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A shocking report prepared by Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) on information provided to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states that the Obama regime has ordered a “total and complete” news blackout relating to any information regarding the near catastrophic meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant [photo top left] located in Nebraska. According to this report, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling” to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a “no-fly ban” over the area.

Though this report confirms independent readings in the United States of “negligible release of nuclear gasses” related to this accident it warns that by the Obama regimes censoring of this event for “political purposes” it risks a “serious blowback” from the American public should they gain knowledge of this being hidden from them. Interesting to note about this event was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chief, Gregory B. Jaczko, blasting the Obama regime just days before the near meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant by declaring that “the policy of not enforcing most fire code violations at dozens of nuclear plants is “unacceptable” and has tied the hands of NRC inspectors.”

This report further notes that the “cover-up” of this nuclear disaster by President Obama is being based on his “fantasy” of creating so-called green jobs which he (strangely) includes nuclear power into as his efforts to bankrupt the US coal industry proceed at a record breaking pace.

Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011   Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also   using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants. For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. Nuclear energy, as has become abundantly clear this year, has no future in Germany. For once the government, the parliament and the public all agree: Atomic reactors in the country will be history a decade from now. Before that can happen, however, the country has to find alternate power sources. In fact, amid concerns that supply shortages this winter could result in temporary blackouts, Germany's Federal Network Agency on Tuesday indicated that one of the seven reactors shut down in the immediate wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan could be restarted this winter to fill the gap . "The numbers that we currently have indicate that one of these nuclear energy plants will be needed," said agency head Matthias Kurth on Tuesday in Berlin. He said that ongoing analysis has indicated that fossil fuel-powered plants would not prove to be adequate as a backup.

Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011   Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also   using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants. For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol. Nuclear energy, as has become abundantly clear this year, has no future in Germany. For once the government, the parliament and the public all agree: Atomic reactors in the country will be history a decade from now. Before that can happen, however, the country has to find alternate power sources. In fact, amid concerns that supply shortages this winter could result in temporary blackouts, Germany's Federal Network Agency on Tuesday indicated that one of the seven reactors shut down in the immediate wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan could be restarted this winter to fill the gap

Nuclear Phase-Out Related articles, background features and opinions about this topic. Print E-Mail Feedback 07/13/2011  Phase-Out Hurdle Germany Could Restart Nuclear Plant to Plug Energy Gap dapd Germany might need to switch a nuclear power plant back on. Germany's energy agency is warning that one of the German reactors mothballed in the wake of Fukushima may have to be restarted to make up for possible power shortages this winter and next. Berlin is also using money earmarked for energy efficiency to subsidize coal-fired power plants.

You’ve likely heard this argument before: “The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, so we can’t rely on renewable energy.” However, a series of recent events undermine the false dichotomy that renewable energies are unreliable and that coal, nuclear and natural gas are reliable.

There are too many reasons to list in a single blogpost why depending on fossil and nuclear energies is dangerous, but one emerging trend is that coal, natural gas and even nuclear energy are not as reliable as they are touted to be. Take for instance the nuclear disaster still unfolding in Japan. On March 11, that country experienced a massive earthquake and the resulting tsunami knocked out several nuclear reactors on the coast. Three days later, an operator of a nearby wind farm in Japan restarted its turbines - turbines that were intentionally turned off  immediately after the earthquake. Several countries, including France and Germany, are now considering complete phase-outs of nuclear energy in favor of offshore wind energy in the aftermath of the Japanese disaster. Even China has suspended its nuclear reactor plans while more offshore wind farms are being planned off that country’s coast.

In another example much closer to home, here in the Southeast, some of TVA’s nuclear fleet is operating at lower levels due to extreme temperatures. When the water temperatures in the Tennessee River reach more than 90 degrees, the TVA Browns Ferry nuclear reactors cannot discharge the already-heated power plant water into the river. If water temperatures become too high in a natural body of water, like a river, the ecosystem can be damaged and fish kills may occur. This problem isn’t limited to nuclear power plants either.

His latest book, "Fukushima Meltdown: The World's First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster," has just become available online as a Kindle book in an excellent and fluid translation by a team under the guidance of American author and scholar, Douglas Lummis. Originally published as "Fukushima Genpatsu Merutodaun" by Asahi Shinsho on May 30, 2011, this is the book that Hirose had hoped he would never have to write. For three decades he has been warning Japanese people about the catastrophes that could been visited on their country — and now his worst nightmare has become a reality. "This is called the '3/11 Disaster' by many," he writes, "but it did not happen on 3/11, it began on 3/11 and it is continuing today. ... Nuclear power plants are a wildly dangerous way to get electricity and are unnecessary. The world needs to learn quickly from Japan's tragedy." Hirose points out that from day one of the disaster the situation in Fukushima had reached the highest level of nuclear accidents, namely level 7 — and from the outset, the government was keenly aware of this fact. But it chose to conceal the truth from the people.

"In past nuclear-plant disasters — those at Chernobyl (in present-day Ukraine, in 1986) and at Three Mile Island (in Pennsylvania in the United States, in 1979) — only one reactor was involved in each. However, at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, four reactors went critical at the same time." On March 13, two days after the tsunami that followed the magnitude-9 Great East Japan Earthquake, Masataka Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), the operator of the stricken nuclear plant, said at a press conference: "The tsunami was beyond all previous imagination. In the sense that we took all measures that could be thought of for dealing with a tsunami, there was nothing wrong with our preparations." As Hirose and many other commentators have pointed out, Tepco executives and government planners knew perfectly well that tsunamis far exceeding 20 meters in height struck that very region in 1896 and again, 37 years later, in 1933. The 14-meter-high tsunami that inundated many of the Fukushima No. 1 plant's facilities was, in fact, well within the parameters of what could objectively be termed "expected" — and was simply not "beyond all previous imagination," as Shimizu claimed.

In fact, the willful absence of care by both industry and government comprises nothing less than a blatant act of savagery against the people of Japan. This book is full of enlightening technical explanations on every aspect of nuclear safety, from structural safeguards (and their clear inadequacy) to the nature of hydrogen explosions and meltdowns. Hirose warns us, with detailed descriptions of the lay of the land and the features of each reactor, about the nuclear power plants at Tomari in Hokkaido, Higashidori in Aomori Prefecture and Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture; about other plants in Ibaraki, Ishikawa, Shimane, Ehime, Saga and Kagoshima prefectures; and perhaps most dangerous of all, about the 14 reactors along the Wakasa Coast in Fukui Prefecture, constituting what I would call Hōshanō Yokochō (Radioactivity Alley). Many of the reactors at these plants are aging and plagued with serious structural problems.

South Korea's oldest nuclear reactor -- shut down since March -- will resume operations, the government said. The announcement Monday coincides with a power shortage warning by the government amid a heat wave that has stretched for 10 days. Built in 1977, the Kori-1 reactor, in the southern port city of Busan, had been shut down since March after it briefly lost power in February during a safety check. That blackout was covered up by officials for more than a month.

The International Atomic Energy Agency gave the go-ahead for the 578-megawatt reactor to restart following a safety check in June. While Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission approved the restart on July 4, it has faced strong opposition from activists and residents.

Nature magazine reports Hiromitsu Ino, an emeritus professor of materials science at the University of Tokyo, as saying that Kori-1 isn't safe to operate because the weld material in the pressure vessel has degraded. "Any 50 nuclear power plants in Japan are much better than Kori-1," he said.

The probability of an accident due to a nuclear plant is one is to infinity and all atomic power plants in the country conform to safety standards, chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Srikumar Banerjee said on Thursday. “At least 1.75 lakh people die due to road accidents in a single year whereas there are nearly 14,000 nuclear plants in the world and the casualty rate till date is just 52,” Dr. Banerjee told reporters on the sidelines of the golden jubilee celebrations of Terminal Ballistic Research Laboratory (TBRL) at Ramgarh, near Chandigarh. Pointing out that no human activity can be risk-free, he said there was a definite need for creating awareness and programmes should to be intensified to convince the people in the neighbourhood of a proposed or existing nuclear plant. He said human body faces more radiation during a CT scan than working in a nuclear power plant.

Referring to the recent Fukushima nuclear accident, Dr. Banerjee said it happened after a gap of 25 years and the cause and effect of the accident was earthquake followed by a tsunami. “It was not a nuclear accident... immediately after the earthquake, the nuclear reactor shut down and nuclear chain reaction stopped,” he said adding it was a complete station blackout as the decay heat produced in the plant could not be taken out. He, however, said the total casualty due to the nuclear accident was zero. “The spread of radiation was not as high as it was projected,” he said talking about the nuclear accident in Japan. After a nuclear reactor is shut down the energy level comes down to around 2 per cent from 100 per cent due to heat decay, Dr. Banerjee said. He, however, exuded confidence all nuclear plants in the country are safe and conform to the standards of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and are taken care of by Nuclear Power Corporation. “India too experienced earthquakes and tsunami in the past but there was no nuclear accident as the nuclear plants had all the gadgets to give signal much in advance,” he said. Dr. Banerjee rejected that alarm bells had rung in India after the Japanese nuclear accident. “All steps needed for safety and security for nuclear plants have been taken by Nuclear Power Corporation,” he added.

He, however, stressed that it was necessary to strengthen the mechanism in the passive cooling system in nuclear plants in India. In the passive cooling system, heat can be taken out from the plant. Responding to a query regarding protests by habitants before setting up a nuclear plant in their neighbourhood, he said what is needed is to explain things to local people in simple local language and also convince them what actually the plant is. After land acquisition, a package must be given to the affected people and at all costs excellent relationship is needed with people living around the plant. He termed it as “baseless,” the allegation that nuclear radiation comes out from the nuclear plant. Besides, the plants along the coastal areas do not have any effect on the lives of fish, he added.

did you know that huge demonstrations have been taking place in Tokyo as well? We certainly didn't until a SOTT forum member posted a report on our forum. The general lack of awareness of the protests in Japan is probably due to the fact that there has been zero coverage of 'Occupy Tokyo' - which has grown out of the country's large (and growing) grassroots anti-nuclear movement - in Japan's mainstream media.

Several large demonstrations have taken place all over Japan in recent months, especially in Tokyo. The general mood is the same as elsewhere: ordinary people in Japan are fed up with their leaders' lies, particularly the lies told by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and how the government has handled the Fukushima disaster. Or rather, how it has avoided handling it. This should all be eerily familiar to Americans of course; BP's lies and the US government's enabling role from the moment the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010 has continued to this day, with the tragedy continuing to unfold in deathly silence. What is happening in Japan is almost a carbon copy; denial, smear campaigns, heavy-handed tactics and, of course, total media blackout. Up to one million people may have died as a result of Chernobyl, although we'll never really know the true death toll. Fukushima is many orders of magnitude worse...

People in Japan are very angry. Even though the Fukushima disaster is nowhere near ending (in fact, it is getting worse), Japanese media are simply not covering the fallout of the worst nuclear accident in history. Aftershocks from the Magnitude 9 earthquake which struck off the coast of Japan on March 11th are hardly mentioned in the Japanese media, but the fact is they are still ongoing and people are constantly stressed out by them. The economic aftershock is also beginning to take hold in a big way. The good news, says the SOTT forum member in Japan, is that people are now starting to wake up the fact that the Japanese government, TEPCO, and the media have been lying all this time and that more people are starting to take action to actually deal with the situation rather than wishfully think it will just blow away out into the Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO has just released "diaries" from early in the accident giving us a better view of the sequence of events from the operators point of view.

The bulk of the materials, distributed on discs with digital files, show reams of raw numerical data. They include photos of broadsheet computer printouts and other formatted charts with thousands of data points for measurements of reactor heat, pressure, water levels, fuel rod positions and the status of cooling pumps, among other functions. Tokyo Electric, or Tepco, also released a smaller batch of more recent documents highlighting its various efforts to restore electric power to each of the reactors, a task that was achieved on April 26. But a series of what Tepco terms reactor "diaries" from the first 48 hours after the quake include the most visually arresting materials. These feature snapshots of whiteboards on which plant employees—11 of whom remained in each of the plant's three control rooms—jotted down status updates on the progress of the reactor shutdowns and steadily increasing radiation levels around the facility.

Using red, black or blue ink markers, the plant operators appear to have scribbled down the notes quickly. Many are smudged or illegible. Others depict complex diagrams and are peppered with technical jargon or acronyms such as SBO for "station blackout." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281504576329011846064194.html

1)     Natural disasters

In the U.S. this is an ongoing effort. Every time something happens through the INPO reporting systems and the NRC assessments, the entire industry looks at each facility and assesses any lessons learned or changes that need to be made.However, it is clear that we need to remain vigilant against complacency while balancing cost vs. risk assessments of these potentials.

2)   Long term Station Blackout (SBO)

The March nuclear disaster in Fukushima in Japan led countries with nuclear power plants to revisit safety measures. The International Atomic Energy Agency constituted a global expert fact-finding mission to the island nation. The purpose of the mission was to ascertain facts and identify initial lessons to be learned for sharing with the nuclear community.

The mission submitted its report in June and the report stated in clear terms that “there were insufficient defence for tsunami hazards. Tsunami hazards that were considered in 2002 were underestimated. Additional protective measures were not reviewed and approved by the regulatory authority. Severe accident management provisions were not adequate to cope with multiple plant failures”.

Further, on the regulatory environment the report states: “Japan has a well organized emergency preparedness and response system as demonstrated by the handling of the Fukushima accident. Nevertheless, complicated structures and organizations can result in delays in urgent decision making.” The inability to foresee such extreme scenarios is a forewarning to countries that are expanding nuclear capacity at a frenzied pace.

Nuclear power is no magic solution, argues Pervez Hoodbhoy — it's not safe, or cheap, and it leads to weapons programmes. A string of energy-starved developing countries have looked at nuclear power as the magic solution. No oil, no gas, no coal needed – it's a fuel with zero air pollution or carbon dioxide emissions. High-tech and prestigious, it was seen as relatively safe. But then Fukushima came along. The disaster's global psychological impact exceeded Chernobyl's, and left a world that's now unsure if nuclear electricity is the answe

Core concerns The fire that followed the failure of emergency generators at the Daiichi nuclear complex raised the terrifying prospect of radiation leaking and spreading. The core of the Unit 1 reactor melted, and spent nuclear fuel, stored under pools of water, sprang to life as cooling pumps stopped. Fukushima's nuclear reactors had been built to withstand the worst, including earthquakes and tsunamis. Sensors successfully shut down the reactors, but when a wall of water 30 feet high crashed over the 20-foot protective concrete walls, electrical power, essential for cooling, was lost. The plume of radiation reached as far as Canada. Closer, it was far worse. Japan knows that swathes of its territory will be contaminated, perhaps uninhabitable, for the rest of the century. In July, for example, beef, vegetables, and ocean fish sold in supermarkets were found to have radioactive caesium in doses several times the safe level. [1]

The Japanese have been careful. In the country of the hibakusha (surviving victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), all reactors go through closer scrutiny than anywhere else. But this clearly wasn't enough. Other highly developed countries — Canada, Russia, UK, and US — have also seen serious reactor accidents. What does this mean for a typical developing country? There, radiation dangers and reactor safety have yet to enter public debate. Regulatory mechanisms are strictly controlled by the authorities, citing national security reasons. And individuals or nongovernmental organisations are forbidden from monitoring radiation levels near any nuclear facility. Poor and powerless village communities in India and Pakistan, that have suffered health effects from uranium and thorium mining, have been forced to withdraw their court cases.

SAN DIEGO -- A major power outage knocked out electricity to more than 2 million people in California, Arizona and Mexico on Thursday, taking two nuclear reactors offline, leaving people sweltering in the late-summer heat and disrupting flights at the San Diego airport.

San Diego bore the brunt of the blackout and most of the nation's eighth-largest city was darkened. All outgoing flights from San Diego's Lindbergh Field were grounded and police stations were using generators to accept emergency calls across the area.

"It feels like you're in an oven and you can't escape," said Rosa Maria Gonzales, a spokeswoman with the Imperial Irrigation District in California's sizzling eastern desert. She said it was about 115 degrees when the power went out for about 150,000 of its customers.

The Obama administration moved Wednesday to speed up permitting and construction of seven proposed electric transmission lines in 12 states, saying the projects would create thousands of jobs and help modernize the nation's power grid.The projects are intended to serve as pilot demonstrations of streamlined federal permitting and improved cooperation among federal, state and tribal governments. The projects will provide more than 2,500 miles of new transmission lines in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

In all, the projects are expected to create more than 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, help avoid blackouts, restore power more quickly when outages occur and reduce the need for new power plants, officials said."To compete in the global economy, we need a modern electricity grid," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday in a statement. "An upgraded electricity grid will give consumers choices while promoting energy savings, increasing energy efficiency and fostering the growth of renewable energy resources."

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released recommendations this week based on lessons from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster, declaring that events like those at Fukushima are unlikely to occur in the United States because of stringent safety measures and regulations.

The 90-day study suggested developing equipment and procedures for U.S. nuclear reactors to keep the core and spent fuel pool cool and requiring that facilities' emergency plans address prolonged station blackouts and events involving multiple reactors.

this is a June 29 Des Moines Register editorial, telling readers "Don't be irrational, don't be hysterical, and don't you dare be anti-nuke". And don't listen to those "baseless rumors": Nuclear plants need scrutiny, not hysteria "Right now the plants are safe."That's what the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said of the two nuclear power plants along the Missouri River in Nebraska after recent flooding. There have been no "nuclear releases." Vital systems to ensure safety are protected. Flood waters are not expected to become unmanageable

Gov. Terry Branstad said that state officials are monitoring the plants and that the public should not worry.Yet some people worry

A healthy dose of concern about nuclear energy is necessary to help keep this country's power plants are safe. The United States must remain dedicated to rigorous scrutiny of plant safety regulations and emergency measures

A Japanese power firm said it would halt operations at a nuclear reactor because of a technical failure, placing further strain on the country's power supply.

Kansai Electric Power Co. said it would manually shut down reactor No. 1 at its Ooi plant in central Japan because of a temporary pressure drop in a standby tank. The tank contains boric acid solution that can be pumped in to slow nuclear fission in case of emergency. Pressure in the tank had already returned to the correct level, but the company decided to shut down the reactor "to give the top priority to safety and find out the cause," a company spokesman said on Saturday.

The company did not yet know when the reactor would resume operations, but there had been no radiation leak, he said. The stalled reactor is one of four at the Ooi plant and has a capacity of 1.18 million kilowatts. It provides four percent of the power generated by the company, according to Jiji Press news agency

NY Gov. wants Indian Point shut in 2013 and 2015 * Entergy wants to run reactors for another 20 years * NRC to take years to decide on new reactor licenses

Two environmental groups said on Monday the giant Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York could be replaced with cleaner, safer energy sources. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Riverkeeper said the region had surplus energy to replace the 2,065-megawatt Indian Point. The groups said the energy could be tapped by running existing generators at modest additional cost, with no impact to reliability of the electric supply until 2020. The group responsible for New York’s power grid disagreed, saying a shutdown of Indian Point could result in blackouts. Indian Point is in Westchester County along the Hudson River, about 45 miles north of midtown Manhattan. The plant, which can power about 2 million homes, supplies about a quarter of the power used in New York City and Westchester.

Collectively, Texas eats more energy than any other state, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. We’re fifth in the country when it comes to our per-capita energy intake — about 532 million British Thermal Units per year. A British Thermal Unit, or Btu, is like a little “bite” of energy. Imagine a wooden match burning and you’ve got a Btu on a stick. Of course, the consumption is with reason. Texas, home to a quarter of the U.S. domestic oil reserves, is also bulging with the second-highest population and a serious petrochemical industry. In recent years, we managed to turn ourselves into the country’s top producer of wind energy. Despite all the chest-thumping that goes on in these parts about those West Texas wind farms (hoist that foam finger!), we are still among the worst in how we use that energy. Though not technically “Southern,” Texans guzzle energy like true rednecks. Each of our homes use, on average, about 14,400 kilowatt hours per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It doesn’t all have to do with the A/C, either. Arizonans, generally agreed to be sharing the heat, typically use about 12,000 kWh a year; New Mexicans cruise in at an annual 7,200 kWh. Don’t even get me started on California’s mere 6,000 kWh/year figure.

Let’s break down that kilowatt-hour thing. A watt is the energy of one candle burning down. (You didn’t put those matches away, did you?) A kilowatt is a thousand burnin’ candles. And a kilowatt hour? I think you can take it from there. We’re wide about the middle in Bexar, too. The average CPS customer used 1,538 kilowatt hours this June when the state average was 1,149 kWh, according to ERCOT. Compare that with Austin residents’ 1,175 kWh and San Marcos residents’ 1,130 kWh, and you start to see something is wrong. So, we’re wasteful. So what? For one, we can’t afford to be. Maybe back when James Dean was lusting under a fountain of crude we had if not reason, an excuse. But in the 1990s Texas became a net importer of energy for the first time. It’s become a habit, putting us behind the curve when it comes to preparing for that tightening energy crush. We all know what happens when growing demand meets an increasingly scarce resource … costs go up. As the pressure drop hits San Anto, there are exactly two ways forward. One is to build another massively expensive power plant. The other is to transform the whole frickin’ city into a de-facto power plant, where energy is used as efficiently as possible and blackouts simply don’t occur.

Consider, South Texas Project Plants 1&2, which send us almost 40 percent of our power, were supposed to cost $974 million. The final cost on that pair ended up at $5.5 billion. If the planned STP expansion follows the same inflationary trajectory, the price tag would wind up over $30 billion. Applications for the Matagorda County plants were first filed with the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974. Building began two years later. However, in 1983 there was still no plant, and Austin, a minority partner in the project, sued Houston Power & Lighting for mismanagement in an attempt to get out of the deal. (Though they tried to sell their share several years ago, the city of Austin remains a 16-percent partner, though they have chosen not to commit to current expansion plans).