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A Japan Atomic Energy Institute paper from 2002 recently surfaced online. This paper was the technical estimations of what would happen if a nuclear reactor on the Pacific coast of Japan were to have a catastrophic accident. The models included radiation dispersal under a variety of scenarios and also illness and death rates under multiple scenarios. The plant for the experiment is  “1100MWe BWR5 with Mark-II type containment– One of the most common plant type in Japan“. Based on the location on the maps included in the paper the reactor used was either unit 6 at Fukushima Daiichi or one of units 1-4 at Fukushima Daini. The scenario is for one reactor failure, not 3 reactor failures plus spent fuel pools as was experienced at Fukushima Daiichi. Of the included reactor scenarios the one that closest resembles the Fukushima disaster is failure of cooling + overpressure damage. Below are two graphs, one in English, another in Japanese. They show the reactor damage scenarios, distance from the plant and mortality.

20 km away will cause max. 1 out of 500 deaths, an exclusion zone of 100 km will cause max. 1 out of 5000 deaths. The diagram may explain the 20 km exclusion zone. all curves go down beond 20 km away from the plant. Acute deaths = deaths for direct exposure to NPP wave radiaton + explosion deaths. The two sharply-dropping lines on the Japanese chart show acute death. Please make note that at 100 Km. distance values are not 0. Moreover X axis is logarithmic. Tokio-Fuku distance= 230 Km. Our estimate for 230 Km. death rate ~ 10*-4.Tokio Metropolis population 34,500,000 (2007)34500000/10000.  3450 deaths in Tokio only. Again, this is based on this model scenario, not exact situations currently going on. These mortality models include late onset cancers and also survivable cancers based on the details in the report.

Some interpretations of the data in this report using the closest to Fukushima Daiichi model available. These do not mean specifically these things will happen, this is what the model shows under the scenario details they used: The model used does not differentiate between a unit 2 style containment failure and a unit 3 or Chernobyl style containment failure. A containment failure can vary greatly in how much of the nuclear fuel is released into the environment. The containment system in the model reactor is newer, technically improved and larger than the containment used in units 1-4 at Fukushima Daiichi. Unit 1 at Fukushima Daiichi has a slightly smaller containment than units 2-4. There have been concerns expressed that the smaller containment had less volume, making it more prone to failure. These slight differences in the reactors would result in changes to the amount of radiation released and would then change all these other outcomes.

Britain is still paying for nuclear-generated electricity consumed a generation ago because of the hidden costs of an industry reared on the expectation of public subsidies, the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said yesterday. He told the Royal Society in London that the nuclear industry and the Government should show that they have learned from their past mistakes if they are to retain public support for a renaissance in nuclear power. “And some of those mistakes are not small,” he said in a keynote address. “Nuclear policy is a runner to be the most expensive failure of post-war British policy-making, and I am aware that this is a crowded and highly contested field.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/chris-huhne-nuclear-power-a-costly-failure-2370340.html

This video clip is from the Q&A session after the lecture by an actor-and-anti-nuke-activist Taro Yamada (man on the right), at the “National Forum of School Lunch” held in Sapporo City on November 6、2011. The death of the member of the special rescue unit of the Fire Department, whom the questioner in the video is talking about, hasn’t been confirmed officially nor reported in MSM. The person called “Dr. Sakiyama” in the video is Dr. Hisako Sakiyama, a specialist in radiation exposure at Takagi School and ex-chief researcher at National Institute of Radiological Sciences. She was a researcher at MIT before working for the Institute. Translation and captioning by tokyobrowntabby.

Transcript Excerpts On October 26, a friend of mine in Osaka passed away. He was a rescue squad member and had been sent to work in disaster-affected areas for a long time, such as Iwate or Fukushima. In July, he was found to have been internally exposed to radiation. All his team members had been, too. But their mission didn’t end. [...] Eventually they got sick and realized they couldn’t continue their duties any more. All the team members including him quit the rescue squad. Before they quit, they had been berated by their supervisors as unpatriotic. In a little more than 3 months since his internal exposure was found in July, my friend vomited blood frequently and finally died of renal failure.

About renal failure after a nuclear catastrophe (via study): The main pathologies in both districts [near the Chernobyl meltdown] were anemia of pregnancy, renal disorders, transient hypertension, and abnormalities of fat metabolism.

Four generators that power emergency systems at U.S. nuclear plants have failed when needed since April, an unusual cluster that has attracted the attention of federal inspectors and could prompt the industry to re-examine its maintenance plans. None of these failures has threatened the public. But the diesel generators serve the crucial function of supplying electricity to cooling systems that prevent a nuclear plant’s hot, radioactive fuel from overheating, melting and potentially releasing radiation into the environment. That worst-case scenario happened this year when the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan lost all backup power for its cooling systems after an earthquake and tsunami. Three diesel generators failed after tornadoes ripped across Alabama and knocked out electric lines serving the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Browns Ferry nuclear plant in April. Two failed because of mechanical problems and one was unavailable because of planned maintenance.

Another generator failed at the North Anna plant in Virginia following an August earthquake. Generators have not worked when needed in at least a dozen other instances since 1997 because of mechanical failures or because they were offline for maintenance, according to an Associated Press review of reports compiled by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “To me it’s not an alarming thing,” said Michael Golay, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies risk at nuclear plants. “But if this trend were to continue, you’d certainly want to look into it.”

nine-tenths of the country which suffered no damage at all, that strength appears to have gone missing. Japan as a whole is suffering a kind of nervous breakdown. In towns nowhere near the tsunami zone, normal life has effectively stopped, with offices and shops closed, pavements empty and factory production lines silent. The only cars on the streets are queuing for petrol.

Even before the disaster, Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan was dogged by cabinet resignations, leadership plots and a 20 per cent approval rating. His government still appears paralysed.And there is, of course, another problem large enough to poleaxe a better man than Mr Kan. Some 150 miles north of Tokyo, the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is leaking radiation in quantities which the government admits could have an impact on human health.

The morale meltdown is, in fact, another symptom of government failure: an immediate failure to be clear and upfront about the risks, and a longer-term failure to behave trustworthily over nuclear power.

From inspectors’ abandoning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan’s response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday.

The failures, which the panel said worsened the extent of the disaster, were outlined in a 500-page interim report detailing Japan’s response to the calamitous events that unfolded at the Fukushima plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out all of the site’s power.

The panel attacked the use of the term “soteigai,” or “unforeseen,” that plant and government officials used both to describe the unprecedented scale of the disaster and to explain why they were unable to stop it. Running a nuclear power plant inherently required officials to foresee the unforeseen, said the panel’s chairman, Yotaro Hatamura, a professor emeritus in engineering at the University of Tokyo. “There was a lot of talk of soteigai, but that only bred perceptions among the public that officials were shirking their responsibilities,” Mr. Hatamura said.

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 standards or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.Officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regularly have decided 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 are undermining safety -- and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize nuclear power's future.

Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed -- up to 20 times the original limit. When cracking caused radioactive leaks in steam generator tubing, an easier test was devised so plants could meet standards.Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in AP's yearlong investigation. And many of them could escalate dangers during an accident.

Despite the problems, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended dozens of reactor licenses.Industry and government officials defend their actions and insist no chances are being taken. But the AP investigation found that with billions of dollars and 19 percent of America's electricity supply at stake, a cozy relationship prevails between industry and the NRC.Records show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance. Studies are conducted by industry and government, and all agree existing standards are "unnecessarily conservative."

Of all the lies that came out of the Gulf disaster, the most preposterous has been the 3 leaks on the riser story. Figure 165-0a to 165-0c were the first few schematic illustrations of BP’s blowout incident. They were so embarrassingly stupid and logic defying, most experts believed the schematics were deliberately drawn by cartoonists to confuse the average Joe Public. The patchwork of realities resembled a makeshift car hastily assembled from parts of different size vehicles. Obviously a mini car body does not match the oversize truck tires. It is obvious the 5½ inch drill pipe at leak(3) cannot be the same 21inch diameter riser (actually a well casing) at leak(2). Yet the world's technical experts willfully overlooked this fundamental discrepancy and allowed the criminals to get away with murders. And America, the world's greatest nation shouting human rights abuses all over the world, allowed this hideous crime of mass destruction in its own backyard to go unpunished? In China, the corporate criminals responsible for this environmental carnage would have been executed instead of having their lives back. Can the 11 dead crewmen, their young families and thousands of Gulf victims who suffered numerous medical problems from the toxic contaminated Gulf waters and corexit sprayed on them, ever have their lives back?

Surely the world's most technologically advanced country could not have been so easily fooled by this “3 wells & 3 leaks on a single riser” fairy tale (concocted Beyond Phantasm). Besides the many controversial circumstances surrounding the sinking of the burning rig (DWH) and the sudden breaking of the super-strong riser in calm water, how could a third open-ended leak (3) be even possible beyond the completely severed riser at the second leak (2)? See fig165-0c. Leak(2) has to be the blown crater of well no.#3 as illustrated in many of our previous articles and irrefutably shown in Figure 165-5 with the right coordinates in the few undoctored videos.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” S Homes.

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 switch — one that's tripped when Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station needs to safely shut down its reactor — was making an unusual buzzing sound.Plant engineers looked into it, made some repairs and overall didn't think it was a big deal.Turns out they didn't understand the problem as well as they thought they did. During a later test, the switch malfunctioned.

The kind of thinking that led to the switch failure at the nuclear power plant 19 miles north of Omaha has now landed the plant in some hot water with federal regulators. More than a mechanical failing, it suggests a culture that's out of step with the assume-nothing, take-no-chances, stay-on-top-of-things approach that's demanded when working with a technology where multiple errors and failures can cascade into very, very bad results. The switch issue came on the heels of another regulatory write-up Fort Calhoun had received for having inadequate plans for dealing with extremely massive flooding — flooding even greater than the historic high water levels seen at the plant this summer.

Fort Calhoun is one of only two out of the nation's 104 nuclear reactors currently on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's list of most-troubled plants, and one of only eight to land on it over the past decade.It's all caused a great deal of introspection within the plant's owner, the Omaha Public Power District. While the utility's top leaders say the plant remains a safe one, in hindsight they say the staff's safety focus had slipped."We had a slow, subtle decline,'' Gary Gates, OPPD's president and CEO, said in an interview during a plant visit last week. "This plant is used to running at a high level of performance. We're embarrassed to be in this situation. This is not how Fort Calhoun runs.

ATLANTA - Four generators that power emergency systems at nuclear plants have failed when needed since April, an unusual cluster that has attracted the attention of federal inspectors and could prompt the industry to re-examine its maintenance plans. None of these failures has threatened the public. But the diesel generators serve the crucial function of supplying electricity to cooling systems that prevent a nuclear plant's hot, radioactive fuel from overheating, melting and potentially releasing radiation into the environment. That worst-case scenario happened this year when the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan lost all backup power for its cooling systems after an earthquake and tsunami.

hree diesel generators failed after tornadoes ripped across Alabama and knocked out electric lines serving the Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry nuclear plant in April. Two failed because of mechanical problems and one was unavailable because of planned maintenance. Alabama nuclear plant cited for safety lapses Another generator failed at the North Anna plant in Virginia following an August earthquake. Generators have not worked when needed in at least a dozen other instances since 1997 because of mechanical failures or because they were offline for maintenance, according to an Associated Press review of reports compiled by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The top civilian nuclear disasters, ranked by International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale. Worst Civilian Nuclear Disasters 1. Chernobyl, Soviet Union (now Ukraine) April 26, 1986 INES Rating: 7 (major impact on people and environment)

The worst nuclear disaster of all time resulted from a test of the reactor’s systems. A power surge while the safety systems were shut down resulted in the dreaded nuclear meltdown. Fuel elements ruptured and a violent explosion rocked the facility. Fuel rods meted and the graphite covering the reactor burned. Authorities reported that 56 have died as a direct result of the disaster—47 plant workers and nine children who died of thyroid disease. However, given the Soviet Union’s tendency to cover up unfavorable information, that number likely is low.  International Atomic Energy Agency reports estimate that the death toll may ultimately be as high as 4,000. The World Health Organization claims that it’s as high as 9,000. In addition to the deaths, 200,000 people had to be permanently relocated after the disaster. The area remains unsuitable for human habitation. 2. Fukushima, Japan March 11, 2011 INES Rating: 7 (major impact on people and environment) Following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami, Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power facility suffered a series of ongoing equipment failures accompanied by the release of nuclear material into the air. The death toll for this currently is at two but is expected to rise and as of April 2011, the crisis still ongoing. A 12 mile evacuation area has been established around the plant.

3. Kyshtym, Soviet Union Sept. 29, 1957 INES Rating: 6 (serious impact on people and environment) Poor construction is blamed for the September 1957 failure of this nuclear plant. Although there was no meltdown or nuclear explosion, a radioactive cloud escaped from the plant and spread for hundreds of miles. Soviet reports say that 10,000 people were evacuated, and 200 deaths were cause by cancer.

Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake. "Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure. The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have.  Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building .... WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR

[This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters, to be released this Monday.  Click here to get the videos and the book.] Two senior nuclear plant engineers were spilling out their souls and files on our huge conference table, blowing away my government investigations team with the inside stuff about the construction of the Shoreham, New York, power station. The meeting was secret. Very secret. Their courage could destroy their careers: No engineering firm wants to hire a snitch, even one who has saved thousands of lives. They could lose their jobs; they could lose everything. They did. That’s what happens. Have a nice day.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Southern Co.’s (SO) application for the first licenses to build reactors in more than 30 years, with the chairman’s dissenting vote sparking new controversy over whether safety upgrades are needed after Japan’s 2011 disaster.

The split vote mars the start of a new atomic era as Southern builds the first U.S. nuclear reactor from a standardized design that promises to speed construction and reduce risks of runaway costs that plagued nuclear development during the 1970s and 1980s. “I simply cannot ignore what happened at Fukushima,” Chairman Gregory Jaczko said in a statement after the 4-1 vote today at NRC headquarters in Rockville, Maryland.

Jaczko said in an interview he couldn’t support the licenses without a binding agreement from Atlanta-based Southern and its partners that the new reactors would be able to handle a power failure, earthquake, flooding and other hazards that contributed to explosions and meltdowns at the stricken Japanese station. The licensing process “is a little bit like buying a house,” where home inspectors identify things that need to be fixed, Jaczko said. “Once you close on your house, which would be like issuing a license, you own those problems.”

From the press release by Akita prefectural government on July 25:A resident in Akita Prefecture alerted the authorities when the bag of leaf compost that he purchased from a local garden/home center measured high in radiation with his portable survey meter. The authorities tested the content of the bag, and it had 11,000 becquerels/kg of cesium.

At the garden/home center (2 locations) the air radiation 1 meter from the pile of the leaf compost bags measured as high as 0.48 microsievert/hr.

The press release is somewhat misleading, as it says the air radiation 1 meter from one bag of the leaf compost is 0.06 microsievert/hr. If you measure in front of the pile of the same bags, the radiation is as high as 0.48 microsievert/hr. Akita's air radiation level (which the prefectural government measures only at 2 locations) is between 0.04 and 0.06 microsievert/hr.According to Yomiuri Shinbun (7/27/2011), these bags were packed in Tochigi Prefecture, and 20,000 bags have already been sold in Akita Prefecture alone.