The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation. The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami: “This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.” Nuclear radiation –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.
Tag: Fukushima
Nuclear Cores and Spent Fuel Pools Have Both Lost Containment Steven Starr – Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the by Text-Enhance” href=”http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/announcement-of-cold-shutdown-of-fukushima-reactors-is-based-on-a-political-decision-rather-than-science.html#”>locations are little known. AP noted a couple of days later: The complex…
Massive Cover-Up of Risks from Flooding to Numerous U.S. Nuclear Facilities “And U.S. officials are apparently a primary reason behind Japan’s cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima accident … to prevent Americans from questioning our similarly-vulnerable reactors.” Numerous American nuclear reactors are built within flood zones: Numerous dam failures have occurred within the U.S.: Reactors in Nebraska and elsewhere were flooded by swollen rivers and almost melted down. See this, this, this and this. The Huntsville Times wrote in an editorial last year: A tornado or a ravaging flood could just as easily be like the tsunami that unleashed the final blow [at Fukushima as an earthquake]. An engineer with the NRC says that a reactor meltdown is an “absolute certainty” if a dam upstream of a nuclear plant fails … and that such a scenario is hundreds of times more likely than the tsunami that hit Fukushima: An engineer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) … Richard Perkins, an NRC reliability and risk engineer, was the lead author on a July 2011 NRC report detailing flood preparedness. He said the NRC blocked information from the public regarding the potential for upstream dam failures to damage nuclear sites. Perkins, in a letter submitted Friday with the NRC Office of Inspector General, said that the NRC “intentionally mischaracterized relevant and noteworthy safety information as sensitive, security information in an effort to conceal the information from the public.” The Huffington Post first obtained the letter.
Fukushima utility: We could have prevented nuclear meltdowns We failed. TEPCO president Naomi Hirose led the internal task force that wrote the report damning the company’s readiness. The utility that owns the Fukushima…
The shocking numbers come from the thyroid examination section of the “Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey,” published by Fukushima Radioactive Contamination Symptoms Research (FRCSR) and translated by the blog Fukushima Voice. Shunichi Yamashita, M.D.,…
“Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site, nearly all, which is in pools. They contain roughly 336 million curies (~1.2 E+19…
Fukushima to Burn Highly-Radioactive Debris Fukushima will start burning radioactive debris containing up to 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram. As Mainchi notes: The state will start building storage facilities for debris generated by the March 2011 tsunami as early as May at two locations in a coastal area of Naraha town, Fukushima Prefecture, Environment Ministry and town officials said Saturday. About 25,000 tons of debris are expected to be brought into the facilities beginning in the summer, according to the officials. If more than 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium are found per kilogram of debris, the debris will be transferred to a medium-term storage facility to be built by the state. But if burnable debris contains 100,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium or less, it may be disposed of at a temporary incinerator to be built within the prefecture, according to the officials. Within the 20-km-radius no-go zone spanning across Naraha and five other municipalities along the coast, debris caused by the magnitude 9.0 quake and the subsequent tsunami has amounted to an estimated 474,000 tons, much of remaining where it is. How much radiation is that? It is a lot. Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen has said that much lower levels of cesium – 5,000-8,000 bq/kg (20 times lower than what will be allowed to be burned at Fukushima) – would be sent to a special facility in the United States and buried underground for thousands of year. See this and this. It is comparable to the levels of radioactivity found within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. See this and this. And even the Japanese – who have raised acceptable levels of radiation to absurd levels – would normally demand that material with this radioactivity be encased in cement and buried:
California Slammed With Fukushima Radiation by Washington’s Blog Fukushima Radiation Plume Hit Southern and Central California The Journal Environmental Science and Technology reports in a new study that the Fukushima radiation plume contacted North America at California…
In 2006, a high level meeting took place between Zhu Zhixin, vice chairman of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, and Jun Hamano, vice minister for economic and fiscal policy (Cabinet Office) to discuss the…
Nuclear power phase-out Discussions on the nuclear power phase-out took place in some countries following the events in Fukushima and partly led to a phase-out decision. Germany and Switzerland took that decision nearly at the…