Scripps Research Institute Department of Immunology scientist and Del Mar, Ca. City Council Member Prof. Donald Mosier, M.D. explains the serious risks of San Onofre nuclear plant operation from both a scientific and a public policy point of view. This is #9 in our ‘preview interview’ series, SHUTDOWN: The Case of San Onofre.
Dr. Mosier can be contacted here: dmosier@delmar.ca.us and here: dmosier@scripps.edu
For more background on Dr. Mosier go here and here and here.
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Title slide from Paul Frey's powerpoint presentation. (Used with permission)
What might the radioactive fallout cloud look like at San Onofre from a Chernobyl-like or Fukushima-scale nuclear accident?
Recently two concerned men, each in his own way, have set out to answer that question. Torgen Johnson mapped a scaled overlay of the Fukushima fallout cloud over the San Onofre region. Paul Frey mapped a scaled overlay of the Chernobyl radioactive plume. Their findings are presented below.
But first, just to get a sense of how radioactive fallout can spread (depending on wind and weather patterns), check out this simulation by IRSN, Institute De Radioprotection Et De Surete Nucleaire, of the Chernobyl fallout clouds spread across Europe from April 25 to May 9, 1986…
And check out this NOAA simulation of just two weeks of releases of cesium over the Pacific from Fukushima. Of course, Fukushima is still releasing billions of bequerals per day and will be for the foreseeable future, so picture that as well. [ More info on the sumulation Fukushima Radioactive Aerosol Dispersion here. ]
Torgen Johnson is an architect and urban planner who lives with his family in region threatened by a San Onofre accident. You can see his popular interview in our series here. This is what he has to say:
I want to share this recent graphic produced of the Fukushima radioactive plume overlaid on San Onofre. The image was created for the sole purpose of illustrating the relative size of the plume in Fukushima after only 25 hours vs. the totally inadequate 10-mile EPZ radius size for a U.S. nuclear power plant.
Evacuation would be futile when confronted by a radioactive plume of this size. This is only the first 25 hours and 20 percent of the plume that Prime Minister Kan and the people of Japan faced.
Of course the plume’s shape is specific to the weather patterns in NE Japan and does not reflect what the plume’s shape would be if there was a severe nuclear accident at San Onofre.
Fukushima radioactive plume overlaid on San Onofre - Torgen Johnson
A second image from NASA shows what happens to smoke from brush fires during a Santa Ana wind condition. The plume would not necessarily take an elongated oval shape as I have seen in some probabilistic risk assessment studies.
Smoke from brush fires during a Santa Ana wind condition - NASA
If just the owner-occupied homes in the City of San Clemente are valued at over $20 billion you can imagine the economic impacts of a nuclear accident in an urbanized area like Southern California. The economic impacts need to be discussed at all public meetings. Torgen
Paul Frey’s PowerPoint Presentation
Title slide from Paul Frey's powerpoint presentation. (Used with permission)
Slide 2 - Paul Frey
Slide 3 - Paul Frey
Slide 4 - Paul Frey
Slide 5 - Paul Frey
Slide 6 - Paul Frey
Slide 7 - Paul Frey
Paul Frey concludes,
LA Exclusion Zones, Estimates of Economic Losses, Health Impacts, Liability and Sources
A Radioactive Exclusion Zone is generally defined as an area over 555KBq/square meter of cesium 137. Information from the sources below can show that if fog, wind and rain carried all the fallout from a worst case meltdown or 1000 ton fuel pool fire onto an area the size of the LA Basin, MUCH OF THE LOS ANGELES BASIN WOULD BE DEFINED AS AN EXCLUSION ZONE and would suffer economically for many years to come. Independent and government studies shown below estimate worst case losses in different scenarios from 500 billion to trillions of dollars.
No insurance company will insure against a nuclear disaster. In a 1 trillion dollar nuclear accident the utilities would only have to pay about 1 percent of damages whereas the taxpayers would have to try and cover the other 99 percent via the Price Anderson Act which limits the liability to 12 billion dollars for any nuclear plant accident. Health effects from radiation would depend on how quickly the population in the LA Basin could evacuate.
(1) Radiological Terrorism: Sabotage of Spent Fuel Pools Author: Hui Zhang, Journal Article, INESAP issue 22 pages 75-78. For calculating burning tons of spent fuel and resulting fallout using Chernobyl as a base reference to multiply. Showed worst case fuel pool fires in France would equal 67 Chernobyls.
(2) A Safety and Regulatory Assessment of Generic BWR and PWR Permanently Shutdown Nuclear Power Plants, Brookhaven National Laboratories, NUREG/CR-6451; BNL NUREG-52498, 1997. Shows shutdown reactors with fuel pools are capable of massive radiological releases. Estimates 546 billion dollars economic loss excluding health effects, 138,000 latent fatalities, and 2100 square miles of land condemned in worst case fuel pool fire. This studies modeling was not done using the geography of the LA Basin, which would lead to higher numbers if all the radiation was trapped in the basin.
(3) Environmental Consequences of the Chernobyl Accident and their Remediation – Twenty Years of Experience. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 2006, for Chernobyl European fallout map. According to IAEA “Over two decades Chernobyl has cost hundreds of billions of dollars”. See IAEA “In Focus: Chernobyl” The IAEA says they do not know how many hundreds billions it really was due to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
(4) Massive Radiological Releases Profoundly Differ From Controlled Releases Author, Patrick Momal, IRSN, Institute De Radioprotection Et De Surete Nucleaire, Eurosafe Forum 2012 that showed cost for a meltdown would exceed half a trillion dollars. Unreleased leaked version of this report from Le Journal de Dimanche showed worst case costs from French nuclear reactor would be three time the GDP of France or over 4 trillion dollars. The study was done in 2007 and partly released at the Eurosafe Forum in 2012.
(5) The Health and Economic Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. Author, Edwin S. Lyman, Union of Concerned Scientists, 2004. Costs to the New York area would exceed 1 Trillion Dollars in worst case.
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John Geesman, attorney for the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, questions a SoCal Edison executive in CPUC SONGS hearing.
“Edison has no plan, and the 70% restart proposal for Unit 2 is a path to nowhere.” John Geesman, attorney for the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility
Damaging New Evidence Revealed [ Updated ]
Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility’s attorney, John Geesman, at yesterday’s California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) hearing on San Onofre costs, was presented with letters he’d requested earlier from Southern California Edison, but that they had withheld until yesterday.
The letters reveal how the defective steam generator’s manufacturer, Mitsubishi and Edison were at a standstill over what action to take as late as December of 2012.
This has major implications for costs charged to ratepayers for running the plant – estimates range from over $400 million to $553 million to $1 billion depending on what’s included – that has produced no electricity since January 2012. SCE clearly has not been able to plan how to proceed to repair the steam generators. Ratepayers had paid $653 million dollars for replacing the steam generators less than two years before the emergency shutdown of San Onofre due to a radiation leak in the new generators.
Attorney Geesman’s point was that, with no real plan in place for the failed generators – shutdown now for over a year – how could SCE claim that charging ratepayers throughout 2012 for electric power they weren’t getting was ‘reasonable’?
Presiding CPUC Administrative Law Judge Melanie Darling – who seems to believe her main job is to protect SCE from the public interest advocates in the proceeding – cut off Geesman’s line of questioning, saying it was outside the scope of this hearing on the reasonableness of SCE’s continuing 2012 charges to customers for the its two non-functioning nuclear reactors.
Geesman responded, “Your honor, aren’t you suggesting that someone driving down the road with the windshield totally blacked out could be acting ‘reasonably’?”
Scroll down for a brief video excerpt of Geesman’s questioning and links to recent news coverage.
Take advantage of the webcast of this CPUC evidentiary hearing – It’s happening through Friday, May 17, 2013 from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm with an hour lunch break. It is available at this URL; https://www.californiaadmin.com/cpuc.shtml
[You must have Real Player installed to watch videos. *Recommended to install previous version of Real (vSP for Windows; v11 for Mac) . Download available on the CPUC site.]
The public pressure to have the hearing live-streamed paid off in that LA Times reporter Abby Sewell – and hopefully many others – can use the webcasts to pay close attention. Do tune in, it’s getting interesting. EON will capture the live stream, and may post excerpts to YouTube if the content warrants special public attention.
Once touted as a successor, or at least a competitor, to carbon-based power, the nuclear sector has taken a beating as the momentum behind new projects stalls and enthusiasm for domestic fossil fuel production grows.
Across the country, plans to build nuclear plants have hit roadblocks recently—a sharp turn for a sector that just a few years ago was looking forward to a renaissance. [ A comprehensive summary of nuclear setbacks. Read more
MAY 16, 2013 San Onofre at the No Nukes Brink
By Harvey Wasserman
In January, it seemed the restart of San Onofre Unit 2 would be a corporate cake walk.
With its massive money and clout, Southern California Edison
was ready to ram through a license exception for a reactor whose botched $770 million steam generator fix had kept it shut for a year.
But a funny thing has happened on the way to the restart: a No Nukes groundswell has turned this routine rubber stamping into an epic battle the grassroots just might win….
… It’s common in the nuke blackmail business for a utility to threaten to shut a reactor where jobs and power are desperately needed. But Edison now has a more desperate theme. The spread of solar throughout southern California will bring far more jobs than San Onofre can begin to promise. A new feed-in tariff in Los Angeles has helped spread solar panels throughout the region.
Edison billed southern California ratepayers roughly $1 billion for San Onofre in 2012 even though it generated no juice. The CPUC would probably let them do it again, but public awareness and anger levels have soared. Major media throughout the region have been pummeling Edison, largely over economic issues.
Should San Onofre stay dead, its power void will fast be filled by cheaper, cleaner, safer green technologies destined to make southern California a major focal point in the global march to Solartopia.
This shutdown would take the number of licensed US reactors down to 100. With others on the brink at Indian Point, Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek and elsewhere, the race to shut the world’s nukes before the next Fukushima is turning the so-called nuclear renaissance into an all-out reactor retreat. More
From Torgen Johnson
Hi All,
I want to share this recent graphic [ below ] produced of the Fukushima radioactive plume overlaid on San Onofre. The image was created for the sole purpose of illustrating the relative size of the plume in Fukushima after only 25 hours vs. the totally inadequate 10-mile EPZ radius size for a U.S. nuclear power plant.
Evacuation would be futile when confronted by a radioactive plume of this size. This is only the first 25 hours and 20 percent of the plume that Prime Minister Kan and the people of Japan faced.
Of course the plume’s shape is specific to the weather patterns in NE Japan and does not reflect what the plume’s shape would be if there was a severe nuclear accident at San Onofre.
A second image from NASA shows what happens to smoke from brush fires during a Santa Ana wind condition. The plume would not necessarily take an elongated oval shape as I have seen in some probabilistic risk assessment studies.
If just the owner occupied homes in the City of San Clemente are valued at over $20 billion you can imagine the economic impacts of a nuclear accident in an urbanized area like Southern California. The economic impacts need to be discussed at all public meetings.
Please feel free to share it. It was sized to print out at 36″ x 50″ poster size.
Torgen
[ For our in depth interview with urban planner Torgen Johnson on the risks to the ‘built environment’ of Southern California go here. ]
From Gary Headrick at San Clemente Green:
I thought you should know that today was a significant day in the saga of San Onofre. Thanks to the tremendous support we got over the past 2 weeks, we were able to submit 3,706 signatures to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the same time we managed to dominate (if you call 54% dominating) a Union Tribune poll on the question of a shutdown, regardless of Edison pulling every string they could to stay ahead. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much action on a poll like this, with over 10,000 votes and 366 comments.
During this brief but intense period our list of subscribers has nearly doubled to 4,709. All of this has been an impressive response from citizens concerned about a reckless restart, and the prospect of running a nuclear experiment with defective equipment in a population of over 8 million people. Let’s hope the trend continues to grow as this important restart decision draws near. We’ll report back on any results or new developments from this effort.
Most importantly, we just want to say thanks for uniting in such a powerful way in the past few days and weeks. You are an inspiration to the entire movement. Let’s keep the momentum building. Thank you!
The manufacturer of faulty steam generators that have sidelined the San Onofre nuclear plant proposed long-term repairs last year that were never adopted by the plant operator. More
Edison, Mitsubishi hit roadblock on San Onofre’s future
By Abby Sewell – LA Times
May 15, 2013, 8:19 p.m.
A flurry of letters that went back and forth between Southern California Edison and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries late last year reveal the serious hurdles that stand in the way of the San Onofre nuclear power plant’s long-term future.
The plant had been offline at that point for nearly a year because of unusual wear on tubes that carry radioactive water in the plant’s newly replaced steam generators, which were designed and manufactured by Mitsubishi.
Edison asked federal regulators in October for permission to restart one of the plant’s two units and run it at 70% power for a few months to see if that would alleviate the conditions that led to the wear. More
Read the Southern California Edison and Mitsubishi Letters
Southern California Edison and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries wrote a series of letters back and forth late last year about possible long term repair plans for faulty steam generators at the San Onofre nuclear plant. The plant has been out of service since January 2012. The correspondence came out as part of a proceeding before the California Public Utilties Commission that could eventually lead to customers’ rates being lowered or refunded. Letters here.
— Abby Sewell
Decision on San Onofre pushed back to June at the earliest
By Abby Sewell – LA Times
May 14, 2013, 7:16 p.m.
The head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday that the agency will not make a decision on whether to restart the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant until late June at the earliest.
The timeline for the plant has been pushed back repeatedly.
The plant’s operator Southern California Edison had hoped at one point to have one of the plant’s two units operating by summer, but NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane made it clear that will not happen.
Macfarlane told reporters Tuesday after a speech, “You know, the process is very complicated now. Almost every day it gets a little more complicated…. Right now I can tell you a decision on restart won’t happen until the end of June, certainly after the middle of June.
“It may get pushed back later,” she said. “I don’t know.”
Macfarlane declined to wade into a debate over the meaning of a decision issued Monday by a panel of NRC administrative judges who were tasked with deciding the fate of a petition filed by environmental group Friends of the Earth….
…Meanwhile, a first round of hearings began this week in San Francisco in a California Public Utilities Commission investigation of the costs to ratepayers from the plant’s outage, which could eventually lead to rates being lowered.
Administrative judges initially angered activists by not allowing videotaping of the proceedings, but later agreed to post a webcast of the hearings. More
[ Watch webcasts here. ]
San Onofre ruling creates confusion
By Abby Sewell – LA Times
May 13, 2013, 7:24 p.m.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and an environmental group came to vastly different interpretations Monday of a federal review panel’s decision Monday on the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant.
The plant’s owner, Southern California Edison, meanwhile, said it is still trying to figure out what the ruling means.
San Onofre has been in the midst of multiple regulatory reviews since a tube in the plant’s newly replaced steam generators sprung a leak and released a small amount of radioactive steam in January 2012. More
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Sage Advice
Cindy Sage, environmental consultant and editor of the groundbreaking international study ‘The BioInitiative Report’ on the health effects of electromagnetic radiation exposure, shares the results of her research and how it relates to wireless ‘smart’ meters with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. In two parts.
Babies Rebel - An anti-nuclear postcard by a prescient Japanese artist published 3 decades ago by the Abalone Alliance
[Updated] The Beginings of a ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ Rollback In this edition:
NRC and CPUC Taking Hits
New Nukes Canceled
Stopping Mobile Chernobyl Plans in the U.S.
As Radiation Rises, Safety Standards Slump
Summer Without San Onofre
Reporter Peeves Peevey
Fukushima Foul-Ups
U.S. and Japan’s Nuclear Schizophrenia
Markey Slams NRC
The Girls of Atomic City
and more…
Overview – The Post-Fukushima Follies
by James Heddle, Mary Beth Brangan – EON
The stories covered in this update, some encouraging, some depressing, make clear the chaos that reigns in the post-Fukushima environment and indicate some gains for the forces of nuclear sanity.
On-going foul-ups at Tepco’s Fukushima Daichi disaster site demonstrate the irremediable dangers of nuclear power technology and the incompetence and irresponsibility of its operators. Yet industry advocates for a ‘nuclear renaissance’ continue to push domestically and internationally for hefty government and ratepayer subsidies (in the absence of private investor interest). The nuclear industry is advising compliant government agencies to merely lower safety standards as radioactive waste accumulates and radioactive contamination of the global environment increases. And, as Japan’s radioactive Fukushima debris begins to reach North American shores, the corporate/government response is the same as with the PB oil spill in the gulf – before the public knows about it, use prison labor to scoop it up, cart it away to Hanford and cover it up.
Nuclear Schizophrenia
In Japan, nuclear schizophrenia divides an anti-nuclear populace from elements in the ruling elite that not only want to restart its currently idle reactors, but want Japan to develop its own nuclear weapons capability.
In the U.S. nuclear schizophrenia takes the form of the Obama administration upgrading its own European nuclear arsenal, while threatening war on Iran and North Korea for allegedly doing the same thing. The EPA is raising permissible levels of radioactive exposure by as much as 27,000 times for Iodine 131 in water, as well as allowing radioactive waste to be put into municipal garbage dumps, and other severe reduction of safety standards, virtually guaranteeing that 1 in 6 children will get cancer if exposed. At the same time a court has ruled that an 83-year-old nun (and two others) be imprisoned for 20 years for their symbolic protest at America’s main uranium facility in Tennessee.
Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Gregory Jaczko has gone on an interview campaign saying all 104 U.S. decrepit nuclear power plants are unsafe and should be decommissioned ASAP, while the supine NRC backs off enforcing its recent ruling that operators retrofit their plants with venting to avoid hydrogen explosions like the three that devastated Fukushima because the industry says it will be ‘too expensive.’ (There are 23 U.S. reactors of the exact design as the Fukushima design which exploded because of these faulty vents.)
Nuclear waste on the road
Radioactive Shellgame
Senators Wyden, Murkowski, Feinstein, and Alexander are pushing legislation for “consolidated interim storage” of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW). that, according to Nuclear Information and Resource Services (NIRS) “would rush unprecedented numbers of shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel onto the roads, rails, and waterways.” That’s because they know that most of America’s aging, rickety nuke plants have more highly radioactive ‘spent fuel’ stored on-site than Fukushima. It should be stored in hardened dry casks and left in place until there’s somewhere else to put it permanently, but utilities say that, too, ‘would be too expensive.’ So the good Senators obligingly propose that the industry’s high level waste be trucked around the country to ‘interim storage’ sites, only to eventually be moved again. This risks serious accidents and leaks on public roads and railways, over waterways, etc.
Whistleblowers, Duct Tape, Tarps, and Broomsticks
In California there’s the unfolding San Onofre saga, a microcosm of the death throes of the zombie-like nuclear industry. Though California’s energy management agency, the Independent System Operator (ISO) says the state’s anticipated summer energy load can be met even with San Onofre shutdown, and clean energy advocates have shown that there is excess energy generating capacity without nuclear energy, Southern California Edison is still pushing to restart one of its damaged San Onofre reactors at partial power. This, despite public opposition and whistleblower revelations of ‘gross’ problems, serious restart risks, and pictures of leaking pipes jury-rigged with plastic and broomsticks.
A flaccid NRC can’t find its regulatory backbone in the face of public outrage and SoCal Edison’s parent corporation is whining that it will permanently mothball the plant, take its marbles and go home.
Fuelled with ratepayer and taxpayer dollars - Image: Beyond Nuclear
CWIPs, Worker Deaths, Shutdowns and License Application Withdrawals
One of the many devious ways the zombie nuclear industry has devised to suck the blood out of the body politic as it staggers toward oblivion is a strategy called ‘Construction Work in Progress,’ or CWIP. Beyond Nuclear explains it this way: “a law, fortunately existent only in a handful of U.S. states, that allows a utility to charge ratepayers higher rates to cover future costs of a yet-to-be-constructed reactor, even if that reactor is never built.”
That’s because, as Beyond Nuclear goes on, ‘The only way to build new atomic reactors in the U.S.,’ reports Peter Bradford in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ‘is to gouge ratepayers.’
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ (BAS) U.S. coverage features former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Commissioner, Union of Concerned Scientists board member, and Vermont Law School professor Peter Bradford’s “How to close the U.S. nuclear industry: Do nothing,” which concludes that, without massive taxpayer or ratepayer infusions, almost all proposed new reactors will not happen, and currently operating reactors will permanently shutdown by mid-century, unless the NRC rubber-stamps 80 years of operations (as opposed to the current, already risky 60).
Maybe Amory Lovins is right in his long-standing prediction that ‘nuclear energy will die of an overdose of market forces.’ Perhaps that’s why Duke energy recently announced closing its Crystal River nuke and withdrawing its license application for two new nukes in North Carolina. Competing with low fracking-gas prices and simultaneously paying for maintenance, means unprofitable nuke plants.
But lest we lapse into a sleep of premature complacency, a recent spate of worker fatalities at U.S. nuclear facilities and ongoing radiation releases from Fukushima are a grim reminder that nukes are a clear and present danger to humans and other living things. There is still much to be done to insure the deadly, tyrannous technology’s demise and adequate managing of its intensely radioactive waste. Much of the waste will be deadly for many hundreds to many hundreds of thousands of years.
Today’s Update includes print and video and has the following sections: Campaigns to Support
California – San Onofre and CPUC Developments
Rising Radioactivity, Sinking Safety Standards
Fukushima/Japan
US Nuclear Developments
General Stories
Campaigns to Support Edison proposes to restart a defective nuclear reactor as early as June 1st. Let’s tell them ‘NO!’ Sign the PetitionVote in the Poll
Without fixing the problem first, SC Edison admits that the reactor could not run safely for more than 11 months at 100%; but says it can run at 70% power for 5 months. If this proposed experiment fails, we won’t know until radiation releases from containment out into the environment again. This time, a cascading event with thousands of already weakened tubes could rupture.There is no way to anticipate a rupture when it is under power, and if that happens, it will be too late. Southern California could become a vast wasteland. Edison’s proposition is completely unacceptable! Sign the PetitionVote in the Poll
From Donna Gilmore, Founder, SanOnofreSafety.org Friends of the Earth has an automated process for us to send comments to the NRC regarding the NRC plan to approve reducing San Onofre safety standards. If the NRC approves the reduced safety standards, it will potentially lead to an early restart of the defective San Onofre Unit 2 nuclear reactor. We must tell the NRC to reject Edison’s experimental restart plans and demand a public hearing before any decisions.
Go to SanOnofreSafety.org for Friends of the Earth Comments link and NRC Comments link, and more details. The direct link to Friends of the Earth action is here The direct NRC link for making comments is here. However, it is “down for scheduled maintenance all day Saturday”.
Tell the CPUC “Lift Ban On Video Coverage of San Onofre Investigative Hearings!”
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is not just your average, run-of-the-mill corporately-captured ‘regulatory agency.’ With its lax safety culture, budgetary mismanagement and recent spy scandals, it seems to be in a class by itself – a ‘fiefdom,’ as one state legislator recently termed it, of its president Michael Peevey, former CEO of Southern California Edison, the very company it will be holding investigatory hearings on next week. Maybe that has something to do with why video cameras have been banned from the hearing. See our post: CPUC Bans Video of San Onofre Hearings and learn where to write to express your outrage.
This year Congress will consider legislation that could establish “centralized interim storage” sites for high-level radioactive waste. Such a plan would do nothing to solve our nation’s pressing permanent radioactive waste problem, but would launch the transport of thousands of casks of lethal radioactive waste on our roads, railways and waterways.
We’ve stopped this nonsense before, it’s time to stop it again.
Send a letter to Congress here. Resources and More Information: https://www.nirs.org/radwaste/hlwtransport/mobilechernobyl.htm
For nearly twenty years, the nuclear power industry has had a singular goal for high-level radioactive waste: get it off their property and ship it to someone else’s.
Why? Because as long as this waste–the same toxic stew of irradiated nuclear fuel that spread across the globe from Fukushima and Chernobyl–remains at their reactor sites, the nuclear utilities are liable for any damages. Once the waste is moved from their property lines, we, the taxpayers, become liable for the devastation a nuclear waste accident could cause.
[Part of the set-up to transfer responsibility for disposal of high level radwaste from corps to taxpayers. Eds.]
Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network or FFAN, (which EON is a member of) filed a petition with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to drastically reduce the amount of radioactive cesium permitted in food, from a ridiculous 1200 Bq/kg, to 5 Bq/kg . The Bq (Becquerel) is a measure of radioactivity. This week the FDA officially accepted the petition into its process, which means they are now accepting comments.
Our petition asks for a binding limit of 5 Bq/kg of cesium 134 & 137 combined, in food, nutritional supplements and pharmaceuticals. Read more here CLICK HERE TO SIGN PETITION
Operators of the San Onofre nuclear plant may decide to retire one or both reactors by year-end if regulators deny or delay a request to partially restart the plant, as outage costs surpass $700 million and uncertainties mount.
Edison International executives made the announcement Tuesday in regulatory filings and on a conference call with analysts.
“Without a restart of Unit 2, a decision to retire one or both units would likely be made before year-end 2013,” said Ted Craver, CEO of the parent company to Southern California Edison, majority owner and operator at San Onofre.
The San Onofre plant has been shut down for more than a year since the discovery of rapid deterioration in its new steam generators. CHARLIE NEUMAN • U-T
[Please go to this page and vote on the issue. Here’s where the poll stands as we post: ]
As of May 10, 2013
View of Chernobyl power plant taken from the roof of a residential building in Pripyat, Ukraine. Photo Taken by Jason Minshull.
From NIRS – Nuclear Information and Resource Service URGE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TO CO-SPONSOR HR 1700– BILL TO IMPROVE NUCLEAR EMERGENCY RESPONSE, INCREASE EPZ TO 50 MILES
May 7, 2013 Dear Friends, The emergency planning issue for nuclear reactors is heating up in the wake of NIRS’ Petition for Rulemaking to expand Emergency Planning Zones (EPZs) and a recent Government Accountability Office report warning that people outside the current 10-mile EPZs don’t know what to do in the event of a nuclear accident, but likely would evacuate anyway. You can read the GAO report on our Nuclear 911 page here. Last week, Rep. Elliott Engel (D-NY) introduced HR 1700, a common sense bill to address emergency planning issues. New York Democrats Nita Lowey and Charles Rangel, and New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne, are initial co-sponsors. You can read this short bill here (pdf). The bill would require the President to designate a single Federal agency to be responsible for coordinating response to a nuclear accident, and to develop clean-up standards to be applied afterwards. The bill would also effectively establish a 50-mile Emergency Planning Zone. Currently, several government agencies have a role in emergency planning, with no clear-cut agency in charge. And the provision about establishing clean-up standards is a jab at the EPA, which recently released draft guidance that drastically relaxes such standards (we’ll be sending an Alert for you to be able to comment on this important issue very soon!).
Please take a moment to send a quick letter to your Representative, asking him/her to co-sponsor HR 1700. The more co-sponsors we can get, the greater the chance this bill could move–there is no reason this need be seen as a partisan issue. Because the emergency planning issue is receiving major political attention, we will soon be sending you a separate Alert that will enable you to contact your local county and city officials asking them to pass resolutions in support of NIRS Petition for Rulemaking to expand Emergency Planning Zones and improve emergency exercises to include scenarios involving natural disasters affecting or initiating nuclear accidents. It should probably go without saying, but emergency planning improvements are obviously not a substitute for nuclear reactor shutdowns. However, as long as reactors are still operating, all of us deserve the best possible emergency response. Right now, we’re not getting it. Your actions will help move our nation in the right direction.
Thanks for all you do,
The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the worst nuclear accident in 25 years, displaced 50,000 households after radiation leaked into the air, soil and sea
TO:
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Senator Dianne Feinstein (D- CA)
Senator Ron Wyden (D- OR) Senator Jeff Merkley (D- OR)
Senator Maria Cantwell (D – WA) Senator Patty Murray (D- WA)
Senator Mark Begich (D- AK) Senator Lisa Murkowski (R- AK)
Senator Mazie Hirono (D- HI) Senator Brian Schatz (D- HI
US Senate switchboard: 1-866-220-0044
Dear West Coast Senators:
We the undersigned are deeply concerned about the radiation danger from the ongoing disaster at the Japanese nuclear complex at Fukushima-Daiichi. We are asking you to conduct a thorough investigation of the continuing damage to West Coast states, and the potential danger of another catastrophe.
This would include a detailed inspection of the facility by a team of experts who are independent of the nuclear industry, as well as ongoing monitoring of West Coast and Hawaii water, air and food for radiation. We are especially concerned about making sure the site is safe in case of another huge earthquake, which is not unlikely.
Another big concern is pollution of the Pacific Ocean from ongoing discharge of radioactive water from the plant. Already, radioactive fish are migrating to the West Coast. Mammals at the top of the oceanic food chain are exhibiting strange symptoms, such as the epidemic of sea lion strandings in California.
We appreciate Senator Wyden’s visit to the site in April 2012, and his subsequent letter of concern to appropriate officials. Evidently there has been no followup. The danger is being ignored. Your investigation would bring much needed attention.
Although the initial meltdown of three reactors, from the earthquake/tsunami of March 11, 2011, occurred over 2 years ago, the complex is still highly unstable, and leaking radiation constantly into the air and water. The Pacific Ocean is more and more contaminated. West Coast marine mammals are dying by the thousands, and West Coast babies are sick. The FDA is not testing food for radiation, although many fish are contaminated, and there have been reports of milk, mushrooms, seaweed being radioactive. Nor is the air along the coast being checked by official agencies.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which runs the facility, has admitted that the disaster was caused by negligence on their part, yet they continue to be in charge of the containment/cleanup process. There are serious mishaps almost daily: pipes break, rats chew through wires and cause power outages, pumps break, containment tanks leak radioactive water into the environment, huge beams fall into fuel pools, etc.
So far, they have been handled, but if any of these problems gets out of control, there will be another nuclear explosion, the facility will have to be abandoned altogether, and the reactor cores and spent fuel pools will emit so much radiation that the West Coast might have to be evacuated. Another 8.0-9.0 earthquake could have the same result, and there are many earthquakes in the region of magnitude 6.0 -7.0.
Meanwhile, TEPCO is secretive, severely limiting access to the complex by journalists and by any experts who are not beholden to the nuclear industry. TEPCO has been accused of doctoring photos and videos to hide cracks in the aging concrete buildings and containment tanks. The workers are overexposed to radiation, underpaid, and must be rotated out after a few months, to be replaced by others with little experience of the facility.
The Japanese government has been accused of lying about the radiation in the area and health problems, and seems more concerned with declaring “normalcy” and safeguarding the nuclear industry than with safeguarding the health and safety of the people.
The financial drain on TEPCO and the Japanese is huge. They are responding to emergencies, dealing with health problems, coping with radioactive fisheries and produce, compensating victims, and working on the daunting task of dismantling the spent fuel pools, which are the most vulnerable to radioactive fire and explosions.
This is an international problem. Many say it is THE most dangerous situation on the planet at this time. It especially affects the residents of West Coast states. Your investigation is urgently needed, to shed light, bring attention, and help find technical and financial solutions.
Thank you.
From Carol Wolman, MD
Dear Friends,
We now have a contact in the office of CA Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is willing to receive FAXes of the signatures and comments from this petition, and pass them on to the Senator. The need for intervention from outside Japan is becoming more and more urgent, as the situation at Fukushima deteriorates.
The leaky fuel pools and growing amount of contaminated ground water have sparked a lengthy and alarming article in the NY Times today. I’ve copied the whole thing below, as it covers the situation in depth, highlighting the ineptness of TEPCO, the utility company that owns the plant and is managing the cleanup. Although the Japanese government nationalized the facility a year ago, this amounts to pouring public money into the cleanup. Evidently the government is unable to change the haphazard, somewhat incompetent way TEPCO is proceeding, putting the Pacific Ocean at risk of massive radioactive pollution. This directly affects the six states whose Senators are being petitioned. Sea mammals are dying along the West Coast in droves, which makes one wonder how much damage has already been done, and what could remedy it.
We must do something before it’s too late. Please continue to push this petition- let’s get some big numbers. A Senate investigation would call proper attention to the dangers.
San Onofre insider says NRC should not allow nuclear restart
ABC Channel 10 News – Team 10 speaks with former NRC employee, insider
SAN DIEGO – For the first time, a source from inside the San Onofre nuclear power plant has come forward to warn that restarting the power plant is too dangerous.
“There is something grossly wrong,” said the inside source, a safety engineer who worked at San Onofre and has 25 years in the nuclear field. Read more.
The source, who requested anonymity, is not alone in concerns over the safety San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
Photo shows plastic bags, tape, broomsticks used to fix San Onofre leak
As Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster demonstrated, no nuclear plant is ever completely safe. In January 2012, the San Onofre nuclear generating station (SONGS) in Southern California was closed due to the discovery of a radiation leak and other damaged components. It has now been over a year, and Southern California Edison (SCE), which operates the station, has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for permission to bring the plant back online. Unfortunately for them, a shocking photograph published by local ABC affiliate 10 News has cast doubt over whether SCE’s request should be granted. The image,
California faces another summer without San Onofre plant
California energy operator officials say they expect to get by without blackouts. Southern California Edison says it might retire the nuclear plant by year’s end.
By Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times
May 7, 2013
California energy officials are preparing for another summer without the San Onofre power station while facing the growing possibility that the nuclear plant will never return to service.
The nuclear plant, one of only two in the state, was powered down more than a year ago when a small amount of radioactive mist leaked from one of the thousands of tubes in the plant’s steam generators.
Southern California Edison officials said in financial statements last week that if federal regulators do not agree to the utility’s proposal to restart one of the plant’s two units at partial power, they might elect to retire the plant completely by the end of the year.
“There’s just a general limit of how much we can continue to rack up these costs without certainty of cost recovery,” Edison International Chief Executive Ted Craver told analysts.
So far, the mothballed plant has cost Edison more than half a billion dollars, and the tab continues to grow. More
“There is a practical limit to how much we can absorb that risk,” said Edison CEO Theodore Craver in a conference call of Wall Street analysts, according to the AP.
Southern California may not go dark this summer. But the future of the nuclear power plants that provide the power there are in doubt. During a conference call, Edison International said that the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or SONGS, may retire both of its reactors along the Pacific coastline. more
By Dan McSwain U-T San Diego
A company spokeswoman said Friday that discussion of fixing the plant was “premature.” Yet her CEO is talking openly about permanent shutdown. more
By Morgan Lee – UT San Diego
Yet another investigation has been launched into the outage at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station — this time about the conduct of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Joseph A. McMillan, assistant inspector general for investigations at the NRC’s Office of the Inspector General, confirmed the probe on Monday. The Inspector General performs investigations to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, with its authority extending to possible criminal statutes and misconduct by employees. more
Electric supply seen as adequate for summer
By Mark Glover – Sacramento Bee
The Folsom-based California Independent System Operator, which operates the state’s wholesale electricity transmission grid, is projecting an adequate supply of power for most of California this summer.
However, ISO’s “2013 summer assessment” said the prolonged shutdown of the 2,200-megawatt San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station “continues to heighten reliability concerns in Southern California this summer.
Consequently, ISO said power reliability risks to southern Orange and San Diego counties are “marginally more challenging” this summer, but still within planning standards.
“We ask consumers to … conserve electricity to ensure enough power for everyone,” said the ISO’s Steve Berberich.
Read more here
From Donna Gilmore – SanOnofreSafety.org 2013 ISO Summer loads and; resource assessment
Here’s a link to ISO’s press release on this issue. It says “…the summer assessment notes the reliability risks to southern Orange and San Diego counties are “marginally more challenging” this summer, but still within planning standards”. PDF
Page 35 of the CAISO 2013 summer assessment has these two key paragraphs. Nowhere in the report does it assess the risk of a major radiation release at San Onofre. A very real possibility with Edison’s plan to restart a defective nuclear reactor.
“The slowly improving economy, which resulted in moderate peak demand growth, matched with the availability of 3,393 MW of new power generation since June 2012 show an overall positive summer outlook for 2013 to meet a broad range of supply and demand conditions. However, there is a risk of localized customer outages under extreme conditions in the southern Orange County and San Diego as a result of the voltage deficiency caused by the shutdown of SONGS.
To address these concerns, a mitigation plan is being implemented to convert the retired Huntington Beach units 3 & 4 into synchronous condensers, install 80 MVAR capacitors at Santiago and Johanna, and a 160 MVAR capacitor at Viejo, split the Barre – Ellis 220 kV lines from the existing two circuits to four circuits, closely monitor the construction of new generation resources in Los Angeles, and dispatch demand side resources during peak days. Even with these measures in place the southern area is still susceptible to reliability concerns and will require close attention over summer operations – particularly during critical peak days and in the event of wildfire conditions that could potentially force transmission out of service.”
NRC inspectors find violations at San Onofre
May 9th, 2013, 4:45 pm – posted by MORGAN COOK – Orange County Register [ Subscription only ]
A routine inspection of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station turned up five violations that were “more than minor” but of “very low safety significance,” according to a report released Thursday afternoon by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
A team of 13 inspectors conducted the on-site examination of the station’s Unit 2 and 3 reactors between Jan. 1 and March 24, according to the report. Southern California Edison was not cited for the violations, according to the report. Edison has 30 days to challenge the NRC’s findings.
Edison officials could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.
Among the problems NRC staff identified during the inspection was an “adverse trend” in “external corrosion” at SONGS, Lara Uselding, an NRC spokeswoman, wrote in an email Thursday afternoon.
“The staff made this determination based upon plant records … combined with independent observation of plant conditions by inspectors, Uselding said. More
Legislators take steps to rein in California Public Utilities Commission
By Steven Harmon – Bay Area News Group – MercuryNews.com
SACRAMENTO — Legislators on Wednesday moved to rein in the Public Utilities Commission, taking the highly unusual step of wiping out its $1.4 billion budget to force the regulatory agency to justify how it spends its money.
The PUC, which one lawmaker called a “fiefdom,” would also be stripped of its ability to start nonprofit organizations that generate programs that hike rates without the approval of the Legislature under language approved by the Assembly budget subcommittee on resources and transportation….
…Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-Van Nuys,… said “Too often, it seems the PUC feels impervious to the actions of the Legislature. Today is a reality check for an out-of-touch leadership at the PUC.” More
What, me worry? - Calls for Michael Peevey to be replaced as PUC president have not elicited a public response from Gov. Jerry Brown
The embattled president of the California Public Utilities Commission recently ignored the call to answer tough questions by state senators in Sacramento and instead decided to attend a conference at an exclusive Napa resort and a reception at an upscale winery in St. Helena, both of which were captured on hidden camera by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit.
Michael Peevey was asked to appear before the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review subcommittee on April 25 to justify keeping the job he has held for the past decade. The senate hearing was in response to growing conflict over a confidential report, uncovered by the Investigative Unit, which raises questions about the CPUC’s commitment to safety and its relationship with utility companies the agency regulates. Peevey’s Priority: Senate Hearing or Napa Winery?”>More
Calls for Michael Peevey to be replaced as PUC president have not elicited a public response from Gov. Jerry Brown. Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/05/5395671/californias-public-utilities-commission.html#storylink=cpy
California’s Public Utilities Commission faces legislative heat
By Melody Gutierrez
mgutierrez@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, May. 5, 2013 – 12:00 am | Page 3A
Last Modified: Sunday, May. 5, 2013 – 8:58 am
Legislators are turning up the heat on the California Public Utilities Commission, withholding money and lambasting the state agency over the past few months for failing to prioritize its core mission of ensuring safe and reliable utility service.
Calls for Gov. Jerry Brown to replace the commission’s top leader, Michael Peevey, have gone unanswered, even as new allegations of mismanagement surface. Peevey’s appointment is through Jan. 1, 2015.
Among the issues highlighted during multiple hearings on the commission in the Senate and Assembly were findings from a state audit that exposed lax financial controls, a scandal involving a covert recording of a private meeting and an unanswered demand that Peevey testify in a legislative hearing.
“The only way this commission is going to change the culture of complacency is to change the leadership,” said Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, who has led the charge to oust Peevey since the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion killed eight people and injured 60 in his district.
This is must reading to understand how standards are now being set for ionizing radiation. And how the EPA is part of the current rollback of standards.
The NCRP (National Commission on Radiation Protection, a nuclear industry funded group) has been hired to coordinate this U.S. rollback of standards for ionizing radiation to levels that are currently allowed in Fukushima! We think this is both because of the ongoing fallout from Fukushima hitting the U.S. as well as the probability of a major radiation release from our aging and poorly maintained nuclear facilities whose owners don’t want to pay for safety repairs. And it certainly would be convenient for the nuclear industry when it puts thousands of tons of radioactive waste onto trucks, trains and boats onto our highways, railways and waterways.
EPA spokesperson Paul Kudarauskas, of the EPA Consequence Management Advisory Team actually said “People are going to have to put on their big boy pants and suck it up.”
Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket Following Radiological Incidents
by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)
The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following “radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication as soon as today, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a “new normal” for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). More
Can’t Win? Change the Rules!
April 24, 2013 Podcast from Fairewinds
The US and Japan are trying to raise acceptable radiation exposure limits. “If you can’t decrease the water level, you elevate the bridge,” says pediatrician and author Dr. Helen Caldicott. On today’s podcast, Arnie and Helen discuss the associated health risks of various types of radioactive releases, how regulators and the nuclear industry are downplaying those releases, and the current state of the Fukushima clean up. “The recovery of the site will go nowhere as long as Tokyo Electric is in charge,” says Arnie.
U.S. nuclear regulators delayed action on a recommendation that utilities install radiation filters at 31 U.S. reactors, a victory for the industry that estimated the proposal may cost as much as $20 million per unit.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday said its staff should consider other approaches that would block release of radiation during an accident. The standards, developed in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, must be in place by March 2017, according to a commission statement. more
WASHINGTON (March 19, 2013) — Even as engineers struggle with a power outage at the damaged Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that has left nuclear fuel storage pools without fresh cooling water, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today released the results of their vote to delay requirements to install systems to filter radiation from vents used to release high-pressure hydrogen gas in the event of an accident. The failure of such vents during the Fukushima meltdowns led to the damaging hydrogen explosions that occurred.
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Congress’ leading voice on nuclear safety, today said that this vote by the NRC to reject its own staff’s recommendations to install these systems would mean the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth, Mass. and Vermont Yankee, among other plants around the country, may never be required to install this key safety improvement.
“The NRC has abdicated its responsibility to ensure public health and safety in New England and across the country,” said Rep. Markey. “Instead of following its top experts’ safety recommendations, it chose to grant the nuclear power industry’s requests for more studies and more delays, and even after the study is completed there is still no guarantee that the NRC will ever make this commonsense requirement mandatory.”
… In May of 2011, Rep. Markey released a report entitled “Fukushima Fallout” that also found that the NRC has not factored modern geologic information into seismic safety requirements for nuclear power plants, and has not incorporated its technical staff’s recommendation to do so even though the new information indicates a much higher probability of core damage caused by an earthquake than previously believed. In fact, the NRC has continued to process applications for license extensions for many nuclear reactors, including those in major metropolitan areas, even in the absence of upgraded seismic safety requirements. more
Makah Reservation, WA — Add eco-disaster cover-ups to corporate austerity and privatization
Wayne Madson Report – May 8, 2013 [ Subscription required, but our friend Wayne Madson deserves our support. ]
Corporate disaster management: Cause it, bury it.
Corporations, in league with federal and state governments, have established a new protocol to deal with major environmental disasters. Using the twin weapons of secretive clean-ups and public relations media blitzes, corporations have a new weapon to add to their other programs of austerity and privatization to seize control of the planet from the people who inhabit it.
With radioactive and toxic debris from the March 2011 Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disaster beginning to wash ashore in large amounts along with coasts of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia, state and federal officials, along with private contractors, have instituted the very same protocol for covert clean up instituted by British Petroleum, the federal government, and Gulf coast state governments for the Deepwater Horizon oil deluge in the Gulf of Mexico. Just as debris and dead marine life is constantly scooped up by heavy equipment along the beaches of the Gulf, often in darkness during the wee hours lof the morning, debris from the Japanese quake and tsunami are being secured by contractors and prison labor as soon as beached debris or large debris items soon to wash shore are spotted by observers.
…There is a major effort underway by the U.S., Japanese, and state of Washington governments, in addition to TEPCO and Fukushima reactors manufacturer GE, to secure and carry off from beaches like Shi Shi Beach (above) radioactive debris from the Japanese quake before environmentalists and the news media can take readings.
WMR has learned that prisoners serving time in two local state prisons in Clallam Bay and Forks, both on the Olympic Peninsula, are being pressed into service for beach cleanup.
Sources on the Makah tribal reservation at the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula report that the bulk of debris has been spotted far out to sea by local fishermen. However, beginning last year, debris from Japan, including a bottle of sake and a can of insecticide began washing ashore on native beaches. [ Read more: Subscription required, but our friend Wayne Madson deserves our support. ]
But be sure to take note that, as Steven Starr comments:
…these [NRDC} maps are based upon the assumption that there is a single plume that travels as would the fallout from a mushroom cloud generated by a nuclear detonation. In other words, a single release, not an ongoing venting from a meltdown or spent fuel fire, which as we know lasts for days and changes with the wind patterns.
See the IRSN image of the spread of cesium-137 from Chernobyl at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwxNfy79gl4
Fukushima/Japan
Is Japan Developing a Nuclear Weapons Program?
Huge reprocessing plant could be used to stockpile plutonium for the future manufacture of nuclear weapons.
By Peter Symonds Global Research, May 07, 2013
The Wall Street Journal published an article on May 1 entitled “Japan’s nuclear plan unsettles US.” It indicated concerns in Washington that the opening of a huge reprocessing plant could be used to stockpile plutonium for the future manufacture of nuclear weapons.
The Rokkasho reprocessing facility in northern Honshu can produce nine tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium annually, or enough to construct up to 2,000 bombs. While Japanese officials insist that the plutonium will be used solely to provide nuclear power, only two of the country’s 50 nuclear power reactors are currently operating. more
TEPCO’s testing of the ALPS system intended to remove all contamination except tritium continues but now it is not expected to be out of the testing phase until fall 2013 at the earliest. TEPCO also admitted that the system is not completely removing contaminants as expected and the radiation levels around the equipment was rising. Right now neither issue was halting work but could become a problem over time if not resolved.
This throws a huge problem into the contaminated water problems. TEPCO currently has no plan do deal with this issue. They have begun building more tanks on site and still hope to use the groundwater bypass system but that has not been approved or fully implemented. The radiation increases around ALPS could cause a bigger problem down the road if the system becomes a high radiation area. This would restrict access and make repairs dangerous. more
Gray and silver storage tanks filled with radioactive wastewater are sprawling over the grounds of the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: April 29, 2013
TOKYO — Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.
Japanese Anti-Nuke Street Art
Fuel-Rod Cooling Halted by Rats at Crippled Japan Nuclear Plant
Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant halted cooling of a spent fuel pool at the site on Monday to remove two dead rats, the third time cooling equipment has gone offline in five weeks because of rodents.
By Risa Maeda and Mari Saito
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant halted cooling of a spent fuel pool at the site on Monday to remove two dead rats, the third time cooling equipment has gone offline in five weeks because of rodents.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said it halted cooling of the No. 2 unit pool, which stores spent uranium fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site, for a few hours to remove the rats and install a net to stop further such intrusions.
Last month, Tepco lost power to cool fuel rods for 29 hours, an outage it later blamed on a rat that had shorted a temporary switchboard.
Two weeks later, workers attempting to install a net tripped the system again. more
Overview of active cesium contamination of freshwater fish in Fukushima and Eastern Japan.
Mizuno T, Kubo H.
Source – The Center for Risk Research, Shiga University.
Abstract
This paper focuses on an overview of radioactive cesium 137 (quasi-Cs137 included Cs134) contamination of freshwater fish in Fukushima and eastern Japan based on the data published by the Fisheries Agency of the Japanese Government in 2011. In the area north and west of the Fukushima Nuclear plant, freshwater fish have been highly contaminated. For example, the mean of active cesium (quasi-Cs137) contamination of Ayu (Plecoglossus altivelis) is 2,657 Bq/kg at Mano River, 20-40 km north-west from the plant. Bioaccumulation is observed in the Agano river basin in Aizu sub-region, 70-150 km west from the plant. The active cesium (quasi-Cs137) contamination of carnivorous Salmondae is around 2 times higher than herbivorous Ayu. The extent of active cesium (quasi-Cs137) contamination of Ayu is observed in the entire eastern Japan. The some level of the contamination is recognized even in Shizuoka prefecture, 400 km south-west from the plant.
POINT OF VIEW/ Katsuno Onozawa: Government’s lethargic response stresses Fukushima mothers
April 30, 2013
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
As concern over nuclear accidents and radiation lessens, people have begun to go so far as to talk about restarting idle reactors.
Now, in the third year since the onset of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, an event we were told would change our values and the way we live, there are still evacuees who cannot return home.
Is concern over nuclear accidents already fading away? Or are people consciously trying to forget?
The Asahi Shimbun asked Katsuno Onozawa, a doctor of psychosomatic medicine, who has taken part in children’s health consultations in Fukushima Prefecture.
＊ ＊ ＊
I regularly join children’s health consultations organized in Fukushima, Koriyama and other cities by a group of physicians gathered from across the country at the behest of a Fukushima NPO (nonprofit organization).
What shocked me the first time I participated in January of last year was the gap between what the newspapers and TV news were reporting and the reality in Fukushima as attested to by the mothers who came for consultations.
Wanting to protect their children from radiation, they pleaded with the prefectural and city governments and local doctors, but none would take their side.
They just said things like, “It’s safe. You don’t have to take any special action. There are lots of radiation-phobia mothers, and we can’t deal with them all.”
They worry that they have to continue living amid high radiation levels due to their inability to evacuate the prefecture for financial or other reasons.
But even other mothers said things to them such as, “The prefecture and city say it’s safe, so it’s OK,” and, “It’s strange of you to express alarm, even though you’re staying.” Even spouses differed, with husbands telling their wives they worry too much.
These women are isolated in their communities and families as they conceal their discomfort. Many reproach themselves, thinking, “Maybe I’m the one who’s strange,” and become depressed.
It seemed they were meeting disapproval simply for coming to the consultations. I was at a loss for words because of these mothers’ situation, and I could not sleep at night because I was so enraged at the government’s heartless response.
WASHINGTON –Call it the “renaissance in reverse.” Not only is the U.S. nuclear power industry mothballing plans for planned reactors in North Carolina and Texas, it also is now pulling the plug (or threatening to do so) on existing reactors in California. All of that and the passage of anti-industry legislation in Florida happened last week (April 28th-May 3rd), easily the worst single week for the U.S. nuclear power industry since the March 2011 meltdown of nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan.One day after the closure by Dominion Resources of the Kewaunee Power Station reactor in Wisconsin, three experts held a phone-based news conference today to comment on the recent string of adverse developments for the troubled nuclear power industry….
Between Tuesday to Thursday of last week, the following things happened:
On Tuesday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ruled that a partnership between NRG Energy Inc. and Toshiba Corp. to build the pair of proposed South Texas Project reactors violates a U.S. law prohibiting foreign control of nuclear power plants. (See here and here.)
In March, the NRC failed to strike down a similar finding that the proposed Calvert Cliffs-3 reactor project in Maryland is dominated by foreign companies. (See PDF.)
Southern California Edison CEO and President Theodore F. Craver told investors Tuesday that one or both reactors at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Stations (SONGS) face permanent shutdown if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not move immediately to permit the damaged reactors to go back online without a prior hearing to determine if it is safe to do so. Costs related to the shutdown are now pegged at $553 million, including $109 million spent on inspections and repairs and $444 million for replacement power. Other estimates indicate the San Onofre debacle could cost consumers up to $3 billion. (See here and here.)
Duke Energy announced Thursday that it will abandon plans for two nuclear reactors at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in North Carolina. Duke will seek to make Progress Energy customers, instead of corporate stockholders, pay for this blunder – and will likely try to add a mark-up, with profit, on top of the $70 million spent. (See here.)
This February, Duke announced that it would not repair the damaged Crystal River reactor in Florida. (See here.)
Also Thursday, the Florida Senate sent a bill to the governor revising a 2006 law allowing utilities to charge for nuclear reactors that may never be built. To date, the “advance cost recovery” provision has permitted Florida Power & Light Co.andDuke Energy(formerlyProgress Energy Florida)to collect more than $1.4 billion from customers.Even with the new legislation, the Sunshine State’s six million ratepayers will have to count on the state’s Public Service Commission to rein in industry abuses on advance cost recovery financing. (See here.)
Rather than the nuclear revival hoped for by the industry, the gearshift has been thrown hard in reverse. Instead of a proliferation of new plants, existing reactors are getting shut down long before their licenses expire. And this is due largely to short-sighted safety shortcuts by the industry and its compliant regulators. They have been their own worst enemies.
The poster child for this revival-in-reverse is San Onofre, located between Los Angeles and San Diego, with 8.5 million people living within 50 miles. Last week, Southern California Edison announced it could permanently close both units if the NRC didn’t soon grant its request to allow restart of the crippled Unit 2 without a prior hearing to determine if it is would be safe to do so. Ironically, it was precisely the same effort to bypass full safety review that led to the failure of the steam generators in the first place. More
Natural gas glut crimps nuclear power
By David J. Unger, Correspondent / May 8, 2013 / Christian Science Monitor
Natural gas has already been blamed for shuttering of coal plants and slowing wind and solar financing. Evidence suggests nuclear is also falling victim to the glut of cheap natural gas. The closure of a nuclear plant in Wisconsin Tuesday is exhibit A.
A nuclear plant in Wisconsin closed Tuesday, after nearly four decades of power generation. Earlier this year, owners of a plant in Florida opted for retirement over rehabilitation. The fate of the San Onofre nuclear plant in California hangs in the balance. More
83-year-old nun gets 20 year sentence for ‘symbolic’ nuclear facility break-in
By Stephen C. Webster – Raw Story
An 83-year-old nun who broke into a Tennessee depleted uranium storage facility in 2012 and splashed human blood on several surfaces, exposing a massive security hole at the nation’s only facility used to store radioactive conventional munitions, was convicted Wednesday and sentenced to a term of up to 20 years in prison.
The only regret Sister Megan Rice shared with members of her jury on Wednesday was that she wished 70 years hadn’t passed before she took direct action, according to the BBC. She and two other peace activists, 64-year-old Michael Walli and 56-year-old Greg Boertje-Obed, were convicted of “invasion of a nuclear facility” in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, even though investigators admitted they did not get close to any actual nuclear material. more
Nuclear Power Taking Its Hits
The safety of the United States’ aging fleet of nuclear power plants questioned.
Bill Chameides – Scientific American
…Not so fast says Gregory B. Jaczko. At a recent conference on nuclear power, Jaczko questioned the safety of the existing fleet of U.S. nuclear power plants …. As the New York Times put it, his remarks indicated that “all 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced by newer technology.” Jaczko also predicted that many of the reactors would not even make it to the end of their 20-year extensions, let alone chug along another 40…. more
Ex-Regulator Says Reactors Are Flawed
By MATTHEW L. WALD NYT Published: April 8, 2013
WASHINGTON — All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday. Shutting them all down at once is not practical, he said, but he supports phasing them out rather than trying to extend their lives. more
Citing slow growth in power demand, Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) has suspended plans to expand the Harris nuclear plant in Wake County, N.C., with two new units.
Utah Bill designed for ratepayers to pay upfront for new nuclear reactors.
The bill is basically an admission that nuclear power plants are far too expensive, and far too risky an investment, to be bankrolled through the private capital market.
Duke Energy Florida wants to collect $174.6 million next year from its customers for a proposed nuclear-power complex in Levy County and for a now-useless upgrade project at its permanently closed Crystal River nuke, according to documents filed last week with the state Public Service Commission.
Duke, which formerly operated as Progress Energy Florida, wants to pass along $106 million in costs for the Levy County project and $68.6 million in costs tied to the Crystal River project.
If regulators approve the proposal, Duke residential customers who use 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a month would be billed $5.62 in nuclear charges in 2014, up from $4.73 a month now, company spokesman Sterling Ivey said in an email.
– May 3rd, 2013
… after Duke-Progress wasted $70 million and eight years that should have been used to help slow global warming
Durham, NC – Duke Energy’s cancellation yesterday of licensing efforts to build two nuclear reactors at subsidiary Progress Energy’s Harris nuclear plant is good news – but it comes with a taint.
The Shearon Harris failure perfectly typifies why the US nuclear “renaissance” is making global warming worse. It is tragic that, against our vigorous warnings, Duke-Progress threw away eight years and $70 million – while blocking widespread advances in energy-saving programs, solar and wind, and combined heat and power, which together could allow phase-out of all fossil-fueled power in the Carolinas and help avoid the soaring electricity rates that are hammering families, small businesses and local governments. more
The goldfish tested positive for radioactive cobalt and radioactive manganese, Mitlyng said. According to FirstEnergy, both fish died shortly after they were taken into custody early last week, but not from radiation.
By Rachel Morgan Rmorgan@timesonline.com | Posted: Tuesday, May 7, 2013 12:30 am
NORTH PERRY, Ohio — The radioactive water in a container holding two goldfish placed in an Ohio nuclear power plant last week came from the same underground steam tunnel in which the fish were found, officials said Tuesday. more
By CASSANDRA SWEET – WSJ
Federal inspectors Monday began probing an accident at an Arkansas nuclear-power plant that left one worker dead, eight others injured and prompted a reactor to shut down.
No radiation leaked from the Arkansas Nuclear One plant, located about 76 miles from Little Rock, according to the facility’s operator, Entergy Corp. ETR -1.03% more
High noon for nuclear power: Dominion’s Kewaunee atomic reactor permanently shutdown!
As reported by Platt’s, at 12 PM Noon Central time today, Dominion’s Kewaunee atomic reactor was permanently shutdown. Last October, Dominion announced its intention to permanently close Kewaunee by mid-2013. Dominion had attempted to sell Kewaunee, but found no buyers. Platt’s reports “CMS Energy — which sold Palisades, its only nuclear station, to Entergy in 2007 — had considered buying the plant, but decided against it because of low gas prices and investor pushback.” more
General Stories
Long-term operations set to dominate nuclear agenda
By Jason Deign on May 8, 2013 – Nuclear Insider
With European new-build programmes stalling, long-term operation of existing plants offers a simple and relatively cheap way to keep nuclear going for the greater good.
Cost and schedule overruns at Flamanville 3 in France and Olkiluoto 3 in Finland; Horizon handing its new-build programme to Hitachi in the UK; one thing seems certain about building new reactors in Europe: while possible, it is a complicated task.
In the meantime, there are plenty of existing reactors out there. While consideration needs to be given to the risks of aging infrastructure, there is no clear limit to how long they could be kept running with due care and attention.
And if building new plants is so tricky, would it not make more sense to focus on extending the lifespan of existing assets?
“You don’t have to invest,” says Dr Alexey Lokhov, nuclear energy analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency and the author of a 2012 report called ‘The Economics of Long-term Operation of Nuclear Power Plants.’
“Or you invest only to do refurbishment; those are small amounts compared to new-build. And you already have a licence, so you don’t need to ask for a new licence. Extensions of licences are usually easier than getting a licence for a new reactor. New build is always complicated.”
Unsurprisingly, in his report Lokhov concluded it was cheaper to extend the lifetime of an existing nuclear power plant (NPP) by a few years than build a new one.
Continued operations and benefits of economies of scale
“The study found that in nearly all cases the continued operation of NPPs for at least 10 more years is profitable even taking into account the additional costs of post-Fukushima modifications,” surmised the report. Washington’s Nuclear Hypocrisy
By Michael Walker, April 29, 2013 foreign Policy in Focus
In April 2009, President Barack Obama gave hope to nuclear disarmament activists around the globe. Speaking in the Czech Republic, he affirmed “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” It was, and remains, the most laudable of objectives. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that the president is truly committed to eliminating these terrifying weapons of mass destruction….
…It was reported over the weekend, for example, that the United States intends to spend around $10 billion enhancing its Europe-based nuclear weapons. This plan, which would involve turning the bombs into guided weapons that could be fired by F-35 warplanes, would represent “a significant upgrade of the U.S. nuclear capability in Europe,” according to one expert. More
Boondoggle Starring Ed Asner
Sierra Club video narrated by Ed Asner on Florida Power and Light’s planned new nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power plant in Miami. It’s a massive boondoggle that risks the health and safety of millions of people living in South Florida. Financing is guaranteed by a Florida law that requires consumers pay $billions in advance for the full cost of the new nuclear reactors even if they never go on line. The reactors will degrade already threatened Everglades National Park and Biscayne National Park by sucking 90-124 million gallons of fresh water out of these ecosystems every day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BzwZIBmLhT4
Book Review The Girls of Atomic City
By Scott Martelle – Truthdig.com
“The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II”
A book by Denise Kiernan
In the fall of 1942, residents of a rural swath of east Tennessee began receiving official notifications that their homes and farms were no longer theirs and that they would have to move. The new owner was the U.S. government, which swept up some 59,000 acres of land and in a matter of months built an instant city of 75,000 people so secret it wasn’t even listed on maps. Its purpose? To process uranium for the world’s first atomic bomb. More
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