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UPDATE: Nine Mile Point 2 nuclear facility shut down twice in 1 week due to a "higher than normal leak".  On August 8th the plant was shut down, then again on August 11th.  Nine Mile Point 2 is situated on Lake Ontario and was leaking into it.  Could that be the source of the extremely high radiation found in Toronto area rainwater? 9wsyr.com (WSYR-TV) -- The Nine Mile Nuclear Plant's unit two is back up and running. The plant needed to be shut down twice this week because of leaks, but Friday night all the repairs were complete.

Inspections have assured that there are no other issues and the unit is back up to about 24 percent power.   It will take a little more time to get the unit back up to 100 percent.   Representatives say the leaks were never a risk to the public, or to plant employees.

Nine Mile Point 2 shut down for second time in a weekAugust 11, 2011

The nuclear energy industry will continue to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as it considers forthcoming recommendations of an agency task force on new procedures and regulations in light of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi.  We have undertaken significant work in the past 90 days to examine our facilities and take the steps necessary to enhance safety.  We will continue to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to understand any potential gaps in safety and fill those gaps. Prompted by the Fukushima accident, the NRC staff has been developing recommendations to enhance safety at America’s reactors. The task force is expected to release its report to the NRC commissioners within the next week. In their interim reports, NRC officials have emphasized that issues identified during the recent inspections will not impede the facilities’ ability to maintain safety even in the face of extreme events.

These NRC’s inspections complement industry efforts begun within days of the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Each of the nation’s 104 nuclear energy facilities has been subjected to a comprehensive verification of preparedness to maintain safety during a severe event, regardless of the cause. As a result of these self-inspections, facility operators have made immediate enhancements or developed plans to enhance safety. The vast majority of the items identified by the industry are enhancements to safety measures already in place.

The NRC has also made clear that issues identified during its post-Fukushima inspections at each plant do not undermine any facility’s ability to respond to extreme events. This conclusion is based upon exemplary levels of safe operation and the multiple layers of protection that exist at each nuclear energy facility in the country.   Moreover, in its annual reports to Congress, the NRC has listed only one “abnormal occurrence” over the past decade—an incident nine years ago that did not result in the release of radiation. Over the last 10 years, the NRC has not identified any negative trends in safety at America’s nuclear facilities. In the wake of the tragedy in Japan, Americans are concerned about whether U.S. reactors face the same risks.  The fact is, American nuclear facilities are subject to more regulatory scrutiny and requirements than in any other country.  American nuclear energy facilities are equipped and employees are trained to manage severe events. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the industry has made significant improvements in physical structures and emergency response capabilities.

Translation of the Dec. 15, 2011 Nature Magazine article by former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and legislator Tomoyuki Taira — both members of  by EX-SKF (Certain expressions may be off, as article was translated English to Japanese and then back to English) [Emphasis Added]: [Subheading:] Possibility of Nuclear Explosion We need to answer the question of what caused the series of explosions at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. Initially, they were reported as hydrogen explosions [...] [T]his is not conclusive. Other possibilities exist, and they are nuclear explosions and gas explosions other than hydrogen gas. [...]

From two observed facts, we believe a nuclear explosion is more likely. First, several transuranic elements have been detected several tens of kilometers away from the plant. Second, the steel trusses in the upper part of the reactor building of Reactor 3 are twisted as if they had been melted.

According to the reports by the Ministry of Education and Science, curium-242 (242Cm) has been detected at a location 3 kilometers from the plant, and plutonium-238 (238Pu) has been detected at a location 45 kilometers from the plant. [...] 242Cm’s half life is short (about 163 days), and the deposition of 238Pu around the plant is far greater than normal, leading the Ministry of Education and Science to conclude these were emitted from Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. If that’s the case, pieces of broken spent nuclear fuel rods may have been scattered around the plant, and it is extremely dangerous.

The discovery of radiation hotspots well beyond the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant has forced the Japanese government to increase its monitoring from six to 22 prefectures in the east of the country.

Elevated levels of radiation have been found 125 miles from the power plant, which was destroyed by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. That is well beyond the 18-mile exclusion zone that has been imposed.Officials in the city of Tokamachi, in northwest Niigata Prefecture, detected 27,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogramme (2.2lbs) of waste in a school compost heap. By law, any waste containing just 8,000 becquerels per kg must be treated as radioactive waste.

Experts and residents say the government should have begun monitoring further afield immediately after the plant began leaking radioactivity."Since the first week of the disaster, authorities have slowly been announcing that they would start checking fish, seaweed, vegetables for radiation," said Tom Gill, a British professor of anthropology at Meiji Gakuin University who is studying communities in the disaster zone.

After Fukushima a great deal of awareness on the dangers of nuclear energy has ignited a series of reactions in society, mainly a generalized rejection to nuclear energy and a call to develop cleaner and safer sources of energy. When thinking about nuclear energy mainly 2 sources come to peoples minds, solar and wind power condemning any sort of nuclear power.  Nuclear power has been associated with Weapons of Mass Destruction, radiation sickness and disease.  However, this is not due to the nuclear power itself but due to the nuclear fuel used to generate this nuclear power.

The above are just some of the most common byproducts, (better known as nuclear waste) of a nuclear fuel cycle, all of these substances are extremely poisonous, causing a variety of diseases, cancers and genetic mutations to the victim.  The worst part is that most of them remain in the environment of decades or even thousands of years, so if accidentally released to the environment they become a problem that future generations have to deal with.  Therefore, in nuclear energy the problem is in the fuel not in the engine. Lets start with the Thorium Reactors.  Thorium is a naturally occurring radioactive chemical element, found in abundance throughout the world.  It is estimated that every cubic meter of earth’s crust contains about 12 grams of this mineral, enough quantity to power 1 person’s electricity consumption for 12-25 years.  Energy is produced from thorium in a process known as the Thorium Fuel Cycle, were a nuclear fuel cycle is derived from the natural abundant isotope of thorium.

In today’s world the main fuel for nuclear power is a naturally occurring radioactive mineral, Uranium.  This mineral is one of the most dense metals in the periodic table which allows it to reach a chain reaction that can yield huge amounts of energy that can be exploited for an extended period of time.  Unfortunately the nuclear fuel cycle of Uranium produced extremely dangerous byproducts, commonly known as nuclear waste.  These are produced in liquid, solid and gaseous form in a wide variety of deadly substances, such as: Iodine 131 Strontium 90 Cesium 137 Euricium 155 Krypton 85 Cadmium 113 Tin 121 Samarium 151 Technetium-99

SciDev.Net reporters from around the world tell us which countries are set on developing nuclear energy despite the Fukushima accident. The quest for energy independence, rising power needs and a desire for political weight all mean that few developing countries with nuclear ambitions have abandoned them in the light of the Fukushima accident. Jordan's planned nuclear plant is part of a strategy to deal with acute water and energy shortages.

The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) wants Jordan to get 60 per cent of its energy from nuclear by 2035. Currently, obtaining energy from neighbouring Arab countries costs Jordan about a fifth of its gross domestic product. The country is also one of the world's most water-poor nations. Jordan plans to desalinate sea water from the Gulf of Aqaba to the south, then pump it to population centres in Amman, Irbid, and Zarqa, using its nuclear-derived energy. After the Fukushima disaster, Jordan started re-evaluating safety procedures for its nuclear reactor, scheduled to begin construction in 2013. The country also considered more safety procedures for construction and in ongoing geological and environmental investigations.

The government would not reverse its decision to build nuclear reactors in Jordan because of the Fukushima disaster," says Abdel-Halim Wreikat, vice Chairman of the JAEC. "Our plant type is a third-generation pressurised water reactor, and it is safer than the Fukushima boiling water reactor." Wreikat argues that "the nuclear option for Jordan at the moment is better than renewable energy options such as solar and wind, as they are still of high cost." But some Jordanian researchers disagree. "The cost of electricity generated from solar plants comes down each year by about five per cent, while the cost of producing electricity from nuclear power is rising year after year," says Ahmed Al-Salaymeh, director of the Energy Centre at the University of Jordan. He called for more economic feasibility studies of the nuclear option.

As Canadians learned about dangerous radiation falling on them in rain on Tuesday as far east as Toronto registered at 20,000 CPM, equivalent to the highly targeted dose of radiation for cancer radiotherapy,  the Fukushima catastrophe escalated even higher Wednesday with evidence that the ground is cracking under the crippled nuclear power plant, causing radioactive steam to escape, "very serious and alarming" according to Anissa Naouai's guest on Russia Today, Dr. Robert Jacobs, Professor of nuclear history at Hiroshima Peace Institute. 

Fukushima nuclear plant workers have reported that the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is already escaping through the cracks that Dr. Jacobs says is very serious and alarming development because it has happened after two large earthquakes over the past few weeks according to Russia Today. (See embedded Russia Today interviewing Dr. Jacobs on Youtube video on this page left.) "There was a 6.4 earthquake on the 31st of July and a 6.0 earthquake on August 12th," Dr. Jacobs told Russia Today's Naoiai.

"What this indicates is there may have been some breaking of the pipes and some of the structures underground that happened during these earthquakes," he said. "There could be radioactive water that is venting into the soil and what's more, as cracks are opening, the steam and radioactivity is working its way up," he said.

Scosche Industries, award-winning innovator of consumer technology, is excited to announce the RDTX-PRO radiation detector and app for iPhone and iPod touch. The radiation detector requires no calibration and allows users to accurately detect gamma radiation above 60keV within +/- 5% accuracy.  The device attaches to an iPhone or iPod touch via the dock connection and is extremely compact for ease of use.  It can also be used as a radiation alarm independently from the iOS device.  When being used as a standalone alarm the RDTX-PRO runs on one AA battery and provides up to 96 hour of radiation detection. “I was extremely impressed with the accuracy and performance of the RDTX-PRO from Scosche,” said Julius James, Radiation Specialist of Fluke Global Calibration Laboratories.  “The detector is as accurate as units that cost significantly more and is much smaller in size.” After connecting the Scosche RDTX-PRO with an iPhone or iPod touch users are prompted to download the free accompanying radTEST app.  The app offers a consumer friendly meter display that shows radiation levels as safe (green), elevated (yellow) or dangerous (red).  For the advanced user the digital display mode can be used to determine exact radiation levels.   Users can also share their results using Facebook, Twitter and Google Maps.

The Scosche RDTX-PRO retail for $329.99 and will be available in September from Synexx in Tokyo Japan.  $10 of each unit sold will be donated to a group of charities with a goal of reaching 1 million dollars within two years.  The charities include the Bikki Children’s Fund, Samaritan’s Purse, All Hands Volunteers, and others committed to aiding those that were affected by the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

The Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee included extensive language in their FY 2012 committee report about nuclear energy.  They wrote of being “extremely concerned that the United States continues to accumulate spent fuel from nuclear reactors without a comprehensive plan to collect the fuel or dispose of it safely, and as a result faces a $15,400,000,000 liability by 2020,” called for the development of “consolidated regional storage facilities,” and mandated research on dry cask storage, advanced fuel cycle options, and disposal in geological media.  The appropriators provided no funding for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant program or Light Water Reactor Small Modular Reactor Licensing Technical Support.  In a separate section, they direct the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to contract with the National Academy of Sciences for a study on the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and discuss beyond design-basis events and mitigating impacts of earthquakes. Language from the committee report 112-75 follows, with page number references to the pdf version of this document.

Nuclear Energy The FY 2011 appropriation was $732.1 million The FY 2012 administration request was $754.0 million The FY 2012 House-passed bill provides $733.6 million, an increase of $1.5 million or 0.2 percent from the current budget. The Senate Appropriations Committee bill provides $583.8 million, a decline of $148.3 million or 20.3 percent.

“The Committee has provided more than $500,000,000 in prior years toward the Next Generation Nuclear Plant [NGNP] program.  Although the program has experienced some successes, particularly in the advanced research and development of TRISO [tristructural-isotropic] fuel, the Committee is frustrated with the lack of progress and failure to resolve the upfront cost-share issue to allocate the risk between industry and the Federal Government. Although the Committee has provided sufficient time for these issues to be resolved, the program has stalled. Recognizing funding constraints, the Committee cannot support continuing the program in its current form. The Committee provides no funding to continue the existing NGNP program, but rather allows the Department to continue high-value, priority research and development activities for high-temperature reactors, in cooperation with industry, that were included in the NGNP program.”

The New York Times published an article on Sunday, June 26, 2011 titled Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush. The article quotes a number of emails from natural gas industry insiders, financial analysts that cover the gas industry and skeptical geologists to produce a number of questions about the long term viability of an increasing dependence on cheap natural gas from hydraulic fracturing. The message is that the gas industry has been engaging in hyperbole regarding its capacity to expand production at current prices to meet market demands.

the people quoted in the NY Times article do not agree that the technique magically produces low cost gas in unprecedented abundance.

“Our engineers here project these wells out to 20-30 years of production and in my mind that has yet to be proven as viable,” wrote a geologist at Chesapeake in a March 17 e-mail to a federal energy analyst. “In fact I’m quite skeptical of it myself when you see the % decline in the first year of production.”

: Dr. Helen Caldicott

All areas of Japan should be tested to assess how radioactive the soil and water are because the winds can blow the radioactive pollution hundreds of miles from the point source at Fukushima. Under no circumstances should radioactive rubbish and debris be incinerated as this simply spreads the isotopes far and wide to re-concentrate in food and fish. All batches of food must be adequately tested for specific radioactive elements using spectrometers. No radioactive food must be sold or consumed, nor must radioactive food be diluted for sale with non-radioactive food as radioactive elements re-concentrate in various bodily organs. All water used for human consumption should be tested weekly. All fish caught off the east coast must be tested for years to come. All people, particularly children, pregnant women and women of childbearing age still living in high radiation zones should be immediately evacuated to non-radioactive areas of Japan. All people who have been exposed to radiation from Fukushima – particularly babies, children, immunosuppressed, old people and others — must be medically thoroughly and routinely examined for malignancy, bone marrow suppression, diabetes, thyroid abnormalities, heart disease, premature aging, and cataracts for the rest of their lives and appropriate treatment instituted. Leukemia will start to manifest within the next couple of years, peak at five years and solid cancers will start appearing 10 to 15 years post-accident and will continue to increase in frequency in this generation over the next 70 to 90 years. All physicians and medical care providers in Japan must read and examine Chernobyl–Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment by the New York Academy of Sciences to understand the true medical gravity of the situation they face. I also suggest with humility that doctors in particular but also politicians and the general public refer to my web page, nuclearfreeplanet.org for more information, that they listen to the interviews related to Fukushima and Chernobyl on my radio program at ifyoulovethisplanet.org and they read my book NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT THE ANSWER. The international medical community and in particular the WHO must be mobilized immediately to assist the Japanese medical profession and politicians to implement this massive task outlined above. The Japanese government must be willing to accept international advice and help. As a matter of extreme urgency Japan must request and receive international advice and help from the IAEA and the NRC in the U.S., and nuclear specialists from Canada, Europe, etc., to prevent the collapse of Fukushima Dai-ichi Unit 4 and the spent fuel pool if there was an earthquake greater than 7 on the Richter scale.As the fuel pool crashed to earth it would heat and burn causing a massive radioactive release 10 times larger than the release from Chernobyl. There is no time to spare and at the moment the world community sits passively by waiting for catastrophe to happen. The international and Japanese media must immediately start reporting the facts from Japan as outlined above. Not to do so is courting global disaster.

Expert tells court former employees of Dimona nuclear facility who were diagnosed with cancer were exposed to year's-worth of radiation on a daily basis

Workers at the

The

A whistle-blower of Tepco leaked the actual situation of Fukushima plant. He left his comments on a Japanese forum. Here are the messages.

Boring survey around reactor 2 is coming to the climax. As a result, the announcement of the government and Tepco has to be denied. If it’s soft material, they can do horizontal boring with such a weak equipment (like the top picture ) but when it comes to the concrete of the reactor building it’s impossible. They need to do boring with a foreign heavy equipment at an angle. They do boring to reach to under the container vessel. (like the bottom 2 pictures)

When they do boring where they don’t need to take a sample they drill roughly with this green rotary diamond bit but the dust is lethal because it’s too radioactive. When they need to take a sample, they change the diamond bit to hole saw type of bit. However, diamond is weak for the heat so when it’s hotter than 500℃ they use the standard type of the tungsten carbide instead.    The bottom 3 pictures are the samples taken.

"Absolutely no progress is being made" towards the final resolution of the crisis, Suzuki told reporters at a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan news conference on Dec. 15. Suzuki, 55, worked for a Toshiba Corp. subsidiary as a general laborer there from July 13 to Aug. 22, documenting sloppy repair work, companies including plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) playing fast and loose with their workers' radiation doses, and a marked concern for appearances over the safety of employees or the public.

For example, the no-entry zones around the plant -- the 20-kilometer radius exclusion zone and the extension covering most of the village of Iitate and other municipalities -- have more to do with convenience that actual safety, Suzuki says. "(Nuclear) technology experts I've spoken to say that there are people living in areas where no one should be. It's almost as though they're living inside a nuclear plant," says Suzuki. Based on this and his own radiation readings, he believes the 80-kilometer-radius evacuation advisory issued by the United States government after the meltdowns was "about right," adding that the government probably decided on the current no-go zones to avoid the immense task of evacuating larger cities like Iwaki and Fukushima.

The situation at the plant itself is no better, where he says much of the work is simply "for show," fraught with corporate jealousies and secretiveness and "completely different" from the "all-Japan" cooperative effort being presented by the government.

The official journal of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), "Canadian Medical Association Journal" is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. On their website, there is an article dated December 21, 2011 which severely criticizes the Japanese government's response (or lack thereof) to the nuclear disaster which has just been declared "over" by the current Noda administration.Written by Lauren Vogel of CMAJ quoting medical experts, the article states:The Japanese government has been "lying through their teeth" ever since the March 11 accident;The Japanese government hasn't disclosed enough information for the citizens to make informed decision, with “extreme lack of transparent, timely and comprehensive communication”;

The response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster by the Japanese government is far worse than the response to the Chernobyl accident by the Soviet Union government;The annual radiation exposure limit for the general public of 20 millisieverts is "unconscionable", and there has been no government "in recent decades that's been willing to accept such a high level of radiation-related risk for its population"

The misinformation on thorium is highly promoted by the nuclear industry and various companies that want investment dollars for thorium reactors and fuel

One myth is that thorium is safe. Thorium-232 has a half life of 14 billion years (billions, not millions). Thorium-232 is also highly radiotoxic, with the same amount of radioactivity of uranium and thorium, thorium produces a far higher dose in the body. If someone inhaled an amount of thorium the bone surface dose is 200 times higher than if they inhaled the same amount of uranium. Thorium also requires longer spent fuel storage than uranium. With the daughter products of thorium like technetium‐99 with a half life of over 200,000 years, thorium is not safe nor a solution to spent fuel storage issues.

Another myth is that thorium reactors can run at atmospheric temperatures, in order to produce power they must be run differently and would not be at atmospheric temperatures. Many of the thorium reactors use liquid sodium fluoride in the reactor process. This material is highly toxic and has its own series of risks. The creation of thorium fuels is also not safer than creating uranium fuels. Thorium poses the same nuclear waste and toxic substance problems found in mining and fuel milling of uranium.