In the fall of 2007, workers at the Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois were using a wire brush to clean a badly corroded steel pipe — one in a series that circulate cooling water to essential emergency equipment — when something unexpected happened: the brush poked through.

The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.

The plant’s owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick — less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness — would be good enough.

Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.

Exelon’s risky decisions occurred under the noses of on-site inspectors from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No documented inspection of the pipes was made by anyone from the N.R.C. for at least the eight years preceding the leak, and the agency also failed to notice that Exelon kept lowering the acceptable standard, according to a subsequent investigation by the commission’s inspector general.

Exelon’s penalty? A reprimand for two low-level violations — a tepid response all too common at the N.R.C., said George A. Mulley Jr., a former investigator with the inspector general’s office who led the Byron inquiry. “They always say, ‘Oh, but nothing happened,’ ” Mr. Mulley said. “Well, sooner or later, our luck — you know, we’re going to end up rolling craps.”

Critics have long painted the commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied. The concerns have greater urgency because of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which many experts say they believe was caused as much by lax government oversight as by a natural disaster.

The Byron pipe leak is just one recent example of the agency’s shortcomings, critics say. It has also taken nearly 30 years for the commission to get effective fireproofing installed in plants after an accident in Alabama. The N.R.C.’s decision to back down in a standoff with the operator of an Ohio plant a decade ago meant that a potentially dangerous hole went undetected for months. And the number of civil penalties paid by licensees has plummeted nearly 80 percent since the late 1990s — a reflection, critics say, of the commission’s inclination to avoid ruffling the feathers of the nuclear industry and its Washington lobbyists.

Although the agency says plants are operating more safely today than they were at the dawn of the nuclear industry, when shutdowns were common, safety experts, Congressional critics and even the agency’s own internal monitors say the N.R.C. is prone to dither when companies complain that its proposed actions would cost time or money. The promise of lucrative industry work after officials leave the commission probably doesn’t help, critics say, pointing to dozens over the years who have taken jobs with nuclear power companies and lobbying firms.

Now, as most of the country’s 104 aging reactors are applying for, and receiving, 20-year extensions from the N.R.C on their original 40-year licenses, reform advocates say a thorough review of the system is urgently needed.

The agency’s shortcomings are especially vexing because Congress created it in the mid-1970s to separate the government’s roles as safety regulator and promoter of nuclear energy — an inherent conflict that dogged its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

“It wasn’t much of a change,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former N.R.C. commissioner who now teaches at Vermont Law School. “The N.R.C. inherited the regulatory staff and adopted the rules and regulations of the A.E.C. intact.”

Mr. Bradford said the nuclear industry had implicitly or explicitly supported every nomination to the commission until Gregory B. Jaczko’s in 2005. Mr. Jaczko, who was elevated to chairman by President Obama in 2009, had previously worked for both Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat and longtime critic of the nuclear industry, and Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and current Senate majority leader who sought to block a nuclear waste repository in his state.

Mr. Jaczko acknowledges that the agency needs to move faster on some safety issues. But he defends its record. “I certainly feel very strongly that this is an independent regulator that will make what it thinks are the right decisions when it comes to safety,” he said. “There will be people who will agree, and some people who will disagree. That’s part of the process.”

For all the agency’s shortcomings as a regulator, even the most vocal critics acknowledge that it should not be compared to the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-plagued agency that oversaw the oil and gas industry and was reorganized by Mr. Obama after the BP oil spill last year.

Still, David Lochbaum, a frequent critic of the N.R.C. who recently worked as a reactor technology instructor there, said the agency too often rolled the dice on safety. “The only difference between Byron and Fukushima is luck,” he said.

Full article at this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/business/energy-environment/08nrc.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

TOKYO — A special advisor to the Japanese government on radiation safety
resigned Friday, saying that he was dissatisfied with the handling of the
ongoing crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Toshiso Kosako, a professor at the prestigious University of Tokyo, said at
a news conference that the prime minister’s office and agencies within the
government “have ignored the laws and have only dealt with the problem at
the moment.” Holding back tears, he said this approach would only prolong
the crisis.

Following the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the Dai-ichi
nuclear power plant has become the site of the second-worst nuclear power
plant crisis in history. Three of its six reactors still pose a potential
threat as officials and plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. work to
bring the situation under control.

Mr. Kosako was appointed on March 16. In announcing the appointment, chief
government spokesman Yukio Edano described him as someone who
“possesses outstanding insight and expertise in the field of radiation safety.”

Mr. Kosako was one of six special advisers to the administration of Prime
Minister Naoto Kan. According to Mr. Edano’s announcement, Mr. Kosako
was to provide “information and advice to the prime minister on the ongoing
incidents as the nuclear power stations.”

But he said that in the weeks since his appointment, it was difficult to
know who was actually in charge of dealing with the situation.

Diet member Akihisa Nagashima, a senior politician within the ruling
Democratic Party said in a statement that the administration had urged Mr.
Kosako to stay on and that his departure represented a “heavy blow” to the
government. A spokesman for the prime minister’s office had no immediate
comment.

Officials and foreign experts say that the situation at the plant has now
passed its most critical stages, with a much lower threat of a large release
of radiation that could cause widespread health problems.

Write to William Sposato at william.sposato@dowjones.com

GENEVA, Apr 27, 2011 (IPS) – The nuclear disaster in Fukushima,
Japan and the 25th anniversary of the catastrophe in the Chernobyl
nuclear power plant in Ukraine have thrown into relief contradictions
in the role played by the World Health Organisation, which civil
society organisations have spent years pointing out.

An international coalition of NGOs, IndependentWHO, says the multilateral
agency has never shown independence in its decisions or actions, in terms
of living up to its mandate of protecting the victims of radioactive contamination.

The groups blame the WHO’s alleged inactivity in this area on an
agreement it signed in 1959 with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), an independent United Nations organisation founded to promote
“safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.”

The coalition of NGOs states that the agreement makes the WHO
“subservient” to the IAEA and prevents the U.N. health agency from
“taking any initiative or action to achieve its objectives: the preservation
and the improvement of health.”

IndependentWHO
The collective’s founding members are
Enfants de Tchernobyl Bélarus,
Physicians for Social Responsibility
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War,
the People’s Health Movement,
the Commission for Independent Information and Research on Radioactivity,
Réseau Sortir du Nucléaire,
Brut de Béton Production and
ContrAtom.

The WHO should break off “that incestuous relationship” with the IAEA,
Russian-born Swiss journalist Wladimir Tchertkoff, who has produced seven
television documentaries on Chernobyl, told IPS.

But the relationship between the two agencies is unequal, because the IAEA
depends on the U.N. Security Council, while the WHO answers to the
lower-ranking Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

In the May 1959 agreement, the two agencies agreed to work in close
cooperation and consult each other whenever either of the two plans to
undertake a programme or activity in an area in which the other has a
substantial interest. It also establishes restrictions to safeguard the
confidentiality of certain documents.

In that framework, “the nuclear lobby has managed to get the WHO to
renounce taking care of the victims of nuclear disasters,” said Swiss
academic Jean Ziegler, currently vice president of the U.N. Human Rights
Council’s Advisory Committee.

In line with the 1959 agreement, the WHO’s position is that “when there is a
nuclear accident, we are not responsible for taking care of the victims; the
nuclear agency is the sole responsible party,” Ziegler told IPS.

He described this as an appalling situation in which thousands of people die,
when they could have been saved.

This “renews our suspicion that the nuclear lobby is well-established” here, he
said, pointing to the WHO building, outside of which the interview took place.

The latest estimate of the number of Chernobyl victims, published by the two
agencies on Sept. 5, 2005, mentions 50 deaths and 4,000 cases of cancer.

IndependentWHO calls such figures absurdly low, because they fail to take
into account the health of the children living in the contaminated areas, “where
rates of illness are at 80 percent.” The statistics also “ignore the fate of the
600,000 to 1,000,000 liquidators,” the name given to the veterans of the
Chernobyl rescue and clean-up, the coalition statements adds.

Tchertkoff pointed out that the study “Chernobyl: Consequences of the
Catastrophe for People and the Environment”, a book translated from Russian
that was published in December 2009 by the New York Academy of Sciences,
put the total number of people who died as a result of the disaster at 985,000,
between the Apr. 26, 1986 explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant
and 2004.

According to health data cited by the book, more than 80 percent of children
in the areas of Ukraine, Belarus — the Soviet republic of Belarusssia at the time
– and Russia that were contaminated by Chernobyl were in good health prior
to the accident, while “fewer than 20 percent are well” today.

Agreement WHA 12-40

IndependentWHO says the agreement between the WHO and
the IAEA “is a major source of disinformation on the health and
environmental consequences of the accident at Chernobyl” and
that “WHO must regain its independence completely so that it
can investigate the relationship between radiation and health.”

“Here are just three examples that illustrate perfectly the way in
which the Agreement compromises the independence of WHO:

1. The IAEA is committed, in its statutes, to the promotion of the
peaceful use of the atom. It is therefore a commercial lobby
group.

2. The IAEA has put itself forward as the body responsible for
the setting of safety standards within the nuclear industry as
a whole. It is therefore both judge and jury.

3. The IAEA has no mandate nor any expertise in matters of
public health.”

Since Apr. 27, 2007, the organisations grouped in IndependentWHO have
maintained a vigil in front of the WHO building in Geneva every working day
from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

The vigil, which consists of one to three activists, is calling for a revision of
the 1959 agreement with the IAEA and demanding that the WHO work
toward its objective, as outlined in the agency’s constitution: “the attainment
by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.”

But Tchertkoff was sceptical. The WHO “cannot do much because it is a
victim” of a situation that was created, he said.

With respect to the accident in Fukushima, in northeast Japan, caused by
the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami, “The WHO doesn’t know what to do,”
he said.

“It doesn’t have staff capable of dealing with the situation. It only has five
people, just two of whom are university graduates with no experience,”
he added.

Tchertkoff also mentioned the controversy triggered by WHO policies
during the 2009 flu pandemic, in particular with regard to the production
and distribution of flu vaccines.

Ziegler said the WHO has been “infiltrated” by the nuclear lobby and the
pharmaceutical industry.

He recalled that an independent inquiry set up by former WHO director-
general Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998-2003) found that some of the
agency’s staff had received payments from the tobacco industry while
the agency was debating the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,
which was finally approved in 2005.

Tchertkoff believes there are two different tendencies in the WHO.

One is that if circumstances continue to deteriorate, like over the last few
weeks, it will become necessary for the WHO to once again discuss its
policy regarding nuclear radiation.

But the other group holds that a reopening of the debate would amount to
a confession “that we haven’t done anything in the past few decades,”
he said.

“A serious internal problem of this kind is lamentable at a time when we
are looking at Fukushima, Chernobyl and all of the world’s nuclear plants,
surrounded by some 410 million people living in a radius of 30 kilometres
from these danger spots,” the journalist said.

IPS, which requested an interview with WHO director of Public Health and
Environment María Neira, received no response from the WHO with regard
to these accusations.

Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times, April 14, 2011

TOKYO  Even before the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
plant has been brought under control, two conglomerates vying
for contracts in an eventual cleanup are estimating that the effort
could take 10 years — or 30.

Nuclear Company to Compensate Evacuees in Japan (April 16, 2011)

The widely divergent outlooks underscore the basic uncertainties
clouding any forecast for Fukushima. It is far from clear when the
cooling system will be restored and radiation emission halted; how
soon workers can access some parts of the plant; and how bad the
damage to the reactors, their fuel and nearby stored fuel turns out
to be. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
warned that at least one reactor’s fuel may even have leaked out
of the reactor pressure vessel.

A global team led by Hitachi said Thursday that it would take at least
three decades to return the site to what engineers refer to as a “green
field” state, meaning within legal limits of radiation for any residents.
Toshiba, Japan’s biggest supplier of nuclear reactors, said it could
take as little as 10 years.

Both companies have large nuclear-related businesses and appear
to be eager to speak about endgame possibilities for a crisis that has
heightened global public mistrust of nuclear power. Billions of dollars
are likely to be at stake in the cleanup, which could help Hitachi and
Toshiba improve their bottom lines. The two said last week that annual
profits would fall short of their forecasts because of the widespread
disruptions in production and supply chains caused by the disaster.

At a roundtable with reporters on Thursday, Toshiba’s chief executive,
Norio Sasaki, wielded an inch-thick proposal outlining the dismantlement
plan submitted to the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company,
this month. Hitachi has presented a competing plan.

The scale and complexity of the challenge are unprecedented. No
nuclear reactor has ever been fully decommissioned in Japan, let
alone the four certain to be dismantled at Fukushima Daiichi after
being flooded with seawater to avert meltdowns and after suffering
explosions and other damage. The final fates of the two other reactors
there have not been announced, but they, too, may need to be
decommissioned.

The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania involved just
one reactor, and though there was a partial meltdown of the nuclear
fuel rods, the chamber holding them did not rupture. The cleanup there
still took 14 years and cost about $1 billion. (Two reactors that continue
to operate at the site are set to be decommissioned in 2014.)

Recovery from the 1986 disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine, meanwhile,
is an example engineers are not eager to follow. Following explosions
and a fire that sent huge radioactive plumes into the atmosphere,
workers covered the remains of the reactor with sand and lead and
eventually entombed it with concrete to halt the release of radiation.
The concrete coffin still remains at Chernobyl, and the area is
uninhabitable.

For now, workers in Japan are still trying to stem leaks of highly
radioactive water from the plant even as they add to the flow by
continuing to pump in water — now fresh, not saltwater. They are also
racing to revive the contained cooling systems that circulate water and
do not bleed contaminants.

But serious challenges remain, including what Japan’s nuclear regulator
said Thursday were rising temperatures at one of the units, as well as
a series of strong aftershocks. Later, Hidehiko Nishiyama, the deputy
director general of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said
the situation at the plant remained “difficult.”

Still, Toshiba’s engineers expect the plant to stabilize “in several
months,” Mr. Sasaki said, and for full-scale cooling to resume. It
would be five years before engineers would be able to open the
pressure vessels to remove the nuclear fuel, he said, and dismantling
the reactors and cleaning up radiation at the plant would take at least
another five years.

Toshiba’s team includes engineers from Westinghouse, whose majority
owner is Toshiba, and the Babcock & Wilcox Company, an energy
technology and services company that handles the disposal of
hazardous materials. The two companies helped shut down the
damaged reactor at Three Mile Island.

A Hitachi spokesman in Tokyo, Yuichi Izumisawa, said that the 10-year
projection was overly optimistic. He said that Hitachi’s engineers
expected it to take that long just to remove the nuclear fuel rods from
the plant and place them in casks to transport to a safe storage facility.

Only then can the dismantling of the plant’s structures begin, he said,
followed by the cleanup of the remaining radiation.

Hitachi, the country’s second biggest supplier of reactors, has a team
of 50 experts working on its dismantling plan. It has a joint nuclear
venture with General Electric and is also working with the American
nuclear operator Exelon and Bechtel, an engineering company.

“You basically need to dismantle the plant from the inside, and the
inside is still very radioactive,” Mr. Izumisawa said. “At Hitachi, we are
baffled over what kind of technology would allow everything to be
finished in 10 years.”

Tetsuo Matsumoto, a professor of nuclear engineering at Tokyo City
University, said that how long the decommissioning process would take
depended heavily on the state of the nuclear fuel.

“Will it still be shaped like rods? Or will it have melted and collapsed
into a big mass?” he said. “It could be 10 years or it could be 30. You
just won’t know until you open up the reactor.”

Ken Ijichi contributed reporting.

Irradiated nuclear fuel contains hundreds of man-made radioactive
poisons for which the natural background level is zero. They fall
into three broad categories:

(1) fission products — radioactive isotopes of xenon, krypton,
iodine, cesium, tellurium, ruthenium, and many others — which
are the broken pieces of atoms that have been split or “fissioned”;

(2) activation products — radioactive isotopes of argon, cobalt,
iron, and many others — which are created when non-radioactive
materials in the reactor absorb one or two neutrons and are
transformed into radioactive elements; and

(3) transuranic elements — plutonium, neptunium, americium, curium,
and others — which are created when uranium atoms absorb one or
more neutrons and then transform themselves into new elements.

See  http://ccnr.org/hlw_chart.html  and  http://ccnr.org/hlw_graph.html

In addition to these man-made radioactive materials, there are also
huge amounts of radioactive materials created which do exist in small
amounts in nature — such as tritium (radioactive hydrogen) and
carbon-14 (radioactive carbon).  These radioactive atoms are easily
incorporated into organic molecules of all kinds, including DNA.

—–

This is the stuff that the nuclear industry wants to bury in geologic
formations in order to protect the biosphere for millions of years.

But when a reactor melts down, that radioactive junk is trapped in
the molten blobs that form.  It’s an enormous toxic mess.  Ad hoc
measures must be taken to package and move and guard these
unwieldy radioactive blobs and contain them so that they do not
leak their radioactive poisons into the environment.

At Chernobyl, where the core of the reactor melted right into the
earth, moving it has proven to be impossible.  Constructing a
containment above the site of the core melt is also impossible
because of the intense radiation levels.  An enormous structure
is being built AWAY from the reactor core melt, which will then — when
finished — be “slid” over the reactor site, enclosing the remnants of
the reactor building and all.

Already over $650 million (US) has been spent to build
this new structure, which will take the place of the crumbling
sarcophagus that was hastily erected over the molten core
following the accident 25 years ago.  Authorities are now
seeking hundreds of million more in order to complete
the task — and this is by no means a permanent solution!

Meanwhile, the remnants of the half-melted TMI core (from
32 years ago) are also presenting storage difficulties….

Gordon Edwards
================

William Freebairn, Washington (Platts), 15 April 2011
Source: http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/ElectricPower/6002873

The US Department of Energy facility storing melted fuel from the Three
Mile Island nuclear plant has not done enough to address crumbling
concrete modules encasing the radioactive material, the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission said in a letter made public Friday.

The DOE facility at the Idaho National Laboratory holds the damaged fuel
from unit 2 of the Three Mile Island Plant, which, in 1979, suffered a partial
meltdown of the core, leading to the US’ worst nuclear accident.

The so-called spent fuel rubble is now contained in concrete storage
modules located at an independent storage installation owned by DOE.

The concrete modules are “showing significant cracking and degradation,”
even though they were built in 1999 to last for 50 years, NRC said in the
letter, which is dated April 7.

DOE has analyzed the structural integrity of the modules, which have
walls two feet thick, and determined that the problem is getting
progressively worse, NRC said.

Since the NRC inspection, DOE has identified funding to pay for repairs
and will begin the work this construction season, meaning from the spring
to the fall, spokeswoman Katinka Podmaniczky said in an email Friday.

“These cracks have no impact on the storage modules’ ability to safely
store spent nuclear fuel,” she said.

At the time of the inspection, it was not clear whether DOE had approved
or scheduled measures to stabilize the degradation, NRC said in the
letter. It asked DOE to provide the regulator with information about
corrective measures, a schedule for their implementation and a plan
for monitoring the effectiveness of actions taken.

The degradation of the modules was likely due to “water intrusion and
the annual thawing and freezing cycle,” NRC said in an inspection report
attached to the letter. Chunks of concrete have fallen from areas of the
modules and there are signs they are no longer water-tight, NRC said.

Cracking was first recognized in 2000 but considered to be “cosmetic,”
NRC said. In 2008, DOE recognized that continued cracking called into
question the ability of the modules to protect the fuel canisters inside
from natural phenomena and shield people from the radiation of the
fuel.

A recent study determined that protective caps should be installed,
damaged concrete replaced and a sealant applied, but those actions
have not yet been taken, the NRC inspection report said.

NRC licensed DOE’s Idaho Operations office in 1999 to store the
damaged fuel in dry shielded stainless steel canisters, which are
loaded inside the reinforced concrete modules.

The 30 dry shielded canisters at the site contain melted fuel from the
Three Mile Island-2 reactor core. That unit, located in Pennsylvania,
experienced the melting of about half the fuel in the core during an
accident. The adjacent Three Mile Island-1 continues to operate.

The NRC inspectors concluded that the storage facility continues to
meet standards, but the degradation of the modules is “a concern
that will be tracked in the future,” agency spokesman David McIntyre
said in an email.

NRC also cited DOE in the inspection report for a “deviation from a[n]
NRC commitment” because it deleted certain material from an
emergency plan.

NRC ordered the energy agency to respond within 30 days. The
deviation was minor, Podmaniczky said.

William Freebairn, william_freebairn@platts.com

Nuclear fuel has melted in three reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and fallen to the lower sections of their container vessels, raising the specter of overheated material compromising a container and causing a massive radiation release, the Atomic Energy Society of Japan said in a report released on Friday (see GSN, April 15).

(Apr. 15) – Abandoned flowers wilt on Tuesday in the exclusion zone surrounding Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Nuclear fuel has melted inside three reactors at the severely damaged facility, says an expert assessment published on Friday (Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images).

The group played down the possibility of a container breach, though, noting that only a small amount of fuel had melted so far and affected material had assumed a granulated structure and remained relatively cool, Kyodo News reported. The six-reactor plant was crippled by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunami that hit Japan on March 11; the confirmed death toll from the events now exceeds 12,000 people.

The melted fuel was thought to have dispersed uniformly across the lower portions of the containers of reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, making the material highly unlikely to resume the fission process in a “recriticality,” according to the organization, which said fuel rods in all three reactors had been harmed. Fuel in the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors has made contact with air, while the No. 3 reactor’s rods have remained underwater, the group said.

Bringing the fuel under control could take between two and three months if restoration work moved forward as expected, said Takashi Sawada, the group’s deputy chairman. The organization based its assessment on information provided by the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and by Tokyo Electric Power, the plant’s operator.

Plant personnel pressed ahead in efforts to prevent additional radioactive material from escaping the site, deploying steel barriers around a No. 2 reactor pipeline and proceeding with the insertion of nitrogen gas into the No. 1 reactor to prevent additional hydrogen blasts. Pressure in the No. 1 reactor has fallen to a certain degree, pointing to the possible escape of air, but radiation in the area has remained largely unchanged.

Tokyo Electric Power indicated it could drop sandbags filled with zeolite into the nearby ocean as soon as Friday to help curb the spread of radioactive contaminants (Kyodo News I, April 15). Silt fencing was deployed in front of screening at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors for containing radioactive water, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Thursday (International Atomic Energy Agency release, April 15).

Workers earlier this week transferred roughly 660 tons of radiation-tainted water out of an underground passage, but fluid flooding the area reached its original depth by Friday morning, Kyodo News quoted the atomic safety agency as saying. Contaminated water has hindered efforts to restore cooling mechanisms needed to help prevent additional radioactive material from escaping the site.

A nuclear waste treatment area intended to receive the water was still undergoing inspection for possible weak points in pipelines.”‘I’m hoping that work to stop water leaks at the (facility) is finished as soon as possible to start channeling the water there,” said Industry Minister Banri Kaieda said on Friday (Kyodo News I).

Fresh water continued to be transferred into reactors No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said. Conditions remained consistent at the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors (International Atomic Energy Agency release).

Soil samples taken at the facility between March 31 and April 4 contained small amounts of plutonium, Kyodo News reported on Friday. The finding marked the third detection of plutonium traces at the site (Kyodo News I).

Radioactive iodine and cesium levels might increased dozens of times over in groundwater close to the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors between April 6 and 13 (Kyodo News II, April 15). Strontium also turned up in soil close to the facility for the first time, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Friday.

Tokyo Electric Power was still developing a longer-term strategy for stabilizing plant conditions, company president Masataka Shimizu said (Danielle Demetriou, Sydney Morning Herald, April 15).

Specialists with Toshiba, one supplier of plant components, said conditions could be brought under control “in several months,” Norio Sasaki, the firm’s chief executive, said on Thursday. A plan developed by the company calls for the removal of fuel from reactor containers to start after five years and for decontamination to take place over another five years, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

Hitachi, which has developed a separate plan to decommission the facility, said Toshiba’s proposal was too hopeful and suggested the fuel removal process alone could take a decade to complete.

The status of the nuclear fuel at the site would affect the speed of dismantlement, said Tetsuo Matsumoto, a nuclear engineering professor with Tokyo City University. “Will it still be shaped like rods? Or will it have melted and collapsed into a big mass?” the expert asked. “It could be 10 years or it could be 30. You just won’t know until you open up the reactor” (Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times, April 14).

Tokyo Electric Power on Wednesday said the deterioration of spent fuel stored in the No. 4 reactor’s cooling pond appeared confined, the Asahi Shimbun reported. Fuel in the reactor was only partly compromised, the company indicated (Asahi Shimbun I, April 15).

The Japanese government on Friday indicated a smaller quantity of radioactive contaminants had been poured into the ocean in a controlled dump of low-level radioactive water than previously suspected, Kyodo News reported. Tokyo Electric Power suggested the 10,393 tons of water jettisoned between April 4 and 10 contained up to 170 billion becquerels of contaminants, but the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency estimated the total amount released to fall around 150 billion becquerels (Kyodo News III, April 15).

The U.S. Energy Department was sending five massive steel containers and a tractor trailer for holding contaminated water from the plant, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo indicated on Thursday (Kyodo News IV, April 14).

Fukushima University experts have plotted out the spread of air-based radioactive materials from the plant using samples taken late last month from 370 points around Fukushima prefecture, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Friday (Asahi Shimbun II, April 15).

In excess of 100 academic specialists intend next month to launch an investigation of the ecological and safety implications of radioactive contaminants released from the facility, Kyodo News reported. Members of the team are expected to help the Fukushima government gather soil samples from 1,500 points along 62 miles of coastline and as far as 37 miles from the ocean (Kyodo News V, April 14).

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday said specialists in his country “will assess the impact of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident on the environment and will also conduct environmental monitoring” (Kyodo News V, April 15).

Participating agencies would include the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry and Russian Meteorological Service, ITAR-Tass quoted Russian Geographical Society Vice President Artur Chilingarov as saying. The monitoring “starts on April 22 and will continue 24 days,” he said (ITAR-Tass, April 15).

Source: http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20110415_5020.php

Experts Urge Jordan to Abandon Nuclear Energy Quest

Friday, April 15, 2011

Amid the ongoing nuclear power plant crisis in Japan, specialists in Jordan are questioning their government’s pursuit of atomic energy, Agence France-Presse reported on Thursday (see GSN, Sept. 29, 2010).

Government Environment Ministry adviser Rauf Dabbas said Jordan’s program “lacks environmental assessment and feasibility studies.”

“We do not know its actual cost. We do not know what precautions should be taken to prevent a nuclear catastrophe in the country,” he said.

The energy-starved Arab nation possess large reserves of uranium and has expressed ambitions of developing full nuclear fuel cycle capabilities which include uranium enrichment — a process that can generate weapon-usable material (see GSN, June 24, 2010). Amman wants the country’s first atomic energy reactor operational no later than 2019.

Read more @ http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20110414_8170.php

by Max Matavire

A provincial anti-nuclear energy organisation has intensified its opposition to the proposed construction of a reactor at Thyspunt, Oyster Bay, on fears of repercussions of a nuclear accident.

Japan’nuclear disaster has bolstered the opposition to the use of this type of energy. ­Reactors at Fukushima plant in Japan have been leaking harmful radioactive materials into the environment following an earthquake and a tsunami there on March 11.

South Africa is faced with an energy crunch and identified increased use of nuclear power as one of the possible solutions. Power utulity Eskom has earmarked Thyspunt as a site for the construction of a nuclear reactor.

Activists and residents are vehemently opposed to the plan. Mike Kantey, the chairperson of the Coalition Against Nuclear Energy (Cane), said his organisation wanted to change the country’s energy policy away from nuclear power plants.

Kantey vowed to oppose the development of a nuclear plant all the way, promising to take the fight to the Constitutional Court.

Cane is now calling on all residents of the province – and the Garden Route – to rally behind the call to stop the construction of the nuclear reactor.

Kantey said the nuclear emissions and waste along the N2 national road posed serious health risks and could irrevocably damage tourism in the region. The government has said it hoped to break ground in 2013, but the plant has to first receive environmental approval and undergo a public participation process before any construction work can begin.

Kantey said he was busy preparing for “battle” against the up-coming environmental approval of the nuclear facility.

Numerous organisations of nuclear activists, environmentalists, dairy farmers, chokka fishermen and ordinary residents have been mobilised to fight against the construction of the nuclear facility.

Some of the organisations involved are the Thyspunt Alliance, the Supertubes Foundation in Jeffreys Bay, Gamtoos community, dairy farmers, residents and the fishing community. The concerns raised include the risk of winds carrying radioactive emissions from Thyspunt to neighbouring areas and the effect on the agriculture and dairy industries.

The opponents of the plant further wanted detailed information on the safety measures and disaster management plans that were in place for the towns along the N2 highway in case of an accident.

Kantey called for substantial support. “I am calling on residents of Knysna and Plettenberg Bay to put their money and support behind the Thyspunt Alliance so that we can take this matter to the Constitutional Court.”

http://www.thenewage.co.za/15163-1016-53-Opposition_to_nuclear_reactor_mounts

Watch this interview on the comparison between Fukushima and the Chernobyl Plant and what experts are saying:

This report “Radiation up 400 times in Miyagi, new blast feared at Fukushima” can be watched at:             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE_Au0J-gqw

Statement re the Nuclear and Earthquake Disaster Unfolding in Japan

The Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (CNIC) is deeply concerned for the health and safety of the people affected by the earthquakes and tsunamis that have struck Japan over the last two days. We are particularly concerned for the people in the vicinity of nuclear power plants, including workers who are trying to minimize the scope of the disaster.

Unit 1 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is in a state of meltdown. A nuclear disaster which the promoters of nuclear power in Japan said wouldn’t happen is in progress. It is occurring as a result of an earthquake that they said would not happen.

This could and should have been predicted. It was predicted by scientists and NGOs such as CNIC. We warned that Japan’s nuclear power plants could be subjected to much stronger earthquakes and much bigger tsunamis than they were designed to withstand.

Besides the question about how this accident will unfold, the big question now is, will the government and the nuclear industry acknowledge its mistakes and change track?

Last December the Japanese government began a review of its nuclear energy policy. The review was commenced in the spirit of essentially confirming the existing policy. That approach is no longer viable. The direction of the policy review must be completely reversed. It must be redirected towards developing a policy of phasing out nuclear energy as smoothly and swiftly as possible.

Philip White

International Liaison Officer

Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center

Phone: 81-3-3357-3800 (office)

Phone: 81-3-3708-2898 (home)

Web (will be updated on Monday):

http://cnic.jp/english/

READ ABOUT:

TEPCO’s Damage Cover-up and Data Falsification Fukushima I Fukushima II

http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/nit92coverupdata.html

READ ABOUT:

Japan’s nuclear legacy, Earthquakes and Nuclear Energy, and the never-ending problems and cover-ups of Japan’s nuclear industry.

http://cnic.jp/english/

BREAKING NEWS.

FACT SHEET ON FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

UPDATE 2:30 pm, Sunday, March 13, 2011 from NIRS:

Tokyo Electric Power is reporting that some six feet of the core of Unit-3 remains uncovered and has been for some time despite efforts to pump water into the core. Tepco speculates there may be leaking pipes and water is not remaining in the core. A translation of part of the statement from our Japanese colleagues:

“The fuel’s integrity has been considerably compromised. We are assessing a considerably serious situation.”

Full Fact Sheet available @:

http://www.nirs.org/reactorwatch/accidents/Fukushimafactsheet.pdf

Core is uncovered at Unit 3; Tokyo Electric Power calls it “a considerably serious situation.”

There are currently 23 General Electric Mark I reactors in the U.S.–the design that exploded at Fukushima. A top Atomic Energy Commission official first proposed banning this design nearly 40 years ago. List/fact sheet.

Link to video of press conference in Japan by Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center (in Japanese with English translation), March 13, 2011.

Statement of Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, March 12, 2011

Green Action blog on Japan nuclear crisis, includes updates, video links.

TMI Alert piece on similarities/differences between Fukushima and Three Mile Island events.

2002 report from Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center on cover-ups of safety problems by Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Nuclear Disaster in Japan – workers and citizens at high risk

The massive explosion following a cooling problem at one Fukushima’s nuclear reactors, Daiichi,  has not only released radiation and other toxic compounds, but has created an untenable situation for workers at Fukushima’s other nuclear reactors nearby, called Daini, especially given that a state of emergency has been declared for five reactors at the two plants. Latest news is that a hydrogen explosion is now possible at the No. 3 reactor at Fukushima 1.

“Workers are being exposed to the ‘allowable’ annual dose of radiation every hour that they remain on site. Our hearts go out to them,” said Muna Lakhani, co-ordinator of Earthlife Africa’s Unplug Nuclear 1 campaign. The danger is not over. There are fears of another explosion as the cooling system at a second reactor has also failed, as of Sunday morning. “The measuring of Caesium at the plant indicates that a meltdown has indeed taken place, which raises the levels of radiation released to catastrophic proportions” suggested Lakhani. Latest news on Sunday confirms fears of a multiple meltdown.

The reactors have all been shut down.  The reactor core remains hot for days after shutdown, however, so workers have been busy ensuring that the fuel rods do not melt down.  For this the cooling systems need to be operational requiring a power source.  The quake has disrupted the backup supplies of power including diesel generators.  The IAEA supplied batteries and coolant in the interim. They are now flushing the highly radioactive core with seawater which will cause massive seawater contamination whilst preventing a full scale Chernobyl type meltdown. This is an act of desperation and unprecedented.

Platitudes by the Japanese government and nuclear industry suggesting that the radiation threat is minimal must be treated with great caution, as reports confirm that not only has the containment been breached, and that ‘venting’ is taking place, but also that radiation levels at about 1000 higher than normal have been measured. The 24 hr monitoring that is supposed to happen as a matter of course, has been shutdown (www/nu/pamp/index-j.html) – Japanese activists suggest that this is so that the public and the world at large will not be told how much radiation has and is being released” said Gray Maguire, ELA branch secretary.

It took local activists many hours to get the exclusion zone expanded from the initial 10km to 20 km, which, while not completely safe, helps limit harm to local residents.

“We call upon the nuclear industry, and the South African government, to take this disaster seriously, and abandon all nuclear plans for our country. Given that proposed sites are all along the coast, we believe that this gamble is unacceptable. Not only are sustainable and safe alternatives cheaper than nuclear power, but they are also better solutions to the creation of decent work and energy security, as well as the best solutions to limit climate change,” Lakhani states. The public should note that our existing nuclear power plant Koeberg is on a geological fault on the Cape Fold Belt with the last destructive large earthquake occurring in 1809. Interesting also is that if we were to apply the 20km exclusion/ evacuation zone (which has been applied to Fukushima) to Koeberg this would mean evacuating most of Cape Town.

There has been a history of safety problems and cover-ups by TEPCO at the Fukushima reactor complex. (http://cnic.jp/english/newsletter/nit92/nit92articles/nit92coverupdata.html).

South Africa is considering a ‘fleet’ of nuclear reactors, at Thyspunt, Bantamklip and additional reactors at Koeberg, at a potential cost of hundreds of billions of Rands. Yje National Nuclear Regulator has also come under fire, for not mobilising a “hazmat” team, with local activists questioning their ability to respond to a disaster at Koeberg.

ENDS/—–

Issued by:

Earthlife Africa Cape Town

Unplug Nuclear 1 Campaign

Contact:

Muna Lakhani

083-471-7276

muna@iafrica.com

Full Document available here in PDF format (2 Mb)

Excerpts:

The beginning of the end

Like other metals uranium is found as ore mineral in rock. However, the actual uranium content in the ore amounts to only 0.5%. Historically, uranium has primarily been
mined underground or in open pit mines. More recently, however, solution-based “leaching” of uranium has gained importance. In the “liquid” process, sulphuric acid or sodium hydroxide is directly channelled into underground reservoirs and the uranium containing solution is pumped to the surface. The most economically important uranium mines are located in Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Brazil, India and more recently in Africa. For years, the quantities produced have not always covered the amount of uranium needed worlwide. This shortfall in the uranium market is primarily met through existing stockpiles, old nuclear weapons and reprocessed fuel elements.
Toxic tailings

The production of the yellow uranium concentrate, or “yellowcake”, is done in processing plants near the mines. Sulphuric acid or alkali and large amounts of water are used to dissolve the uranium from the rock. The separation process leaves ever accumulating quantities of remainder rock and rubble – also known as tailings. These tailings3are pumped into reservoirs in spite of containing many health damaging substances such as thorium, radium and heavy metals (including arsenic). The tailings continue to release 85% of their original radioactivity, only decreasing to a less dangerous level over a few hundred thousand years.
Contamination of humans and nature

Radioactive dust is released in both the mining and milling of uranium. If this dust reaches a human body, radioactive material attacks the cells. Uranium miners are therefore exposed to a highly increased risk of cancer. Additionally, in the areas surrounding the mines, cancer rates in the local populations are higher-than-average. Numerous leaks and crevasses in the mine can cause radioactive waste from the tailing basin to enter the water cycle and contaminate ground and drinking water, lakes, rivers and even the air we breathe. The wind blows radioactive dust from the dried tailings all over the landscape. Radon gas will also escape and if is inhaled, it can cause lung cancer. Animals in
the vicinity of Australian mines exhibit significantly increased sterility and mutation rates. Since most uranium mines are located in arid regions, the high water consumption used in the mining also promotes the desertification of these regions.
At the expense of indigenous peoples

The people who are most affected by uranium mining are indigenous peoples including the Native Americans (Navajo, Laguna, Acoma, and other tribes) in North America, the Tuareg in Niger, the Adivasi in India, and the Aboriginal people in Australia. About 70% of the uranium development areas are on indigenous peoples’ lands. Since their way of life is strongly rooted in local ecosystems, the radioactive contamination essentially means the annihilation of their livelihoods and cultures. Again and again ancestral populations have had to move, established communities have been destroyed and traditions have been disrupted. Often, the development of new uranium mines is accomplished through undemocratic processes. For example, the Australian Government has overridden their environmental laws, including their Water Act, along with the law supporting the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples, in order to support the Olympic Dam mining company.

Uranium Weapons

Uranium weapons contains depleted uranium (DU). As a waste product of the uranium enrichment process, DU accrues worldwide in large quantities. Compared with conventional
munitions, using depleted uranium can double the effectiveness of a weapons penetration. Due to its high density, for example, uranium can penetrate steel. The first time depleted uranium munitions were used, was in the 1991 Gulf War. In the Balkan war, in the late 1990‘s, NATO used 12 tons of depleted uranium munitions, and in the Iraq war, up to 165 tons have been fired so far.

Irreversible destruction of the gene pool

U238 is not only a radioactive alpha particle emitter, but also a chemical poison. Even low doses can damage internal organs. Higher concentrations cause heavy metals poisoning.
Frequent miscarriages and genetic defects in newborns after the Kosovo war and in Iraq, are attributed to depleted uranium munitions. The gene pool of the affected population is destroyed forever.

Dust drifts without respect to borders

As of 2007, 18 countries have included depleted uranium munitions in their arsenals: UK, USA, France, Russia, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Pakistan, Oman, Thailand, China, India and Taiwan. Besides Iraq, depleted uranium weapons were already used in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Palestine, in Lebanon and Kosovo.
The areas contaminated by depleted uranium include production facilities in the US and the UK, weapons testing grounds and storage sites, and, of course, the locations where accidents have occured and where military actions using depleted uranium weapons have taken place. The clouds of dust contaminated with radioactivity are blown by the wind to areas hundreds of miles away from the site of conflict. Dust drifts, which contain the particles of depleted uranium, blow radioactive particles in dust storms to adjacent areas and countries.

Risky residue

Uranium must first be”enriched” in order to be processed into fuel rods for nuclear power generation. This process also creates highly toxic and radioactive residues.
For electricity generation current power plant models need the easily fissionable uranium isotope U235. However, the yellowcake uranium concentrate only contains 0.7% U235, the largest portion comprises of the more stable U238. Therefore, yellowcake, if it is to be suitable for use in a reactor – needs to be “enriched“ to a U235 content of 3% to 5%. The material to be enriched must also be available in gaseous form. Therefore, it is converted from yellowcake to the chemically aggressive and toxic substance, uranium hexafluoride. In a complicated process, the two isotopes of the uranium hexafluoride U235 and U238 are then separated from each other as much as possible. The part with the greater amount of U235 is called enriched uranium, the part with the lower amount of U235 is called depleted uranium (DU). The enriched material is then compressed into pellets in fuel element factories, pooled into fuel rods and then used as fuel in nuclear power stations. The depleted uranium cannot be used for electricity production.
Uranium transports across Europe

For every ton of enriched uranium, at least seven tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride nuclear waste is created. In Europe, most radioactive remains are transported from Western Europe to Russia where, according to the enrichment company Urenco, the recovery of usable uranium is supposed to happen. From an economic perspective, the re-enrichment of the material is much more expensive than to mine for new natural uranium. For companies, it is primarily a convenient way to dispose of nuclear waste. Since 1996, a total of 27,000 tons of uranium waste from the German enrichment plant in Gronau has been sent to Russia. Worldwide, an estimated 1.1 million tons of depleted uranium is stored at enrichment plants.
Hazardous cargo

Radioactive waste producers carry a risk of their storage tanks leaking and potentially releasing radioactive waste into ground and drinking water. In July 2008, at the French
enrichment plant in Tricastin, 30,000 litres of radioactive uranium solution was released from leaking tanks. Another problem is the risk of accidental explosions. According to the German Government, between early 2007 and October 2008, there were over 300 shipments of nuclear materials through Germany, mostly on public streets. These shipments also pass without escort through inner cities. The uranium is transported as gaseous UF6. Upon contact with humidity, a leak of UF6 would release corrosive hydrofluoric acid. Barrels of UH were found outdoors steadily emitting nuclear radiation. In the Tomsk region, where an enrichment plant is located, the local human life expectancy is only 48 years.

With electricity from coal, oil and gas, the energy from most nuclear reactors is produced in a steam generating power plant. However, the heat from nuclear power is not produced by combustion, but rather by fission.

Hot potato

Just under 3% of global energy is generated by 439 nuclear power plants. In nuclear power stations, large amounts of energy are produced by the fission of a uranium nuclei
inside fuel rods. The released neutrons, in turn, generate more fission and set neighboring atoms into motion and a chain reaction is created. If this process is not controlled, it can lead to a meltdown. In the worst scenario, radioactivity can leak uncontrollably. Water is commonly used to control the speed and temperature of the reactions. The resulting heat  from the nuclear fission is transferred to the water, thereby creating steam, which drives the turbines, and electricity is generated.

Risk in detail

The most common types of nuclear power plants are light water reactors, where water serves as coolant and particle brake. There are two types: boiling water and pressurised water reactors. In the somewhat simpler constructed boiling water reactor. The same water which surrounds the fuel elements, drives the generators. Especially with this model, severe hydrogen explosions have occured in the german NPPs of Gundremmingen in 1987, Krümmel in 1999 and Brunsbüttel in 2001. In the pressurised water reactor, nuclear fission and
electricity production are separated by two water circuits. But, both types of reactors pose technical risks. There are frequent leaks and cooling problems. This can be very  dangerous, if during an emergency shutdown, the emergency systems still have to deal with the cooling of high temperatures. At a new reactor in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the cooling systems failed after an emergency shutdown in 1979, which almost resulted in a meltdown. Also, the emergency power supply is very vulnerable in both models. In 2006, at Forsmark in Sweden, half of the power sets shut down. The nuclear power plant employees acted without functioning measurement systems. According to the former heads of the design department, it was only seven minutes away from a meltdown. The NPPs Krümmel and Brunsbüttel, but also Isar 1 and Gundremmingen are very similar in the design to Forsmark. In heavy water reactors, heavy water (D2O) is used for cooling and is very costly to produce. In graphite reactors, graphite is used as a neutron brake. Examples of this type of reactor are the Soviet RBMK reactors. But the most well known is, Chernobyl. A variety of these type of reactors are still in operation in Russia. A special type of graphite reactor, are high-temperature reactors (pebble bed reactors). They work with fuel balls as the neutron brake. This technology, however, has never gone beyond the testing phase. Breeder reactors in addition to electricity production, are simultaneously used to “breed” fuel-grade plutonium, which is then, in turn, used in other power stations. The security risk is considerably higher, because plutonium is much more explosive and hazardous than uranium. With the exception of small research reactors, not a single “fast breeder“ is currently in operation.

The great explosive force of nuclear weapons and the generation of energy in nuclear power plants occur in the same way: atomic nuclei fission and subsequent release of energy.

Human guinea pigs

Research on nuclear fission was motivated by military intentions from the start. In 1942, in the U.S. the construction of the atomic bomb began under the leadership of the physicist

Robert Oppenheimer, in the top secret “Manhattan Project”. The first nuclear weapon was tested in July 1945 in Alamogordo in the desert of New Mexico. The bombings of  Hiroshima and Nagasaki followed shortly afterwards, instantly killing 225,000, and killing and maiming thousands more over the following years. According to information from the International Physicians fort the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), up to 1998, there were 2058 nuclear tests in numerous locations. To quantify that, between 1945 and 1998, every ten days a test took place. There were 500 nuclear bombs ignited above ground, in the atmosphere, under water or on the Earth. Approximately three times as many tests took place underground after the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. The tests were conducted primarily in the Pacific Islands, Nevada (USA), Kazakhstan, Russia and China.
Uncontrolled chain reaction

The explosive energy of nuclear weapons is produced by the splitting of atomic nuclei. When a neutron hit a fissionable nucleus, it decays, releasing large amounts of energy.
A chain reaction is set in motion. As a result of nuclear weapons testing, scientists hopes to gain information on pressure waves, temperature, amount of radiation and the potential direction of the radioactive cloud.

Deadly rain

After the detonation of an atomic bomb, there is a release of so-called “nuclear fallout”, an intensely radioactive material. The larger radioactive particles fall down immediately after the explosion and leave a fatal amount of radiation on the ground. Smaller radioactive particles are later thrown into the air. They travel, over large distances, and contaminate soil, air and food products. These particles can cause the symptoms of acute radiation sickness: dizziness, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, fever, bleeding from mucous membranes, and loss of hair, all of which normally lead to death within a short time. Local weather conditions determine the nature of the fallout. After the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Black rain fell. A dark, thick, oily precipitation, full of radioactivity. In the Marshall Islands, radioactive ash rained down, which the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands thought was a kind of “snow”. Local explosion, global radiation As a result of the nuclear tests, the global exposure is greatly increased. This has led, and will continue to lead in the future, to a reduction in human health. An IPPNW study has looked at 430,000 fatal cancers worldwide, which are thought to be as a direct result of the long-term consequences of nuclear testing. Radiobiologists at the University of Munich, Germany, estimate this number could even be as high as three million.

Full Document available here in PDF format (2 Mb)

By Karl Grossman, Op-Ed News, Sept. 3, 2010

This past April 26th marked the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. It came as the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear government officials in the United States and other nations were trying to “revive” nuclear power. And it followed the publication of a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the impacts of the Chernobyl disaster.

Search for http://www.greens-efa-service.org/medialib/media/flash/torch/ -- it will take you to a media flash presentation based on a report by The Other Report on Chernobyl – the TORCH report – on radiation plumes after the Chernobyl disaster. It is hosted by the European Greens Party website.

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences. It is authored by three noted scientists:

–Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president;

–Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and

–Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.

The book is solidly based — on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports — some 5,000 in all.

It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.

The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy Agency — still on its website that the expected death toll from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is under-estimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.

Alice Slater, representative in New York of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, comments: “The tragic news uncovered by the comprehensive new research that almost one million people died in the toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current industry-driven “nuclear renaissance.’ Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the true damages caused by Chernobyl.”

Further worsening the situation, she said, has been “the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization in which the WHO is precluded from publishing any research on radiation effects without consultation with the IAEA.” WHO, the public health arm of the UN, has supported the IAEA’s claim that 4,000 will die as a result of the accident.

“How fortunate,” said Ms. Slater, “that independent scientists have now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl accident.”

The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set up through the UN in 1957 “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy,” and its 1959 agreement with WHO. There is a “need to change,” it says, the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing for the “hiding” from the “public of any information “unwanted” by the nuclear industry.

“An important lesson from the Chernobyl experience is that experts and organizations tied to the nuclear industry have dismissed and ignored the consequences of the catastrophe,” it states.

The book details the spread of radioactive poisons following the explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on April 26, 1986. These major releases only ended when the fire at the reactor was brought under control in mid-May. Emitted were “hundreds of millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” The most extensive fall-out occurred in regions closest to the plant–in the Ukraine (the reactor was 60 miles from Kiev in Ukraine), Belarus and Russia.

However, there was fallout all over the world as the winds kept changing direction “so the radioactive emissions “covered an enormous territory.”

The radioactive poisons sent billowing from the plant into the air included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90.

There is a breakdown by country, highlighted by maps, of where the radionuclides fell out. Beyond Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the countries included Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The radiological measurements show that some 10% of Chernobyl poisons “fell on Asia “Huge areas” of eastern Turkey and central China “were highly contaminated,” reports the book. Northwestern Japan was impacted, too.

Northern Africa was hit with “more than 5% of all Chernobyl releases.” The finding of Cesium-137 and both Plutonium-239 and Plutonium-240 “in accumulated Nile River sediment is evidence of significant Chernobyl contamination,” it states.

“Areas of North America were contaminated from the first, most powerful explosion, which lifted a cloud of radionuclides to a height of more than 10 km. Some 1% of all Chernobyl nuclides,” says the book, “fell on North America.”

The consequences on public health are extensively analyzed. Medical records involving children–the young, their cells more rapidly multiplying, are especially affected by radioactivity–are considered. Before the accident, more than 80% of the children in the territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia extensively contaminated by Chernobyl “were healthy,” the book reports, based on health data. But “today fewer than 20% are well.”

There is an examination of genetic impacts with records reflecting an increase in “chromosomal aberrations” wherever there was fallout. This will continue through the “children of irradiated parents for as many as seven generations.” So “the genetic consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe will impact hundreds of millions of people.”

As to deaths, the list of countries and consequences begins with Belarus. “For the period 1900-2000 cancer mortality in Belarus increased 40%,” it states, again based on medical data and illuminated by tables in the book. “The increase was a maximum in the most highly contaminated Gomel Province and lower in the less contaminated Brest and Mogilev provinces.” They include childhood cancers, thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers.

Considering health data of people in all nations impacted by the fallout, the “overall mortality for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated as 985,000 additional deaths.”

Further, “the concentrations” of some of the poisons, because they have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 years, “will remain practically the same virtually forever.”

The book also examines the impact on plants and animals. “Immediately after the catastrophe, the frequency of plant mutations in the contaminated territories increased sharply.”

There are photographs of some of these plant mutations. “Chernobyl irradiation has caused many structural anomalies and tumor like changes in many plant species and has led to genetic disorders, sometimes continuing for many years,” it says.

“Twenty-three years after the catastrophe it is still too early to know if the whole spectrum of plant radiogenic changes has been discerned. We are far from knowing all of the consequences for flora resulting from the catastrophe.”

As to animals, the book notes “serious increases in morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public health of humans–increasing tumor rates, immuno-deficiencies, and decreasing life expectancy.”

In one study it is found that “survival rates of barn swallows in the most contaminated sites near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are close to zero. In areas of moderate contamination, annual survival is less than 25%.” Research is cited into ghastly abnormalities in barn swallows that do hatch: “two heads, two tails.”

“In 1986,” the book states, “the level of irradiation in plants and animals in Western Europe, North America, the Arctic, and eastern Asia were sometimes hundreds and even thousands of times above acceptable norms.”

In its final chapter, the book declares that the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant “was the worst technogenic accident in history.” And it examines “obstacles” to the reporting of the true consequences of Chernobyl with a special focus on “organizations associated with the nuclear industry” that “protect the industry first–not the public.” Here, the IAEA and WHO are charged.

The book ends by quoting U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s call in 1963 for an end of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.

“The Chernobyl catastrophe,” it declares, “demonstrates that the nuclear industry’s willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons.”

Dr. Sherman, speaking of the IAEA’s and WHO’s dealing with the impacts of Chernobyl, commented: “It’s like Dracula guarding the blood bank.” The 1959 agreement under which WHO “is not to be independent of the IAEA” but must clear any information it obtains on issues involving radioactivity with the IAEA has put “the two in bed together.”

Of her reflections on 14 months editing the book, she said: “Every single system that was studied — whether human or wolves or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria — all were changed, some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning.”

In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes about how “apologists of nuclear power” sought to hide the real impacts of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The book “provides the largest and most complete collection of data concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of people and the environment.

The main conclusion of the book is that it is impossible and wrong “to forget Chernobyl.’”

In the record of Big Lies, the claim of the IAEA-WHO that “only” 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe is among the biggest. The Chernobyl accident is, as the new book documents, an ongoing global catastrophe.

And it is a clear call for no new nuclear power plants to be built and for the closing of the dangerous atomic machines now running — and a switch to safe energy technologies, now available, led by solar and wind energy, that will not leave nearly a million people dead from one disaster.

Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and host of the nationally syndicated TV program Enviro Close-Up.

Source:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/New-Book-Concludes-Cherno-by-Karl-Grossman-100902-941.html