FUKUSHIMA UPDATE
FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2011
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• TOP OF BLOG for updates
• Truth About Nuclear Power | Lethal Levels of Radiation
Japan Admits 3 Nuclear Meltdowns, More Radiation Leaked into Sea; U.S. Nuclear Waste Poses Deadly Risks
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency recently admitted for the first time that full nuclear meltdowns occurred at three of the plant’s reactors, and more than doubled its estimate for the amount of radiation that leaked from the plant in the first week of the disaster in March.
Democracy NOW!
“What they failed to mention is that they discharged an equally large amount into the ocean,” says our guest Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. “As [the radiation] goes up the food chain, it accumulates. By the time it reaches people who consume this food, the levels are higher than they originally were when they entered the environment.”
Hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, with Guests:
• Robert Alvarez, former senior policy adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy and now a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. His new report is called "Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the US: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage."
• Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the group Green Action
Almost three months after the earthquake and tsunami that triggered a nuclear disaster in Japan, government officials say they may evacuate more towns affected by radiation. New monitoring data shows "hot spots" of elevated contamination farther away from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The new hot spots were announced after authorities conceded on Monday the crisis at the stricken nuclear power facility was far more severe than they had previously admitted. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency more than doubled its estimate for the amount of radiation that leaked from the plant in the first week of the disaster in March. The agency has also admitted for the first time that full nuclear meltdowns occurred at three of the plant’s reactors.
Alvarez also discusses his new report on the vulnerabilities and hazards of stored spent fuel at U.S. reactors in the United States. (see below)
A recent law school graduate, Takanori Eto, is the first to file a lawsuit against the Japanese government over its handling of the crisis...
In Tokyo we speak with Aileen Mioko Smith, executive director of the group Green Action. She says citizens leading their own monitoring efforts are calling for additional evacuations, especially for young children and pregnant women.
• Democracy Now!
• "Japan Admits 3 Nuclear Meltdowns, More Radiation Leaked into Sea; U.S. Nuclear Waste Poses Deadly Risks" includes Rush Transcript
Fukushima reactor(s) "melt-through" to "dry earth floor"
Beyond Nuclear: "The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is reporting that one, or more, of the atomic reactors at Fukushima Daiichi which have suffered core meltdowns have actually experienced something even worse -- melt-through of multiple layers of steel (reactor pressure vessel and primary containment structure), so that molten nuclear fuel is now onto the 'dry earth floor' beneath.
ABC quotes senior adviser to the Japanese government Goshi Hosono (in translation): 'At present there is damage to the bottom of the reactor container, we call this ‘core melting’ in English. Part of the nuclear fuel has fallen onto the dry earth floor and it's possible that it's still lodged there.' The Random House Dictionary defines 'China syndrome' as 'a hypothetical nuclear-reactor accident in which the fuel would melt through the floor of the containment structure and burrow into the earth.' If the above report is correct, the question becomes, are the desperate attempts to cool the molten nuclear fuel trying to prevent it from burrowing deeper into the ground, if it has already melted through reactor pressure vessel, primary containment, and presumably concrete foundations? Breaches of containment would create pathways for catastrophic radioactivity releases into the environment."
Beyond Nuclear
see also, below: Become a co-petitioner to NRC and support the Beyond Nuclear call for the suspension of the 23 Fukushima-style reactors operating in the United States.
Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the US: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage - IPS
The price of fixing America's nuclear vulnerabilities may be high, but the price of doing too little is incalculable.
U.S. reactors have generated about 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel, of which 75 percent is stored in pools, according to Nuclear Energy Institute data. Spent fuel rods give off about 1 million rems (10,00Sv) of radiation per hour at a distance of one foot — enough radiation to kill people in a matter of seconds. There are more than 30 million such rods in U.S. spent fuel pools. No other nation has generated this much radioactivity from either nuclear power or nuclear weapons production.
Nearly 40 percent of the radioactivity in U.S. spent fuel is cesium-137 (4.5 billion curies) — roughly 20 times more than released from all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. U.S. spent pools hold about 15-30 times more cesium-137 than the Chernobyl accident released. For instance, the pool at the Vermont Yankee reactor, a BWR Mark I, currently holds nearly three times the amount of spent fuel stored at Dai-Ichi's crippled Unit 4 reactor. The Vermont Yankee reactor also holds about seven percent more radioactivity than the combined total in the pools at the four troubled reactors at the Fukushima site...
Institute for Policy Studies
"Ideas into Action for Peace, Justice, and
the Environment."
Support the Beyond Nuclear Petition to NRC to suspend operation of 23 Fukushima-style reactors in the United States
Become a co-petitioner to NRC and support the Beyond Nuclear call for the suspension of the 23 Fukushima-style reactors operating in the United States.
Co-petition with Beyond Nuclear's April 13, 2011 call upon NRC to suspend the operation of the 23 GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactors in the US and:
1) Convene public meetings in each of the Mark I Emergency Planning Zones to take public comment for incorporation into President Obama's charted review by NRC on the wisdom of continued operation of the dangerous Fukushima-style nuclear reactors here in the US;
2) Revoke a 1989 approval of an experimental venting system installed on the deeply flawed US Mark I reactor containment system as was also installed on the Fukushima nuclear power plants and failed to prevent the meltdowns of the three Japanese reactors operating at the time of the earthquake and tsunmai. Ask NRC to require all US Mark I operators to submit a license amendment request for any further modifications to the weak containment design in a process that is accorded full public hearing rights and;
3) Require Mark I operators to install emergency backup power to assure cooling of hundreds of tons of radioactive waste in storage pools located on top of each reactor builidng outside of containment in the event of loss of offsite power. NRC should further require operators to offload high-level radioactive waste (irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies) from these vulnerable densely packed storage pools to hardened onsite storage in dry casks.
Note: The Beyond Nuclear petition was amended with the US NRC on June 8, 2011 to include Brunswick Units 1 & 2 (NC). The April 13 petition identified that the Brunswick Mark I containment structures were not identical to the other 21 US Mark I units, but subsequently identified to have installed the same controversial venting system. Therefore, the two Brunswick units have been added to the call for a suspension of operations for a total of twenty-three (23).
Support the Beyond Nuclear Petition to NRC to suspend operation of 23 Fukushima-style reactors in the United States
Beyond Nuclear
• Unsafe at Any Dose by Helen Caldicott | Helen Caldicott, MD
• The Nuclear Retreat | The Renewable Energy Renaissance
• BeyondNuclear1's YouTube Channel
Regarding Chernobyl...
Chernobyl: A Million Casualties
EnviroVideo presents Enviro Close-UP with Karl Grossman
A million people have died so far as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident, explains Janette Sherman, M.D., toxicologist and contributing editor of the book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. Published by the New York Academy of Sciences, the book, authored by Dr. Alexey Yablokov, Dr. Vassily Nesterenko and Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, examined medical records now available--which expose as a lie the claim of the International Atomic Energy Commission that perhaps 4,000 people may die as a result of Chernobyl. Enviro Close-Up # 610 (29 mintes)
EnviroVideo presents Enviro Close-UP with Karl Grossman on blip.tv
A EnviroVideo produces environmental and social justice programs for television - including interview and news shows, specials, and documentaries. The underlying premise of EnviroVideo is that there are critical environmental issues at hand that can best be communicated to large numbers of people through the media most favored for news and information - television and the Internet. And if there is broad public awareness, pressing environmental matters can be dealt with and action taken to truly resolve them.
envirovideo.com
Miraho -Nie chcemy atomu (DiesProduction).avi
"WE DO NOT WANT THE ATOM IN OUR HOME!!"
{graphic content - PARENTAL ADVISORY}
what's on your mind?
25 lat po wybuchu w Czarnobylu Polska zamierza kontynuowac budowe elektrowni jadrowych w kilku lokalizacjach , z tej okazji skunkheads wyraza swoj sprzeciw wobec polityki atomowej .
NIE CHCEMY ATOMU W NASZYM DOMU !!!!
"25 years after the Chernobyl explosion, Poland intends to continue building nuclear power plants in several locations, this opportunity skunkheads expresses its opposition to nuclear policy.
WE DO NOT WANT THE ATOM IN OUR HOME!!"
see also: 25th Anniversary of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster | NUCLEAR "SAFTEY" = NUCLEAR THREAT
more videos
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Truth About Nuclear Power | Lethal Levels of Radiation
Diablo Canyon | Need To Know | PBS Video
You can't see it, and you can't smell it either | Nuclear Nightmare Unfolding
>Three Nuclear Meltdowns, Radiation Leaked into Sea; U.S. Waste Poses Deadly Risks
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