A major health crisis looms that is only hastened through the extensive deployment of “smart grid” technology. … Read More
Radioactive leak found at Palisades Nuclear Power Plant
The plant, which is located on the shore of the great lake and operated by Entergy, was shut down after the water tank exceeded its site threshold and leaked. Authorities say the crack led to about 79 gallons of “slightly radioactive water” spilling from the Palisades plant into the lake, WOOD-TV reports.The leak came from a 300,000-gallon injection and refueling tank, which floods and cools the nuclear reactor with borated water during refueling outages. It also removes heat from the reactor when there is a loss of coolant by sourcing the safety injection system.This month’s incident marks the second time the injection and refueling tank leaked, and caused the ninth shutdown of the plant since September 2011. Since 2012, the plant shut down six times as a result of leaks.It took operators about a week and a half to find the source of the leak. But even though authorities acknowledged that the leaking water was radioactive, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claims that this poses no risk to the local community, since it is was diluted.“The NRC’s radiation dose limits are based on scientific studies and have not been shown to cause harmful health effects,” NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng told MLive. “The NRC regularly reviews new information to make sure the agency’s limits are optimal for protecting public health. But this was an unplanned release that should not have happened.”The NRC says the assessed dose to the public was 0.002 percent of the federal limit. The maximum dose to the public is limited to 0.1 rem per year. But because the Palisades plant has been shut down nine times since September 2011 and has frequently leaked in the past, Americans have expressed deep concern over the lack of safety that repeatedly causes problems in the lakeside Covert Township, Mich.David Lochbaum, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ nuclear safety project, told MLive that it is unacceptable for the plant to suffer repeated leaks, and that Entergy should repair it properly rather than continuously patching up leaks. The NRC mandates plant owners to find and fix all safety hazards.“Applying Band-Aid fixes every few months is not complying with this federal regulation,” he said. “The NRC must take steps to ensure that a federal regulation developed to protect public health and safety is consistently being met rather than consistently being violated. ‘Patch and restart’ may be great for generating revenue, but it is very bad for public safety.”Congressman Fred Upton, the chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce,on Mondaytook a tour of the plant and announced that it will remain shut down until officials are sure it is safe to re-start. He said 10 of the tank’s nozzles are currently being upgraded and he will return to re-examine the plant before it is restarted. … Read More
‘Ultimate destination’: NASA sets Mars walk as top priority
Walking on Mars is human destiny, NASA administrator Charles Bolden told experts at a conference at George Washington University, and despite the ongoing economic crisis, the American space program is ready to set new records. “A human mission to Mars is today the ultimate destination in our solar system for humanity, and it is a priority for NASA. Our entire exploration program is aligned to support this goal,” Bolden said. President Barack Obama requested about $17.7 billion for NASA in 2014 which Bolden said is a “vibrant and coordinated strategy for Mars exploration.” The biggest difference in the new budget is the introduction of a new asteroid initiative, which should enable NASA to divert threatening asteroids headed towards Earth. The proposal includes sending a robotic spacecraft by 2025 to a nearing asteroid and redirecting it into orbit around the Moon. An asteroid mission Bolden argues would provide the necessary experience towards eventual human missions to Mars. However, many challenges in the space program must first be overcome, including medical concerns for the safety of the passengers in high-radiation environments for such extended periods. US astronaut Scott Kelly is set to spend one year in space in 2015, to better understand how prolonged zero gravity exposure affects bone density, muscle mass and vision. Current missions to the ISS last no more than 6 months. In order to investigate the physical and psychological effects of spending such a long period in space in February 2011 a six-strong crew from Russia, China, Italy and France spent some 520 days in a specially designed capsule on earth. NASA also plans to announce a specifically chosen crew of some 20 trainee astronauts who “will be among the first trained specifically for long-duration space flights,” said Bolden. Bolden is optimistic that by the 2030s, the US can design a space vehicle capable of traveling on the seven-month or longer flight to Mars and then return to Earth. Experts estimate that another 40 ton package, including air supply, would be needed to maintain a human habitat on Mars.“The US has demonstrated that we know how to get to the Moon,” Bolden said. “What we have not demonstrated and what I think everyone in this room – well most people in this room will concede, is that there are technological gaps to sending humans to an asteroid and to Mars,” Bolden said at the conference. The US has repeatedly sent successful robotic missions to Mars, the most recent being the Curiosity rover in August 2012. NASA now hopes the US Congress will approve outsourcing to private contractors all future rocket missions to low earth orbit in order to concentrate on deep space exploration instead.Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet in 2011 for all manned flights to the earth’s orbit, the US at the moment solemnly relies on the Russian space program.Congress must approve the new budget, otherwise the US would have to extend a contract with Roscosmos and pay“significantly more” to use the Soyuz rockets, Bolden told Bloomberg Television’s “Capitol Gains.”The agency argues that it requires full funding to develop a domestic private industry to transport US scientists to the ISS and low-Earth orbit by 2017. If this fails, Bolden said, it would require NASA to renegotiate a contract with the Russians, under which NASA currently pays $70 million for US crew to fly to the ISS.This, Bolden argues would be an embarrassment for US space program as it will“allow the Russians to begin to believe that we are not committed to reliance on American industry and we’re not committed to an American capability to get our own astronauts into space. They’ll name their price, and my guess is it will be significantly more than $70 million.” Bolden said that a new space race is on between private enterprises,“American companies are racing each other.” Boeing, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada companies are“all racing to see who gets to the finish line and who wins a contract to carry American astronauts and our partner astronauts to the International Space Station, hopefully by 2017,” Bolden said.On April 30 NASA said that it renegotiated a $424 million contract with Roscosmos for ISS transportation services in 2016, which will include six seats in Soyuz rockets with return and rescue services extending through June 2017. … Read More
Nuclear unclear: Radioactive materials disappear in UK over last decade
The papers revealed by the HSE, the UK government’s safety watchdog, list some big names in British industry as amongst the culprits including Rolls-Royce Marine Power Operations in Derby, which makes the reactors for Britain’s nuclear submarines, it was reported in The Guardian on Monday.Small pellets of highly radioactive Ytterbium-169 were lost from the Rolls-Royce marine division, while a 13kg ball of depleted uranium went missing from the Forgemasters steel works in Sheffield, The Royal Free hospital in London lost caesium-137 used in cancer treatment. A report into the incident found that it “had the potential to cause significant radiation injuries to anyone handling [it] directly or being in the proximity for a short period of time.”In another case, materials containing caesium-137 were lost on a North Sea oil rig by the oil services firm Schlumberger.While at the site of the former atomic energy research center at Harwell near Oxford, cobalt 60 was found under a tube store under a machine during clearance.Earlier this year a small canister of iridium-192 was stolen from a van in Lancashire, but was later found at a nearby retail park almost a month later.“The unacceptable frequency and seriousness of these losses, some with the potential for severe radiological consequences, reflect poorly on the licenses and the HSE regulator. I cannot understand why it is not considered to be in the public interest to vigorously prosecute all such offences,” John Large, an internationally consultant to the nuclear industry, told The Guardian.“Such slack security raises deep concerns about the accessibility of these substances to terrorists and others of malevolent intent,” he said.While the HSE successfully prosecuted the Royal Free Hospital, Shlumberger and the massive Sellafield nuclear plant, other organizations have got away with written warnings.In the case of Sellafield, the nuclear reprocessing facility pleaded guilty at Workington magistrates to sending mixed general waste, such as plastic, paper and metal from controlled radioactive areas to the Lillyhall landfill site in Workington when it should have been sent to the low-level waste repository [for low level nuclear waste] at Drigg, Cumbria.The science departments of York and Warwick universities were luckier; they received written advice over losing radioactive materials during science demonstrations.While the Loreto high school in Manchester is being investigated over the loss of americium-241. “Some of these radioactive sources are very persistent, for example the Royal Free hospital’s lost caesium-137 has a half-life of around 30 years, so it remains radio-toxic for at least 10 half-lives or about 300 years,” said Large, who led the nuclear assessment risk for the raising of the destroyed Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in 2001. … Read More
Fukushima’s Catastrophic Aftermath Continues
“Should the public discover the true health cost(s) of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death.” … Read More
Japanese court refuses to rehouse children near Fukushima site
On Wednesday, the Sendai High Court said that while the radiation level in the city of over 300 thousand still exceeds the Japanese average, it poses no danger to health, and said those worried are free to re-locate at their own expense.“The children are victims with absolutely no responsibility for the nuclear accident,” complained the Toshio Yanagihara, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, following the ruling, which can be appealed in a higher court.The suit was filed in June 2011 by parents of 14 children worried about persistent low-level exposure to radiation from the plant, which was damaged by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March that year.After repeated rulings against them, all but one of the children have either moved away from Koriyama, or have grown too old for the lawsuit, which has been widely supported by anti-nuclear activists.Currently those living in Koriyama are exposed to about 2.2 millisieverts per year (mSv/y), about three times the average natural background radiation throughout the country. Following the meltdown, officials set the yearly dangerous exposure limit to 20 mSv/y, and say that any exposure below 100 mSv/y is unlikely to have any health repercussions.Associated Press reports that throughout Koriyama, there are spikes of radiation that far exceed the average, and breach the government limit. Besides, activists say that radiation can penetrate the human body in harmful quantities not only through the measured air levels, but food and water, which are also subject to long-term contamination.In the two years following the accident, three children in the Fukushima area have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which is often a symptom of excessive radiation exposure. However, the number is too statistically small to confidently attribute to the accident, and besides, the true impact of radiation poisoning – as in Chernobyl – often only emerges years later. World Health Organisation (WHO) officials say those who were infants at the time of the accident, the risk of thyroid cancer is increased by up to 70 percent (though this type of tumor is still rare). The overall incidence of cancer among the most affected population is likely to be 4 to 7 per cent higher, according to an extensive study WHO published earlier this year.Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency has criticized the “temporary” measures in place at the Fukushima plant, which is still being maintained, and says the impact of the meltdown could take over 40 years to clear up.Despite prominent anti-nuclear protests, Industry Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said this week that the country intends to restart some of the 48 nuclear reactors mothballed since 2011. Only two reactors are currently operational. … Read More
Fukushima decommissioning to last for up to 40 years – IAEA
An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection last week of the ruined Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma has exposed certain bottlenecks in the plan to clean up the nuclear disaster. A statement by the IAEA released Monday criticized TEPCO’s progress on the cleanup.Experts of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology believe that a chain of equipment failures of the plant’s essential systems that took place over the last few weeks could become a serious problem in the future. The IAEA called on to TEPCO to maintain plant’s equipment properly to avoid potentially hazardous situations, especially disconnections of the cooling systems of the shutoff reactors and fuel storage pools.”As for the duration of the decommissioning project, it will be nearly impossible to ensure the time for decommissioning such a complex facility in less than 30 to 40 years as it is currently established in the roadmap,” said Juan Carlos Lentijo, the IAEA’s Director of the Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology (NEFW).The IAEA statement stressed that Japan must still develop technology and equipment to locate and remove melted uranium fuel, given the harsh conditions and strong radiation levels at the Fukushima facility.Fukushima saw a chain of incidents over the last five weeks, at least three of which were caused by rats that damaged wires in critically important electrical equipment. And on Monday, TEPCO personnel conducted an emergency shutdown of the cooling system of one of the fuel storage pools after two dead rats were found inside a transformer box.Lentijo, who headed the IAEA delegation to Fukushima, explained that water management is “probably the most challenging” task for the plant at the moment.Another issue was the multiple leakages of radioactive water from storage tanks and cooling systems, which are not only further contaminating the area around the plant, but may also be expelling radioactive pollution deep underground, where it could pollute underground water tables.Earlier, TEPCO reported that a steady inflow of groundwater in the basements of the damaged reactor buildings resulted in about 400 tons of contaminated water daily. With the Fukushima nuclear plant’s storage tanks already housing 280,000 tons of liquid radioactive waste, this means the amount of contaminated water would double within just a few years.Lentijo urged TEPCO to “implement additional countermeasures to regain confidence.” IAEA experts also noted that TEPCO needs to step up protections against “external hazards” similar to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that followed it, which devastated the plant on March11, 2011. “It is important to have a very good capability to identify as promptly as possible failures and to establish compensatory measures,” he said.“You have to adopt a very cautious position to ensure that you always are working on the safe side,” Lentijo added.A final report by the 12-member IAEA delegation to Fukushima is expected to be published in May. … Read More
