TEPCO tries to Cover Up Nuclear Fuel Removal Problems at Fukushima

Remove TEPCO Before Removing Fuel

Video Source: Fairewinds Energy Education

http://fairewinds.org/podcast/remove-tepco-removing-fuel

Fairewinds has fielded a number of questions regarding the removal of the fuel rods from the spent fuel pool in Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi. Today’s video shows Arnie debunking TEPCO’s animated film point by point, and highlights the issues TEPCO will have removing the fuel rods. TEPCO needs to be removed as the organization overseeing the cleanup of the site prior to the removal of the fuel rods.

Please visit the Fairewinds Energy Education website and consider donating at the following link: http://fairewinds.org/donate/
 

Japan’s Triple Meltdown: Current Info & Tour of Problems at Fukushima

Source Video: Global Research

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfkxEmCxHMo

Each week Fairewinds receives many questions about the ongoing tragedy unfolding in Japan as a result of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Join us as Fairewinds' Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen highlights the many problems facing Japan as he takes you on a tour of the Fukushima Daiichi site by combining satellite video, animated graphics and photos to create a comprehensive and easy to follow video tour.

Original Video Post: Fairewinds

http://fairewinds.org/media/fairewinds-videos/tour-fukushima-daiichi

Please visit Fairewinds for more info.

http://fairewinds.org/

 

Japan’s PM “Lying to the Japanese People” – Nuclear Engineer

Video Source: The Real News

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LVOPSgR1Xk

Arnie Gundersen: “Japan's PM claims Fukushima is safe but the nuclear disaster is underfunded and lacks transparency, causing the public to remain in the dark.”

Open Letter to the United Nations Secretary General ban Ki-Moon on the urgency of the ongoing events at Fukushima Japan.

http://www.nirs.org/fukushima/expert-ltr-bankimoon-09-2013.pdf

Visit Fairwinds Energy Education to keep up to date with all nuclear related issues at the link below.

http://fairewinds.com/

Humankinds Most Dangerous Moment Coming

http://worldunitednews.blogspot.ca/2013/09/humankinds-most-dangerous-moment.html

 
Video Archive: News Japan's Nuclear Disaster

 

Worse than Chernobyl - The inner threat of Fukushima crisis

 

 Workers wearing protective suits and masks are seen near tanks of radiation contaminated water at Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant (Reuters / Issei Kato)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/op-edge/chernobyl-fukushima-crisis-catastrophe-715/

Christopher Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risks for RT

I recently pointed out, this operation has to go on forever - a long sickness, but at least not a sudden death. However, this week begins a new development in the potential sudden death department.

There is a curious and bizarre reversal of the natural at Fukushima: a looking-glass world inversion. Unlike the standard marine catastrophe, for example the Titanic, where the need is to manically pump water out of the ship to stop it sinking, at Fukushima the game is to madly pump water in, in order to stop it melting down and exploding.

Probably because it is now clear that the saturation of the ground from all the pumping water for cooling the several reactors and spent fuel pools has destabilized the foundations of the buildings, TEPCO is bringing forward its operation to try and deal with what is perhaps the most dangerous of the four sites, the spent fuel pond of Reactor 4. For this pond contains a truly enormous amount of radioactive material: 1,331 spent fuel grids amounting to 228.3 tons of Uranium and Plutonium buried inside a swimming pool which has already dried out once and exploded. That explosion blasted a significant, but unknown, quantity of lethally radioactive bits and pieces of fuel element around the site (where I heard they were bulldozed into the ground - who knows?), but it also blew the top off the building, covered the fuel elements under the water with rubble and pieces of crane machinery, and no doubt twisted and melted a large proportion of the remaining spent fuel.

The operation involves the kind of game that we are all familiar with in those machines in penny arcades. You know the ones. You stick in some coins. You have levers which manipulate a claw which you position over a teddy bear or a doll and then you let this down, pick the item up and drop it down a chute to win it. In the TEPCO version of this game, you build a crane over the spent fuel tank (or what’s left of it) and manoeuver a grab down into the rubble to deftly pick out a spent fuel assembly, like a 4.5meter long and 24cm square birdcage containing the zirconium metal clad fuel elements, each unit weighing about one third of a ton.

Of course, to make the game more interesting, they are not just sitting there like they were when the tank was being used. They are under water (sea water), covered in debris, corroded, busted, twisted, intertwined and generally impossible to deal with. And here is the really scary thing: if you manage to bust a fuel element, the best outcome is that huge amounts of radioactivity escape into the air and blow over Japan, just like before. The worst outcome is when two of these things get too close, perhaps because in pulling one out it breaks and falls against another one in the tank. Because then you suddenly have lots of fission, a lot of heat, a meltdown, possibly a big blast like before, and the destruction of the entire cooling pond. Or else the water boils off and the whole thing catches fire.

 

This photo taken on August 6, 2013 shows local government officials and nuclear experts inspecting a monitoring well where high levels of radioactive materials were detected at Tokyo Electric Power's (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant (Japan out AFP Photo / Japan Pool via JIJI Press)

Then what happens? Not quite Armageddon, but as far as Japan is concerned, almost. I bet they have contingency plans to evacuate the northern island to Korea, China, anywhere. A lot of this radiation will end up in the USA, a long way downwind, admittedly, but then there is an awful lot of radioactivity involved.

Let me lead you through what the spent fuel pond of Reactor 4 contains in the way of radionuclides. I was taken to task after my last article for not listing enough of the radionuclide contaminants. So for the record, though some may find it boring, let me remedy that. It is an impressive list of lethal material:

Strontium-89, Strontium-90, Yttrium-90, Zirconium-95, Niobium-95, Ruthenium-106, Rhodium-106, Antimony-125, Iodine-131, Xenon-133, Caesium-137, Caesium-134, Cerium-144 (loads of this), Protoactinium-147, Europium-154, Plutonium-238, 239, 240, 241, Americium (Yes)-241 and 243, Curium-242,243,244, and of course Uranium 238,235 and 234.

These are the main ones. There are a lot more, and decay daughters of these also. It is a scary amount of invisible death. The total quantity of all these in the spent fuel pool of reactor 4 is about 10²¹ Becquerels, if we leave out the noble gases and iodines maybe 10²⁰ (that is, 1 with 20 zeroes). Maybe 50 to 100 Chernobyl accidents worth, or more depending on what you believe came out of Chernobyl.

I list these because it should be made quite clear that the concentration of the media on the radio-caesiums and plutoniums and iodines is a very partial story. More discourse manipulation.

What lies within

Which brings me to another aspect of this grim piece of contemporary history. My expertise is in the health effects of internal radionuclides: what happens when these substances I list above get into human beings. Just after the Fukushima catastrophe I made a calculation and a prediction based on the scientific model of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR). I presented it at the German Society for Radioprotection/ ECRR conference in Berlin in May 2011.

This showed that there would be some 200,000 extra cancers in roughly 10 million population in the 200km radius of the site in the next 10 years, and 400,000 over 50 years. The current risk model adhered to and employed by the Japanese government is that of the International Commission of Radiological Protection, the ICRP. This predicts that no detectable cancers will be seen as a result of the “very low doses” received by the population.

This photo taken on August 6, 2013 shows local government officials and nuclear experts inspecting a facility to prevent seeping of contamination water into the sea at Tokyo Electric Power's (TEPCO) Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant (Japan out AFP Photo / Japan Pool via JIJI Press)

It is this nonsense that allows them to say it is safe to live in contaminated areas so long as the annual “dose” is lower than about 20mSv and to refuse to evacuate the children from such places. The ECRR has predicted and explained all the increased rates of illness seen after the Chernobyl accident in the contaminated territories and of course predicts that the first effects will be increases in thyroid cancer in children, just like Chernobyl. But the ICRP and those employing its model deny there are such effects in Chernobyl: the problems there are due to vodka, radiophobia etc. Or that the children in Belarus who did develop thyroid cancer were iodine deficient. So in effect, Fukushima is a test of the two models. A test which has now begun.

It was reported recently that a survey of thyroid conditions in young people age 0-18 by Fukushima Medical University found 12 confirmed cases and 15 suspected cases of thyroid cancer in 178,000 individuals screened. This is in a two-year period. The 2005 Japanese national incidence rate for thyroid cancer aged 0-18 is given in a recent peer reviewed report as 0.0 per 100,000. That is to say there are no cases. Let me be generous and say that the annual rate per 100,000 is 0.05. That means in the last two years we would expect 0.18 cases: we actually see at minimum 12 cases but most likely 27 cases.

In epidemiology we calculate the excess risk as 27/0.18 which is 150 times the expected rate. Japan Times tells us “Researchers at Fukushima Medical University, which has been taking the leading role in the study, have said they do not believe the most recent cases are related to the nuclear crisis.” Right, that’s OK then. This must have been a random cluster, unluckily, but coincidentally near Fukushima, a source of radioiodine which is a known cause of thyroid cancer.

The risk model

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, UNSCEAR would agree. Also the World Health Organization (since 1959 part of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] as far as research into radiation and health is concerned). In its preliminary report on Fukushima Health effects, issued in 2012, it states that the maximum thyroid dose was 35mSv and that most received a lot less. On the basis of the ICRP model you would not expect (says radiation and health supremo Dr. Wolfgang Weiss) to see what is clearly happening: an accelerating thyroid cancer epidemic, worse than and earlier than the Chernobyl thyroid cancer epidemic.

It is one more piece of evidence that the current ICRP risk model, employed by the Japanese (and all other world governments) is totally wrong and unsafe and must urgently be abandoned. Internal radiation exposure, as the ECRR approach shows, cannot be assessed by the simple concept of ‘Absorbed Dose’. For those who want a more technical explanation you can see my recent article.

I met Weiss in 2011 at a conference of radiation research in Paris which he was running. At this MELODI conference I took the microphone and told the 650 delegates that the ICRP model was dead in the water and its use continued to kill the people it was intended to protect. I was pursued up the aisle by the Chair, Dr. Sisko Salomaa (of the Finnish Radiation Protection organization STUK), to wrestle the microphone away from the dangerous lunatic Busby

 

A worker checks radiation levels on the window of a bus during a media tour at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant (AFP Photo / Pool / Toshifumi Kitamura)

But Weiss, Salomaa, and the other radiation agency apparatchiks well know that the ICRP and the other global radiation protection agencies UNSCEAR, IAEA and WHO are run by people (like themselves) who are not experts on internal radiation pollution and health, and rarely have any real hands-on research expertise. They rely exclusively on the Hiroshima bomb studies which ignored internal radiation, the black rain of uranium that affected the controls outside the city and the control entrants after the bomb.

I have checked out their research publications: it is just the case. Ask them. Their job has been - and still is - to protect, not the public, but the nuclear industry and the military. After Chernobyl, some of them turned up in Kiev when I was there in 2000 and talked down the effects of the radiation. Watch them in action here. By 2005, these Chernobyl cancer effects were turning up in Europe. One study in Sweden by Martin Tondel found an 11 percent excess cancer risk for every 100kBq/sq metre of caesium-137 contamination. Tondel was swiftly dealt with by his boss, Lars Erik Holm, one-time head of ICRP and now Medical Officer of Health of Sweden (Yes).

Again and again, these agencies and their spokespersons have denied what was in front of their very eyes. Billions of dollars are poured into cancer research, research on radiation, but any attempt to carry out epidemiological studies of those exposed to internal radiation, from depleted uranium in Iraq, to Chernobyl contamination, to the shores of the massively-contaminated Baltic Sea have been turned down for funding. I know. I applied with colleagues from Latvia Technical University and from the Karolinska Institute to look at cancer on the shores of the Baltic; no way were we going to be allowed to even get the data, let alone be funded.

As more evidence emerges from this ghastly inadvertent Fukushima experiment, we will see more and more that we have governments and radiation agencies who are wielding unsafe and incorrect scientific assessments of reality. Additionally, we have what might become one of the most serious global public health events of human history being overseen by a private profit-making company, TEPCO, with no good track record of competence or believability.

And appropriately, in this looking-glass world, in a bizarre echo of these two inversions of justice and democracy, we have a sinking ship that can only be saved by pumping water into it.

What are we going to do with these people who have let us down, who are letting us down? They all should be put into a court and tried and sent to jail for what are effectively war crimes, in this new war, the invisible genetic poisoning of the planet and its innocent inhabitants.

 

14 Nuclear Power Plants in Japan failed and not just the 6 at Fukushima Daiichi

VIDEO: Could Have been worse Removed by Vimeo

Source: Fairwinds Energy Education

Fairwinds Video Link

Fairewinds analysis of the triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi determined that other Japanese reactor sites were also in jeopardy because their cooling water systems were destroyed by the same tsunami. In this film, Fairewinds provides evidence that cooling systems for 24 out of 37 diesel generators were shut down by the tsunami and that 14 additional nuclear reactors were impacted. Finally, Fairewinds also recommends that the criteria of the international nuclear accident scale have a Level 8 added. The addition of a Level 8 would reflect the nuclear accident scenario at a multi-reactor site that significantly changes the risk factors to the general public and emergency evacuation procedures.

Team H2O Report

Video Transcript

If I were to ask you, what caused the accident at Fukushima-Daiichi, I bet you would tell me that an unimaginably large tsunami hit the plant and flooded out the diesel generators. If I were to ask, if we moved the diesel generators higher, would this entire accident have been avoided? Again, I bet you would tell me that yes, that would solve the problem. And you would be wrong.

I am Arnie Gundersen from Fairewinds. Today, I would like to talk about the real cause of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. And how close we came, not just at Fukushima Daiichi, but at 3 other nuclear sites and at 10 other nuclear reactors. On the morning of March 11, 2011, a Richter 9 earthquake out in the Pacific Ocean about 100 miles off the coast of Japan caused a shock wave that hit the island. The nuclear plants on the island shut down quickly and there is inconclusive evidence about whether they really did survive that earthquake or not. But 45 minutes later, a huge tsunami hit the island and wiped out those nuclear power plants. This is not just Fukushima Daiichi. The wave hit Fukushima Daiichi, Fukushima Daini, Onagawa, and Tokai. And all of them were damaged by the same tsunami.

About a week after the accident, I was on CNN and I told John King that it was not about the earthquake and it was not about the tsunami wiping out the diesels that knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi reactors. We brought up a satellite video that showed the damage to the pumps along the ocean. And as you can see here, it is just rubble. Now these pumps were relatively strong. They were designed to withstand earthquakes and anything Mother Nature could throw at them. And as you can see, the space along the coast is just a scrapyard of twisted metal.

You know in your car, you have a pump on the front of the engine, called a water pump. If the water pump fails, your engine dies. Well, that is really what happened at Fukushima Daiichi. Those pumps along the water provide cooling water to the diesels, just like the pump on the front of your engine on your car. Without those pumps operating, the diesels were doomed to fail anyway. It does not matter if those diesels were 100 feet in the air. The pumps along the water were destroyed. And that is the real root cause of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.

We call that the loss of the ultimate heat sink. And the keyword there is ultimate. You need the ocean to pull the water out of the nuclear reactor to keep it cool. But that same water has to cool the diesels to make that happen. The diesels would not have worked even if they had not been flooded. Now this problem that we call the loss of the ultimate heat sink, did not just happen at Fukushima Daiichi I, II, III, and IV. All 6 reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi site experienced it, but also at the Fukushima Daini site, the Onagawa site, and the Tokai site. Between those 4 sites there are 14 nuclear reactors. They had 37 diesels. 9 of them failed because of the tsunami. Those are the ones at Fukushima Daiichi I, II, III and IV. But 15 others failed too.

Mainstream media is not talking about that and the nuclear industry is not talking about that either. The diesels were not flooded. What happened was the pumps along the ocean were destroyed, not just for Fukushima Daiichi I, II, III, and IV, but for every one of those sites at least one diesel was knocked out because it could not be cooled. On December 21st, 2011, a report was written by a Team H2O Project and it discussed, "What are the lessons that we really should learn from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident?" It is a long report, 250 pages, and we have it on the website. But the key page as far as I am concerned is page 108. There is a really complicated graph on the page, but let me explain it. The pink boxes on that graph are the diesels that were destroyed from flooding. And you will see the diesels at Fukushima Daiichi were destroyed from flooding. But also, one at Fukushima Daini was also destroyed by the flood. More importantly, there are 15 other boxes on that chart that are orange. Those represent the 15 diesels that did not work, not because they were flooded, but because the cooling water systems had been destroyed by the tsunami. So the 9 that failed because they were flooded, would have failed anyway because their pumps were destroyed. Plus, 15 others were destroyed just because they could not be cooled. Between the 4 sites, Fukushima Daiichi, Daini, Onagawa and Tokai, there were 37 diesels. 24 were wiped out by the tsunami.

There is an important lesson here and the lesson is that it does not matter where we put the diesels. We have to put the cooling pumps at the water because that is were the water is. The nuclear industry is not addressing that; they are focussing on moving the diesels, or hardening the diesels or protecting the diesels from flooding. But in fact, the key that has to be resolved here is what are you going to do to protect the pumps along the edge of the water. Now there is another piece to this puzzle that the mainstream media and the nuclear industry do not want to talk about. It is the fact that this accident occurred when everyone was already on the site. There were a thousand people working at Fukushima Daiichi and another thousand people working at Fukushima Daini. Had the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami occurred 12 hours later, there would have been a hundred people working at Fukushima-Daiichi and another hundred at Daini, about 6 miles away. The roads would have been destroyed, either by the tsunami or the earthquake and the people could not have returned to work. It was through herculean efforts by a thousand heroes at both of those sites that rescued the world from a more serious accident than the one we have already experienced.

Think about how bad it would have been if the accident had been in the evening. We would have had 10 nuclear reactors in meltdown and likely other problems at the Onagawa Plant and the Tokai Plant. So when we talk about the Fukushima Daiichi accident, I think #1, it should be called accidents, because we had 3 nuclear reactors explode and another fuel pool in jeopardy. But also, it was not just Fukushima Daiichi. Fukushima Daini was in jeopardy for days. Onagawa was in trouble for more than a day. And Tokai also experienced trouble. So there were 14 nuclear reactors in jeopardy on March 11th. And the world instead was focussed on Fukushima Daiichi.

There is a citizen scientist in Pennsylvania who has suggested, and I think it is a great suggestion, that we add a level to the international nuclear scale to address the fact that when more than one nuclear plant is having an accident, the whole world needs to mobilize to solve the problem. I am sure you know that Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl were both considered Level 7 accidents which is the worst that could happen.

Adding a level to the international scale on nuclear accidents and adding this Level 8 accident is not about the amount of radiation released. I think Fukushima Daiichi released somewhat more radiation than Chernobyl. But even if they are roughly the same, that is not the point. The point is that it was a multi-unit accident and it also affected many sites. Well, that affects how many resources are brought in from outside and that is why Scott Portzline's recommendation that we add a level to the nuclear accident scale is so important.

So Mr .Portzline is recommending, and I agree with him, that we really need one more rung on the international emergency scale. We need a Level 8. It is not about how much radiation is released, it is about when multiple sites or multiple units are involved, the accident can be much, much worse than what we encountered. In fact as I have said, a 12 hour difference in this accident would have very likely meant the destruction of Japan, because 2,000 people happened to be there and they were able to rescue plants that were in dire straits.

The 2 lessons for today are #1, the nuclear industry needs to move the pumps or protect the pumps with something called submersible pumps so that they work even when they are flooded. And the second piece is that the International Atomic Energy Agency needs to admit that there are circumstances beyond a Level 7, a Level 8, where international co-operation is critical. If only the international community had had a Level 8 and recognized that it was not just a single plant or a single site that was in jeopardy, and that, in fact, 14 nuclear reactors at 4 different sites were in jeopardy. The world might have been able to minimize the consequences at Fukushima Daiichi and minimize the exposure to the Japanese population if only the international community had acted faster.

Thank you. I am Arnie Gundersen and I will keep you informed.

Team H2O Report

Source: Fairwinds Energy Education

 

Coverup: Risk of Nuclear Melt-Down in U.S. Higher than it was at Fukushima

 

Source: Global Research (Washington’s Blog)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverup-risk-of-nuclear-melt-down-in-u-s-higher-than-it-was-at-fukushima/5309002

Reactors in Nebraska and elsewhere were flooded by swollen rivers and almost melted down. See this, this, this and this. (Links Below)

The Huntsville Times wrote in an editorial last year:

A tornado or a ravaging flood could just as easily be like the tsunami that unleashed the final blow [at Fukushima as an earthquake].

An engineer with the NRC says that a reactor meltdown is an “absolute certainty” if a dam upstream of a nuclear plant fails … and that such a scenario is hundreds of times more likely than the tsunami that hit Fukushima :

An engineer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) … Richard Perkins, an NRC reliability and risk engineer, was the lead author on a July 2011 NRC report detailing flood preparedness. He said the NRC blocked information from the public regarding the potential for upstream dam failures to damage nuclear sites.

Perkins, in a letter submitted Friday with the NRC Office of Inspector General, said that the NRC “intentionally mischaracterized relevant and noteworthy safety information as sensitive, security information in an effort to conceal the information from the public.” The Huffington Post first obtained the letter.

***

 

 

 

 

 

The report in question was completed four months after … Fukushima.

The report concluded that, “Failure of one or more dams upstream from a nuclear power plant may result in flood levels at a site that render essential safety systems inoperable.”

Huffington Post reported last month:

These charges were echoed in separate conversations with another risk engineer inside the agencywho suggested that the vulnerability at one plant in particular — the three-reactor Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca, S.C. — put it at risk of a flood and subsequent systems failure, should an upstream dam completely fail, that would be similar to the tsunami that hobbled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in Japan last year.***

The engineer is among several nuclear experts who remain particularly concerned about the Oconee plant in South Carolina, which sits on Lake Keowee, 11 miles downstream from the Jocassee Reservoir. Among the redacted findings in the July 2011 report — and what has been known at the NRC for years, the engineer said — is that the Oconee facility, which is operated by Duke Energy, would suffer almost certain core damage if the Jocassee dam were to fail. And the odds of it failing sometime over the next 20 years, the engineer said, are far greater than the odds of a freak tsunami taking out the defenses of a nuclear plant in Japan.

“The probability of Jocassee Dam catastrophically failing is hundreds of times greater than a 51 foot wall of water hitting Fukushima Daiichi,” the engineer said. “And, like the tsunami in Japan, the man‐made ‘tsunami’ resulting from the failure of the Jocassee Dam will –- with absolute certainty –- result in the failure of three reactor plants along with their containment structures.

“Although it is not a given that Jocassee Dam will fail in the next 20 years,” the engineer added, “it is a given that if it does fail, the three reactor plants will melt down and release their radionuclides into the environment.”

In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post, Richard H. Perkins, a reliability and risk engineer with the agency’s division of risk analysis, alleged that NRC officials falsely invoked security concerns in redacting large portions of a report detailing the agency’s preliminary investigation into the potential for dangerous and damaging flooding at U.S. nuclear power plants due to upstream dam failure.

Perkins, along with at least one other employee inside NRC, also an engineer, suggested that the real motive for redacting certain information was to prevent the public from learning the full extent of these vulnerabilities, and to obscure just how much the NRC has known about the problem, and for how long.

Huffington Post notes today:

An un-redacted version of a recently released Nuclear Regulatory Commission report highlights the threat that flooding poses to nuclear power plants located near large dams — and suggests that the NRC has misled the public for years about the severity of the threat, according to engineers and nuclear safety advocates.

“The redacted information shows that the NRC is lying to the American public about the safety of U.S. reactors,” said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and safety advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

According to the NRC’s own calculations, which were also withheld in the version of the report released in March, the odds of the dam near the Oconee plant failing at some point over the next 22 years are far higher than were the odds of an earthquake-induced tsunami causing a meltdown at the Fukushima plant.

The NRC report identifies flood threats from upstream dams at nearly three dozen other nuclear facilities in the United States, including the Fort Calhoun Station in Nebraska, the Prairie Island facility in Minnesota and the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, among others.

Larry Criscione, a risk engineer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is one of two NRC employees who have now publicly raised questions about both the flood risk at Oconee and the agency’s withholding of related information, said assertions that the plant is “currently able to mitigate flooding events,” amounted to double-speak.

Criscione said this is because current regulations don’t include the failure of the Jocassee Dam — 11 miles upriver from Oconee — in the universe of potential flooding events that might threaten the plant. “I think they’re being dishonest,” Criscione said in a telephone interview. “I think that we currently intend to have Duke Energy improve their flooding protection and to say that the current standard is adequate is incorrect.”

According to the leaked report, NRC stated unequivocally in a 2009 letter to Duke that it believed that “a Jocassee Dam failure is a credible event” and that Duke had “not demonstrated that the Oconee Nuclear Station units will be adequately protected.” These statements — along with Duke’s own flood timeline associated with a Jocassee Dam failure and NRC’s calculated odds of such a failure — were among many details that were blacked out of the earlier, publicly released report.

Richard H. Perkins, a risk engineer with the NRC and the lead author of the leaked report, pointed to the analysis by the Association of Dam Safety Officials in an email message to The Huffington Post. “I felt it made a significant point that large, fatal, dam failures occur from time to time,” he said. “They are generally unexpected and they can kill lots of people. It’s not credible to say ‘dam failures are not credible.’”

Dave Lochbaum, the Union of Concerned Scientists engineer who reviewed a copy of the un-redacted report, says these revelations directly contradict the NRC’s assertions that Oconee is currently safe. “Fukushima operated just under 40 years before their luck ran out,” Lochbaum, who worked briefly for the NRC himself between 2009 and 2010, and who now heads the Nuclear Safety Project at UCS, said in a phone call. “If it ever does occur here, the consequences would be very, very high.

“Japan is now building higher sea walls at other plants along its coasts. That’s great for those plants, but it’s too late for Fukushima. If in hindsight you think you should have put the wall in,” Lochbaum said, “then in foresight you should do it now.”

Other Comparisons Between Dangers In U.S. and Fukushima

There are, in fact, numerous parallels between Fukushima and vulnerable U.S. plants.

A Japanese government commission found that the Fukushima accident occurred because Tepco and the Japanese government were negligent, corrupt and in collusion. See this, this and this. The U.S. NRC is similarly corrupt.

The operator of the Fukushima complex admitted earlier this month that it knew of the extreme vulnerability of its plants, but:

If the company were to implement a severe-accident response plan, it would spur anxiety throughout the country and in the community where the plant is sited, and lend momentum to the antinuclear movement ….

The U.S. has 23 reactors which are virtually identical to Fukushima.

Most American nuclear reactors are old. They are aging poorly, and are in very real danger of melting down.

And yet the NRC is relaxing safety standards at the old plants. Indeed, while many of the plants are already past the service life that the engineers built them for, the NRC is considering extending licenses another 80 years, which former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and now senior adviser with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign David Freeman calls “committing suicide”:

You’re not just rolling the dice, you’re practically committing suicide … everyone living within a 50 mile radius is a guinea pig.

Indeed, the Fukushima reactors were damaged by earthquake even before the tsunami hit (confirmed here). And the American reactors may be even more vulnerable to earthquakes than Fukushima.

Moreover, the top threat from Fukushima are the spent fuel pools. And American nuclear plants have fuel pool problems which could dwarf the problems at Fukushima.

And neither government is spending the small amounts it would take to harden their reactors against a power outage.

The parallels run even deeper. Specifically, the American government has largely been responsible for Japan’s nuclear policy for decades. And U.S. officials are apparently a primary reason behind Japan’s cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima accident … to prevent Americans from questioning our similarly-vulnerable reactors

Links:

Berm Protecting Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant Breaks … Plant Flooded, on Emergency Diesel Generators

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/berm-protecting-fort-calhoun-nuclear-plant-breaks-plant-flooded-on-emergency-diesel-generators.html
Nebraska Nuclear Threat: As Predictable as Fukushima
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/nebraska-nuclear-threat-as-predictable-as-fukushima.html
Nebraska Nuclear Reactor Flooded
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/nebraska-nuclear-reactor-flooded.html
Parts of Nebraska Nuclear Facility Already Under 2 Feet of Water … But – So Far – Emergency Flood Walls Are Protecting Electrical Equipment
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/parts-of-nebraska-nuclear-facility-already-under-2-feet-of-water-but-so-far-emergency-flood-walls-are-protecting-electrical-equipment.html
Nuclear Engineer Accuses regulators of Safety Cover up
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/249843-nrc-engineer-accuses-regulators-of-safety-cover-up
Letter: NRC intentionally mischaracterized relevant and noteworthy safety information http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/igletter.pdf
NRC Report: Flooding of Nuclear Power Plant Sites following upstream dam failures
http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1218/ML12188A239.pdf
Japanese Seismologist in 2004 on Risk of Nuclear Accident: “It’s Like a Kamikaze Terrorist Wrapped in Bombs Just Waiting to Explode”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/03/japanese-seismologist-in-2004-on-risk-of-nuclear-accident-its-like-a-kamikaze-terrorist-wrapped-in-bombs-just-waiting-to-explode.html
Engineers Knew Fukushima Might Be Unsafe, But Covered It Up … And Now the Extreme Vulnerability of NEW U.S. Plants Is Being Covered Up
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/engineers-knew-fukushima-might-be-unsafe-but-covered-it-up-and-now-the-extreme-vulnerabilty-of-new-u-s-plants-is-being-covered-up.html
Japan’s Nuclear Meltdown, the Economic Meltdown, and the Gulf Oil Meltdown All Happened for the SAME REASON
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/04/japans-nuclear-melt-down-economic.html
General Electric designed reactors in Fukushima have 23 sisters in USA
http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/03/13/6256121-general-electric-designed-reactors-in-fukushima-have-23-sisters-in-us
US Nuclear Regulators weaken safety rules
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/20/national/main20072497.shtml
US nuclear regulator meets to discuss 80-year licenses for old reactors
http://enenews.com/you-wont-believe-this-us-nuclear-regulator-meets-to-discuss-80-year-licenses-for-old-reactors-not-just-rolling-the-dice-youre-practically-committing-suicide-expert-video/comment-page-1
Japan’s Atomic disaster due to collusion
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/05/us-japan-nuclear-report-idUSBRE8640K420120705
A U.S. Nuclear Accident Could Be a Lot Worse than Japan
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/04/a-u-s-nuclear-accident-could-be-a-lot-worse-than-japan.html
The Top Short-Term Threat to Humanity: The Fuel Pools of Fukushima
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/04/the-largest-short-term-threat-to-humanity-the-fuel-pools-of-fukushima.html
The AMERICAN Government Is Dictating Japanese Nuclear Policy
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/american-government-is-dictating-japanese-nuclear-policy.html

 

After disastrous US job report, QE3 expected next week

 

US jobs growth slows sharply. QE3 coming next week

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/qe3-jobs-employment-labor-610/

The percentage of able-bodied Americans searching for jobs has hit a 30-year-low, and Wall Street now expects the US Federal Reserve to announce a new round of quantitative easing as early as next week.

The US Labor Department released their workforce statistics for August 2012 on Friday, and the figures are far from what economists had expected.

The Labor Department announced this week that while the unemployment rate last month dropped slightly to 8.1 percent, July’s figure was revised to show that fewer jobs, in fact, were added that month. For August, the US economy added 96,000 new jobs, a substantially smaller figure than predicted. The median statistic that Bloomberg found after surveying nearly 100 economists came to 130,000 new jobs.

Additionally, the participation rate — the labor force as a percent of the population as a whole — charted at 63.5 percent, the lowest figure the country has seen since September 1981.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner was quick to come down on the Obama White House over the latest news, releasing a statement on Friday that attacks US President Barack Obama and his “failed promises to get our economy moving again.”

"Wages are stagnant, gas prices and health care costs are up, our national debt has surpassed $16 trillion and millions of Americans remain out of work or underemployed,” Speaker Boehner said, only hours after President Obama accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination to run for reelection.

“I’m very concerned about those of us who are unemployed and where are we going to find stable employment,” would-be worker Kimberly Hackler of White, Georgia tells Bloomberg. Hackler says she has been looking for work since November, applying for close to 200 positions in the last year but coming up empty handed after each try.

“I don’t see the economy improving anytime soon. I am concerned it could get worse,” Hackler says.

Some economists expect the same outcome, in fact, and predict that the Federal Reserve may now finally step up to the plate. According to them, now is the perfect time for the US central bank to start third round of quantitative easing, or QE3, to address America’s economic woes.

In a statement made early Friday, Goldman Sachs tells reporters that they expect the Fed to announce plans for QE3 during an already scheduled meeting next week among the Federal Open Market Committee, more than a year ahead of when they had originally anticipated the maneuver.

“With today’s August employment report showing a nonfarm payroll gain of 96,000 and an unemployment rate of 8.1% because of a drop in the participation rate, we expect a return to unsterilized and probably open-ended asset purchases at the September 12-13 FOMC meeting,” the bankers write.

“We now anticipate that the FOMC will announce a return to unsterilized asset purchases (QE3), mainly agency mortgage-backed securities but potentially including Treasury securities, at its September 12-13 FOMC meeting. We previously forecasted QE3 in December or early 2013. We continue to expect a lengthening of the FOMC’s forward guidance for the first hike in the funds rate from “late 2014” to mid-2015 or beyond,” Goldman adds.

Joseph Trevisani, chief market strategist at Worldwide Markets in, New Jersey, says to Reuters, "This weak employment report, in jobs, wages, hours worked and participation is probably the last piece the Fed needs before launching another round of quantitative easing next week.”

Last month, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told an audience at his annual Jackson Hole address, "The stagnation of the labor market in particular is a grave concern not only because of the enormous suffering and waste of human talent it entails, but also because persistently high levels of unemployment will wreak structural damage on our economy that could last for many years.” The Fed has been thought to be preparing a round of quantitative easing for the last year amid dire employment levels, but the Labor Department’s latest news may have finally pushed them over the edge.

Putting power over public safety? Japan to restart two nuclear reactors

This picture taken on April 12, 2012 shows the third (R) and fourth reactor building of the Ohi nuclear power plant of the Kansai Electric Power Co (KEPCO) at Ohi town in Fukui prefecture, western Japan (AFP Photo/Jiji Press/Japan Out)

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/nuclear-japan-reactors-fukushima-196/

The Japanese town of Ohi has deemed it necessary to restart its two nuclear reactors, citing imminent power shortages. But Robert Jacobs, a professor of nuclear history, told RT the move is meant to avert investment losses in the nuclear sector.

The Ohi town assembly defended the decision to put the reactors back online, citing potential damage to the local economy and the rise in unemployment the prolonged halt of the reactors could cause. The decision will become official when the assembly convenes on Monday.

However, activists argue that a transfer to greener energy sources would boost local economies and create far more jobs in the long-term.

Japan is facing serious energy shortfalls this summer after the decision to shut down the last of its 53 reactors on May 5.

In response to the potential crisis, the Japanese central government has been trying to convince towns hosting atomic stations to approve their reactivation.

But Robert Jacobs, a professor of nuclear history and culture at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, told RT the push to reopen the plants is the perfect example of a government putting money before human health.

RT: Greenpeace has called the government's push to restart nuclear plants “reckless.” Are these reactors safe to reactivate?

Robert Jacobs: No, these reactors are not safe to restart. Japan remains the most active seismic nation on Earth and there are many earthquake faults under or nearby many of the reactors, and many others are in tsunami zones. Additionally, there have been repeated and blatant disregard for safety procedures at many Japanese nuclear plants. None of these issues have been addressed during the shutdowns, and in fact the worst of these (seismic activity and tsunami threats) cannot be addressed or improved. In order for nuclear power plants not to pose a threat they must be in a secure location and operated flawlessly. The first of these criteria cannot be achieved, and the second has not.



'The Japanese government is going to push as hard as it can to restart the reactors.'

RT: Is it necessary for Japan to restart these two reactors in the face of this summer’s predicted energy shortages?

RJ: No. Japan can meet these predicted shortages through a combination of conservation and other sources of energy. Many Japanese companies have taken steps to reduce power usage in ways that should have been practiced all along. These have significantly reduced demand and allowed the companies to continue to operate at current levels while reducing their power needs. Currently Japan is importing more coal and gas to make up for shortfalls in nuclear power production. So there is no short term crisis in terms of meeting the demands of power customers.

RT: Do you think this will be the beginning of a domino effect, and the government will begin to reactivate other stations?

RJ: The government of Japan and the power companies are dedicated to restarting the reactors. This is primarily for two reasons. First, they believe that the longer the nuclear plants remain offline, the harder it will be to eventually restart them. So they are determined to restart the reactors just to keep them viable. This is a political choice. The second reason is because the power companies have invested so much money into the nuclear power plants (half of their assets for some of them) that they do not want to see those investments become worthless. So to preserve the value of their assets, they will push very hard to restart the nuclear reactors, whether they are safe or not. This is an economic choice. But the people of Japan are almost entirely against restarting the nuclear plants and that is why they remain offline. They don't believe the assurances of the government, the power companies, and also the media. Also, they see that the nuclear power plants are all offline and the world has not come to an end as many in the government and power companies said would happen.

RT: Given that Japan relied on nuclear energy for 30% of its power prior to the Fukushima disaster, is a nuclear-free future viable?

RJ: Yes. This would be the case eventually anyways, even if Fukushima had never happened. The nuclear power industry has been in its death throes for some time now. No new plant has been built for a long time. They are not actually very profitable investments. So if no new plants were to be built, sooner or later all of the current plants would shut down and Japan would have entered a non-nuclear future regardless. The meltdowns have just hastened the inevitable. The current debate is about whether or not to focus on maximizing the return to the power companies on their investments before this happens. But at the cost of public safety this is a ridiculous choice to make.



'Previously most Japanese people had faith in the wisdom and honesty of authorities such as the government, larger corporations and the media, that faith has been broken…"

RT: What do you think the government’s mixed energy program, due to be unveiled this summer, will entail?

RJ: On this I am not well-informed, but my guess is that they will attempt to soften the push to restart the reactors by couching it in a larger "mixed" energy program. There is no choice but to include several sources of energy, so there is already a mixed program. But when they formally introduce such a program, it will be a way to include restarting the nuclear power plants being made to seem like a small part of the program – when it is the entire purpose of this repackaging of the image.

RT: What is the Japanese government doing to allay the fears of a nuclear-weary population?

RJ: The Japanese government is going to push as hard as it can to restart the reactors. They have already been doing this. They claim that Japan will become a Third World nation if it does not restart the reactors. They claim that there will be widespread blackouts and that corporations will leave the country if the plants are not restarted. But there has been a big change here in Japan. Whereas previously most Japanese people had faith in the wisdom and honesty of authorities such as the government, larger corporations and the media, that faith has been broken and the Japanese people are no longer so easily swayed by such doom and gloom pronouncements and will not be easily manipulated. This is going to be a very contentious standoff

BP shareholders urge assets sell-off

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig ablaze in April 2010

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/175380.html

Some of the oil giant BP's largest shareholders are calling for the firm to sell off up to half of its assets, a year after the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP has already sold some $23 billion worth of assets to help pay for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as part of plans to divest $30 billion by the end of 2011, but some of the firm's top 10 investors have called on the company to sell another $30 billion worth of assets, the Sunday Times reported on Saturday.

The investors say the move is aimed at coming up with the money to pay for the clean-up of the spill and compensate its victims. However, a BP spokesman has said that the company is "comfortable" with its current level of fundraising.

"The $30bn will cover the costs of the Gulf of Mexico clean-up and the compensation fund,” the spokesman added.

The move comes as environmentalists say the impact of the oil spill is a lot worse than previously thought. Millions of barrels of crude leaked into the Gulf of Mexico last year after a blast on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig.

The April 20 explosion on the drilling rig off the Louisiana coast killed 11 people and triggered the worst oil disaster in the US history.

Last week, fishermen and disgruntled shareholders protested against the oil giant at its first annual general meeting since the spill.

A delegation representing hundreds of fishing families went to the meeting's venue in east London to voice their concerns as they brought shares in the company to gain access to the meeting.

Aussie flood creates war-like disaster

Floods slash $13 billion off Australian economy

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/159932.html


Queensland State Premier Anna Bligh says Australia's flood-devastated state faces a reconstruction and cleanup similar to an effort following a war.

"This is going to be a long recovery. This morning as I look across not only the capital city (Brisbane), but three-quarters of my state, we are facing a reconstruction effort of post-war proportions," Bligh told Australian radio on Thursday.

Although flood waters peaked bellow feared catastrophic levels on Thursday, Australia's third largest city, Brisbane, and other devastated regions face years of rebuilding and even the threat of fresh floods in the weeks ahead.

Flooding has smashed infrastructure inundating roads and railways in Brisbane. The sewage leaked and spread into the water that remained one meter bellow the feared level.

The city center remained shuttered, more than 12,000 homes were flooded in the city of two million and some 118,000 buildings had their power cut.

Brisbane airport survived the swell and remains open, with almost all flights unaffected.

Forecasters say water levels are expected to slowly recede over the weekend. So far, the death toll from Queensland's flooding stands at least 23 with dozens more are reported missing.

The Queensland floods may end up costing the economy $13 billion because of lost productivity and damage to key infrastructure.