia.

"I believe this is very good evidence that releases were thousands of times greater than the story we've been told," he said. "As we think about the current plans to open more nuclear reactors, when we hear -- which we hear often -- that no one was harmed at Three Mile Island, we really should question that."

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Published on Monday, March 21, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Latest Update Beyond Fukishima: A World in Denial About Nuclear Risks by Danny Schechter What will it take for our world to recognize the dangers that nuclear scientists and even Albert Einstein were warning about at the “dawn” of the nuclear age?

As Hiroshima becomes yesterday’s distant memory and Fukishima the current threat, the full extent of the casualties and body count are not yet in, partly because the Japanese government and the power companies don’t want to alarm the public.

Years earlier, a similar cover-up was in effect at Thee Mile Island complex in Pennsylvania where reports of the damage people suffered from a serious accident was minimized, never examined in depth by some of the very same media outlets who are today criticizing Japan for a lack of transparency.

“But the word never crossed the conceptual chasm between the "mainstream" media and the "alternative." Despite a federal class action lawsuit filed by 2400 Pennsylvania families claiming damages from the accident, despite at least $15 million quietly paid to parents children with birth defects, despite three decades of official admissions that nobody knows how much radiation escaped from TMI, where it went or who it affected, not a mention of the fact that people might have been killed there made its way into a corporate report” (See slides 14-24)

Beyond Fukishima: A World in Denial About Nuclear Risks by Danny Schechter Page 2 o

What they don’t seem to know and what millions in Japan are finding out is this technology—with spent rods that are never “spent” and the nuclear waste that will outlive us all-- is inherently unsafe. Jonathan Schell makes this point well in a recent essay in The Nation:

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“The chain of events at the reactors now running out of control provides a case history of the underlying mismatch between human nature and the force we imagine we can control.

Nuclear power is a complex, high technology. But the things that endemically malfunction are of a humble kind.

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The art of nuclear power is to boil water with the incredible heat generated by a nuclear chain reaction. But such temperatures necessitate continuous cooling. Cooling requires pumps. Pumps require conventional power. These are the things that habitually go wrong —and have gone wrong in Japan. A backup generator shuts down. A battery runs out. The pump grinds to a halt. You might suppose that it is easy to pump water into a big container, and that is usually true, but the best-laid plans go awry from time to time.

Sometimes the problem is a tsunami, and sometimes it is an operator asleep at the switch.”

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As the “incident” records of our own Nuclear Regulatory Agency make clear, these are not just Japanese problems. The Christian Science Monitor reports, “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to resolve known safety problems, leading to 14 'near-misses' in US nuclear power plants in 2009 and 2010, according to a new report from a nuclear watchdog group.”

Long Term Affects of TMI Accident o

March 28, 1979: Three Mile Island and infant mortality

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Exposure to radioactive fallout and contaminated water released by the meltdown at Three Mile Island may have caused thousands of deaths. Among many, two books, "Deadly Deceit: Low Level Radiation High Level Cover-up" by Jay Gould and Ben Goldman, 1990, and Joe Mangano's "Low-Level Radiation and Immune System Damage: An Atomic Era Legacy," 1999, document these fatalities.

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Infant deaths in surrounding counties soared 53 percent in the first month after TMI; 27 percent in the first year. As originally published, the federal government's own Monthly Vital Statistics Report shows a statistically significant rise in infant mortality rates shortly after the accident.

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Studying 10 counties closest to TMI, deaths from birth defects were15-to-35 percent higher afterward than before the accident; breast cancer incidence rose seven percent higher; these increases far exceeded those elsewhere in Pennsylvania. Gould suggests that between 50,000 and 100,000 excess deaths occurred after the TMI accident.

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In counties downwind of the accident, leukemia deaths among kids under 10 (1980-to-1984) jumped almost 50 percent compared to the national rate. From 1980-1984 death rates in the three nearest counties were considerably higher than 1970-74 (before the reactor opened) for leukemia, female breast, thyroid and bone and joint cancers.

Chernobyl Reactor Accident April 26, 1986

26 APRIL 1986:

1.23am: Reactor number four at Chernobyl nuclear power plant begins to fail. Explosion blows 1,000-ton cover off the reactor and 31 people die immediately.

5am: Fire caused by explosion is put out by firefighters who are not warned of radiation.

Many later die. Officials arrive at site and order evacuation of nearby town of Pripyat.

27 APRIL: Disaster is hidden until workers at Forsmark nuclear plant in Sweden are found to have radioactive particles on clothes. Swedish search for the source of radioactivity leads to the USSR 1 MAY: Despite clouds of radiation overhead, authorities encourage locals to turn out for May Day parade in nearby Kiev.

JUNE-NOVEMBER: Large sarcophagus made of steel and

concrete is hastily constructed.

The sarcophagus was hastily thrown together after the explosion as a desperate attempt to contain the world’s worst nuclear accident. Many of the workers who toiled on it have since died of cancer and the sarcophagus itself began showing signs of serious stress in the early 1990s.(See

slide 100)

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow 28 April 2005 A leading Russian scientist has claimed that the sarcophagus entombing Chernobyl’s broken nuclear reactor is dangerously degraded and he warned that its collapse could cause a catastrophe on the same scale as the original accident almost 20 years ago. .

Sarcophagus built over Chernobyl Reactor

Deserted city of Prypiat, Ukraine after Chernobyl Disaster Deserted city of Prypiat after Chernobyl

Pripyat is located 3 km north of the Chernobyl plant and was built as a city to house the Chernobyl Plant workers. Construction of the city began in 1970. Pripyat had a population of 49,000 - now it's a dead city - no one lives here, and special permission is required to enter the city limits.

Two days after the explosions at the Chernobyl plant, Pripyat was evacuated. 1,000 buses were brought in from Kiev to the outskirts of the city, preparing for a possible evacuation. The citizens were told to take 3 days worth of clothing and necessities with them, though the government knew the people would never return to their homes.

Long Term Affects of Chernobyl o March 26, 1986: From 32 to 985,000 Chernobyl deaths o

The Wisconsin State Journal noted on April 15, 1991 that "The most senior scientist at the Chernobyl nuclear power station says the disaster claimed up to 10,000 lives, thousands more than Soviet authorities have admitted, a London newspaper reported on Sunday.

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The Milwaukee Journal, on April 21, 1991 reported, "Many Soviet and Western researchers dispute the official death toll of only 32, saying that at least 500 people and possibly as many as 7,000 have died of cancer and other illnesses.“

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Estimates of deaths caused by Chernobyl vary widely. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported April 27, 1995 that Ukrainian Health Minister Andrei Serdyuk had announced the latest Ukrainian estimate of Chernobyl's death toll at 125,000 from illnesses traced to radiation.

According to a report from the New York Academy of Sciences, due to the Chernobyl disaster, 985,000 people have died, mainly from cancer, between 1986-2004.

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The United Nations reported Sept. 6, 2005 that its scientists predicted about 4,000 eventual radiation-related deaths among 600,000 people in the affected area. CNN reported April 26, 1997, "Ukrainian authorities say over 4,000 died of radiation-related illnesses.

Points Against Nuclear Power o

1. Nuclear power plants produce electricity with about 66 g equivalent carbon dioxide emissions per kWh, while renewable power generators produce only 9.5-39 g carbon dioxide per kWh.

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2. Nuclear power plants can overheat and melt down, releasing radioactivity.

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3. Radioactive waste disposal; not solved yet; “depleted” uranium, received free by the government, is used in “conventional” weapons and pollutes for long periods of time, and can cause birth defects.

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4. Power plants can be adapted to produce nuclear weapons.

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5. Nuclear plants are very expensive and is the only industry to have its liability artificially limited, even in cases of intentional misconduct or gross negligence. Taxpayers pay for cleanup above the cap.

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6. Nuclear terrorism; concern that nuclear facilities could be targeted by terrorists.

International Peace Program Sadako Sasaki was a 12year old girl who was 2 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. She was symptom free until then, but developed leukemia. She was told that if she folded 1000 paper cranes, she would be granted her wish, to live.

She folded 644, using every scrap of paper she could find.

But after she died, her friends finished folding the 1000 and they were buried with her. The origami crane has become the International Symbol of Peace.

Paper Cranes for Peace

Children’s Peace Memorial, Hiroshima

1000 Paper Cranes on Display

What’s Next for the Nuclear Disarmament Movement?

New York, August 6, 2010

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Mayors Akiba and Taue lead our march from Times Square to the United Nations. Mayor Akiba holds the "Abolition Flame," which has been carried around the world spreading a message of peace, justice and abolition

Wildfires Could Spread to Region irradiated by Chernobyl Disaster Published on Friday, August 6, 2010 by Russia

The Russian Emergencies Minister is warning of possible radiation risks, as wildfires approach closer to the area affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The main fear is that the fires, which are moving further south of Moscow toward the Bryansk region, could disturb and spread the contamination buried in the ground after the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

"Several laboratories are closely monitoring the situation in the Bryansk region, the territory which was contaminated following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster," Emergencies minister Sergey Shoigu said. "If fires erupt there, there is a risk that radionuclide can be released into the air with other combustible gases, and more areas could become contaminated."

Firefighters have been dispatched to the area to avert possible outbreaks. They have been battling hundreds of blazes across Central Russia, which have claimed fifty lives thus far.

Meanwhile, the smog created by the wildfires is the thickest so far. It has already disrupted air travel, with Moscow's Domodedovo and Vnukovo airports diverting forty incoming flights to the airports located either north of the city, or to St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod or Kazan. Š 2010 Russia Today

oď Żâ€Ż Thousands Protest Against German Nuclear Plan Published on Saturday, September 18, 2010 by AgencFrancePresse BERLIN - Tens of thousands demonstrated in Berlin Saturday against the government's proposal to extend the life of Germany's nuclear power plants for another decade or more.

Anti-nuclear protesters demonstrate at the Reichstag building during a demonstration against German government's energy policy at the governmental district in Berlin, September 18, 2010.

The Reichstag is the seat of the German lower house of parliament Bundestag. Waving banners and balloons marked with the slogans of the anti-nuclear movement, they turned out in force to protest outside Chancellor Angela Merkel's headquarters.

The organisers -- environmental groups backed by left-leaning opposition parties -- put their numbers at 100,000, though police made it 37,000.

Merkel's centre-right coalition on Sunday agreed to lift the deadline of 2022 for the phasing out of nuclear power set by an earlier Social Democrat-led government.

With no permanent storage site for radioactive waste in place and fears about a repetition of a disaster in Germany like the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine in 1986, polls indicate a majority of voters oppose an extension.

Anti-nuclear protesters demonstrate at the Reichstag building during a demonstration against German government's energy policy at the governmental district in Berlin, September 18, 2010. The Reichstag is the seat of the German lower house of parliament Bundestag, the sentence on the banner reads "Enough of this crap".

(REUTERS/Thomas Peter)

Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years Published on Sunday, February 27, 2011 by The NationalGeographic

by Charles Q. Choi Even a regional nuclear war could spark "unprecedented" global cooling and reduce rainfall for years, according to U.S. government computer models. Widespread famine and disease would likely follow, experts speculate.

Today, with the United States the only standing superpower, nuclear winter is little more than a nightmare. But nuclear war remains a very real threat—for instance, between developing-world nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan. For a time Earth would likely be a colder, hungrier planet.

"Our results suggest that agriculture could be severely impacted, especially in areas that are susceptible to late-spring and early-fall frosts," said Oman, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

In addition, researcher Michael Mills, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, found large decreases in the protective ozone layer, leading to much more ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth's surface and harming the environment and people. "The main message from our work,"

NASA's Oman said, "would be that even a regional nuclear conflict would have global consequences."

Nuclear Emergency: Japan Warns of Radiation Leak from Quake-Hit Plant Govt says situation "not yet critical"

by Osamu Tsukimori and Kiyoshi Takenaka TOKYO

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Japan warned there could be a small radiation leak from a reactor whose cooling system was knocked by Friday's massive earthquake, but thousands of residents in the area had been moved out of harm's way.

NUCLEAR EMERGENCY

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Evacuation underway in the area surrounding Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

Underscoring grave concerns about the Fukushima plant some 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. air force had delivered coolant to avert a rise in the temperature of the facility's nuclear rods.

Pressure building in the plant was set to be released soon, a move that could result in a radiation leak, officials said. Some 3,000 people who live within a 3 km radius of the plant had been evacuated, Kyodo news agency said. "It's possible that radioactive material in the reactor vessel could leak outside but the amount is expected to be small and the wind blowing towards the sea will be considered," Chief Cabinet Yukio Edano told a news conference.

Radiation Leak from Quake-Hit Plant in Japan, p. 2 "Residents are safe after those within a 3 km radius were evacuated and those within a 10 km radius are staying indoors, so we want people to be calm," he added.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan was set to visit the plant on Saturday morning and also fly over the quake-hit area.

Tokyo Electric Power Co said pressure had built up inside a reactor at the FukushimaDaiichi plant after the cooling system was knocked out by the earthquake, the largest on record in Japan.

Pressure had risen to 1.5 times the designed capacity, the Japan Nuclear Safety agency said. Media also said the radiation level was rising in the turbine building.

The cooling problems at the Japanese plant raised fears of a repeat of 1979's Three Mile Island accident, the most serious in the history of the U.S. nuclear power industry.

Experts, however, said the situation was, so far, less serious.

Equipment malfunctions, design problems and human error led to a partial meltdown of the reactor core at the Three Mile Island plant, but only minute amounts of dangerous radioactive gases were released. (See chart on slide 19) "The situation is still several stages away from Three Mile Island when the reactor container ceased to function as it should," said Tomoko Murakami, leader of the nuclear energy group at Japan's Institute of Energy Economics.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that around 20 percent of nuclear reactors around the world are currently operating in areas of significant seismic activity.

Published Saturday, March 12, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Behind the Hydrogen Explosion at the Fukushima Nuclear Plant

by Karl Grossman

The explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant is being described as caused by a “hydrogen build-up” The situation harks back to the “hydrogen bubble” that was feared would explode when the Three Mile Island plant in 1979 had a partial melt.

Eruption of hydrogen gas as a first reaction in a loss-ofcoolant accident has been discussed with great worry in U.S. government and nuclear industry literature for decades. That is because a highly volatile substance called zirconium was chosen back in the 1940’s and 50’s,, when plans were first developed to build nuclear power plants, as the material to be used to make the rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded.

Other substances were tried, particularly stainless steel, but only zirconium worked well. That’s because there are 30,000 to 40,000 rods—composed of twenty tons of zirconium—in an average nuclear power plant. Zirconium, it was found, allows neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained.

Hydrogen Explosion, p 2 But there’s a huge problem with zirconium—it is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam.

The only other major commercial use of zirconium through the years has been in flashbulbs used in photography. A speck of it, on a flashbulb, ignites to provide a flash of light.

Before then, however, zirconium reacts to the heat by drawing oxygen from water and steam and letting off hydrogen, which itself can explode—and is said to have done so at Fukushima.

As a result of such a hydrogen explosion, there is additional heat—bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level. Whether in addition to being a hydrogen explosion, zirconium also exploded at Fukushima remains to be known.

It is described in U.S. government and nuclear industry accident studies as a “metalwater” reaction. It’s a reaction, the research has long stated, that can easily trigger a meltdown.

Using tons of a material otherwise used as the speck that explodes in a flashbulb in nuclear power plants —yes, absolutely crazy. Moreover, in the spent fuel pools usually situated next to nuclear power plants, there are large numbers of additional fuel rods, used ones, disposed of as waste. There must be constant water circulation in the spent fuel pools. In what is labeled a “loss-of-water’ accident in a spent fuel pool, the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods is projected as exploding—sending into the environment the lethal nuclear poisons in a spent fuel pool.

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, has long specialized in doing investigative reporting on nuclear technology. He is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power. He is the host of the nationally aired TV program, Enviro Close-Up (envirovideo.com).

Published on Friday, March 11, 011 by CommonDreams.org

An 8.9 Quake Could Have Irradiated the Entire US

By Harvey Wasserman

Had the massive 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.

The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.

All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.

San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.

Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.

By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors--including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.

Third blast at Japan nuclear plant 15 March 2011 Last updated at 01:58 GMT (from BBC News, Asia-Pacific

A quake-stricken nuclear plant in Japan has been hit by a third explosion in four days, amid fears of a meltdown.

The blast occurred at reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, which engineers had been trying to stabilize after two As radiation levels near the plant rise, people are being checked for exposure other reactors exploded.

A fresh explosion rocked reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant - 250km (155 miles) north-east of Tokyo - in the early hours of Tuesday. Radiation levels around Fukushima for one hour's exposure rose to eight times the legal limit for exposure in one year, said the plant's operator, the Tokyo ElectriPower Co (Tepco). The radiation reading at 0831 local time (2331 GMT) climbed to 8,217 microsievertan hour from 1,941 about 40 minutes earlier, Tepco said.

The annual legal limit is 1,000 microsieverts.

However, officials say that a level of one million microsieverts would be needed to cause widespread radiation sickness.

Third Blast, p. 2

Mr Kan also said a fire had broken out at the plant's reactor 4, but urged people to remain calm.

On Monday, a hydrogen blast at reactor 3 injured 11 people and destroyed the building surrounding it. That explosion was felt 40km (25 miles) away and sent a huge column of smoke into the air.

Japanese ordered indoors in radiation leak crisis

By ERIC TALMADGE and SHINO YUASA, Associated Press 10:30 3/14/11

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SOMA, Japan – Radiation leaked from a crippled nuclear plant in tsunami-ravaged northeastern Japan after a third reactor was rocked by an explosion Tuesday and a fourth caught fire in a dramatic escalation of the 4-day-old catastrophe. The government warned anyone nearby to stay indoors to avoid exposure.

In a nationally televised statement, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation has spread from four reactors of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Fukushima province, one of the hardest-hit in Friday's 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami that has killed more than 10,000 people.

"The level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out," Kan said. "We are making utmost efforts to prevent further explosions and radiation leaks."

This is the worst nuclear crisis Japan has faced since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. It is also the first time that such a grave nuclear threat has been raised in the world since a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine exploded in 1986.

"It is likely that the level of radiation increased sharply due to a fire at Unit 4," Edano said. "Now we are talking about levels that can damage human health. These are readings taken near the area where we believe the releases are happening. Far away, the levels should be lower," he said.

Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight. Don't turn on ventilators. Please hang your laundry indoors," he said.

"These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that," he said

POSTED: March 14, 5:20 PM ET

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By Tim Dickinson

California's Fukushima in Waiting?

A cascading nuclear disaster is underway in Japan.

Could it happen here? You bet.

Consider Diablo Canyon, California's most earthquakeprone nuclear power plant. It was built — on the central coast near San Luis Obispo, half way between San Francisco and LA — to withstand a magnitude 7.5 earthquake. Which sounds reassuring — until you realize that Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, now in partial meltdown, was engineered to stand up to a 7.9, only to be hit by a 8.9 quake.

Don't be misled by the logarithmic Richter scale; those numbers are worlds apart: A 7.5 quake is the equivalent to the force of detonating 180,000 kilotons of TNT; a magnitude 8.9 quake: 22 million kilotons — 122 times greater.)

Scarier still, Diablo Canyon was built with the Hosgri Fault, 4.5 kilometers offshore, in mind. But in 2008, scientists discovered a second major fault — the Shoreline Fault — only 1 kilometer offshore from the nuclear plant.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission NRC and the plant's operator PG&E have both declared the second fault a non-issue. But a September

California’s /Fujushima, p.2 presentation from the California EnergyCommission raises troubling questions about the second fault, reporting that its "major characteristics...are largely unknown," including "whether an earthquake beginning on the Hosgri Fault could continue on the Shoreline Fault or vice versa, causing a larger quake than if either fault broke on its own."

Most troubling of the unknowns? "Whether this fault or fault displays could extend under the plant.(Emphasis added here and below.) The commission's presentation blasts PG&E for not investigating known risks, reporting that the fault geology is "not understood sufficiently to rule out [an] earthquake directly beneath the plant," and that the utility "has not assessed the expected ground motions and plant vulnerabilities from such an earthquake."

In light of the fact that the current disaster in Japan has resulted in both earthquake and tsunami damage, it's also troubling that the commission presentation calls on PG&E and the feds to update Diablo Canyon's "tsunami hazard assessment."

(Calls to PG&E, the NRC, and the California Energy Commission were not immediately returned.)

Radiation Reaching US, More Transparency Called For

By William J. Broad, The New York Times

19 March 11

Faint traces of very low levels of radiation from the stricken nuclear complex in Japan have been detected in Sacramento, European officials reported Friday, bringing the distant atomic crisis to American shores for the first time. o

The readings, picked up by highly sensitive detectors set up to monitor clandestine nuclear blasts, were the first solid evidence of the leading edge of a long radioactive plume that has drifted slowly across the Pacific with the prevailing winds over the past week and has now reached the continental United States.

o

Health experts said the plume's radiation had been diluted enormously in its journey across thousands of miles and - at least for now, with concentrations very low - would have no health consequences in the United States. In a similar way, radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spread around the globe and reached the West Coast of the United States in 10 days, its levels detectable but minuscule.]

A shopper searches for earthquake survival supplies near a display of gas masks at the Army & Navy Military Surplus Store. (photo: AP

Workers flee Japan nuclear plant as smoke rises

By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Eric Talmadge

And Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press – 2 hrs 2 mins ago 3/21/11

o

FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Gray smoke rose from two reactor units Monday, temporarily stalling critical work to reconnect power lines and restore cooling systems to stabilize Japan's radiation-leaking nuclear complex.

o

Workers are racing to bring the nuclear plant under control, but the process is proceeding in fits and starts, stalled by incidents like the smoke and by the need to work methodically to make sure wiring, pumps and other machinery can be safely switched on.

o

"Our crisis is still going on. Our crisis is with the nuclear plants. We are doing everything we can to bring this to an end," Gov. Yuhei Sato of Fukushima prefecture, where the plant is located, told the more than 1,000 people moved away from the plant into a gymnasium.

"Don't give up. We know you are suffering.“

o

What caused the smoke to billow first from Unit 3 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant and later from Unit 2 is under investigation, nuclear safety agency officials said. Still, in the days since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami wrecked the plant's cooling systems, both reactors have overheated and seen explosions. Workers were evacuated from the area to buildings nearby, though radiation levels remained steady, the officials said.

o

Radioactive iodine, which breaks down after a week, has been the most widespread contaminant found, but so have traces of cesium, which lasts decades and may cause cancer.

o

That cesium was likely generated when nuclear fuel rods partially melted last week, NISA's Nishiyama said, and is an indication of potential harm to the environment and how badly damaged some of the reactors are.

Tue Mar 22, 11:49 AM ET

Nuclear Nightmare Published on Saturday, March 19, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Ralph Nader

The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States—many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.

Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power’s overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there are still no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.

Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry’s promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area “the size of Pennsylvania” and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.

Because of many costs, perils, close calls at various reactors, and the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, there has not been a nuclear power plant built in the United States since 1974.

Now the industry is coming back “on your back” claiming it will help reduce global warming from fossil fuel emitted greenhouse gases.

Nuclear Nightmare by Ralph Nader

P. 2

Pushed aggressively by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu, who refuses to meet with longtime nuclear industry critics, here is what “on your back” means: 1.

Wall Street will not finance new nuclear plants without a 100% taxpayer loan guarantee. Too risky. That’s a lot of guarantee given that new nukes cost $12 billion each, assuming no mishaps. Obama and the Congress are OK with that arrangement.

2.

Nuclear power is uninsurable in the private insurance market—too risky. Under the Price-Anderson Act, taxpayers pay the greatest cost of a meltdown’s devastation.

3.

Nuclear power plants and transports of radioactive wastes are a national security nightmare for the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine the target that thousands of vulnerable spent fuel rods present for sabotage.

4.

Guess who pays for whatever final waste repositories are licensed? You the taxppayer and your descendants as far as your gene line persists. Huge decommissioning costs, at the end of a nuclear plant’s existence come from the ratepayers’ pockets.

5.

Nuclear plant disasters present impossible evacuation burdens for those living anywhere near a plant, especially if time is short.Imagine evacuating the long-troubled Indian Point plants 26 miles north of New York City. Workers in that region have a hard enough time evacuating their places of employment during 5 pm rush hour. That’s one reason Secretary of State Clinton (in her time as Senator of New York) and Governor Andrew Cuomo called for the shutdown of Indian Point.

Nuclear Nightmare

by

Ralph Nader

P. 3

6. Nuclear power is both uneconomical and unnecessary. It can’t compete against energy conservation, including cogeneration, windpower and ever more efficient, quicker, safer, renewable forms of providing electricity.(Nuclear power plants produce electricity with about 66 g equivalent carbon dioxide emissions per kWh, while renewable power generators produce only 9.5-39 g carbon dioxide per kWh.) Peter Bradford, a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) commissioner has also made a compelling case against nuclear power on economic and safety grounds (http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/whynewnukesareriskyfcts.pdf). There is far more for ratepayers, taxpayers and families near nuclear plants to find out. Here’s how you can start: 1. Demand public hearings in your communities where there is a nuke, sponsored either by your member of Congress or the NRC, to put the facts, risks and evacuation plans on the table.

2. If you call yourself conservative, ask why nuclear power requires such huge amounts of your tax dollars and guarantees and can’t buy adequate private insurance.

3. If you are an environmentalist, ask why nuclear power isn’t required to meet a costefficient market test against investments in energy conservation and renewables.

4. If you understand traffic congestion, ask for an actual real life evacuation drill for those living and working 10 miles around the plant (some scientists think it should be at least 25 miles) and watch the hemming and hawing from proponents of nuclear power. The people in northern Japan may lose their land, homes, relatives, and friends as a result of a dangerous technology designed simply to boil water. There are better ways to generate steam.

Breach suspected at troubled Japanese power plant

By SHINO YUASA and JEFF DONN Associated Press Shino Yuasa And Jef Donn Associated Press – 24 mins ago TOKYO – Two weeks after an earthquake and tsunami triggered a crisis at a nuclear plant, the facility is still not under control, and the government said Friday there is a suspected breach at a reactor. That means radioactive contamination at the plant is more serious than once thought.

Japanese leaders defended their decision not to evacuate people from a wider area around the plant, insisting they are safe if they stay indoors. But officials also said residents may want to voluntarily move to areas with better facilities, since supplies in the tsunami-devastated region are running short.

Low levels of radiation have been seeping out since the March 11 quake and tsunami knocked out the plant's cooling system, but a breach could mean a much larger release of contaminants. The most likely consequence would be contamination of the groundwater.

"The situation today at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant is still very grave and serious. We must remain vigilant," a somber Prime Minister Naoto Kan said. "We are not in a position where we can be optimistic. We must treat every development with the utmost care.“ The possible breach in the plant's Unit 3 might be a crack or a hole in the stainless steel chamber of the reactor core or in the spent fuel pool that's lined with several feet of reinforced concrete. The temperature and pressure inside the core, which holds the fuel rods, remained stable and was far lower than what would further melt the core.

Kan apologized to farmers and business owners for the toll the radiation has had on their livelihoods: Several countries have halted some food imports from areas near the plant after elevated levels of radiation were found in raw milk, seawater and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips.

Breach suspected, p. 2

He also thanked utility workers, firefighters and military personnel for "risking their lives" to cool the overheated facility.

Officials have evacuated residents within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant and advised those up to 19 miles (30 kilometers) away to stay indoors to minimize exposure. The U.S. has recommended that people stay 50 miles (80 kilometers) away from the plant.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano insisted that people living 12 to 20 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) from the plant should still be safe from radiation as long as they stay indoors. But since supplies are not being delivered to the area fast enough, he said it may be better for residents to voluntarily evacuate to places with better facilities.

If the current situation is protracted and worsens, then we will not deny the possibility of (mandatory) evacuation," he said.

Nissan Motor Co. said it may move part of its engine production line to the United States because of damage to a plant.

Previous radioactive emissions have come from intentional efforts to vent small amounts of steam through valves to prevent the core from bursting. However, releases from a breach could allow uncontrolled quantities of radioactive contaminants to escape into the surrounding ground or air.

Nuclear Radiation 'The Greatest Public Health Hazard'Published on Saturday, Mar26,

2011 by

CNN

Helen Caldicott MD says it is impossible to have a safe nuclear power plant When she was an adolescent, Helen Caldicott says, she read the nuclear apocalypse novel "On the Beach."

The story was set in the aftermath of an atomic war; the protagonists must await the arrival of a deadly fallout cloud. It was a formative event, she says, and later, in medical school, the connection between health and nuclear energy would galvanize her.

Caldicott went on to become one of the most vocal, ubiquitous and controversial opponents of nuclear power during the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, severely damaged after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, has given a fresh urgency, she says, to a "medical problem of vast dimensions," highlighted by reports that emerge daily on the spread of radiation.

Caldicott, who lives in Australia and the U.S., remains engrossed in the anti-nuclear issue, heads the Helen Caldicott Foundation for a Nuclear-Free Planet and regularly lectures around the world on its dangers. She's written seven books, including "If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth" and "Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer."

Nuclear Radiation:Greatest Health Hazard, p 2 by Helen Caldicott CNN spoke with Caldicott ahead of a talk she was giving in Camden, New Jersey.

CNN: What is the health risk for people living near the Fukushima Daiichi plant?

Calicott:The risk cannot be determined with any accuracy yet, because it is not clear how much radiation has or is escaping………. High levels of exposure can cause acute radiation sickness, a syndrome first recognized by the medical profession after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It can have terrible effects. In two weeks, victims' hair begins to drop out. They develop hemorrhaging under the skin, severe nausea and diarrhea and may eventually die from bleeding or infection.

Men exposed to such a dose would be rendered sterile, women would stop menstruating, and spontaneous abortions would likely occur. Babies could be born with microcephaly, with tiny heads and mental disabilities. Many people would develop acute shortness of breath from lung damage. In five years, there would be an epidemic of leukemia, and in 15 years, solid cancers would start appearing in many organs: lung, breast, thyroid, brain and bone.

There is no way to decontaminate exposed people once they inhale or ingest radioactive elements, which are dispersed throughout the body to many different organs.

CNN: How is this disaster comparable to the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island?

Nuclear Radiation:Greatest Health Hazard, p 3

Caldicott: The radiation monitors at Three Mile Island went off the scale within minutes of the accident, so releases were only guesstimates by physicists. But almost certainly, radioactive elements like strontium 90, cesium 137 and tritium escaped. Chernobyl had a full meltdown and rupture of the containment vessel, and fallout contaminated 40% of Europe and England.

CNN: Is it possible to have a safe nuclear power plant?

Caldicott: No. They are very complicated machines containing the energy released when an atom is split: Einstein's formula e=mc², the mass of the atom times the speed of light squared. Anything can go wrong: natural disasters, failure of cooling systems, human and computer error, terrorism, sabotage. ‌.. Einstein said, "The splitting of the atom changed everything save man's mode of thinking; thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe." He also said, "Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water."

CNN: Doesn't every form of energy production involve some risk, as we saw with the oil spill in the Gulf?

Caldicott: Well, that was dreadful. But to leave a legacy of huge vats of leaking radioactive waste around the world, inducing epidemics of malignancy and random compulsory genetic engineering, is a legacy for which future generations will be distinctly ungrateful.

CNN: Is there any other aspect of this event that we should be paying attention to and or not?

Caldicott: No, except that the media keep interviewing nuclear engineers and physicists, but in truth this is a medical problem of vast dimensions.

Nuclear Radiation: Unsafe at Any Dose Published on Monday, May 2, 2011 by The New York Times

by Helen Caldicott

(UPDATE)

Six weeks ago, when I first heard about the reactor damage at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, I knew the prognosis: If any of the containment vessels or fuel pools exploded, it would mean millions of new cases of cancer in the Northern Hemisphere. Many advocates of nuclear power would deny this. During the 25th anniversary last week of the Chernobyl disaster, some commentators asserted that few people died in the aftermath, and that there have been relatively few genetic abnormalities in survivors’ offspring.

But this is dangerously ill informed and short-sighted; if anyone knows better, it’s doctors like me. There’s great debate about the number of fatalities following Chernobyl…… but a 2009 report published by the New York Academy of Sciences says that almost one million people have already perished from cancer and other diseases. The high doses of radiation caused so many miscarriages that we will never know the number of genetically damaged fetuses that did not come to term. (And both Belarus and Ukraine have group homes full of deformed children.)

As we know from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it takes years to get cancer. Leukemia takes only 5 to 10 years to emerge, but solid cancers take 15 to 60. (My brother, Dr. Malcolm Stuart a nuclear physicist, developed cancer 24 years after beginning his work; his wife died three years later from leukemia; his son developed colon cancer in 2010; and daughter had pre-cancerous thyroid removed in 2009.) Furthermore, most radiationinduced mutations are recessive; it can take many generations for two recessive genes to combine to form a child with a particular disease, like my specialty, cystic fibrosis. We can’t possibly imagine how many cancers and other diseases will be caused in the far future by the radioactive isotopes emitted by Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Doctors understand these dangers. We work hard to try to save the life of a child dying of leukemia. We work hard to try to save the life of a woman dying of metastatic breast cancer.

And yet the medical dictum says that for incurable diseases, the only recourse is prevention. There’s no group better prepared than doctors to stand up to the physicists of the nuclear industry.

Nuclear Radiation: Unsafe at Any Dose

p 2by Helen Caldicott

(UPDATE)

Nuclear power is neither clean, nor sustainable, nor an alternative to fossil fuels — in fact, it adds substantially to global warming. (See slide 31:1. Nuclear power plants produce electricity with about 66 g equivalent carbon dioxide emissions per kWh, while renewable power generators produce only 9.5-39 g carbon dioxide per kWh.) Solar, wind and geothermal energy, along with conservation, can meet our energy needs.

At the beginning, we had no sense that radiation induced cancer. Marie Curie and her daughter didn’t know that the radioactive materials they handled would kill them. But it didn’t take long for the early nuclear physicists in the Manhattan Project to recognize the toxicity of radioactive elements. I knew many of them quite well. They had hoped that peaceful nuclear energy would absolve their guilt over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it has only extended it.

Stumped By Science: Michele Bachmann Calls CO2 ‘Harmless,’ ‘Negligible,’ ‘Necessary,’ ‘Natural’ By Brad Johnson on Apr 24th, 2009 at 10:59 am on THE WONK ROOM On the House floor on Earth Day, April 22, 2009, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) argued that the threat of manmade global warming doesn’t make any sense because “carbon dioxide is a natural byproduct of nature”: Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that — that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth.

Rep. Blumenauer (D-OR), later in the evening, demolished Bachmann for “making things up on the floor of the House”: My good friend, the gentlelady from Minnesota, doesn’t think there are any problems with the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s interesting to listen to her say that something that was naturally occurring simply couldn’t be harmful, ignoring the fact that we have the highest concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for 2/3 of a million years.

The consensus of the scientific community — not people making things up on the floor of the House — is that this has been profoundly influenced by human activity, starting with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, where we started consuming huge quantities of coal, burning fossil fuels, accelerating that over time. The consensus of the scientific community is that this is in fact a serious problem.

(To repeat, from Slide 31:Nuclear power plants produce electricity with about 66 g equivalent carbon dioxide emissions per kWh, while renewable power generators produce only 9.5-39 g carbon dioxide per kWh.)

MARCH 26, 2011

Setback for Japan at Rogue Reactors

By ANDREW MORSE, MITSURU OBE and MEGUMI FUJIKAWA

The regulator overseeing Japan‘sFukushimaDaiichi nuclear complex on Saturday announced a sharp elevation in radioactive contamination had been detected in nearby seawater, furthering signs of distress at a plant where officials had cautioned of radioactive leaks near hobbled reactors the day before.

A spokesman said the spike in radioactive iodine— to 1,250 times the legal limit—didn't pose an immediate threat to human health or the area environment, since the material quickly dissipates in the tides and would become diluted before reaching fish and seaweed.

But the news underscores that fact that, for all the progress claimed by officials over the past week, they have a long way to go in bringing Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s reactors under control and understanding exactly what is happening inside the compound.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images o A blue sheet was held over patients exposed to nuclear-plant radiation as they were transferred on Friday.

Setback for Japan at Rogue Reactors P 2 The seawater reading announced Saturday compared with an earlier report that showed iodine at 126 times the legal limit. A person drinking half a liter of water with the latest level of contamination would be consuming 1 millisievert, the equivalent of a full year's acceptable consumption.

"The situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is still very grave," said Prime Minister Naoto Kan at a news conference. "We are still not at a stage where we can be optimistic.“ "Radiation levels in some parts of the facilities are just stunning," said one official at Japan's nuclear regulator. "The work to fix the cooling system was made all the more difficult by the lack of information about where radiation is high inside the complex.

Important Facts Posted by nohobear Mar 27 2011 - 3:59pm

o

Agreed, my friend. shutting down and decommissioning reactors worldwide should be our highest priority. But don't fall into the trap of projecting that without nuclear power, we'll all be sitting inside our cold houses in the dark. It's utter B.S. Nuclear power supplies, after transmission losses, accounts for 8% of our domestic energy. Repeat 8%. http://architecture2030.org/hot_topics/nuclear-energy-fact-check

o

We could save more than that by switching lighting over to compact fluorescent or LEDS, putting timers and motion activated sensors on lights, and not have to build a single solar cell.It's all industry lies to frighten us into accepting nuclear power as the price for the continuation of our lifestyle afforded by modern technology. Yes we extravagantly waste resources and need to get serious about conservation and recycling. But we don't need nuclear power to prevent living in the stone age. Or that without it, necessitates a reduction in the quality of life.

o

Nuclear power generation is INSANE. Splitting atoms and creating poisonous wastes that last thousands of centuries to boil water is INSANE. (by the way, reports are coming out now that the Chernobyl concrete sarcophogus is beginning to deteriorate and leak. It's a mere 25 years old. )This is all about a very few people getting very wealthy (and producing fissionable material for the MIC for bombs) at the expense of taxpayers, our environment, the species we share the biosphere with that sustains all of us, our lives, the lives of our descendants into the far future. All to boil frickin water to run steam turbines.

o

It's also about peak oil. Promoting nuclear keeps the technology, expensive, centralized, unnecessarily complex, in the hands of a few, for the enrichment of an elite, for which the average person will continue to pay throughout their lives. A form of energy serfdom. Look around you. Imagine every rooftop generating it's own electricity or collecting heat from sunshine. Regardless of whether at 90% efficiency, or 20%. Every open parking lot covered with a solar array. That is the vision of freedom that corporations and the nuclear industry want to mock, discount, repudiate, de-legitimize at any cost. Because it will take away their power and more importantly, their profits.

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o

We Demand Global Nuclear Phase Out Joint Statement on the Japanese Nuclear Disaster Published on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Right Livelihood Laureates

The following is a Joint International Statement of Laureates of the “Alternative Nobel Prize” and Members of the World Future Council on Japanese Nuclear Disaster:

We extend our deepest sympathies to the people of Japan who have experienced a devastating earthquake and tsunami followed by severe damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

We commend the brave individuals who are risking their lives to prevent the escape of massive amounts of radiation from the damaged nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools at Fukushima Daiichi.

The tragedy in Japan has raised global awareness of the extreme dangers that can result from nuclear power generation. Grave as these dangers are, however, they are not as great as those arising from the possession, threat and use of nuclear weapons – weapons that have the capacity to destroy civilization and end most life on the planet.

The conclusion we draw from the nuclear power plant accident in Japan is that the human community, acting for itself and as trustees for future generations, must exercise a far higher level of care globally in dealing with technologies capable of causing mass annihilation, and should phase out, abolish and replace such technologies with alternatives that do not threaten present and future generations. This applies to nuclear weapons as well as to nuclear power reactors.

Signed by 49 dignitaries from: Nigeria, Paraguay, Sweden, Canada, Bangldesh, USA, UK, Malaysia, Australia, Germany, China, India, Brazil, Croatia, Russia, France, Chile, Kenya, Argentina, Russia, Philippines, Colombia, New Zealand, Nepal, Sri Lanka.

Published on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

Japan May Have Lost Race to Save Nuclear Reactor

by Ian Sample, Science correspondent The radioactive core in a reactor at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel and on to a concrete floor, experts say, raising fears of a major release of radiation at the site.

Image from a Japanese Ground Self-Defense video shows part of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant on March 27. (AFP/HO/File) The warning follows an analysis by a leading US expert of radiation levels at the plant. Richard Lahey, who was head of safety research for boiling-water reactors at General Electric when the company installed the units at Fukushima, told the Guardian workers at the site appeared to have "lost the race" to save the reactor, but said there was no danger of a Chernobyl-style catastrophe.

At least part of the molten core, which includes melted fuel rods and zirconium alloy cladding, seemed to have sunk through the steel "lower head" of the pressure vessel around reactor two, Lahey said.

The major concern when molten fuel breaches a containment vessel is that it reacts with the concrete floor of the drywell underneath, releasing radioactive gases into the surrounding area. At Fukushima, the drywell has been flooded with seawater, which will cool any molten fuel that escapes from the reactor and reduce the amount of radioactive gas released.

Lahey said: "It won't come out as one big glob; it'll come out like lava, and that is good because it's easier to cool.“ "The reason we are concerned is that they are detecting water outside the containment area that is highly radioactive and it can only have come from the reactor core," Lahey added. "It's not going to be anything like Chernobyl, where it went up with a big fire and steam explosion, but it's not going to be good news for the environment."

Japan Says Battle to Save Nuclear Reactors Has Failed by Justin McCurry in Tokyo Published on Thursday, March 31, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

Japanese officials have conceded that the battle to salvage four crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been lost.

The plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said the reactors would be scrapped, and warned the operation to contain the nuclear crisis, well into its third week, could last months.

The firm's chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, said it had "no choice" but to scrap the Nos 1-4 reactors, but held out hope that the remaining two could continue to operate.

But the government's chief spokesman, Yukio Edano, repeated an earlier call for all six reactors at the 40-year-old plant to be decommissioned. "It is very clear looking at the social circumstances," he said.

On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggested widening the 30km exclusion zone around the plant after finding that radiation levels at a village 40km from the plant exceeded the criteria for evacuation.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was due to arrive in Tokyo on Thursday to show support for the Fukushima operation and for talks with his Japanese counterpart, Naoto Kan. Sarkozy, the current G8 chair, is the first foreign leader to visit Japan since the 11 March earthquake and tsunami. The government's acceptance of help from the US and France has strengthened the belief that the battle to save the stricken reactors is lost.

Battle to Save Reactors Failed, P 2

The country's nuclear and industrial safety agency, Nisa, said on Thursday radioactive iodine at 4,385 times the legal limit had been identified in the sea near the plant, although officials have yet to determine how it got there. On Wednesday the measurement had been 3,355 times the legal limit. Hidehiko Nishiyama, a Nisa spokesman, said fishing had stopped in the area, adding that the contamination posed no immediate threat to humans. "We will find out how it happened and do our utmost to prevent it from rising," he said.

While Nisa officials attempted to play down the contamination's impact on marine life, any development that heightens health concerns among consumers will dismay local fishermen, many of whom already face a long struggle to rebuild their businesses after the tsunami. Experts say the radiation will be diluted by the sea, lessening the contamination of fish and other marine life.

The hundreds of workers at the plant must now find a balance between pumping enough water to cool the reactors and avoiding a runoff of highly radioactive excess water.

As yet they do not have anywhere to store the contaminated water.

The options under consideration were to transfer the water to a ship or cover the reactors to trap radioactive particles, Edano said.

Vermont Yankee license on hold

By Beth Daley Globe Staff / March 16, 2011

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday put a temporary hold on a 20-year license extension for the controversial Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. The commission had instructed its staff to issue the renewal last Thursday, the day before the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Spokesman Neil Sheehan attributed the delay to the fact that manpower is short while the agency focuses resources on helping Japan deal with the unfolding nuclear crisis triggered by the natural disaster.

Vermont Yankee, in Vernon near the Massachusetts border, has suffered a series of problems in recent years that have frayed the public trust, including the collapse of a cooling tower and leaks of tritium into groundwater from underground pipes that company officials initially said were not there.

Critics say the design of the nearly 40-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is similar to the most compromised reactor of the plant at the heart of Japan’s crisis. (Entergy/ Associated Press)

Published on Monday, April 18, 2011 by Burlington Free Press (Vermont)

Owners of Vermont Yankee File Lawsuit to Keep Nuclear Plant Open

by Terri Hallenbeck

oď Żâ€Ż UPDATE!!

MONTPELIER - Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Corp. turned to federal court Monday to try to keep Vermont from shutting down the Vernon nuclear power plant, the company announced this morning. The action comes after many observers wondered what Entergy's next step might be as it tries to extend the use of the 39-year-old plant. The plant last month won permission of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate for another 20 years after its license March 21, 2012, but it has failed to win state permission amid concerns over tritium leaks and misinformation the company supplied to the state.

The 2006 state law, which Entergy did not actively oppose at the time, requires the Legislature to vote to allow the Public Service Board to grant a certificate of public good. The state Senate, led by then-Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin, voted 26-4 in 2010 against that. Shumlin was elected governor last fall.

Entergy said its lawsuit points to a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled a state has no authority over a nuclear power plant relicensing.

Published on Friday, April 1, 2011 by Australian Broadcast Company

Crews 'Facing 100-Year Battle' at Fukushima

by David Mark and Mark Willacy

Chernobyl Nuclear Plant – 1986 See Slide 26

Fukushima Nuclear Plant 2011 -- Handout photo taken by a camera attached to the tip of the arm of a concrete squeeze pump shows inside the broken building housing the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Fukushima Prefecture on March 24, 2011. Steam is seen rising from around a fuel-handling crane (top L, green). The pump's 50-meter arm has been used to pour water into the spent fuel pool of the reactor as part of efforts to get the crippled plant under control. (Photo courtesy of Tokyo Electric Power Co.)

'Worse Than Chernobyl': When the Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater

by Tom Burnett Published on Tuesday, March 29, 2011 by Hawaii News Daily o

Fukushima is going to dwarf Chenobyl. The Japanese government has had a level 7 nuclear disaster going for almost a week but won’t admit it.

o

The disaster is occurring the opposite way than Chernobyl, which exploded and stopped the reaction. Note: However, The reactor was destroyed in the accident and considerable amounts of radioactive material were released to the environment. and radionuclides from the Chernobyl release were measurable in all countries of the northern hemisphere. (UNSCEAR assessment) At Fukushima, the reactions are getting worse. I suspect three nuclear piles are in meltdown and we will probably get some of it.

o

If reactor 3 is in meltdown, the concrete under the containment looks like lava. But Fukushima is not far off the water table. When that molten mass of self-sustaining nuclear material gets to the water table it won’t simply cool down. It will explode – not a nuclear explosion, but probably enough to involve the rest of the reactors and fuel rods at the facility.

o

Pouring concrete on a critical reactor makes no sense (see next slide)– it will simply explode and release more radioactive particulate matter. The concrete will melt and the problem will get worse. Chernobyl was different – a critical reactor exploded and stopped the reaction. At Fukushima, the reactor cores are still melting down. The ONLY way to stop that is to detonate a ~10 kiloton fission device inside each reactor containment vessel and hope to vaporize the cores. That’s probably a bad solution.

If I Had the Ear of the Prime Minister, I Would Recommend the "Chernobyl Option" Michio Kaku on March 15, 2011, 12:17 PM 1. If I had the ear of the Prime Minister, I would recommend the "Chernobyl Option."

2. Put the Japanese Air Force on alert 3. Assemble a huge fleet of helicopters. Put shielding underneath them.

4. Accumulate enough sand, boric acid, and concrete to smother these reactors, to entomb them forever. Note: (Chernobyl’s sarcophagus is only 25 yrs. old and is leaking.)

This is what the Soviets did in 1986, calling out the Red Air Force and sandbagging the reactor with over 5,000 tons of concrete and sand. Note:(It wasn’t filled with water.)

About Dr. Kaku's Universe 145 Posts Since 2010 Dr. Kaku's Universe is written by Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at C.U.N.Y. and a popular radio host and television personality. The blog explores paradoxical and counterintuitive oddities of the physical world, including string theory, time travel, parallel universes, and black holes. Follow Dr. Kaku by finding him on Twitter @DrKakusUniverse or by signing up for his weekly newsletter.

Potential dispersion of the radioactive cloud over The Northern Hemisphere This animation displays a potential dispersion of the radioactive cloud (Caesium 137 Isotope) after a nuclear accident in reactor Fukushima I. The continuous release rate is very uncertain, thus the calculations have to be interpreted qualitatively. Dispersion in the near surface level (Level 1), in appr. 2500 m height (Level 12) and in appr. 5000 m height (Level 16).

• surface • 2500 m • 5000 m

Radioactive Water From Japan's Fukushima Plant Is Published on Saturday, April 2, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

Leaking Into Sea

by David Batty and agencies

Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said Tepco was planning to pour concrete into the pit to seal the crack, which may have been leaking since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake three weeks ago.

This could be one of the sources of seawater contamination," Nishiyama said. "There could be other similar cracks in the area, and we must find them as quickly as possible."

One member of the power plant crew described difficult conditions inside the complex in an interview in the Mainichi newspaper. He said the plant has run out of the nylon protective booties that workers put over their shoes. "We only put something like plastic garbage bags you can buy at a convenience store and sealed them with masking tape," said the anonymous worker.

Japanese media reported that nuclear workers had been offered up to 400,000 yen (£3,000) a day to work inside the crippled reactors. Before the crisis some contract workers were reportedly being paid as little as 10,000 to 20,000 yen (£75 to £150) a day.

A worker wearing a protective suit points at a cracked concrete pit near the number two reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. (Photograph: Reuters)

Concrete fails to plug leak at Fukushima nuclear plant

By Julie Makinen | Los Angeles Times

Posted on Sunday, April 3, 2011

o

TOKYO — The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Saturday that highly radioactive water was leaking from a pit near a reactor into the ocean, which may partially explain the high levels of radioactivity that have been found in seawater off the coast.

o

Workers pumped cement into the shaft Saturday, but by the end of the day, the flow of water into the ocean had not diminished. Engineers speculated that the water was preventing the cement from setting, allowing it to be washed away. Tepco officials said that on Sunday morning they would explore using a polymer — a type of quicksetting plastic — in an attempt to plug the leak.

o

After spraying thousands of tons of water on the reactors at Fukushima over the last three weeks to keep the facility from overheating and releasing dangerous amounts of radiation over a wide area, the utility is faced with the problem of great volumes of contaminated water.

o

With storage tanks at the facility nearing capacity, Tepco is contemplating storing the water in a giant artificial floating island offshore, Kyodo news reported. Tepco, which has been monitoring radiation levels in seawater just offshore from the plant, said it would begin sampling about nine miles off the coast

o

Workers also have been spraying the grounds of the plant with a polymer in an attempt to prevent any radioactive isotopes that have been deposited there from escaping from the vicinity of the plant. The polymer acts like a kind of super-glue, binding any contaminants to the soil so they cannot be blown away.

The Fukushima 50: What's the prognosis for Japan's nuclear heroes? posted on March 25, 2011, at 2:43 PM Two workers at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plantwere taken to the hospital this week after being exposed to high levels of radiation. Their injuries underscored the dangers facing the so-called Fukushima 50 — the crew that stayed behind to prevent a full-scale meltdown at the crippled plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

How were these two workers injured?

They stood for 40 to 50 minutes in radioactive, ankledeep water in the basement of Fukushima's No. 3 reactor, trying to lay cables to help restore power to the reactor's cooling system. Their equipment registered radiation levels as high as 180 millisieverts, enough to cause radiation burns below their knees.

Just how much radiation is that?

A lot. Most people are exposed to just two millisieverts of radiation over the course of a whole year. The normal allowable exposure limit for nuclear workers in Japan is 50 millisieverts in a year (about seven times the dose from a chest CT scan), but in the aftermath of the earthquake, Japan raised the annual limit to 250 millisieverts.

Japan's damaged Fukushima nuclear plant emits smoke and steam days after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake:

Prognosis for Japan’s workers? P 2 Anyone exposed to that much radiation stands a 1.25 percent greater chance of getting cancer than the average person. "If 250 mSv is spread over several days," says radiation biologist Eric Hall, as quoted by USA Today, "they're not going to be sick, but they will have a risk later."

Weren't they wearing protective gear?

Yes, they were covered with three layers of protective clothing, masks, helmets, and gloves.

But the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the plant, had not given them special boots, because there had been no deep puddles in the basement the previous day. The contaminated water seeped through their ordinary work shoes and their pants. A third worker who was wearing protective boots was unharmed.

Have other workers been hurt?

Yes. Britain's Daily Mail reports that five workers have been killed at the plant. USA Today, citing TEPCO, says two have gone missing and another 25 have been injured or exposed to high levels of radiation. Most of the injuries were caused by explosions. "I don't know any other way to say it," says Keiichi Nakagawa, associate professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Tokyo Hospital, as quoted by USA Today, "but this is like suicide fighters in a war."

What is their long term prognosis?

It's too early to tell. The World Health Organization says cancer rates were roughly 4 percent higher than normal among people exposed to similar doses of radiation after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986. Protective clothing can buffer workers from the extremely high exposure that would otherwise cause radiation sickness, which could kill them quickly. But "you are still breathing this into your lungs, and there is passive absorption in the skin, eyes, and mouth," says Lee Tin-lap, a toxicologist at a Hong Kong university, as quoted by Benzinga. "We really do not know what longterm impact that would have." o Sources: BBC News, Asahi Shimbun, USA Today, Daily Mail, Benzinga, WHO

Are the Fukushima 50 doomed to death?

posted on April 1,

2011, at 11:25 AM Sources: AOL News, TIME, NY Times, Fox News, Telegraph

Japan's nuclear heroes are credited with protecting their nation from a catastrophic meltdown. But at what cost to themselves?

Now, details of the conditions and fears of the so-called Fukushima 50 — the small group that stayed behind when most of the plant's workers were evacuated after the March 11 tsunami — have begun to emerge. Here, a glimpse of the life-threatening ordeal of the Fukushima 50: Are their lives in danger?

Yes. Distraught relatives say that many of the plant's workers assume they are undertaking a suicide mission.. Through tears, the mother of a 32-year-old worker told Fox News by phone that her son and his colleagues know they are probably sacrificing their lives, and could have only weeks or months to live. "They have accepted they will all probably die from radiation sickness in the short term or cancer in the long-term," she said. "They know it is impossible for them not to have been exposed to lethal doses of radiation.

Can they protect themselves?

The Fukushima 50 wear protective suits, and those working in highly radioactive areas, such as the fuel rod containment chambers, can only stay there for 15 minutes at a time. They sleep in conference rooms, hallways, and stairwells, where each worker gets one blanket, and a lead mat to shield them from radiation. "My son has been sleeping on a desk because he is afraid to lie on the floor," said the woman who spoke to Fox News. "But they say high radioactivity is every-where and I think this will not save him."

How bad are conditions at Fukushima?

Horrendous. The Fukushima 50 aren't on their own anymore — there are now about 400 Tokyo Electric Power Co. employees inside the plant. They work in rotating 12-hour shifts. The high levels of contamination make it hard to get supplies to them, so food and water are scarce.

They get two meals a day: Typically, vegetable juice and 30 crackers each for breakfast, and instant rice for dinner. "I just wanted people to understand that there are many people fighting under harsh circumstances in the nuclear plants," one worker wrote in an email. "That is all I want. Crying is useless. If we're in hell now all we can do is to crawl up towards heaven."

Published on Monday, April 4, 2011 by Agence France-Presse

Japan Starts Dumping Radioactive Water into Sea o

TOKYO — Japan started dumping 11,500 tons of low-level radioactive water at sea Monday to free up storage space at its crippled Fukushima nuclear plant for more highly contaminated water.

o

TEPCO official said the water was only of low-level radioactivity and had to be cleared to make room for more radioactive water.

o

"Highly radioactive waste water has been accumulated at turbine buildings at Fukushima Daiichi, especially at the reactor unit two," he said.

o o

"There is a need to release already stored water in order to accept the additional waste water.“

o

Government spokesman Yukio Edano said it was the only available option.

o

"We have no choice but to release water tainted with radioactive materials into the ocean as a safety measure," Edano said.

o

A nuclear safety agency spokesman said that under normal circumstances the water would be treated to reduce radioactive traces below legal limits.

Published on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English by Dahr Jamail

'No Safe Levels' of Radiation in Japan Experts warn that any detectable level of radiation is "too much". o

In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.

o

Meanwhile, water that is vastly more radioactive continues to gush into the ocean through a large crack in a six-foot deep pit at the nuclear plant. Over the weekend, workers at the plant used sawdust, shredded newspaper and diaper chemicals in a desperate attempt to plug the area, which failed. Water leaking from the pit is about 10,000 times more radioactive than water normally found at a nuclear plant .

o

“The U.S. Department of Energy has testified that there is no level of radiation that is so low that it is without health risks,” Jacqueline Cabasso, the Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

o

Karl Morgan, who worked on the Manhattan project, later came out against the nuclear industry when he understood the danger of low levels of ionizing radiationand he said there is no safe level of radiation exposure. These so-called safe levels are coming from within the nuclear establishment.”

o

“Nobody is talking about the fact that there is no safe dose of radiation,” Cabasso added, “One of the reasons Morgan said this is because doses are cumulative in the body.”

Fukushima as Chernobyl from “No Safe Levels of radiation” p 2 o

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

“There are still no-go areas there, and the workers town has long since been abandoned, (Prypiat,Ukraine, slide 28)and we are seeing radioactive refugees from there, like we are now seeing generated in Japan,”

o

“So we don’t understand this mistake because of the timeless invisible nature of the problem that radiation is,” Kathleen Sullivan, who has been an education consultant to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, added.

o

The Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics of Vienna told New Scientist on March 24: “Japan’s damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

o

The same group of scientists stated, “The Fukushima plant has around 1760 tonnes of fresh and used nuclear fuel on site,” while, “the Chernobyl reactor had only 180 tonnes.”

o

According to a report from the New York Academy of Sciences, due to the Chernobyl disaster, 985,000 people have died, mainly from cancer, between 1986-2004.

Andrea Stahl, a senior scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, told Reuters, “It’s only a matter of days before it disperses in the entire northern hemisphere.”

Published on Wednesday, April 6, 2011 by Al-Jazeera-English

Plugs Radioactive Leak

Japan Finally

Nuclear operator says engineers have stop radioactive water leak but more contaminated water to be pumped into the sea.

The development at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, announced on Wednesday, is a breakthrough in the battle to contain the nuclear crisis caused by last month's earthquake and tsunami.

"The leaks were slowed yesterday after we injected a mixture of liquid glass and a hardening agent and it has now stopped," a TEPCO spokesman told the Reuters news agency.

Engineers had been desperately struggling to stop the leaks and had used sawdust, newspapers and concrete as well as liquid glass to try to stem the flow of highly-contaminated water.

The liquid glass was injected into the ground beneath the leaking storage pit on Tuesday and stopped the leak after solidifying the earth.

Al Jazeera's correspondent, Marga Ortigas reported "So as much as they see this as a big breakthrough, it is by no means a solution to all the valves there ."The bottom line is that they still have reactors that are in danger of overheating, they need to continue to keep those reactors cool and to do so they need to continue to pump in water.

Workers are struggling to restart cooling pumps - which recycle the water - in four reactors damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that hit northeast Japan.

Until those are fixed, they must pump in water from outside to prevent overheating and meltdowns.

US Officials Doubted Nuclear Safety Plans: Watchdog

by Scott Malone Published on Wednesday, April 6, 2011 by Reuters BOSTON - U.S. regulators privately have expressed doubts that some of the nation's nuclear power plants are prepared for a Fukushima-scale disaster, undercutting their public confidence since Japan's nuclear crisis began, documents released by an independent safety watchdog group show.

Those concerns seem to contrast with the confidence U.S. regulators and industry officials have publicly expressed after the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl began to unfold on March 11, UCS officials said on Wednesday.

"While the NRC and the nuclear industry have been reassuring Americans that there is nothing to worry about -- that we can do a better job dealing with a nuclear disaster like the one that just happened in Japan -- it turns out that privately NRC senior analysts are not so sure," said Edwin Lyman, a UCS nuclear expert.

The e-mails in question are part of an NRC review of how the operators of nuclear plants in Delta, Pennsylvania, and Surry County, Virginia, would cope with a prolonged power outage that knocked cooling systems offline, as occurred at the Tokyo Electric Power Co-operated Fukushima plant.

In a July 28, 2010, e-mail, one NRC staffer said that contingency plans for Exelon Corp's Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Delta "have really not been reviewed to ensure that they will work to mitigate severe accidents."

The Peach Bottom site uses a General Electric Co reactor with a similar design to four of the reactors at Fukushima.

The UCS said it obtained the e-mails through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Comanche Peak Repeated violations and cost overruns have plagued TXU at both sites, and both plants have been sited for problems during and after construction. Although construction of Comanche Peak took 20 years, the construction was rushed, and the NRC repeatedly fined TXU for falsifying blueprints and specs to pass inspections in a rush to get reactor online. This is but one example, as thousands of NRC violations have occurred at Comanche Peak, and cost overruns reaching tens of billions of dollars- a burden forced upon the ratepayers.

It has been concluded that Comanche Peak was constructed with an ever-changing blueprint, and that these billions have been spent specifically to make the plant comply with federal safety requirements. In 1986, NRC inspectors had found many problems in auditing the plant. The reactor vessel was found to not be installed according to engineering specifications. In addition, almost zero documentation was kept on the installation for quality control purposes, and it was found that the utility failed to identify these problems during the 14 years of construction.

During this time, the utility was required to regulate the construction by conducting quality assurance audits, which they failed to do. In addition, inadequate control over critical records were identified, with thousands of document packages shipped offsite without oversight. Along with these problems, 30 other violations were reported in draft inspection reports and later removed under suspicious circumstances.

Comanche Peak p2 The NRC's Office of Inspector and Auditor (OIA) stated that "(NRC) Region IV management harrassed and intimidated inspectors to pressure them to downgrade or delete proposed inspection findings" presumably in order to ensure that the plant went online sooner. [for more, see the section "Corruption at NRC Region IV"] When construction began in 1974, TXU stated that the plant would be online to the Dallas-Fort Worth Area in 1980 at a cost of $779 million. It was almost $11 billion and 16 years later on April 3, 1990, that the first reactor came online. TXU has been forced to redesign Comanche Peak during and after its construction, reportedly adding more safety-related modifications than any other nuclear power plant in the country. This, in turn, has led to skyrocketing cost-overruns and a campaign of harassment meant to silence whistleblowers and expedite the building process when changes appeared too costly or time consuming. In it's first seven months, the plant had to be shut down on four separate occasions for repair work.

By 1992, Comanche Peak was still not fully completed, and was already faced with: - $10 Billion in cost overruns "one-third the taxpayers are to absorb" - documented cash settlements paid by Texas Utilities to former employees, apparently to silence whistleblowers and public interest groups The NRC originally condoned these settlements, then reversed it's position after a Senate subcommittee rebuked the agency in 1989;* - workers repeatedly exposed to toxins, radiation and intimidation in the workplace; - a list of thousands of non-conforming violations cited as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines levied by the NRC.

Comanche Peak p3 Continuing concerns have been raised over: - quality control at the plant; - electrical wiring, specifically wiring with separation problems, which causes cables to short out or melt; - the viability of the reactor shield; - the fire safety problems; - pipe supports meant to hold up the thousands of feet of piping responsible for conveying both radioactive water and coolant to and from the core (an accident, in this case, might lead most quickly to meltdown) - the chronic falsification of documents to pass NRC inspections

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster at One Month: The Explosion of Nukespeak Published on Monday, April 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Karl Grossman

Today marks exactly a month since the nuclear power disaster in Japan began. Along with the ongoing discharges of radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear plant complex, there has been a largely outrageous flow of media coverage.

Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News on April 6th asked a good question: “And what about all that water,the many million gallons of it, highly radioactive, dumped in the Pacific Ocean for days on end-- how can this not be harmful?”

The question might have been good but the response to it, Almaguer’s report, was far from that. He presented a talking head expert, Luca Centurioni of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who said: “No, there is no immediate danger.”

The bottom line,” said Almaguer, “experts are in agreement there’s no threat to our water or our food.” He added: “And as you can see Brian, California’s coastline is as beautiful as ever.” Radioactivity, of course, is invisible.

Or consider Charles Osgood on “The Osgood File” on CBS radio on April 1—stressing that there was nothing to fear but fear itself, quoting FDR during the depression.

Meanwhile, amid all the disinformation about radioactivity there has been the effort by most of media to frame a debate between nuclear and coal—choose your poison. In fact, the energy debate is between nuclear, coal and oil, on one side, and safe, clean, renewable energy technologies, led by solar and wind, on the other.

As Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, concludes in his new book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse—as have many studies and reports—solar, wind and geothermal energy can provide all the energy the world’s needs.

Nukespeak, p 2 o

o

The classic book on disinformation on nuclear technology is Nukespeak, published in 1982. It is dedicated to George Orwell, author of 1984, and written by Stephen Hilgarten, Richard C. Bell and Rory O’Connor.

It opens by declaring that “the history of nuclear development has been profoundly shaped by the manipulation through official secrecy and extensive public-relations campaigns. Nukespeak and the use of information-management techniques have consistently distorted the debate over nuclear weapons and nuclear power Time and time again, nuclear developers have confused their hopes with reality, publicly presented their expectations and assumptions as facts, covered up damaging information, harassed and fired scientists who disagreed with established policy, refused to recognize the existence of problems…claimed that there was no choice but to follow their policies.” See slide

Japan equates nuclear crisis severity to Chernobyl

By RYAN NAKASHIMA and SHINO YUASA, Associated Press Ryan Nakashima And Shino Yuasa, Associated Press – 45 mins ago

TOKYO – Japan ranked its nuclear crisis at the highest possible severity on an international scale — the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — even as it insisted Tuesday that radiation leaks are declining at its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant. The higher rating is an open acknowledgement of what was widely understood already: The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is the second-worst in history. It does not signal a worsening of the plant's status in recent days or any new health dangers Japanese nuclear regulators said the severity rating was raised from 5 to 7 on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency due to new assessments of the overall radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

The upgraded status did not mean radiation from the plant was worsening, but rather reflected concern about long-term health risks as it continues to spew into the air, soil and seawater. Most radiation exposures around the region haven't been high enough yet to raise significant health concerns.

Japanese officials said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted from Chernobyl, but about 10 times the amount needed to reach the level 7 threshold. They acknowledged the emissions could eventually exceed Chernobyl's, but said the chance that will happen is very small. However, regulators have also acknowledged that a more severe nuclear accident is a distinct possibility until regular cooling systems are restored — a process likely to take months.

New Doubts About Turning Plutonium Into a Fuel Monday 11 April 2011 by: Jo Becker and William J. Broad, The New York Times On a tract of government land along the Savannah River in South Carolina, an army of workers is building one of the nation's most ambitious nuclear enterprises in decades: a plant that aims to safeguard at least 43 tons of weapons-grade plutonium by mixing it into fuel for commercial power reactors.

The project grew out of talks with the Russians to shrink nuclear arsenals after the cold war. The plant at the Savannah River Site, once devoted to making plutonium for weapons, would now turn America's lethal surplus to peaceful ends. Blended with uranium, the usual reactor fuel, the plutonium would be transformed into a new fuel called mixed oxide, or mox.

“We are literally turning swords into plowshares,” one of the project's biggest boosters, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said at a hearing on Capitol Hill last week.

But 11 years after the government awarded a construction contract, the cost of the project has soared to nearly $5 billion. The vast concrete and steel structure is a halffinished hulk, and the government has yet to find a single customer, despite offers of lucrative subsidies.

The most likely customer, the Tennessee Valley Authority, has been in discussions with the federal Department of Energy about using mox to replace a third of the regular uranium fuel in several reactors — a far greater concentration than at the stricken Japanese reactor, Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit No. 3, where 6 percent of the core is made out of mox. But the T.V.A. now says it will delay any decision until officials can see how the mox performed at Fukushima Daiichi, including how hot the fuel became and how badly it was damaged.

At the same time, plutonium is preferred over uranium as nuclear bomb fuel because much less is needed to make a blast of equal size. And while it is difficult to work with, it does not need to undergo the complex process of purification required for uranium.

New Doubts about Plutonium p 2 After studying a range of options, the Clinton administration decided to build a mox fuel plant to dispose of a portion of the plutonium, awarding a contract to a consortium now called Shaw Areva Mox Services.

The rest of the plutonium was to be mixed with highly radioactive nuclear waste and immobilized in glass or ceramic blocks, making it difficult and dangerous for any thief to extract. The government judged the mox route to be more expensive, but the dual-track approach was seen as insurance should either fail.

That strategy also helped persuade Jim Hodges, the Democratic governor of South Carolina from 1999 to 2003, to sign off on plutonium shipments to the Savannah River Site. When the Bush administration canceled the glass-block disposal program, Mr. Hodges was furious.

His concern, he said in a recent interview, was that South Carolina would become a dumping ground if the mox program did not work out because of political or technical difficulties. "That site was never designed for long-term plutonium storage," he said.

"We were concerned about health and safety." Now, he said, that dumping ground is in danger of coming to pass.

Japan Radiation Fears Grip Town on Edge of Destruction Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

by Justin McCurry in Minamisoma

Minamisoma straddles the 20km perimeter from Fukushima plant, and residents are divided on whether to stay or go

Minamisoma is a town living in a state of nuclear limbo. Its southern reaches lie just inside the 20km (12 mile) radius from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that has been declared an evacuation zone. Farther north, residents have been told to remain indoors or consider leaving. Then on Tuesday the government announced that five additional communities, possibly including more neighborhoods inside Minamisoma, are to be included in an expanded evacuation zone amid fears over the long-term effects of radiation seeping from the Fukushima plant.

Even before that advice was issued, the majority of Minamisoma's 71,000 people had voted with their feet. The first hydrogen explosion at the plant prompted an exodus that saw the population plummet to just 10,000.

Shops and restaurants closed, suppliers refused to enter the town, and for a few chaotic days the only vehicles on the streets were self-defense force trucks and dozens of buses laid on to take evacuees to hundreds of temporary shelters across Japan. Some residents who initially evacuated are now returning to the area, reassured by data showing that radiation is well below dangerous levels. At a local health center medical workers in protective clothing offer free radiation checks for residents and visitors.

Minamisoma's plight drew worldwide attention last week after its mayor, Katsunobu Sakurai, pleaded for help in an 11-minute YouTube video with English subtitles. Minamisoma's plight drew worldwide attention last week after its mayor, Katsunobu Sakurai, pleaded for help in an 11-minute YouTube video with English subtitles. "As long as the power plant is in trouble, this town might as well be dead. You walk to the station and everything is shuttered. At night the streets are dark and empty. This used to be a fun, lively place to live. But not any more."

Published on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

25 Years After Chernobyl: Lessons Learned by H. Patricia Hynes In the early morning of April 26, 1986, an explosion in the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor #4 released a radioactive plume which by nightfall had hurtled four miles into the atmosphere. An intense fire burned in the reactor core for ten days, continuously spewing radioactive particles and aerosols. Belarus, western Russia, and rich farmland of the Ukraine were immediately and severely contaminated. High winds carried tons of particles to many parts of Europe and throughout the Northern Hemisphere, blanketing 77,000 square miles with radioisotopes of iodine, cesium, strontium, and plutonium. The accident defied the nuclear industry’s risk assumptions and calculations, among them that a nuclear accident would happen slowly not like the runaway chain reaction at Chernobyl.

Estimates of cancer rates and deaths from Chernobyl vary greatly due to study assumptions, methods, geographical scope and politics. The highest estimate of overall mortality is 985,000 people, according to a recent compilation of more than 5000 studies. The lowest estimates derive from UN studies, where pro-nuclear politics limit and potentially corrupt their findings. These politics are girded by the 1959 agreement between the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Association in which both agencies may withhold confidential information where they deem it necessary.

Thousands of acres of prime agricultural land remain seriously contaminated in the former Soviet breadbasket region; as of 2007 nearly 400 sheep farms in the UK remained in quarantine from radioactive fallout. In many European countries restrictions on wild game, berries, mushrooms, and fish will remain in effect for decades, if not centuries.

25 Years After Chernobyl p 2

In March 2011, prior to the nuclear apocalypse of Japan's Fukushima power plant, former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev published his lessons learned from Chernobyl. He calls the Chernobyl accident “a shocking reminder of the reality of the nuclear threat.” The nuclear power industry survives through secrecy and deceit, he wrote, having kept private “some 150 significant radiation leaks at nuclear power stations over the world.” He warns that the new and most dire threat to nuclear power is nuclear terrorism. The lessons Gorbachev culled from Chernobyl have compelled him to call for a quick transition to “efficient, safe and renewable energy which will bring enormous economic, social, and environmental benefits.”

Why gamble on the side of nuclear technology optimists who place their bets on future passive safety systems and pebble reactors when time is running out on the 60 yearold industry, economics is not on their side, and renewables are ready? Critically acclaimed studies, among them one from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and another conducted by researchers Jacobson and Delucchi at Stanford and University of California, Davis have laid out a roadmap for energy policy in the next two to four decades, using a mix of energy efficiency, wind, water, and solar technologies. The barriers to achieving a renewable national and global energy system are fundamentally political and social, not technological or economic.

No End in Sight for Nuclear Catastrophe in Japan Published on Sunday, April 17, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

by Justin McCurry

Japan nuclear firm aims to end crisis within nine months, but no word when - if ever - evacuees will be able to return In the first indication of how long it will take to stabilise the plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company [Tepco] revealed on Sunday a two-stage process it hopes will end with the safe "cold shutdown" of the stricken reactors.

Tepco officials say the two most urgent tasks are to prevent hydrogen explosions at three of the six reactors, and to secure storage for tens of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water in the turbine buildings.

The firm has been pumping low-level radioactive water into the sea, angering neighbouring China and South Korea.

"We will do our utmost to curb the release of radioactive materials by achieving a stable cooling state at the reactors and spent fuel pools," Tepco's chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata, told reporters.

The trade minister, Banri Kaieda, suggested some residents would be able to return as soon as the the plant was stabilised.

But Katsumata, who admitted he was considering resigning over the crisis, said only that he hopes people will be able to return "as early as possible".

Tepco is to monitor radiation levels in affected towns and villages once the plant is stabilised and liaise with the government about a possible lifting of the evacuation order.

US Nuclear Regulator a Policeman or Salesman?

Published on Monday, April 18, 2011 by Reuters

by Ben Berkowitz and Roberta Rampton NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission exists to police, not promote, the domestic nuclear industry -- but diplomatic cables show that it is sometimes used as a sales tool to help push American technology to foreign governments.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Reuters by a third party, shed light on the way in which U.S. embassies have pulled in the NRC when lobbying for the purchase of equipment made by Westinghouse and other domestic manufacturers.

The subject is particularly sensitive at a time when there are concerns about whether the operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was designed by U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co., had been properly supervised by the NRC's equivalent in Japan.

The NRC's own chairman has said that in the nuclear business, avoiding conflicts of interest is paramount."The important point is that all countries should strive to maintain a strict independence between the regulator and the industries that it oversees," Gregory Jaczko said in an April 2010 speech to an international forum in Seoul.

Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137 In Vermont Milk Published on Monday, April 11, 2011 by Forbes by Jeff McMahon

Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium-137 has been found in American milk—in Montpelier, Vermont—for the first time since the Japan nuclear disaster began, according to data released by the Environmental Protection Agency late Friday.

Milk samples from Phoenix and Los Angeles contained iodine-131 at levels roughly equal to the maximum contaminant level permitted by EPA, the data shows. The Phoenix sample contained 3.2 picoCuries per liter of iodine-131. The Los Angeles sample contained 2.9. The EPA maximum contaminant level is 3.0, but this is a conservative standard designed to minimize exposure over a lifetime, so EPA does not consider these levels to pose a health threat.

Doctor warns Japan nuke workers are at their limit

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Eric Talmadge, Associated Press – 1 hr 41 mins ago FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Workers battling the crisis at Japan's stricken nuclear plant suffer from insomnia, show signs of dehydration and high blood pressure and are at risk of developing depression or heart trouble, a doctor who met with them said Wednesday.

The crews have been fighting to get the radiation-spewing Fukushima Dai-ichi plant under control since it was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan.

"The conditions at the plant remain harsh," epidemiologist Takeshi Tanigawa told The Associated Press. "I am afraid that if this continues we will see a growing risk of health problems."

Tanigawa, the Public Health Department chairman at Ehime University's medical school, said he met and spoke with 80 of the workers over four days when he was allowed into another nearby nuclear plant where many of them take their breaks. He said he was not able to carry out full physical exams on the workers before leaving Tuesday because of time constraints. The nuclear workers have been toiling around the clock to stabilize the plant. Tanigawa said they get little rest, no baths or fresh food and are under the constant threat of exposure to radiation, which remains so high in many places that robots are being used to take measurements. In a telephone interview, Tanigawa said the work conditions don't meet the basic rights guaranteed workers by Japan's constitution.

During their breaks at the Fukushima Daini plant, they often sleep on the floor of a gymnasium, "wrapped only in blankets and with no privacy," he said.

Doctor warns Japan nuke workers are at their limit p2 Tanigawa said the mental stress of the job is deepened by the fear of radiation exposure, the concerns of their loved ones — many don't want the men to stay on at the plant — and the fact that many of the workers themselves lost homes or family in the tsunami.

TEPCO said the situation has become difficult as the crisis has become protracted.

"We think that we have worked to improve food, sleep hours and off days so that working conditions are improving," it said in a statement. "We would like to work on further improvements, taking Dr. Tanigawa's views into account.“ Tanigawa said that although emergency conditions may have justified harsh working hours in the early days of the crisis, the situation has now "become chronic.“ "TEPCO and the government don't think about them. The workers must do a good job, but they do not have any support," he said.

"They feel a deep sense of responsibility to be there," he said. "I asked many if they wanted to stop, but they responded, `Who would do this if I didn't?'"

Japan seals off no-go zone around nuclear plant

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Eric Talmadge,

Associated Press – 14 mins ag

FUTABA, Japan – Japan officially sealed off a wide area around a crippled nuclear power plant early Friday to stop tens of thousands of residents from sneaking back to the homes they quickly fled and are enduring a long, uncertain wait to return.

Fearing they might not see their homes and belongings again for at least six months, evacuees raced into the deserted towns Thursday before the ban took effect to grab whatever belongings they could cram into their cars.

Nearly 80,000 people were hurriedly evacuated from a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on March 12, after an earthquake and a tsunami destroyed its power and cooling systems. The evacuation order had no teeth, and people began increasingly returning to check on the remains of their lives. Some had stayed all along.

Under a special nuclear emergency law, people who enter the zone will be subject to fines of up to 100,000 yen ($1,200) or possible detention of up to 30 days. Up to now, defiance of the evacuation order was not punishable by law, and the police manning the roadblocks had no authority to stop people from entering.

"We beg the understanding of residents. We really want residents not to enter the areas," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters.

With the deadline approaching, evacuees ventured into the no-go zone, some in white protective suits and others in face masks and rain gear they hoped would protect against radiation. Most raced through the zone with car windows closed, their vehicles stuffed with clothing and valuables.

Edano said one person per household would be allowed to return by bus for a maximum of two hours to collect necessary belongings and would be screened for radiation afterward.

Residents chafed at the one-person limit.

Details were still being worked out, and Edano said he hoped each family would be able to make the trip within the next month or two. When the situation stabilizes, families will be allowed further visits, he said.

No visits will be allowed in the two-mile (three-kilometer) area closest to the plant, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of NISA.

Published on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 by Agence France Presse

UN Chief Issues Nuclear Warning on Chernobyl Visit

by Anya Tsukanova

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — The head of the UN warned on a landmark visit to Chernobyl on Wednesday that the Ukrainian tragedy and the recent accident in Japan prompted "painful questions" about the future of atomic power.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon visited the site of the Chernobyl disaster a day after world donors pledged 550 million euros ($800 million) towards a permanent shelter to secure the ruined reactor, which exploded on April 26, 1986.

"To many, nuclear energy looks to be a relatively clean and logical choice in an era of increasing resources' scarcity. Yet the record requires us to ask painful questions: have we correctly calculated its risks and costs?" he said.

"Climate change means more incidents of freak and increasingly severe weather (and) with the number of nuclear energy facilities scheduled to increase substantially in the coming decades our vulnerability will only grow."

"The unfortunate truth is we are likely to see more such disasters. The world has witnessed an unnerving history of nuclear accidents," he said at a conference, calling for a global debate on the safety of nuclear energy.

Ban Ki-moon spent around 20 minutes at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. (AFP/Getty)

Japan plans disaster budget, building 100K homes

By RAVI NESSMAN and YURI KAGEYAMA, Associated Press Ravi Nessman And

Yuri Kageyama, Associated Press – Fri Apr 22, 7:46 am ET

TOKYO – Japan's government proposed a special $50 billion (4 trillion yen) budget to help finance reconstruction efforts Friday and plans to build 100,000 temporary homes for survivors.

The twin disasters destroyed roads, ports, farms and homes and crippled a nuclear power plant that forced tens of thousands of more people to evacuate their houses for at least several months.

The government said the damage could cost $309 billion, making it the world's most expensive natural disaster.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he was moved by his conversations with victims during a recent tour of shelters.month's devastating earthquake and tsunami.

"I felt with renewed determination that we must do our best to get them back as soon as possible," he told reporters.

As part of the government's recovery plan, it will build 30,000 temporary homes by the end of May and another 70,000 after that, Kan said.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., which said it will take six to nine months to bring the plant under full control, has been heavily criticized for its handling of the crisis.

TEPCO President Masataka Shimizu was received harshly when he toured a shelter of 1,600 people in Koriyama."We're angry, angry, angry," one man shouted at him, according to television footage.

Shimizu apologized to the governor of Fukushima prefecture, Yuhei Sato, an outspoken critic of the response by the government and company to the nuclear crisis.

Sato bluntly told Shimizu the era of nuclear power plants in Fukushima had ended.

"No way. The resumption of nuclear power plants ... no way," he said.

Published on Sunday, April 24, 2011 by Inter Press Service

from Killer Chernobyl

Still No Escape

by Peter Custers Dr. Peter Custers is author of a theoretical study on nuclear production, 'Questioning Globalized Militarism' (Tulika/Merlin Press, 2007).

LEIDEN, the Netherlands - The accident could have served as a wake-up call to the whole of humanity. Twenty-five years ago, on Apr. 26 1986, disaster struck at the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear complex in the Ukrainian state of the former Soviet Union.

The accident actually started taking shape in the preceding night, when workers undertook a turbine test that had incompletely been carried out before the nuclear plant became operational. When the test was being carried out, the automatic emergency system was shut down, undermining reactor safety.

During the test also, fuel elements burst, setting off a chain of events which in no time resulted in two powerful explosions. Soon the reactor’s meltdown was a fact, and a huge radioactive cloud spread its contaminating effects over a vast area of the Soviet Union and beyond.

A quarter century has lapsed since this accident occurred. Until last month’s accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Chernobyl was considered to be the very worst disaster ever to have occurred at a nuclear production facility since the founding of the sector during World War II. Moreover, as recent reports confirm, even today the Chernobyl disaster is far from over.

First, the radioactive fall-out from the Soviet granite-moderated reactor was unprecedentedly large. Officially, the fall-out is stated to have been 50 million of curies of radioactivity. But it probably was at least several times this figure.

Amongst the numerous known and unknown nuclear accidents that historically have occurred, Chernobyl is not the only one to have resulted in a dangerously large fall-out of radioactivity. When storage tanks for high- radioactive waste in 1957 exploded in a nuclear military reprocessing factory in Cheliabinsk, in a remote corner of the Ural mountains, tens of millions of curies of radioactivity also leaked, damaging the health of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens.

No Escape from Chernobyl, p 2

Both the fall-out from Chernobyl and that from Cherniabinsk by far exceeded the radioactive fall-out from the U.S.’s dropping of atom bombs on Japan’s cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. Besides, since the Chernobyl complex was located close to densely populated parts of the Ukraine and Europe, the radioactive fall-out from the damaged civilian reactor was bound to be very consequential.

Fifty thousand people living in Chernobyl’s immediate surroundings had to be evacuated. A vast rural region became uninhabitable. And 15 countries of Europe saw half of their territories contaminated by the radioactive cloud.

As happened in the wake of the recent Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, public authorities everywhere were forced to put restrictions on the sale and import of food, so as to reduce the risk of radiation-induced cancer deaths among their populations.

Initially, the effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the widespread anger it aroused put a brake on plans to expand production of nuclear energy, in particular in Europe and the U.S. Yet as 'Chernobyl' started receding from public memory, proponents of nuclear energy once again went on the offensive, claiming the disaster had cost very few lives.

The only admission institutions representing nuclear interests, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are willing to make is that the disaster caused an increase in thyroid cancers in children. This, they say, may result in just a few thousand mortalities.

Not even the fact that tens of thousands of young and healthy men who heroically participated in clean- up activities in Chernobyl faced an early death is admitted from this side.

In a more critical report brought out in 2006, the international organisation Greenpeace revealed that the figure for victims of cancer cases due to Chernobyl could top a quarter million, and that nearly a hundred thousand fatal cancers were to be deplored

No Escape from Chernobyl, p 3

Again, in an ambitious study brought out by the New York Academy of Sciences in 2009, Russian scientists compared data from severely contaminated, and from less contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union. They concluded that the death toll until end 2004 may be nine to ten times Greenpeace’s estimate.(Note:) According to a report from the New York Academy of Sciences, due to the Chernobyl disaster, 985,000 people have died, mainly from cancer, between 1986-2004.

Undoubtedly, vast numbers of fatalities from the 1986 fall-out remain unrecorded or hidden. Yet Chernobyl's tragic effects can easily be seen by those who care. In some areas of the former Soviet Union, less than 20 percent of children are healthy. Numerous babies have been born with deformities or with disturbances of their nervous systems. Genetic disorders were found in every animal species studied by the Russian scientists.

However, it would be wrong to think the after-effects of Chernobyl were limited to the direct consequences of the 1986 fall-out. Towards understanding the implications of a nuclear disaster, it is also necessary to look at the outcome of the clean-up operation undertaken subsequently by the then Soviet authorities.

First, 5,000 tons of materials were dropped from helicopters to re-cover the damaged reactor, at the price of the life the pilots. Then, some 600,000 workers, baptised the 'liquidators', were recruited or forced to rapidly build a sarcophagus of concrete and metal.

This operation carried out over a period of six months was extremely hazardous, and probably resulted in the largest category of radiation-induced illnesses and deaths from the catastrophe. Besides, contrary to what one would expect or hope for - the new outer shell for Chernobyl's melted reactor never functioned as an effective barrier to radiation leakages. It reportedly has been in danger of collapse for years.

No Escape from Chernobyl, p 4

Thus, since the nineties discussions have been under way over the building of a new arch.

Such an arch would have to be erected in proximity of the former reactor, and will need to be glided towards its destination via rails, in order to reduce risks for humans. Also, the existing sarcophagus and the destroyed reactor will have to be dismantled, with the aid of robots.

As of 2011, a major chunk of the funds required to finance this new operation still has not been collected. Clearly, the mess from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is long, if not ever-lasting.

And although Japan's technological capacity today obviously exceeds that of the Soviet Union 25 years back, the clean-up work in Japan is sure to extend over very many decades to come.

What fundamental lessons can we draw from Chernobyl - for Japan and for the world at large? The experience gathered since the meltdown 25 years back appears to validate the views nuclear critics expressed at the time. The disaster fuelled immediate and worldwide resistance - not just against expansion, but against any reliance on nuclear energy. Many hundreds of thousands of people have since participated in protests in Western Europe alone.

One of the central arguments critics cite is that nuclear technology is a form of technology which is so hazardous, so destructive, that humanity would do well to renounce it entirely. Yet since the late nineties, strenuous efforts have been made by proponents of nuclear energy to stage a 'renaissance' and resume the trend of nuclear expansion worldwide.

It is very unfortunate that a section of writers and intellectuals who are vocal against climate change have sought fit to voice the same arguments being used by representatives of the nuclear lobby to defend a nuclear comeback. As a retrospective on the Chernobyl catastrophe easily brings out: one cannot trade one catastrophe against another; one can't exchange a climate catastrophe for a nuclear catastrophe.

On this anniversary we need a sacred pledge in favour of reliance on technologies that are productive, that squarely sustain all forms of life on planet earth. oď Żâ€Ż

Š 2011 Inter Press Service

NRC Waives Enforcement of Fire Rules at Nuclear Plants Published on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 by Pro Publica

by John Sullivan

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is routinely waiving fire rule violations at nearly half the nation's 104 commercial reactors, even though fire presents one of the chief hazards at nuclear plants.

The policy, the result of a series of little-noticed decisions in recent years, is meant to encourage nuclear companies to remedy longstanding fire safety problems. But critics say it is leaving decades-old fire hazards in place as the NRC fails to enforce its own rules.

Fires present a special risk to nuclear plants because they can knock out cables that control-room operators need to safely cool down a reactor. The explosions [2] and fires [2] at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant have shown what can happen when operators can't activate pumps, valves and other equipment needed to prevent damage to the radioactive core.

The door of the equipment entrance to the Unit 2 reactor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, Ala., on March 25, 2011.

Thirty-six years after a devastating cable fire at the plant prompted the NRC to adopt tough new fire rules, Browns Ferry still doesn’t comply with the requirements to protect cables. (Dave Martin/AP Photo)

Fukushima a Warning for U.S. Plants Published on Wednesday, May 18, 2011 by UPI.com

TOKYO -- Emergency vents failed to prevent hydrogen explosions at Japan's Fukushima reactors and put the safety of U.S. nuclear plants in question, experts warn "Japan is going to teach us lessons," said David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi) Documents released by the Tokyo Electric Power Co. this week show the panic that struck the utility when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit, The New York Times reports.

The venting system, built by General Electric, used the same power source as the rest of the plant, backup generators in basements that were vulnerable to tsunamis. The earthquake also may have damaged the valves, Tepco said.

When the vents failed at Fukushima, the hydrogen gas fueled explosions that spewed radioactive materials into the atmosphere.

U.S. officials had said American reactors would be spare such disasters by new and stronger venting systems. But Tepco now says Fukushima installed the same vents years ago, the Times reported.

"Japan is going to teach us lessons," said David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"If we're in a situation where we can't vent where we need to, we need to fix that."

Š 2011 United Press International, Inc.

Police officers keep eyes on a group of anti-nuclear power plant demonstrators staging a rally, demanding decommission of 10 reactors in Fukushima, in front of the headquarters in Tokyo of Tokyo Electric Power Co. "Japan is going to teach us lessons," said David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

America's New Nuke Showdown Starts Now!

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News 17 May 11

The critical first US House vote on a proposed $36 billion loan guarantee package for reactor construction may come as early as June 2. Green power advocates are already calling and writing the White House and Congress early and often, gearing up for a long, definitive showdown.

Germany and Japan have made their decision - the "Lethal Atom" has no future.

The coffin nail is Fukushima. Substantial radiation still leaks from three or more of its six reactors. Volatile fuel rods are dangerously exposed. Various containment and fuel pool structures are compromised. Heat and radiation still pour into our global ecosystems, with no end in sight.

Thankfully, a global citizens movement helped lower the amount of plutonium-based MOX fuel loaded into Unit Three. Without that, Fukushima's emissions would be far more lethal.

As it is, fallout continues to be detected across Europe and the United States. Fukushima is now rated on par with Chernobyl, by some estimates the killer of more than a million people.

For Prime Minister Naoto Kan, Japan's energy policy must now "start from scratch," with a sharp turn to green technologies. More than a dozen proposed reactors will not be built. Some existing ones - including at least two at Hamaoka - will join the six at Fukushima on the shut-down list, at least for the time being. Three more are still closed from a 2006 earthquake at Kashiwazaki.

America’s Nuke Showdown p 2 Amidst a heavy budget crunch, the administration must now justify lavishing taxpayer money on an industry that can't get private financing or meaningful liability insurance, can't compete in the marketplace and can't deal with its wastes.

As evidenced by the sharp green turns in Germany and Japan, renewable technologies have come of age. The Solartopian vision of a green-powered Earth has now definitively attracted two of the plant's four largest economies.

In short, we are at the tipping point where renewables are cheaper and more attractive to national-scale investors than nukes.

Without these guarantees, America's nuclear industry has future prospects ranging from slim to none.

The ante is being raised in Vermont, New York, California and in other states where fierce battles rage to shut existing reactors, many of which are on earthquake faults and virtually identical to those now spewing at Fukushima.

So now we are engaged in what may be the final, definitive battle over the future of atomic power in the United States.

Over the next few months, millions of dollars will pour from the industry's lobby into the coffers of Congresspeople willing to vote them billions. The White House shows no signs of turning away from that particular tsunami.

But against all odds, a grassroots green-powered citizens movement has been holding its own. If it does so again this year, a sustainable future may finally be within reach.

YOUR reach!

Harvey Wasserman |

Fukushima's Apocalyptic Threat

Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News

Intro: "Fukushima may be in an apocalyptic downward spiral. Forget the corporate-induced media coma that says otherwiseÂ…or nothing at all. Lethal radiation is spewing unabated.

Emission levels could seriously escalate. There is no end in sight. The potential is many times worse than Chernobyl. Containing this disaster may be beyond the abilities of Tokyo Electric or the Japanese government.“ There is no reason to incur further unnecessary risk. With all needed resources, it's time for the world's best scientists and engineers to take charge. Even then the outcome is unclear.

For a brief but terrifying overview, consult Dr. Chris Busby as interviewed by RT/TV. Fukushima Units One, Two and Three are all in various stages of melting down.

Molten fuel at Unit One may have burned through its reactor pressure vessel, with water poured in to cool it merely pouring out the bottom.

A growing pond of highly radioactive liquid is softening the ground and draining into the ocean. There is no way to predict where these molten masses of fuel will yet go. Especially in the event of an aftershock, steam and hydrogen explosions could blow out what's left of the containments.

The extra plutonium in the MOX fuel at Unit Three is an added liability.

At least one spent fuel pool has been on fire.

The site has already suffered at least two hydrogen explosions. Some believe a fission explosion may also have occurred.

All have weakened the structures and support systems on site.

These shocks and the soft ground may be why Unit Four has partially sunk and is tipping, possibly on the brink of collapse. Even a relatively minor aftershock could mean catastrophe.

Apocaliptic Threat, p 2 More explosions are possible. More leaks are virtually certain.

Escalated radiation levels from any one of the reactors could force all workers to evacuate, leaving the entire site to chance.

The New York Times has now reported that critical valve failures that contributed to the Fukushima disaster are likely at numerous US reactors.

Significant radioactive debris has been found thousands of yards from the plant. Radiation levels in Tokyo, nearly 200 miles away, have risen. Fallout has been detected in North America and throughout Europe. Radiation pouring into the sea has begun to spread worldwide.

There is much more, none of it good.

Japan and Germany have had the good survival sense to abandon future reactor construction, and to shut some existing sites.

But here, the corporate media blackout is virtually complete. Out of sight, out of mind seems the strategy for an industry desperate for federal loan guarantees and continued operation of a rickety fleet of decaying old reactors.

Apocaliptic Threat, p 3 The Obama Administration has ended radiation monitoring of seafood in the Pacific. It does not provide reliable, systematic radiological or medical data on fallout coming to the United States.

But we may all be in unprecedented danger.

A national movement is underway to end atomic give-aways and turn to a green-powered Earth.

Now we must also move ALL the world's governments beyond denial to focus on somehow bringing Fukushima under control.

After two months of all-out effort, four reactors and at least that many spent fuel pools remain at risk.

Our survival depends on stopping Fukushima from further irradiating us all. The world community has come together to put a new sarcophagus around Chernobyl.

A parallel, more urgent effort now needs to focus on Fukushima.

Whatever technical, scientific and material resources are available to our species, that's what needs to go there.

NOW!!!

'Tornado Alley' Nuclear Reactor Not Fully Twister-Proof

by Matthew Daly Published on Friday, May 27, 2011 by the Associated Press

WASHINGTON — o o o o

o o

The closest nuclear power plant to tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo., was singled out weeks before the storm for being vulnerable to twisters.

Inspections triggered by Japan’s nuclear crisis found that some emergency equipment and storage sites at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant in southeastern Kansas might not survive a tornado.

Specifically, plant operators and federal inspectors said Wolf Creek did not secure equipment and vehicles needed to fight fires, retrieve fuel for emergency generators and resupply water to keep nuclear fuel cool as it’s being moved.

Wolf Creek, until recently, was one of three nuclear plants placed on a federal watch list in March for safety-related issues.

David Lochbaum, a former nuclear plant engineer who now works on nuclear safety for the advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, said the equipment that a tornado could disable is the “backup of backups,” but that potential should raise concern nonetheless “It’s kind of nuclear safety 101,” Lochbaum said. “It’s kind of stupid for it to be there, where it could help with a tornado, and a tornado takes it out.”

Already this year, tornadoes have knocked out power to nuclear power plants in Alabama and Virginia, exposing vulnerabilities. Storms disabled Browns Ferry sirens.

Tornado Alley not Fully Twister-Proof, p.2 o

Those instances, along with the situation at Wolf Creek, highlight a larger problem at the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors: While reactors and safety systems are designed to withstand a worst-case earthquake, flood, or tornado, that doesn’t necessarily mean all emergency equipment or the buildings that house such equipment are disaster proof

o

Wolf Creek’s location in Tornado Alley means that it was designed to handle the maximum tornadoes possible for the United States, with wind speeds up to 360 miles per hour and a maximum rotational speed of 290 miles per hour.

o

Tornadoes recently forced the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant near Athens, Ala., to shut down after severe weather wrecked transmission lines and created problems for a plant in Tennessee.

The storms also disrupted siren systems that alert residents living near nuclear

o

o

power plants to trouble. The sirens, which are connected to the electrical grid, failed during a blackout. TVA officials said they are in the process of adding sirens that have battery backups, meaning they would work even during a power outage.

At one point, only 12 of 100 sirens in the communities surrounding Browns Ferry worked. A similar problem occurred in the region surrounding the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., which lost 36 of its 108 sirens..

FIRST INTERNATIONAL URANIUM FILM FESTIVAL RIO DE JANEIRO PRESS RELEASE 31/05/2011

Costa Rican production: URANIUM 238 The Pentagon´s Dirty Pool wins best short film category of the First International Uranium Film Festival which ended Saturday night (28th of May 2011) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Costa Rican Activists Accept Award

Costa Rica’s Recent Commitment Thirty four international productions surrounding the nuclear fuel chain were chosen by a jury; people had the opportunity to view documentaries and films produced in Brazil, India, Australia,the Netherlands, UK, Costa Rica, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, the United States, Japan,South Africa and other countries, where organizations and filmakers are speaking out against the risks and dangers associated with the nuclear industry.

“URANIO 238”, produced for the San José Quaker Peace Center, runs 28 minutes, and discusses nuclear waste known as “depleted uranium” currently used in conventional weapons.

Through interviews with soldiers and activists, the documentary explores the health risks when this materials is ingested or inhaled by people in war zones or test areas”, Ortega explained.

According to the producer, the main goal of the documentary was to point out the risks of the military use of depleted uranium for a presentation in the First Latin American Conference on Uranium Weapons. This event was organized by the Quaker Peace Center, the International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST) and the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) in San José, Costa Rica in 2009.

"Used in 1991 in the first Gulf War, the Balkans conflict, and later on in the second invasion of Iraq, this dangerous toxic and radioactive waste is associated with alarming rises in cancer rates, infant malformations and other terrible health effects among civilian populations in war zones and soldiers This documentary is part of a worldwide campaign to ban the use of uranium weapons in wars. The International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW) is a global network which seeks an international treaty banning DU weapons world wide. As part of these efforts, peace activists recently celebrated on April 28th 2011, the passing by the Legislature of Costa Rica, of a reform to Costa Rica´s Arms Law, banning the use, manufacture, transit, production and distribution of uranium weapons.

German Nuclear Shutdown Sets Global Example

By Deborah Cole, Agence France-Presse 30 May 11

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany could serve as a global trailblazer with its decision Monday to phase out nuclear power by 2022 but France, Europe's biggest producer, said it will not follow suit.

Merkel said the "fundamental" rethink of energy policy in the world's number four economy, prompted by the disaster in March at Japan's Fukushima plant, opened new opportunities for business and climate protection.

"We believe we as a country can be a trailblazer for a new age of renewable energy sources," she told reporters."We can be the first major industrialised country that achieves the transition to renewable energy with all the opportunities - for exports, development, technology, jobs - it carries with it.“ Yet neighbour France, while saying it "respected" the German position, insisted it was not ready to give up nuclear energy which Prime Minister Francois Fillon described as a "solution for the future."

"We think that for some decades at least we will not be able to do without nuclear energy," added Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.

The German plan, hammered out by Merkel's ruling coalition in marathon overnight negotiations, will see the country shutter all 17 of its nuclear reactors, eight of which are currently off the electricity grid, within 11 years.

"We want the electricity of the future to be safer and at the same time reliable and affordable," Merkel told reporters as she accepted the findings of an expert commission on nuclear power she appointed in March."We learned from Fukushima that we have to deal differently with risks," added the chancellor, whose popularity suffered over her earlier pro-nuclear stance.

Seven of the eight reactors already offline are the country's oldest, which the government shut down for three months pending a safety probe after the Fukushima emergency.

The eighth is the Kruemmel plant, in north Germany, which has been offline for years because of technical problems.]Six further reactors will shut down by 2021 and the three most modern will stop operating the following year 2022.

German Nuclear Shutdown Sets Global Example p.2

Monday's decision, which could run into legal challenges from energy companies, means Germany will have to find the 22 percent of its electricity needs that were covered by nuclear power from other sources.

A draft implementation plan to be debated next week would focus on hiking energy efficiency to reduce electricity use, building new power plants fired by greenhouse gas emitting natural gas and coal, expanding the production of wind energy, and improving the supply network from wind farms.

Thorny questions remained unanswered, including finding a permanent storage site for the highly radioactive waste and slashing CO2 emissions.

The decision represents a humbling U-turn for Merkel, who in late 2010 decided to extend the lifetime of the reactors by an average of 12 years. This would have kept them open until the mid-2030s.

That decision was unpopular even before the earthquake and tsunami that severely damaged the Fukushima facility, sparking mass anti-nuclear protests in Germany.

Poland and nuclear-free Austria, however, welcomed the German move.

"This decision by a highly industrialised country will have a very strong signal effect. It shows that scrapping nuclear power is both possible and feasible," said Austrian Environment Minister Nikolaus Berlakovich.

And Poland, considering launching its first nuclear power station in 2020, said it would rethink its plans.

The United States and Britain have announced plans to build new reactors as an alternative to producing harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

Italy scrapped nuclear power in 1987, one year after the Chernobyl disaster, while Switzerland said last week it would phase out atomic energy by 2034.

3 Nuclear Reactors Melted Down after Quake, Japan Confirms Published on Monday, June 6, 2011 by CNN

Tokyo -- Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.

3 Nuclear Reactors Melted Down after Quake, Japan Confirms The nuclear group's new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The announcement will not change plans for how to stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the agency said.

Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.

The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted last month that nuclear fuel rods in reactors 2 and 3 probably melted during the first week of the nuclear crisis.

It had already said fuel rods at the heart of reactor No. 1 melted almost completely in the first 16 hours after the disaster struck. The remnants of that core are now sitting in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at the heart of the unit and that vessel is now believed to be leaking.

The earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi, causing the three operating reactors to overheat. That compounded a natural disaster by spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Tokyo Electric avoided using the term "meltdown," and says it was keeping the remnants of the core cool. But U.S. experts interviewed by CNN after the company's announcement in May said that while it may have been containing the situation, the damage had already been done.

U.S. Plan to Boost Nuke Spending Undercuts Nonproliferation, Activists Warn Published on Monday, June 6, 2011 by Inter Press Service

by Haider Rizvi UNITED NATIONS - A Pentagon plan to step up spending on nuclear weaponry would severely undermine global efforts geared towards disarmament, warn independent analysts on U.S. nuclear policy.

The U.S. military reportedly wants Congress to approve 213 billion dollars for the "modernisation" of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems over the next 10 years. That is in addition to average annual spending of 54 billion dollars on nuclear maintenance.

Congress is currently debating cuts in the forthcoming budget. At the moment, there is no indication that the majority of lawmakers and the Barack Obama administration intend to question the rationale behind "new" nuclear weapons programme also includes nuke-carrying drones."It's a long-distance killing," said David Krieger, president of the US based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. "Drones with nuclear weapons are inappropriate. That's an invitation to nuclear chaos," he added, expressing concerns that other states suspected of having or developing nuclear weapons programmes would be more defiant in the coming years.

For more than a decade, the U.S. nuclear policy establishment has cracked down on Iran and North Korea, the first for allegedly trying to develop nuclear weapons and the second for its avowed nuclear programme, but has not given a clear signal about when it would be ready to destroy its own huge nuclear arsenal.

Germany To Phase Out Nuclear Power; US Could Do Same Published on Wednesday, June 8, 2011 by Associated Press

Last week, Chancellor Merkel parted ways with the US on what had been a shared vision of how to maintain thriving economies while reducing greenhouse gases. For both nations, part of that plan had been nuclear power. For Germany, it is no longer.

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Merkel announced that her country would close all of its 17 existing reactors by 2022.

Other nations, including Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, have announced plans to pare back nuclear power, but none have gone as far as Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy.

Cooling towers of the nuclear power plant in Gundremmingen, southern Germany rise above the countryside. (Christof Stache / AFP - Getty Imag

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Merkel announced that her country would close all of its 17 existing reactors by 2022. Other nations, including Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, have announced plans to pare back nuclear power, but none have gone as far as Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy. Merkel vows to replace nuclear power with alternatives that do not increase greenhouse gases or shackle the economic growth. Could the US do the same? An increasing number of reports suggest it is not beyond the realm of possibility, and Germany could provide a road map. "Germany is conducting what I call a grand laboratory experiment," says Mark Hibbs senior associate in the nuclear policy program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Are We On the Brink of Burying Nuke Power Forever?

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News 16 June 11

Tnis may be the moment history has turned definitively against atomic energy.

To be sure: we are still required to fight hard to bury reactor loan guarantees in the United States. There are parallel struggles in China, Indian, England, France and South Korea.

The great fear is that until every single reactor on this planet is shut, none of us is really safe from another radioactive horror show.

Thus the moment is clearly marked at Fukushima by three reactors and a radioactive fuel pool still untamed after three months, with the horrific potential to do far more apocalyptic damage than we've seen even to date.

An anti-nuke flag is displayed at a protest in Kouenji, Japan, 04/10/11. (photo: SandoCap/ Flickr)

And Fukushima's radiation raining down on the United States, with links to reports of heightened infant death rate in Seattle.And by countless other on-going disasters andnear-misses at reactors everywhere on the planet.

Included is Fort Calhoun, in Nebraska, which got zero corporate media coverage as it was nearly flooded and did lose power to its radioactive fuel pool.

From well-reasoned fear, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Israel and other critical players have announced they will build no more reactors. Some will start shutting the ones they have.

Are We On the Brink of Burying Nuke Power Forever? P 2

By Harvey Wasserman Japan and Germany are the third and fourth largest economies on Earth. Japan has long been at the core of the reactor industry. Germany's economy is the largest in Europe.

Some European nations are rumbling about an alliance to shut the reactors among their nuclear neighbors.

All this could be happening merely in reaction to yet another Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The corporate media has attempted to induce a coma over Fukushima by simply refusing thcover the on-going disaster.

But the worsening realities are as utterly relentless as they are terrifying. In the age of the internet, there is simply no way to totally suppress the horror of what is happening to our Earth, especially at its lethal, festering wound at Fukushima.

But what truly sets this moment apart is not just the radioactive nightmare. There have been others. There will certainly be more.

What's unique about now is the Solartopian flip side. It is the irrepressible fact that we have finally reached the green-powered tipping point.

For the first time in history, the financial, industrial and trade journals are filled with pithy, number-laden reports declaring the moment has come - and this can not be overemphasized - that solar power is definitively cheaper than nuclear.

It is an epic moment that future economic and technological historians will note as a true turning point. In real terms, Solartopian technology - wind, solar, geothermal, ocean thermal, bio-fuels, wave, current, tidal, efficiency, conservation - has always been cheaper than nukes.

The "Peaceful Atom" has always been a creature of subsidies, a happy face painted on the Bomb. Its true health, safety and environmental costs can never be reliably calculated.

What, after all, will be the true price tag on Fukushima? How do we begin to calculate the costs in human agony and ecological destruction?

Are We On the Brink of Burying Nuke Power Forever?

P3

by Harvey Wasserman

Already Japan is being torn apart by who will pay: the utility (it doesn't have enough assets), the government (it could go bankrupt) or the victims (who else?). The only thing certain is this once-powerful industrial nation will never recover.

The true installment cost of the US reactor fleet can't even be calculated, as much of the liability was dishonestly wiped off the books in the deregulation scam of 1999-2002.

What we're left with worldwide is 440 uninsured ticking time bombs, potential Chernobyls and Fukushimas, every one of them. There are 104 in the US. The only real question is when the next one will go off and how long it will take to actually hear about it.

In the long term, the future is with renewables. They are often subsidized as well. But the scale is not comparable, and does not fully compensate for the hidden realities of atomic power's uninsurability and its inability to solve its basic waste, health and eco-impacts.

Were the nuclear industry forced to fully insure itself, or were it charged the true cost of its invested capital, or what it does to the planet and the humans who live on it, not a single reactor owner could afford to keep a reactor running for a single day.

Small wonder Wall Street has long been more anti-nuclear than Main Street. The dream of a Solartopian future has become the capitalist present. Germany and Japan would not be committing to a green-powered future if its large corporations - Siemans, Enercon, Mitsubishi, Sharp - whose CEOs have run the numbers and decided nukes are a loser. And that the real profit center for the long-term energy biz is in green power.

What remains for us is to get the government out of the game. The $36 billion in loan guarantees Obama wants in the 2012 budget must come out. We need to call the White House and Congress constantly until this happens.

Then we need to find a way to get the Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Brits and French to join Germany, Japan and the rest of us in a post-nuclear world.

How soon this gets done is up to us. Our fervent hope - and greatest incentive - is knowing this must be done before the next Fukushima strikes.

Japan’s Meltdowns Demand New No-Nukes Thinking

by Amy Goodman Published on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 by TruthDig.com

Few details are emerging that indicate the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan is far worse than previously known, with three of the four affected reactors experiencing full meltdowns. Meanwhile, in the U.S., massive flooding along the Missouri River has put Nebraska’s two nuclear plants, both near Omaha, on alert. The Cooper Nuclear Station declared a low-level emergency and will have to close down if the river rises another 3 inches. The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant has been shut down since April 9, in part due to flooding. At Prairie Island, Minn., extreme heat caused the nuclear plant’s two emergency diesel generators to fail. Emergency-generator failure was one of the key problems that led to the meltdowns at Fukushima.

In May, in reaction to the Fukushima disaster, Nikolaus Berlakovich, Austria’s federal minister of agriculture, forestry, environment and water management, convened a meeting of Europe’s 11 nuclear-free countries. Those gathered resolved to push for a nuclear-free Europe, even as Germany announced it will phase out nuclear power in 10 years and push ahead on renewable-energy research. Then, in last week’s national elections in Italy, more than 90 percent of voters resoundingly rejected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s plans to restart the country’s nuclear-powergeneration plans.

Leaders of national nuclear-energy programs are gathering this week in Vienna for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety. The meeting was called in response to Fukushima. Ironically, the ministers, including U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Gregory Jaczko, held their meeting safely in a country with no nuclear power plants. Austria is at the forefront of Europe’s new anti-nuclear alliance.

The IAEA meeting was preceded by the release of an Associated Press report stating that consistently, and for decades, U.S. nuclear regulators lowered the bar on safety regulations in order to allow operators to keep the nuclear plants running. Nuclear power plants were constructed in the U.S. in the decades leading up to the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979. These 104 plants are all getting on in years. The original licenses were granted for 40 years.

Japan’s Meltdowns Demand New No-Nukes Thinking p2 The AP’s Jeff Donn wrote, “When the first ones were being built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before those licenses expired.” Enormous upfront construction costs, safety concerns and the problem of storing radioactive nuclear waste for thousands of years drove away private investors. Instead of developing and building new nuclear plants, the owners —typically for-profit companies like Exelon Corp., a major donor to the Obama campaigns through the years—simply try to run the old reactors longer, applying to the NRC for 20-year extensions.

Europe, already ahead of the U.S. in development and deployment of renewable-energy technology, is now poised to accelerate in the field. In the U.S., the NRC has provided preliminary approval of the Southern Company’s planned expansion of the Vogtle power plant in Georgia, which would allow the first construction of new nuclear power plants in the U.S. since Three Mile Island. The project got a boost from President Barack Obama, who pledged an $8.3 billion federal loan guarantee.

Southern plans on using Westinghouse’s new AP1000 reactor. But a coalition of environmental groups has filed to block the permit, noting that the new reactor design is inherently unsafe.

Obama established what he called his Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. One of its 15 members is John Rowe, the chairman and chief executive officer of Exelon Corp. (the same nuclear-energy company that has lavished campaign contributions on Obama). The commission made a fact-finding trip to Japan to see how that country was thriving with nuclear power—one month before the Fukushima disaster. In May, the commission reiterated its position, which is Obama’s position, that nuclear ought to be part of the U.S. energy mix. o The U.S. energy mix, instead, should include a national jobs program to make existing buildings energy efficient, and to install solar and wind-power technology where appropriate. These jobs could not be outsourced and would immediately reduce our energy use and, thus, our reliance on foreign oil and domestic coal and nuclear. Such a program could favor U.S. manufacturers, to keep the money in the U.S. economy. That would be a simple, effective and sane reaction to Fukushima. o Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Flood Berm Bursts at Nebraska Nuclear Plant Published on Sunday, June 26, 2011 by CNN

A water-filled berm protecting a nuclear power plant in Nebraska from rising floodwaters collapsed Sunday, according to a spokesman, who said the plant remains secure.

Some sort of machinery came in contact with the berm, puncturing it and causing the berm to deflate, said Mike Jones, a spokesman for the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD), which owns the Fort Calhoun plant.

The plant, located about 20 miles north of Omaha, has been shut since April for refueling.

"The plant is still protected. This was an additional, a secondary, level of protection that we had put up, Jones said. “The plant remains protected to the level it would have Been if the aqua berm had not been added.�

An aerial view of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in eastern Nebraska, surrounded by Missouri River flood waters June 24, 2011.

REUTERS/Lane Hickenbottom Parts of the grounds are already under water as the swollen Missouri River overflows its banks, including areas around some auxiliary buildings, Jones said. In addition to the berm, authorities have put in place flood gates and other barriers to help protect the facility.

The plant is designed to withstand waters up to 1,014 feet above mean sea level, according to the OPPD. The river currently stands at 1,006.3 feet and is not expected to exceed 1,008 feet, the Power District said.

The 6 to 12 inches of rainfall in the upper Missouri basin in the past few weeks is nearly a normal year's worth, and runoff from the mountain snowpack is 140% of normal, according to forecasters.

CNN's Patrick Oppmann contributed to this report.

Fukushima Spews, Los Alamos Burns, Vermont Rages and We’ve Almost Lost Nebraska Published on Wednesday, June 29, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Harvey Wasserman Humankind is now threatened by the simultaneous implosion, explosion, incineration, courtroom contempt and drowning of its most lethal industry.

We know only two things for certain: worse is yet to come, and those in charge are lying about it---at least to the extent of what they actually know, which is nowhere near enough.

Indeed, the assurances from the nuke power industry continue to flow like the floodwaters now swamping the Missouri Valley heartland.

But major breakthroughs have come from a Pennsylvania Senator and New York’s Governor on issues of evacuation and shut-down. And a public campaign for an end to loan guarantees could put an end to the US industry once and for all.

Fukushima:

The bad news continues to bleed from Japan with no end in sight. The “light at the end of the tunnel” is an out-of-control radioactive freight train, headed to the core of an endangered planet.

Widespread internal radioactive contamination among Japanese citizens around Fukushima has now been confirmed.

Two whales caught some 650 kilometers from the melting reactors have shown intense radiation. o Plutonium, the deadliest substance known to our species, has been found dangerously far from the site.

Possibilities may include a “China Syndrome” scenario in which one or more still-molten cores does melt through the containment and hits ground water. That could lead to a steam explosion that could blow still larger clouds of radioactive steam, water and debris into the atmosphere and ocean.

Los Alamos:

A massive wildfire has swept at least to the outskirts of the national laboratory that was at the core of the program that built the Atomic Bomb.

The first explosion irradiated a nearby valley on July 16, 1945. Then came the two that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. o There are significant quantities of stored radioactive material in and around Los Alamos. How much there is, where it is, how badly it is threatened, how much (if any) has already been engulfed in flames remains to be seen. Evacuations are underway.

Official reassurances are not reliable.

Nor are estimates of the potential for radioactive fallout to spread throughout North America and beyond.

Vermont Yankee:

Entergy, owner of the one reactor in Vermont, has sued to shred a solemn public contract.

The one thing certain here is the company’s contempt for the sanctity of its own word.

Years ago Entergy sought official permits at VY. It promised in return that the state could choose to shut the reactor on March 21, 2012, which it’s now done.

In recent years VY has spewed tritium into groundwater and the Connecticut River, in some cases from underground pipes whose existence the company denied. A cooling tower has collapsed.

Fukushima Spews, Los Alamos Burns, Vermont Rages p 2 But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has extended the reactor's license and asked the federal Justice Department to intervene on behalf of the utility.

The request trashes any credibility retained by the NRC. The Commission was established in the mid 1970s to be a disinterested party on which the public could rely. For it to now take a partisan stand on behalf of a reactor owner it’s bound to regulate thoroughly contaminates the core of its existenc Nebraska: The flooding Missouri River continues to threaten at least two heartland reactors.

Late reports indicate Cooper may still be running, with public assurances it could be shut very quickly. What might happen if the operators are a little bit late has not been explained.

Nor is there much to go on about the impacts of flooded cores and fuel cooling ponds on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers or the eco-systems along the way to a Gulf of Mexico still reeling from BP’s toxic dose.

It’s as yet unclear whether flood waters will continue to rise at these two reactors, whether the operators can protect them, and what will happen if they can’t.

But we do know for sure that US Senator Robert Casey, Jr. (D-PA) now wants to see more deeply into one of the key holes in the nuclear façade: evacuation.

A quarter-century later, Casey wants to see what it might now take to move downwinders out of harm’s way from a TMI, Perry, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Vermont Yankee, Cooper, Ft. Calhoun…..you name it.

Casey’s being joined by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose demands for the shut-down of Indian Point, 35 miles north of Manhattan, have left its owners “shaken.”

Cuomo and Casey might do well to join governors of states like Vermont, Massachusetts, California and others in testing the law on evacuation planning. Populations have vastly increased at virtually all US reactor sites since TMI. And the ugly realities that define the so-called “Peaceful Atom” are still making themselves all too apparent.

A $36 billion loan guarantee give-away still mars the proposed 2012 federal budget. Constant pressure on Congress and the White House can kill that, and any other proposed funding for still more of these nightmares.

Japan

Jun 25, 2011

Costs rise in 'worst industrial

disaster'

By Victor Kotsev

The day after the disastrous level-nine earthquake that triggered the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear crisis, March 12, an Israeli expert on air quality and poisoning, Professor Menachem Luria, told Israeli Channel 2: "From what we can gather, this disaster is even more dangerous than Chernobyl."

At the time, his was a minority opinion in the scientific community; very few believed that a nuclear accident as bad as the 1986 meltdown in Ukraine would occur again. "I think that's basically impossible," said James Stubbins, an expert at the University of Illinois, and many others agreed.

Yet, as we are now slowly coming to realize, Fukushima is worse than Chernobyl. In a revealing recent feature article published by al-Jazeera, Dahr Jamail conveys the comments of Arnold Gundersen, a senior former nuclear industry executive in the United States.

"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Gundersen asserts. "We have 20 nuclear cores exposed, the fuel pools have several cores each, that is 20 times the potential to be released than Chernobyl ... The data I'm seeing shows that we are finding hot spots further away than we had from Chernobyl, and the amount of radiation in many of them was the amount that caused areas to be declared no-man's-land for Chernobyl. We are seeing square kilometers being found 60 to 70 kilometers away from the reactor. You can't clean all this up." [1] The Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the operator of the crippled plant, now grudgingly acknowledge that their timeline for bringing the situation under control, by the end of the year, "may be" unrealistic. They also acknowledge that Fukushima has "probably" released more radiation than Chernobyl. Both have come under strong criticism in the past for withholding information and releasing overly optimistic estimates.

Yet even scientists working at the plant apparently have trouble comprehending the severity of the crisis. Last week, they attempted to install a filtration system to decontaminate and recycle the vast amounts of highly radioactive water accumulated as a result of the continuous efforts to cool the reactors.

Fukushima is running dangerously low on storage capacities for the used water. However, the system jammed after just five hours of operation.

Costs rise in 'worst industrial disaster‘ p2 oď Żâ€Ż

Reportedly, American pressure for more information and concerted action eventually helped jerk the Japanese authorities from their shock. This narrative carries the seeds of another narrative which most of us would very much like to believe: a story of international cooperation and the coming together of the world's finest technological achievements to combat a natural disaster.

Yet American officials were also caught unprepared. Most continue to deny outright that the radioactive pollution will have a palpable effect on the United States. Recent reports, however, indicate that infant mortality rates in eight major cities in the northwestern United States, where the fallout was greatest, jumped 35% in the four weeks following the accident. This is consistent with the biological effects of radiation. [4] Previous reports have indicated the presence of radioactive particles in rainwater as far east as Massachusetts, and in milk and other products throughout the country. The American authorities, as indeed most authorities in the world, appear to be in denial. Many important reports continue to be classified, and there is a sense that governments are lying to their people for lack of a better response.

In all likelihood, the scope of the disaster continues to evade us. There is little doubt that "the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind" will force us to learn painful lessons, and that we are only just beginning to grapple with its meaning.

Some of the consequences are fairly mundane, if hard to pinpoint very precisely yet, in that they are economic and technical. The nuclear industry will be doing some major soul-searching, and seems set for a period of decline; numerous countries are already reconsidering their reliance on nuclear plants.

The global economy will face reshuffles, as will the global energy market.

It has the potential, however, to go much deeper than that, shaking the very foundations of our sense of collective security. Certainly if some of the worst-case predictions materialize, and a sizeable part of Japan turns into a nuclear desert, we'll face urgent questions about where we are heading as a species; this may happen even in a more optimistic scenario.

It is possible, for example, that people's trust in the state system will be shaken, and on many levels.

This is not to say that the predominant current form of political and social organization will disappear, at least in the near future. But it has been under stress for quite some time now, and this disaster seems capable of bringing the existing stresses into public attention; so far they have been mostly confined to academic discourse.

Costs rise in 'worst industrial disaster p 3' if some of the worst-case predictions materialize, and a sizeable part of Japan turns into a nuclear desert, we'll face urgent questions about where we are heading as a species; this may happen even in a more optimistic scenario.

But while these former developments draw on the positive aspects of globalization - the availability of new resources to which new types of structures are better adapted - there is also a darker side. It is visible in Fukushima. The new possibilities have led to the manufacture of technology that is too powerful to control; its effects cannot be confined to national borders - and what better example than Japan of the fact that, to paraphrase John Donne, no society is an island nowadays.

In some of our most popular science-fiction narratives, the best astronauts of the leading world powers destroy asteroids that threaten the Earth with nuclear weapons (Armageddon grossed over half a billion dollars, attesting to our eagerness to consume the images; suffice it to mention that early on in the Fukushima crisis, some observers suggested nuking the reactors). [5] Yet in reality, we can't deal with a sizeable pile of radioactive waste, even long after the chain reaction has stopped.

Gundersen's conclusions speak loudly: "Somehow, robotically, they will have to go in there and manage to put it in a container and store it for infinity, and that technology doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to pick up the molten core from the floor, there is no solution available now for picking that up from the floor."

So do those of Dr Sawada, another scientist interviewed by Dahr Jamail: "Until we know how to safely dispose of the radioactive materials generated by nuclear plants, we should postpone these activities so as not to cause further harm to future generations oď Żâ€Ż

Notes 1. Fukushima: It's much worse than you think, al-Jazeera, 16 June 2011.

2. Tepco Halts Filtering of Tainted Water at Japanese Plant, , The New York Times, 18 June 2011.

3. In Nuclear Crisis, Crippling Mistrust,, The New York Times, 12 June 2011.

4. Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout? , 10-12 June 2011.

5. When The Fukushima Meltdown Hits Groundwater, , Rense, 27 March 2011.

Victor Kotsev is a journalist and political analyst based in Tel Aviv.

Fire near Los Alamos lab now largest ever in New Mexico

By Zelie Pollon | Reuters – 2 hrs 19 mins ago

"That's sad news that it's the largest fire in New Mexico history," Los Alamos County Fire Chief Douglas Tucker told Reuters. "That's one of the banners you don't want to wave."

By comparison, the largest blaze in Arizona, the Wallow Fire, has blackened 538,000 acres since it erupted May 29 of this year. It is still burning.

The latest fire in New Mexico had crept perilously close for several days to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation's top nuclear arms production facilities.

But a firefighting force that has grown to roughly 1,200 personnel has managed to carve containment lines around 3 percent of the fire's perimeter on its eastern and southern flanks, keeping flames from invading the lab complex.

Those lines continued to hold on Friday as winds fanned the blaze farther to the north and west, away from the laboratory and adjacent town of Los Alamos, home to some 10,000 residents who remain under evacuation orders.

The fire has now encroached on thousands of acres of an Indian reservation to the north, the Santa Clara Pueblo, officials said.

Los Alamos evacuation order lifted; 12,000 go home

By P. SOLOMON BANDA - Associated Press | AP – Sun, Jul 3, 2011 LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — A smattering of summer rain gave a boost to firefighters battling a huge forest fire near Los Alamos, giving authorities enough confidence to allow about 12,000 people to return home for the first time in nearly a week.

Residents rolled into town Sunday morning, honking their horns and waving to firefighters as the word got out that the roadblocks were lifted and the narrow two-lane highway cut into the side of a mesa leading to Los Alamos was open. They had fled en masse Monday as the fast-moving fire approached the city and its nuclear laboratory.

Meanwhile, hundreds of lab employees were returning to prepare operations and thousands of experiments for the scientists and technicians who were forced to evacuate days ago. Among the work put on hold were experiments using two supercomputers and studies on extending the life of 1960s-era nuclear bombs.

The blaze remained in Los Alamos Canyon, which runs past the old Manhattan Project site and a 1940s-era dump site of low-level radioactive waste, as well as the site of a nuclear reactor that was demolished in 2003.

Firefighters had planned to burn out areas near homes west of the town to remove combustible material and ensure the fire doesn't creep through an area burned in a 2000 blaze, but the rain kept the fire away, Coil said.

Is this the legacy we want to leave to our future generations?