Can Nuclear Power Slow Down Climate Change? An analysis of nuclear greenhouse gas emissions | The Helen Caldicott Foundation

Can Nuclear Power Slow Down Climate Change  
(click title to access link to PDF of full report)

By Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen Ceedata Consultancy

Commissioned by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 2015

Supporting organizations:
Sortir du Nucléaire, France, Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS), USA, Ecodefense, Russia, Global 2000 (Friends of the Earth), Austria, Bürgerinitiative Lüchow-Dannenberg, Germany, Folkkampanjen mot Kärnkraft-Kärnvapen, Sweden

This report is sponsored by: the Greens in the European Parliament

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Mali Lightfoot, Executive Director of the Helen Caldicott Foundation, for her valuable suggestions and comments.

Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, MSc storm@ceedata.nl

With this study WISE hopes to contribute to a thorough debate about the best solutions to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is part of the current global energy system. The question is whether the role of nuclear power should be increased or halted. In order to be able to fruitfully discuss this we should at least know what the contribution of nuclear power could possibly be.

Summary and conclusions (for complete report click on the link  above or go directly to the report on the WISE site which is downloadable)

Starting point

Nuclear power is claimed to be nearly carbon-free and indispensable for mitigating climate change as a result of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.
Assuming that nuclear power really does not emit carbon dioxide CO2 nor other greenhouse gases (GHGs), how large is the present nuclear mitigation share and how large could it become in the future? Could the term ‘indispensable’ in this context be quantfied? These issues are assessed from a physical point of view, economic aspects are left outside the scope of this assessment.

How large is the present nuclear mitigation share?

The global GHG emissions comprise a number of different gases and sources. Weighted by the global warming potential of the various GHGs 61% of the emissions were caused by CO2 from burning of fossil fuels for energy generation. Nuclear power could displace fossil-fuelled electricity generation, so hypothetically the maximum nuclear mitigation share would be 61% if the global energy supply were to be fully electric and fully nuclear.

In 2014 the nuclear contribution to the global usable energy supply was 1.6% and consequently the nuclear mitigation share was 1.0%.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asserts that the nuclear contribution to the global energy supply was 4.6% in 2014. However, this figure turns out to be based on a thermodynamically inaccurate statistical trick using virtual energy quantities.

How large could the nuclear mitigation to climate change become in the future according to the nuclear industry?

We found no hard figures on this issue, for that reason this study analyses the mitigation consequences of the envisioned developments of global nuclear generating capacity. During the past years the International Atomic Energy Agency and the nuclear industry, represented by the World Nuclear Association (WNA), published numerous scenarios of global nuclear generating capacity in the future, measured in gigawatt- electric GWe. Four recent scenarios are assessed in this study, as these can be considered to be typical of the views within the nuclear industry...

more: The Helen Caldicott Foundation | Can Nuclear Power Slow Down Climate Change? An analysis of nuclear greenhouse gas emissions.

whats up: #BustTheMyth – nukes are NOT carbon-free, clean, safe, green, or affordable!

Dr Caldicott to speak in South Australia, on Nuclear Waste

The Prospect Local Environment Group (PLEG) will be hosting a public meeting on a proposed nuclear waste dump in South Australia, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr Helen Caldicott. Other speakers to be announced.  Prospect Town Hall  128 Prospect Road, Prospect, South Australia 5082

Dr Caldicott to speak in South Australia, on Nuclear Waste | Antinuclear

Common Myths of the Nuclear Industry - Helen Caldicott, MD

Common Myths of the Nuclear Industry - Helen Caldicott, MD

Can Nuclear Power Slow Down Climate Change? An analysis of nuclear greenhouse gas emissions | The Helen Caldicott Foundation

Can Nuclear Power Slow Down Climate Change  (click title to access link to PDF of full report)

By Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen Ceedata Consultancy

Commissioned by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE) Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 2015

Supporting organizations:
Sortir du Nucléaire, France, Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF), Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS), USA, Ecodefense, Russia, Global 2000 (Friends of the Earth), Austria, Bürgerinitiative Lüchow-Dannenberg, Germany, Folkkampanjen mot Kärnkraft-Kärnvapen, Sweden

This report is sponsored by: the Greens in the European Parliament

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Mali Lightfoot, Executive Director of the Helen Caldicott Foundation, for her valuable suggestions and comments.

Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, MSc storm@ceedata.nl

With this study WISE hopes to contribute to a thorough debate about the best solutions to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is part of the current global energy system. The question is whether the role of nuclear power should be increased or halted. In order to be able to fruitfully discuss this we should at least know what the contribution of nuclear power could possibly be.

Summary and conclusions (for complete report click on the link  above or go directly to the report on the WISE site which is downloadable)

Starting point

Nuclear power is claimed to be nearly carbon-free and indispensable for mitigating climate change as a result of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.
Assuming that nuclear power really does not emit carbon dioxide CO2 nor other greenhouse gases (GHGs), how large is the present nuclear mitigation share and how large could it become in the future? Could the term ‘indispensable’ in this context be quantfied? These issues are assessed from a physical point of view, economic aspects are left outside the scope of this assessment.

How large is the present nuclear mitigation share?

The global GHG emissions comprise a number of different gases and sources. Weighted by the global warming potential of the various GHGs 61% of the emissions were caused by CO2 from burning of fossil fuels for energy generation. Nuclear power could displace fossil-fuelled electricity generation, so hypothetically the maximum nuclear mitigation share would be 61% if the global energy supply were to be fully electric and fully nuclear.

In 2014 the nuclear contribution to the global usable energy supply was 1.6% and consequently the nuclear mitigation share was 1.0%.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asserts that the nuclear contribution to the global energy supply was 4.6% in 2014. However, this figure turns out to be based on a thermodynamically inaccurate statistical trick using virtual energy quantities.

How large could the nuclear mitigation to climate change become in the future according to the nuclear industry?

We found no hard figures on this issue, for that reason this study analyses the mitigation consequences of the envisioned developments of global nuclear generating capacity. During the past years the International Atomic Energy Agency and the nuclear industry, represented by the World Nuclear Association (WNA), published numerous scenarios of global nuclear generating capacity in the future, measured in gigawatt- electric GWe. Four recent scenarios are assessed in this study, as these can be considered to be typical of the views within the nuclear industry...

more: The Helen Caldicott Foundation | Can Nuclear Power Slow Down Climate Change? An analysis of nuclear greenhouse gas emissions.

LIVESTREAM & ARCHIVE LINK for Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction (2.28-3.1.2014 ) | The Helen Caldicott Foundation

HERE'S THE LIVESTREAM LINK FOR Helen Mary Caldicott's SYMPOSIUM IN NYC ON FEB. 28TH-MAR 1ST!

2.28-3.1 The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction, NYC

The Helen Caldicott Foundation

http://totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf 

Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction l February 28-March 1, 2015 at The New York Academy of Medicine

Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction – February 28-March 1, 2015 at The New York Academy of Medicine A unique, two-day symposium at which an international panel of leading experts in disarmament, political science, existential risk, artificial intelligence, anthropology, medicine, nuclear weapons and other nuclear…

The Helen Caldicott Foundation

2.27 New Brunswick, NJ: The Medical Implications of the Nuclear Age - Helen Caldicott, MD

The Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is hosting a seminar and book signing by Dr Caldicott on Friday February 27 2015.

1:30 P.M. – Alampi Room
Marine Sciences Bldg., 71 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ
Refreshments served at 1:15 pm

Host: Prof. Alan Robock, robock@envsci.rutgers.edu, 848-932-5751
Website: Environmental Sciences Seminars http://www.envsci.rutgers.edu/info/seminar/seminar.shtml

“The medical dangers of the nuclear fuel chain begin at uranium mining and end with either a massive nuclear power plant meltdown, a nuclear war or the many diseases and mutations in animals, plants and humans that will arise from the inevitable leakage of radioactive waste and the subsequent pollution of food chains for virtually infinity. I will walk people through this highly complex issue so that they have a deeper understanding of the genetic and carcinogenic dangers of the nuclear age.”

CRISIS WITHOUT END and NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER will be available for sale and signing after the talk.

The Medical Implications of the Nuclear Age - Helen Caldicott, MD

2.28 - 3.1: NYC Top Anti-Nuclear Authorites to Convene

LIVESTREAM & ARCHIVE LINK for Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction (2.28-3.1.2014 ) | The Helen Caldicott Foundation

HERE'S THE LIVESTREAM LINK FOR Helen Mary Caldicott's SYMPOSIUM IN NYC ON FEB. 28TH-MAR 1ST!

>>> http://totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf 

Growing threat of planet-wide nuclear extinction will bring world's leading scholars and activists to New York City for two-day symposium Feb. 28-March 1, 2015

This conference will be held at the New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Ave., N.Y., NY, sponsored by The Helen Caldicott Foundation For a Nuclear Free Future. The press is invited.

Dr. Caldicott is an Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate who has founded several associations dedicated to opposing the use of nuclear power, depleted uranium munitions, and nuclear weapons. She has been awarded 21 honorary doctoral degrees and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling.

This symposium will be unique, linking the existential threat of Artificial Super Intelligence(ASI) with the current existential threat of nuclear war. It will examine a future in which intelligent machines could launch a nuclear war with no human input.

This threat is compounded as the escalating crisis in the Ukraine has significantly increased nuclear risk. According to Dr. Caldicott: “As the Cold War heats up again, the U.S. and Russia each maintain over one thousand nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert to be launched with a press of a button, increasing the risk of a global conflagration.”

“Between them,” she goes on to day, “the U.S. and Russia possess 93% of the world’s 16,400 nuclear weapons arsenal, a situation which is made worse by outdated equipment, negligence, poor maintenance, viruses, and hacking within the arsenals of both countries.”

Far from his past disarmament promises, “President Obama plans to earmark $1 trillion over the next 30 years to replace every nuclear weapon, missile, ship, submarine and plane.”

▶ Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident - YouTube

read more:
Top Anti-Nuclear Authorites to Convene in New York City | Veterans Today

PAGE AT HELEN CALDICOTT FOUNDATION:
Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction l February 28-March 1, 2015 at The New York Academy of Medicine

11.9 CONCORD, NH: Dr. Helen Caldicott speaking on “Fukushima, Nuclear Power & Nuclear War” | NH Peace Action: Safe and Green Campaign

Dr. Helen Caldicott will speak on “Fukushima, Nuclear Power & Nuclear War” to celebrate New Hampshire Peace Action’s 31st anniversary. Tickets are $30 in advance or $35 at the door. Safe and Green Campaign is pleased to co-sponsor this benefit for NH Peace Action.

NH Peace Action: Helen Caldicott | Safe and Green Campaign

Nuclear power no answer to climate change

Dr. Helen Caldicott | Sydney Morning Herald | 7 October, 2013

Advocating nuclear power as an answer to global warming is analogous to prescribing smoking for weight loss.

Nuclear reactors do not stand alone but rely on a massive industrial infrastructure using fossil fuel and other global warming gases.

Renewable energy that is readily available, cheaper than nuclear and coal, and can rapidly avert global warming must be immediately implemented by global governments.

Robert Stone is rightly concerned about global warming (The Age, October 4) so I refer him to an excellent study, Carbon Free Nuclear Free http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/ demonstrating that the US could achieve this by about 2030.

Let's examine the Fukushima disaster – Australia's uranium fuelled the reactors.

On March 11, 2011, three reactors were online when a massive earthquake disrupted their power supply, drowned the auxiliary diesel generators in the basements, and submerged pumps supplying each with 3.79 million litres of cooling water a minute.
Within hours, the intensely hot radioactive cores in units 1, 2 and 3 had started to melt while the zirconium metal cladding on the uranium fuel rods reacted with water generating hydrogen which forcefully exploded in buildings of 1, 2, 3 and 4, releasing huge amounts of radioactive elements into the air. And 400 tonnes of highly radioactive water – a total of 245,000 tonnes – has been leaking into the Pacific daily since the accident. Three molten cores, each weighing more than 100 tonnes melted their way through 15 centimetres of steel in the reactor vessels, now rest on concrete floors of the severely cracked containment buildings. Each core contains as much radiation as that released by 1000 Hiroshima-sized bombs with more than 200 different radioactive elements, lasting seconds to millions of years.

Each of these deadly radioactive poisons has its own specific pathway in the food chain and the human body. Radioactive elements are tasteless, odourless and invisible. It takes many years for cancers and other radiation-related diseases to manifest – from five to 80 years.

Children are 10 to 20 times more radio-sensitive than adults, and foetuses thousands of times more so. Females are more sensitive than males. Radiation is cumulative. There is no safe dose. Each dose adds to the risk of developing cancer.
Radiation of the reproductive organs induces genetic mutations in the sperm and eggs, increasing the incidence of genetic diseases over future generations such as diabetes, cystic fibrosis, haemochromatosis and 6000 others.

Sea water beside Fukushima is highly contaminated with tritium, the highest level recorded. Tritium causes birth defects, cancers of various organs including brain and ovaries, testicular atrophy and mental retardation. Tritium concentrates in food and fish and remains radioactive for 120 years .

Cesium, a potassium mimicker, concentrates in heart, endocrine organs and muscles where it induces cardiac irregularities, heart attacks, diabetes, hypothyroidism, thyroid cancer and rhabdomyosarcoma, a muscle cancer. Cesium is radioactive for 300 years and concentrates in the food chain.

Strontium 90, poisonous for 300 years, is analogous to calcium, concentrating in grass and milk, then in bones, teeth and breast milk where it can cause bone cancer, leukaemia or breast cancer.

Plutonium lasts 240,000 years and is one of the most potent carcinogens – a millionth of a gram can cause cancer.
Plutonium resembles iron so it can induce cancers in the lung, liver, bone, testicle and ovary. It crosses the placenta, causing severe birth deformities.

Each reactor core contains 150 kilograms of plutonium, and five kilograms is sufficient to make an atomic bomb. So nuclear power plants are essentially timeless bomb factories.

Iodine 131, radioactive for 100 days, is a potent carcinogen. Already 44 childhood thyroid cancers are suspected in Fukushima. Thyroid cancer is extremely rare in young children.

More than 350,000 children still live in highly radioactive areas. Leukaemia and solid cancers of various organs will increase for the next 70 to 80 years in this generation. About 2 million people in Japan live in highly contaminated areas.
Food in the contaminated zone will be radioactive for hundreds of years as it concentrates radiation. So cancer will devastate many future Japanese generations.

Japanese doctors are reporting that they have been ordered not to tell patients that their problems are radiation related.
The levels of radiation in buildings 1, 2 and 3 are now so high humans cannot enter or get close to the molten cores. It will be impossible to remove these cores for hundreds of years – if ever.

Should one of these buildings collapse during another earthquake, the targeted flow of cooling water to the pools and cores would cease and the cores would become red hot, releasing massive amounts of radiation into the air and water. Fuel in five cooling pools could also ignite.

Building 4 is severely damaged. A vulnerable cooling pool situated on the roof contains 250 tonnes of very hot fuel rods which were removed from the reactor just before the earthquake struck. Although the rods and their holding racks are still intact, they are geometrically deformed due to the force of the hydrogen explosion and will be dangerous to remove.

A large earthquake disrupting the integrity of the building could cause it to collapse, taking down the pool. Zirconium cladding the rods would burn, releasing the equivalent of 14,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs and 10 times more cesium than Chernobyl, polluting much of Japan and the northern hemisphere.

While atmospheric radiation will largely remain in the north, radioactive water and polluted fish will continue to migrate across the Pacific, affecting Hawaii, North America, South America and, eventually, Australia


Dr Helen Caldicott is a paediatrician and the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility

Nuclear power no answer to climate change | nuclearfreeplanet.org

Nuclear Hotseat #119: Joseph Mangano Shreds IAEA's Straitjacket on WHO's Radiation Reports | Nuclear Hotseat

Nuclear Hotseat #119: Joseph Mangano Shreds IAEA's Straitjacket on WHO's Radiation Reports | Nuclear Hotseat

INTERVIEW:  Special feature interview with Joseph Mangano of Radiation and Public Health Project (www.radiation.org) on how the International Atomic Energy Agency’s straitjacketed and muzzled “epidemiology” makes it impossible for the World Health Organization to ever present honest information on the dangers of nuclear radiation.  Based on an analysis of the IAEA’s fatally flawed “science” by the late Dr. Rosalie Bertell.  Infuriating, jaw-dropping — and the underlying reason why the nuclear-industrial complex continues to get away with putting the future of all planetary life at risk. 

PLUS:

• Activists rise up against NRC waste “confidence,” proposed nuclear waste dump on Lake Huron, and the EPA’s dramatically weakened radiation guides – the New (Gina) McCarthyism?
• Japanese PM Shinzo Abe-Baby has ongoing “Mission Accomplished” complications from his “The situation is under control!” claims to the International Olympic Committee;
  • And isn’t it odd that Russia, China and Korea are doing a better job of protecting their citizens than the US?

LISTEN NOW / DOWNLOAD > Nuclear Hotseat #119: Joseph Mangano Shreds IAEA's Straitjacket on WHO's Radiation Reports | Nuclear Hotseat

VIDEO EXTRAS:

Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps in Toronto on Fukushima and proposed nuclear waste dump in Ontario, on the shore of Lake Huron:

Former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Gregory Jaczko in Japan speaking out on Fukushima dangers re: Spent Fuel Pool 4 at Japanese Foreign Correspondents Club.

THANK YOU LIBBE HALEVY!

Nuclear Hotseat Podcast

The Activist Voice of the Anti-Nuclear Movement

Produced and Hosted by Libbe HaLevy

THIS WEEK’S NUCLEAR HOTSEAT: www.NuclearHotseat.com/Blog

(CLICK TO ACCESS): 

Nuclear Hotseat is the weekly international news magazine keeping you up to date on all things anti-nuclear.  Produced and Hosted by Three Mile Island survivor Libbe HaLevy, each podcast contains the week’s international nuclear news, at least one expert interview, ways to protect physical health of yourself and your loved ones from the dangers of radiation exposure, and activist opportunities.

Among the nuclear experts interviewed by Nuclear Hotseat in its first two years:

• Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer, head of Fairewinds Energy Education
• Dr. Helen Caldicott, founding President, Physicians for Social Responsibility
• Dr. Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano, authors of “An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima:  Is There a Correlation?”
• Karl Grossman, Journalist, host of “Enviro Close-Up”
• Daniel Hirsch, Nuclear Policy Lecturer, UC Santa Cruz
• Alice Slater, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
• Mochizuki Iori, blogger, Fukushima Diary
• Nuclear Whistleblowers
• …and many more.

Nuclear Hotseat Podcast | Nuclear Hotseat

Documentary: On Fukushima Beach + The Lights of Fukushima (OFB2)

On Fukushima Beach (remastered) - YouTube On Fukushima Beach (remastered for 03/11/2013)

Documentary: The Lights of Fukushima - On Fukushima Beach 2 - YouTube

> On Fukushima Beach - Explosive New Documentary - Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall - Open Salon

Red Button Studios

September 23, 2012

Free download at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aseiCqEx9BQ

Film Review

On Fukushima Beach is an hour long brilliantly constructed documentary that uses a montage of mainstream and Internet media clips to unpack the Fukushima disaster. In addition to providing a painless scientific overview of radiation health issues, it outlines the ongoing radiation risks faced by all residents of the northern hemisphere.

There are simple measures people everywhere (except the Japanese – they need to be evacuated asap) could be taking to protect themselves. Yet in their eagerness to promote and support the nuclear power industry, the Obama administration, the Japanese government and the international agencies charged with monitoring and addressing similar health issues (such as the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization), have remained stubbornly silent on what promises to be the most serious health crisis of the 21^st century.

Relying heavily on the technical expertise of highly prominent and credible medical professionals and scientists (including Australian pediatrician Dr Helen Caldicott and Japanese-American theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku), the film stresses the following essential points:

• Despite being “shut down,” all four Fukushima reactors continue to release dangerous radioactive nucleotides, both to the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. There is a self-perpetuating chain reaction occurring in Reactors 1-3, in which core meltdowns have occurred. Continuing radiation release can only be stopped by encasing them in a concrete shell, as the Soviets did at Chernobyl. Extremely high radiation levels make it too hazardous for workers to begin construction of this shell (even though an organization of several hundred elderly retired engineers have volunteered to sacrifice themselves to undertake the clean up -Retired Fukushima engineers. Tokyo Electric Power Co., aka TEPCO, has rebuffed their offer, fearing negative publicity.)
• Since meltdowns have already occurred (there was an explosion but no meltdown at Chernobyl), high levels of radiation have entered the subsoil below the containment chamber, as well as the groundwater. Halting radiation leakage into the groundwater would require installation of an impermeable barrier between the reactor and the water table. TEPCO has refused to even consider such a barrier, claiming it would be too expensive and “affect stock prices.”
• The Japanese government was criminally negligent in refusing to evacuate Tokyo (238 km or 148 miles from Fukushima), owing to their reluctance to create public “panic.” Abundant evidence suggests they were well aware Tokyo’s 30 million residents were at risk. Recent random sampling reveals that Tokyo children are being exposed to five times the acceptable does of radiation. Many are already showing evidence of radiation poisoning (hair loss, lethargy, rashes, joint pains, tiredness and rings under their eyes). While government clinics are diagnosing them with psychiatric conditions, pregnant women are undergoing abortions to prevent their infants from being born with birth defects.
• Despite claims from the nuclear power industry that no human beings have ever died from industry-related radiation poisoning, careful documentation by Russian scientists indicate that there were approximately one million deaths (mainly from cancer and leukemia) directly related to Chernobyl. The time lag between exposure and death (three to four years for leukemia and lung cancer and fifteen years for solid cancers) make it easier for the nuclear industry to deny the connection. However there are clear statistical links that can’t be explained any other way.
• Prevailing wind patterns mean that Americans, even those on the East Coast, and Europeans have been exposed to dangerous levels of airborne radiation. Studies of ocean currents reveal that high radiation levels have spread throughout the entire North Pacific. Tuna and other species caught on the West Coast reveal dangerous levels of radioactive cesium. No one, no matter where they live, should be eating Pacific seafood sourced north of the Equator.
• There are 1,535 spent MOX (combined uranium/plutonium) fuel rods stored in open cooling pools on the roof of Reactor 4. According to TEPCO, they can’t be moved before 2015-2016. Another earthquake could potentially expose them to the air, forcing evacuation of the entire northern hemisphere.

The filmmakers also attempt to explain the conspiracy of silence around the ongoing Fukushima disaster and the extreme threat it poses to literally billions of people in the northern hemisphere. They blame the insane power of the nuclear power industry, which ironically is one of the most spectacularly unprofitable industries in modern times. The companies that build and operate nuclear power plants rely on massive government subsidies in the construction phase, as the revenue they earn from selling electricity can’t possibly cover their costs. Apparently nuclear power – known as “atoms for peace” in the 1950s – was dreamed up as a public relations ploy to de-stigmatize nuclear weapons in the public mind.

The film stresses that nuclear power and weapons production have always been joined at the hip. It also reveals that General Electric (GE), the powerful defense contractor (and owner of NBC network) which manufactures nuclear weapons – is the same company that designed and built the Fukushima reactors. Interesting how the Obama administration, which has approved massive subsidies for new nuclear power plants, has exerted major pressure on Japan to conceal GE’s involvement in Fukushima.

Entergy Watch: FitzPatrick, Indian Point, Palisades, Pilgrim, Vermont Yankee

Entergy's dirty dozen atomic reactorsFitzPatrick

AGREE New York (Alliance for a Green Economy), working in partnership with Beyond Nuclear, have filed an emergency enforcement petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), seeking the immediate shutdown of the Fukushima-twin design FitzPatrick atomic reactor on the Lake Ontario shore in upstate NY.Help AGREE reach its goal of 1,000 signatures in support of its petition by signing on!

AGREE's website also covers a serious radioactive tritium leak at the adjacent Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant. As listed in Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" pamphlet, FitzPatrick and Nine Mile Point Unit 1 are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4. Nine Mile Point Unit 2 is a GE BWR Mark II, very similar in design to the Mark I. Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" campaignseeks to permanently shut these demonstrably dangerous reactors, whose containment structures were known to be too small and too weak by 1972.

Presumably, the NRC Commission's vote this week, to require hardened vents at Mark Is and IIs as a "lesson learned" from the Fukushima catastrophe (but, by a 4 to 1 vote -- with NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane the sole dissent -- to reject radiological filters on those hardened vents) will finally require FitzPatrick to install one. FitzPatrick was the only one of the 23 Mark Is in the U.S. to refuse to "voluntarily" install containment vents in an effort to compenstate for its too small, too weak containment. However, the newly ordered hardened vents are not required to be installed until Jan. 1, 2018 -- an inexplicable, unjustifiable five year delay!

Indian Point

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps was honored to present "The Radioactive Waste Con Game & Reactor Risk Russian Roulette at Indian Point" at the invitation of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) at the Stony Point Center near Indian Point nuclear power plant on March 10, 2013. Featured at the IPSEC event were two U.S. Navy sailors who served aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, Jaime Plym and Maurice Enis, whose story appeared on the CBS Evening News later that very same evening. Plym and Enis were exposed to Fukushima fallout as they provided rescue and recovery support to Japan in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. They've been seriously sick ever since, and have joined with over 100 fellow crew members in a lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Palisades

Public pressure led to NRC holding a Webinar on March 19 about the embrittlement of Palisades' reactor pressure vessel (RPV) -- the worst at any U.S. atomic reactor -- and its vulnerability to a catastrophic fracture due to pressurized thermal shock. This was the third NRC Webinar about Palisades since October. The first two were about the long list of leaks and breakdowns that have occurred in recent months and years. NRC's next Palisades Webinar is slated for July, and will be about radiological releases. Beyond Nuclear has published a pamphlet about "routine radiation releases" from atomic reactors. Note that the photograph in the pamphlet, by Gabriela Bulisova, of a liquid radiological release pathway, was taken at Palisades itself. Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter also devoted an entire chapter of his April 2010 report, Leak First, Fix Later, to tritium leaks into groundwater at Palisades.

Both NRC and Entergy Nuclear have issued defensive statements, standing by the integrity and safety of Palisades' RPV, after a number of media outlets -- such as Reuters, and WOOD TV-8 in Grand Rapids, MI -- reported that Palisades will yet again violate NRC's already weakened PTS safety regulations by 2017, begging the question, will Palisades be forced to permanently shutdown? However, Mr. Hiromitsu Ino of Citizens Nuclear Information Center-Tokyo, in a technical paper, has warned that the Japanese nuclear industry has significantly underestimated embrittlement at its pressurized water reactors, a failure that is almost certainly true of the U.S. nuclear power industry as well.

On Monday, March 25, concerned local residents and environmental group representatives will meet with NRC Commissioner William Magwood IV in South Haven. Commissioner Magwood will tour the problem-plagued Palisades plant the next morning. This will be the second meeting with an NRC Commissioner by local grassroots watchdogs in 10 months. On May 25, 2012, 25-30 concerned citizens met with NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko just after he had toured Palisades.

On Tuesday, April 2, NRC will hold its annual End-of-Cycle-Review public meeting in South Haven. Concerned citizens are urged to attend. In 2012, citizens consistently packed a large number of NRC meetings, whether regularly scheduled or specially called.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps will discuss Palisades, and other radioactive risks to Michigan, at a Thursday, April 4 meeting of the South East Michigan Group of the Sierra Club in Bloomfield Hills. On Monday, April 8, he will speak at the Jackson, MI chapter meeting of the Sierra Club.

The Union of Concerned Scientist's Director of the Nuclear Safety Project, David Lochbaum, will speak in west MI about Palisades on Thursday, April 11th.

Pilgrim

As reported by the Plymouth Patch, on March 15th, just an hour after the prosecutor moved to drop trespassing charges and the judge agreed, members of "the Pilgrim 14," and about 50 of their supporters, went back out to Entergy's Pilgrim atomic reactor near Boston, where five were arrested for trespassing again. The protestors had hoped to mount a "necessity defense," and had expert witnesses lined up to testify that Pilgrim's radiological trespasses against residents downwind justified efforts to shutdown the reactor.

One of those expert witnesses, Dr. Helen Caldicott, is scheduled to speak in Plymouth on March 25th.

Learn more about grassroots efforts to permanently shutdown Pilgrim at the websites of Cape Downwinders and Pilgrim Watch. Cape Cod Bay Watch, a member of the Pilgrim Coalition, has announced a "Save Our Bay Flotilla" for June 9th.

Vermont Yankee

March 21st is Vermont Energy Independence Day! It is also the first anniversary of the expiration of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee's original 40-year operating license, as marked by Richard Watts in his blog "Failure to Navigate." The very next day, the first day of VY's state-contested, NRC-rubberstamped 20-year license extension, 1,500 rallied in Brattleboro, marching to Entergy's Vermont HQ, where over 150 were arrested for non-violent civil disobedience. Additional arrests took place at Entergy's Northeast HQ in Westchester County, NY near Indian Point nuclear power plant, as well as in New Orleans at Entergy's national HQ.

Watts is the author of Public Meltdown: The Story of Vermont Yankee, which chronicles the decline and fall of Entergy Nuclear, and its VY atomic reactor, in the Green Mountain State, from core asset and good neighbor, to rogue corporation and pariah. Watts, with the support ofthe Linthilac Foundation, has generously donated 50 copies of his book to Beyond Nuclear. They have sold like hotcakes at recent Beyond Nuclear presentations near Palisades and Indian Point. All proceeds have gone towards the grassroots groups, such as Michigan Safe Energy Future and Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, resisting Entergy on a local level.

The Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance, Safe and Green Campaign, and SAGE Alliance have announced a "Leaks, Lies, and Lawyers" parade and rally in Brattleboro on March 30th, featuring the Bread and Puppet Theater, protesting a year of illegal operations by Entergy's VT Yankee Nuke.

And, as reported by the Rutland Herald, even NRC has begun questioning Vermont Yankee's financial qualifications.

In addition, an accidental over-pressurization, and blow-out panel failure, has raised concerns about increased radiological releases during current re-fueling operations at Vermont Yankee. 

Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the New England Coalition, was quoted by theRutland Herald:

"This incident is a downtime demonstration of the fact that secondary containment, as well as primary containment, is designed for failure of its ostensible purpose of containing radioactive releases in the event of a reactor accident...In short, even the most obtuse observer should now understand that Vermont Yankee’s containment safety systems have a very high probability of failure."

The Brattleboro Reformer also reported on the failure of VY's exhaust fans, resulting in over-pressurization of the reactor building and the blow-out of the panel. The panel was supposed to be secured with a wire cable, to prevent it from falling to the ground, but it landed on the turbine building roof nonetheless.

Beyond Nuclear - NUCLEAR POWER - Entergy Watch: FitzPatrick, Indian Point, Palisades, Pilgrim, Vermont Yankee