Group items tagged

WASHINGTON (April 6, 2011) - In the weeks following the Fukushima accident, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and nuclear industry officials have been asserting that U.S. nuclear plants are better prepared to withstand a catastrophic event like the March 11 earthquake and tsunami than Japanese plants because they have additional safety measures in place. However, according to internal NRC documents (links provided below) released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), there is no consensus within the NRC that U.S. plants are sufficiently protected. The documents indicate that technical staff members doubt the effectiveness of key safety measures adopted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. UCS obtained the documents on March 25 from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it made a month before the Japanese disaster.

If a nuclear power plant in the US were to have issues, who would be affected? In a partnership between Nature News and Columbia University, we now have a Google map that tells us the population sizes around plants so we can easily scan and see the number of people that could be affected should anything occur at the plants. The team Power Reactor Information System (PRIS) database run by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Columbia University's NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center to map out in an easy-to-read way, the location and size of nuclear power plants as well as population numbers around those plants. On the map, population sizes are illustrated with circle size as well as color. Green circles represent less than 500,000 people and on the other side of the scale, red circles represent populations of over 20 million.

"Activists in the Bay Area are marking the 25th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster with rallies, speakers, street theater, and educational events. Calling the Ukraine catastrophe "the most significant nuclear reactor failure in the history of nuclear power", anti-nuke enthusiasts say they want the world to remember that April 26, 1986 was the day when one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded, killing plant employees instantly and leading to a projected increase in cancer deaths in the hundreds of thousands. Tri-Valley CARES, Plutonium-Free Future and other groups concerned about the proliferation of nuclear power sponsored a panel discussion on April 10 in Oakland called "A Quarter Century of Chernobyl". The panel featured Russian women activists with first-hand experience in that nuclear reactor disaster. In Menlo Park, a community demonstration at the busy downtown intersection spilled over to a nearby outdoor cafe where lunchtime patrons became the audience for street theater with an anti-nuke message. "

"As Japan struggles to regain control of its Fukushima Daiichi power plant, there's lots of talk about which technical safeguards the plant lacked and which should be required in future nuclear facilities. But a new report points to another kind of safeguard that failed: public institutions. Nuclear power plants are designed for what the industry calls defense in depth: the inclusion of backup safeguards in case the primary safeguards fail. No single layer of protection should be trusted entirely. The same is true of people. No power plant operator should be trusted to maintain the safety of its reactors. We need multiple layers of scrutiny-inspectors, regulators, independent nuclear experts-to double- and triple-check the operator's work."

"The governor of Shizuoka Prefecture, a major tea leaf production region in Japan, urged the health minister Thursday to revise the provisional limit of radioactive substances in the product. Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu said the maximum level was unreasonable and a recent test showed tea leaves and processed tea in the area as being safe during a meeting with health minister Ritsuo Hosokawa, who promised to make public the results and check the limit's validity. The survey was conducted under an instruction from the ministry of health, labor and welfare. "The government applied the limit set for foods to tea, 95 percent of which is used for drinking. That was the cause of the confusion," Kawakatsu said. "Confusion and anger are swirling in the tea industry in our prefecture.""

"The government plans to establish a 100 billion yen fund to keep track of the health of all residents of Fukushima Prefecture for 30 years following radiation leaks at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, government sources said Thursday. The government plans to allocate 78 billion yen in a second supplementary budget for the current fiscal year and plans to ask the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., to contribute 25 billion yen to the fund."

"ROCKVILLE, Md. - When commercial nuclear power was getting its start in the 1960s and 1970s, industry and regulators stated unequivocally that reactors were designed only to operate for 40 years. Now they tell another story - insisting that the units were built with no inherent life span, and can run for up to a century, an Associated Press investigation shows. By rewriting history, plant owners are making it easier to extend the lives of dozens of reactors in a relicensing process that resembles nothing more than an elaborate rubber stamp. As part of a yearlong investigation of aging issues at the nation's nuclear power plants, the AP found that the relicensing process often lacks fully independent safety reviews. Records show that paperwork of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometimes matches word-for-word the language used in a plant operator's application."

"BUCHANAN - As America's nuclear power plants have aged, the once-rural areas around them have become far more crowded and much more difficult to evacuate. Yet government and industry have paid little heed, even as plants are running at higher power and posing more danger in the event of an accident, an Associated Press investigation has found. Populations around the facilities have swelled as much as 41/2 times since 1980, a computer-assisted population analysis shows. But some estimates of evacuation times have not been updated in decades, even as the population has increased more than ever imagined. Emergency plans would direct residents to flee on antiquated, two-lane roads that clog hopelessly at rush hour."

"LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews. The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety - and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States."

"The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation. Tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen, has leaked from at least 48 of 65 sites, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records reviewed as part of the AP's yearlong examination of safety issues at aging nuclear power plants. Leaks from at least 37 of those facilities contained concentrations exceeding the federal drinking water standard. While most leaks have been found within plant boundaries, some have migrated off-site. But none is known to have reached public water supplies."